"Goodbye is too good a word..."

I'm in no state to write a post today. The good news just keeps rolling in while I am in tremendous physical pain. It is not just the physical pain though, there is still the spiritual pain, the seemingly endless psychic shocks, the aftermaths of love's recognition of loss, and of course... the turning away from all of that as much as is possible to face the existential void.

You know, those old chestnuts.

I would go into details but many have encouraged me to take the high road, that it serves no purpose; so, that's what I'll try to do. 

I'll leave it at this: people tend to get the love that they deserve.  

I was matching poor love with even poorer love. It nearly bankrupted me. The audits reveal a dismally inadequate handling of affairs. 

Trust will rot the bottom of your heart out when too generously misapplied. 

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The end of the world

Another weekend away with the boy. I have part of life figured out. I will need to put new tires on the car soon, or maybe a new car altogether.

We turned left on the main road that cuts through Petaluma and followed it through the bubbles of hills to the coast, then south on the PCH along mostly national seashore to unincorporated Bolinas, the end of the world. Onward to Stinson Beach today with the boy and my expatriate friend who is on an extended leave of absence from Prague. Airbnb has made the world possible again. 

The boy mostly napped on the way here. I was falling in love with The Beach Boys and The Beatles, again. Pet Sounds, Revolver, and Rubber Soul. In that order. I could hardly be much happier.

Sheriff John Stone, why don't you leave me alone? Yeah, yeah….

We arrived to game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals, incredulous that Tampa Bay participates at this level. At any level, really. I'm told their team is good. I thought it was game 7, to give you an idea of my involvement. The boy is a Chicago fan though, so still am I. 

Who, in their right mind, would take Tampa over Chicago anyway? Even living in Tampa is not reason enough.

I didn't sleep a single second last night, again. I worry too much about the boy, him waking up and not knowing where he is, trying to find the bathroom and falling down the short flight of stairs here. That's all it took. About an hour later I got up and turned on the bathroom light, so that he could see the steps, but it was too late for me. My mind was already at a full gallup.

He slept next to me on a pullout that when he awoke he promptly announced was a "robot bed." The second words out of his mouth were the completion of a promise made last night to try to persuade him to go to sleep: We're all superheroes now!

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… the world where we belong

Wouldn't it be nice if we were older
Then we wouldn't have to wait so long
And wouldn't it be nice to live together
In the kind of world where we belong

You know it's gonna make it that much better
When we can say goodnight and stay together

Wouldn't it be nice if we could wake up
In the morning when the day is new
And after having spent the day together
Hold each other close the whole night through

Happy times together we've been spending
I wish that every kiss was never-ending
Wouldn't it be nice

Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true
Baby, then there wouldn't be a single thing we couldn't do
We could be married
And then we'd be happy

Wouldn't it be nice

You know it seems the more we talk about it
It only makes it worse to live without it
But let's talk about it
Wouldn't it be nice

Good night my baby

Sleep tight my baby

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Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

- To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing.

- Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, Lines 19-28)

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To Feed a Hummingbird

Well, no ornithologists read here, we've now established that. A few days ago I referred to a hummingbird feeder in which the birds could leach off of the welfare system of free seed, forgetting that hummingbirds do not eat seed, but survive on nectar and insects. So, my newly arrived hummingbird feeder will be stocked with a solution of sugar water, I think. Exciting times for the boy and I though, to have a little project to entertain ourselves.

There is also the cold sake with which to contend. I will make contact my true sumo spirit.

I can hardly keep my head up at work today. last night I stayed up late and watched the first half of "Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck" the documentary about the self-demised rock star. I made it up to the point where the band is achieving their biggest success, the release of Nevermind. Things are gettin' cray-cray for Prince Nervosa. I look forward to the second half, even knowing where it ends, and how.

I had an idea of him being an unloved child, but the wealth of childhood footage tells another story, though a surplus of footage and pictures of your childhood do not necessarily fill the empty crevices of the heart. The sense of being loved is not so easily sustained. If only… 

As for the loneliness of another's heart, none can rightly say.

The hummingbird feeder has a built-in ant moat, sensibly. 

One of my favorite anecdotes is from Jacques Barzun: He relayed how a man was boring the room of a dinner party with his seemingly endless fascination with ant colonies. After claiming several times that they were like a highly efficient Army... a woman sitting across from him finally quieted him, No Navy I presume?

Wit is perhaps the only thing that I have ever taken seriously.

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Okay, don't call me Evilyn….

Well, Caitlyn cost me a few friends. Or, it may have been Evilyn. Who knows. I did not take the subject seriously enough for some. There is no pleasing everybody and it is impossible to match everyone's level of sanctimoniousness just perfectly. There are just too many variables involved. Only a mirror can reflect the full spectrum of light, sending back all of the wavelengths that are not absorbed by the object itself.

One reader went so far as to to say, A straight man will never understand what it's like… Insinuating presumably that only gay men are born with the gifts of empathy and understanding. I wasn't speaking for Caitlyn, I was speaking about her. One reader, at least, noticed that much. For many, her courage is beyond question and certainly beyond the grasp of a straight man.

I acknowledge that any form of "coming out" is a difficult and significant event in a person's life. The point that I was trying to make is that many have no such support system to applaud them when and if they do. Courage is as much about walking and standing alone as it is about being welcomed with a ticker-tape parade. This is in no way meant to belittle the courage that is required for anybody to announce themselves to the world other than what the world has come to thus far expect from them. It is merely a recognition that most do not get any support for their beliefs or impulses concerning self, unorthodox or not.

Also, Kim and Kanye were on the cover of Vogue, not Vanity Fair. Oops.

Well, I would write more today but I am busy getting back in to the work week. I only had a one day weekend, which I spent lying in bed, mostly, then watching SF lose to Cleveland in game two of the NBA Finals. Then back to bed, then back to work. When I awoke and checked the newsstands I still had yet to arrive on the cover.

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Call Me Evilyn

("front-and-back zip fasteners")

One can simultaneously support the LGBT communities and still wish everyone to shut-the-fuck-up about how presumably courageous Caitlyn Jenner is. There is absolutely 0% chance of anybody considering me courageous for making publicly known my sexual or gender preferences. So, shut up about hers. Please.

I do it all of the time right here, expressing certainties and ambiguities, so I know this to be substantively true and verifiably accurate. 

Though, if I surprised everybody with a socially motivated and politically preferred announcement that no one had ever expected... then I might be hailed as courageous also, perhaps by 5% of the people that I personally know. Nothing more.

However, if I said something as commonplace as, I find most budding young girls to be sexually attractive, and I also think that the most natural thing in God's world is for me to lie with them in the biblical sense, to assure their eternal purity, and bring forth life into this world as part of God's wonderful plan…  …well, then I would be denounced, even if I admitted that I only wanted to father them just a little bit as a woman, or even mother just as much them as a man.

No amount of taping my cock underneath a one-piece bathing suit will change this. 

This site is about me, not Caitlyn, etc.

I know what some of you might rightfully be thinking : Caitlyn's announcement had only to do with herself, not with the filthy sexual desires of the middling man whose site you are now simultaneously hating and yet reading. You would be wrong, because I found Caitlyn to be a very handsome older woman, and that is part of what she was announcing: herself as a newly formed sexual object. I should also have access to this right, as should all. 

Why don't young girls get to announce this persona with the same applause and support? If the "problem" is society's constraints then shut the fuck up if a 14 year old girl wants to be fucked by all of her teenage neighbors, rather than she merely wants to get a spot on tv to be a different sex, or gender, or anything else. Don't let the applause stop at the upper limits of your own silly morals, because that is not real applause, and you are no more capable of recognizing courage than a predator is to spotting prey.

What people seem to confuse is the difference between being special and announcing your speciality as an act of courage. These same people might tell you that we are all princesses and princes, if you just listen long enough to the voice of Disney and you so choose to change.

It's a small world, post-op, after all.

Freely squirt your fantasies of sexual courage, fame, and affluence up onto and across Caitlyn's face, and throat, and tender titties, stomach, and pussy-area. This is where your courage warms to life, no matter gender or sex. 

Give it a try: Look, look, look, then demand.

If Vanity Fair had half of a pair of balls then the back cover would have shown Caitlyn's equally receptive backside, with a taped bulge. Never forget how cowardly that publishing decision was. It was never even discussed, only thought about and perhaps lightly joked en referencia amidst the hallways and offices of such fair vanities. 

I take nothing away from Caitlyn, here. She knows this. 

I declare... she puts the i right back in Cat, and runs the two Bruces through the victory tape.

Annie Leibovitz would absolutely hate me, because I lack the requisite fame that is needed for her camera shutter to function so well and so often as it does. She has half the pirate eye of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg. I want to do a private retrospective of her work called: Davy Jones' Liquor

Jon Stewart got it partially right, as he all too often does, by assuming the sanctimonious stance that Caitlyn's decision exists in some untouched media bubble that we can only use to denounce those who notice or respond , but to subjectively hold above notice all those who place themselves in front of the lens, unless they have suffered in the way that all true liberals prefer…. 

The real crime is watching anything other than Jon Stewart. Stewart's team mind is a powerful pair of binoculars that has loosened its middle hinge and its single uniting, binding screw; which then allows itself to look closely or look away with equal impunity. 

Scrutiny is best performed with a single eye. So, it's always best to have two.

Caitlyn Jenner wants to be recognized and treated like a woman. She needs this, it relly shows. I noticed this, and I hope that you did also. She has a very delta-esque package, filled with known and unknown olympic wonders.

Her next shoot will show a tear or two, because , you know, real boys don't cry, real girls always find a smile.

The first word that went through my mind when I saw her cover of VF: Mommy.

Were we supposed to ignore her, or notice her? I can't even tell. It seems a crime to do either in the wrong way. Stewart acts and speaks as if we only get to notice his way of eyeballing, think with his way of mindfulness, respond one liberally-way, together, now, or else… 

We are in league with all the evil doing that is manhood itself - forgetting, as magically as science, that in some ways Caitlyn is also still a man, rambunctious in his public announcement, like a boy or man in drag. Not one person has praised the strength of his manhood. That is what I hope is remembered from what I am saying. He is also now showing, and always has, the same courage he did as a man. So, please, dear…. Either praise Kanye, or admit to something so ugly we'll both leave it ill-described. 

Would it be just as "courageous" for him to speak as a man now? What if he wears men's clothing next? 

Is that the same victory Jon Stewart knows how to respond to. I'm confident his writers would worm their way through a jest. I know that I could, if pressured into a pair of shorts.

Imagine there's Bruce Jenner: "It was too difficult to be a woman. I found that I loved the swimwear, but walking in heels was like a decathlon in Spring. You know, I am a woman, an athlete, and also somebody that goes to Jamba Juice." 

What acclaim might meet him then... Courage, Honesty? 

We are equally asked to show honor for activist women who have denounced the very things that Caitlyn has now embraced. 

Does Caitlyn mean that feminism might somehow be flawed?

What are we to think of such things? Agenda alone can not be the impetus of our conversation, unless both speakers are sharing the cover of the same magazine. Again, Kim and Kanye are in perfect league with Caitlyn, at least as far as Vanity Fair assesses social meaning. If you disagree, then your thoughts are like milk, they expire monthly.

Little matter at all that we consider Caitlyn's manhood. To do so now shows the same sort of brutish indelicacy for which we must all light torches and bang on village on doors. This perennial Hollywood Halloween only seems to suit those who choose to celebrate, most often on days well outside of late October. 

I am also among the throng of peasants, yet sometimes wear the panties of a gang of terrified torch-bearing townspeople. A seasonably fresh semi-cotton pair, but a pair that is not afraid of burning a witch or two, here or there, when the Daily calls.

Stewart regularly exploits gender and sexual differences as the common subject that he is pretending to explore. Don't get me wrong, folks… I'd rather be a camera than a nail, yes I would…. He makes some very powerful and salient points about what it means to be a woman in America. He does not further the discourse in anyway, however, he merely uses that found dialogue to make himself seem superior to it. 

Who can't do this? Anybody can watch the news and say, I doubt that. He attacks the correct demons, and giggles along with the preferred gods. Wouldn't you, too?

I will miss Stewart in almost the exact same degree that I will not. Very few people are as good at what he does. None are as smug and filled with such self-assured self-importance, yet also few with as much grace, wit and deftness of skill. If smugness were a crime then most of you would have had me arrested long ago. 

His agenda... his forced media giggle is false, pretentious, annoying, cloying and… well, I'll just stop there.   

I'll almost stop there: He denounces what it means to be a woman in America in the Caitlyn clip linked above - while forgetting and dismissing his usual patriotism for the time being - he must have slipped in his remembrances of how much he admires the struggles of women outside of America. he never stops to notice the difference between victory and failure when it comes to expression, he only notes that other's reaction to expression is somehow always wrong. 

He's a very useful, three-faced twat. Nope, that's not even right. He's like most ideologues: no currently achieved values will ever reach his. He lives in the temporary joys of doubt, disbelief, and the television light of scrutiny. 

If every dad ever trying to espouse their dogma - at the dinner tables of the America that he so wishes to better - had the same sharp team of writers that he does, then maybe, just maybe... his repeated canon would pop off just like dear old Dad's…. seemingly well studied, until you realized that he was always moving the cup that had the white fuzzy ball hidden underneath.

If speaking truth requires this obfuscation, and distraction, then I concede that he did it very well.

I'll miss him. I miss many thinkers that I do not necessarily agree with. 

Try reading Christopher Hitchens, etc.

So, call me courageous if you must, but young girls do look very delicious. I want to be one of them. Or, more precisely: I want to be wanted like one of them. 

I don't mean in the innocent way, either. I mean that they are sexually desirable and I want to feel that way also. Caitlyn wants that, too. If Caitlyn is courageous then pubescent girls are the nation's greatest heroes and anybody that says otherwise is a traitor, a coward. 

If announcing your newly arrived sexuality or gender is to be applauded, then why the fuck are there laws against taking children across state lines?

Any person that claims otherwise should be eaten by the pack, because they are a danger. The only reason men don't admit that young women are desirable is because they are cowards, under the thumb of women who don't look nearly as good as Bruce Jenner does right now, and afraid to take a legal battle all the way to the Supreme Court. 

They couldn't beat him in '76 in Montreal... and they sure as fuck can hardly lie next to him at a pool in 2015. Fat men are useless. They should only be taxed, or taunted, or both. 

Men are pussies, just look at Cait. Notice her lovely delta, her delicious way of drawing your eyes in towards her victories. 

Stweart gets it very wrong in assuming that she is now suffering the indignity of being treated like a woman. She is also enjoying the luxury of being noticed as one.

I would hold open a door for her. Who wouldn't?  Only an animal would act otherwise.

Few men would honor Bruce, the world is required to honor Caitlyn.  

Courage does not only exist on the periphery of desire, I've found. It sits and squats and stalks and wails right from the center, also, and sometimes dies there. Alone.

If making your sexual or gender preferences known on the cover of Vanity Fair is the definition of courage than Kim and Kanye should be awarded the Medal of Freedom. They simultaneously announced a celebration of their combined genders as if either of them were anything other than both all along. 

If you think Caitlyn's cover has any less to do with Vanity then you deserve all of the magazine covers the world can possibly throw at you, and the ads. The additions, as it were. 

Courage is not exclusive to the act of transition, it also involves the courage to be yourself, to maintain who you are, through common and dull adversity… sometimes, late at night, even if you haven't changed sexes, genders, husbands, wives, or tuxedos, anytime lately. 

I am as Evilyn.

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Anestheistiologist

Ugh, my lateral epicondylitis is really beginning to act preventatively. I haven't been to the gym in about a month. I keep telling myself that a sore elbow doesn't prevent me from riding my bike, but that doesn't do any good. I can hear my heart being slowed with steak, and pork, and biscuits, and strips of delicious bacon. My habits act as a boa constrictor in love with my vital organs. I need a good sweat, to work some things out of my system, but beer is delicious and cold, and never very far off.

My good and true friend from Bellingham has sent me a bottle of cold sake in the mail, and his lovely daughters have sent a hummingbird feeder for the boy and I to set up here at the house. They also have one at the corner of their house and we had a pretty good time watching the marvels of nature come and gorge themselves on the welfare system of free seed. My friend, who is Filipino by descent though born and raised American, is not near the fan of sushi and sashimi that I am. I insisted that we go out to oyster bars and sushi restaurants while I visited recently. We drank cold sake, and now he has become a fledgling connoisseur and convert of sorts. 

I am no aficionado, by any standards, though I do prefer cold sake to warm, where the light-bodied and dry flavors can be enjoyed more. I have promised to have him eating like an Asian within the year. Are Filipino's considered Asians or Polynesians? Little matter, we can orient my readers to my inherent racism and ignorance any other time. That's not the real point of the story. It is only that I have formed, by will and from chaos, a new true lover of cold sake.

It still disappoints me that there are not better sushi restaurants available to me in Sonoma. It is one of my abiding regrets and recurring sadnesses of the place. I really should have done my research…. Ah well, at the time we just wanted to be closer to Fukushima.

I feel as if I have come out from underneath something, finally. It all happens in degrees, this living. My life has fluctuated back and forth between the various stages of loss. I have come full circle and worked my way through "acceptance" back to "denial and isolation."

The circle of loss is complete.

I made a rather significant financial decision this morning that will allow the boy and I to travel more. We will be taking extended weekend trips more often, and perhaps even beyond just the weekends. I'll have to check with Mom. She and I have signed a new agreement that allows for one week a year each, though I suspect that from time to time each of us might wish to exceed that limit. For all that has gone terribly wrong there between us we still do pretty well when it comes to reaching an agreement on the boy, thankfully.

Others have filled me with horror stories, describing how things started off well but steadily devolved. Mine and the ex-wife's story is hopefully that story in reverse. We did not get off to such a stellar beginning to our end, but found some sort of middle path that seems to have allowed us a temporary reprieve from mutual misery.

The boy and I are doing great, anyway. 

Having a son has turned out to be a near miracle in the life of an anestheistiologist (a non-believer who specializes in putting people to sleep).

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The Velvet Swamp: Orlando, FLA

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I've been workin' mister, since the day that I was born

Well I may be right and I may be wrong, but you gonna' miss me when I'm gone…  - Lead Belly

Oh sweet friends, I have figured out this life thing, for ill or else. It was easier than I had made it out to be:

You jus' gotta get in the car while it runs, hope that it has wheels on the road, and then you gotta' go, go, go, and go... with the music loud, the windows open, until the going becomes the living and the wind loves your music as does the sound of the future hitting your car at 9 to 11 miles per hour over the posted limits when nobody's watching. Departure resolves into adventure, like music you've never heard yet. Trus' it.

That's what I'm gonna' do from here on out. I promise, fuckers. 


I've been lately listening to some of the blues that I so deeply loved* as a younger man… … also folk, and some country, too… before electronics arrived to pervert my sensibilities, leaving me half-ruined to the experimental chemistry of my peers, much to my astonished amazement and recurring pleasures.

Something inside of me has let go, and is fast goin' go-go.


An obligation that I had promised would be a life-long vow - Ah' well … since signing the divorce papers I have happened upon the simplest thing in the world: I owe one less person in the world everything and yet nothing; am bound by a vacuum of lost sentiment in which a delicate boy floats between us.

No feelings of that dedicated love will direct my future again, profound or trivial. My only self-accepted responsibility now is to live a life that my son would want to participate in. It's dumbfounding how easy it all is, perplexing how long it took for the realization to grip me like a sentence. I must be part obtuse.


Men are mistreated. Vows and promises were a male invention, and few women will ever let you forget it. It's called feminism, a textual expectation of ideas.

If divorce was easier then everybody would do it. Just demand that others keep the word to which you refuse to subscribe.

It's easy, all you need is law. 

The song embedded above is one of my favorite songs, performed by Bruce Springsteen, written by Woody Guthrie.

I'm stranded on this road that goes from sea to sea 

A hundred thousand others are stranded here with me 

A hundred thousand others and a hundred thousand more 

I 'aint got no home in this world any more

Adventure, that's what's needed now. I'm boyish enough to indulge, man enough to demand what my life will be next. Some part of this thing within me remains, against adverse odds and many efforts.


Time is a matter of these degrees; not temperature, but crossing temperaments all, in all ways.

Always crossing, too often crossed.

Well, I've seen better days, but I 'aint puttin' up with these. 

* - That link is a poor example, one that I played while writing this. Ry Cooder is a hero in the guitar world. To be clear: I have never before referenced a Ralph Macchio film on my blog and I felt strongly enough about this fact to document the disparity between his body of work, the music contained therein, and my efforts documented here.

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As Pigs Fly

… and ride the train we did. 

It was quaint fun for those who gravitate towards such things. It had its charms. The boy sure liked it, most of all when we would go over bridges that traversed little rivers cutting through the hills. He would excitedly declare that he could go into the river if only we had brought his Thomas the Train boots. They are rubber "wellies" and he knows that they are designed for puddle-jumping and all manner of things water and/or mud related, particularly exploring and jumping in.

There wasn't much of a destination involved in the ride, just up into the hills a few thousand feet in elevation, about 25 miles in switchbacks and stretches of curves, to a camp outpost where they sold lunch and roadside junk. Or, stuff that would get sold as roadside junk if it were not beside the tracks, but instead at a privately owned log-cabin gas station beside a state highway.

We sat at a picnic bench and chatted. I asked if he was having fun at the outpost stop. 

This is adult fun, Daddy.

Only for certain types of adults, buddy.

(Where they fly…)

There was plenty of homespun wisdom to be had from conversations overheard:

You cain't stop an earthquake. I tellya. God will prevail! The 'urth gonna do what the 'urth gonna do.

And so on.

On the train and at the stop there was a guitar player who paced back and forth singing songs about riding trains. He liked to claim that all the songs he knew were a hundred years old or more, but they were not. It only took a dollar each to get him to sing City of New Orleans or 500 Miles or The Train Song, an old personal favorite. 

He didn't know I Often Dream of Trains, at which point I coincidentally ran out of dollar bills.

The boy seemed to like having the window open and watching the trees pass. I had to be at constant alert to make sure he didn't lean out in excitement. He knows that he must sit on his "bum-bum" at all times in these situations. A fall from a train window would be an unforgiving misstep in adventure. 

I talked to him about logging and the gold rush of 1849 and what effect it had on people, and how some of the things we could see out the train window came to be as a result of those things. The West coast version of Americana, somehow both more hopeful and yet more desperate.

On the trip back he started to doze a bit. I pulled him up on me, putting my legs up on the bench across from us and then let him lie down face up along the length of my body with his "night-night," at which point he promptly fell asleep. It must do something to women to see a man care for a child as they all passed and looked down and cooed and gave exaggerated awwwws of approval.

It did feel good, though, that sense of trust and safety that I was able to provide as my feet fell asleep right along with him. He and I took a little longer to shape the relationship that we have, but it's up and running at full steam now, just a rollin' on down the tracks...

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The Halves and the Halves Not

A family could spend a full afternoon doing all there is to do in this town. Again, I have no idea why I came here.

After Walmart's Burning Man yesterday we came back to the room for a bit and watched the Cartoon Network (line of the day: "The more you know, the bigger bummer you are") and then went over our remaining possibilities to exhaust this town of its usefulness. 

Putt-putt golf and pizza it was.

Rhys did not have the patience for the traditional and time-tested techniques of miniature golf, so he created a sport that was similar to land hockey with a ball. The object was for him to get the ball in the cup before me, which he did on every hole, even if it required using his hands, or kicking my ball into the water. He squealed in delight and victory, reminding me 18 consecutive times that he won. It was unanimous. He had won his first Open.

Afterwards, we drove the Grand Prix and then I taught him how and why to use a gun to kill soft animals. If only his mother was here to express her pride and gratitude.

No, he tried to play the hunting game, but I wouldn't allow it, being a liberal. I know the picture shows that he got the high score and it's prompting him to enter his initials, but I swear that the player before us just left it like that. Rhys had just run over and grabbed the gun. I do question where he learned to pump a rifle, though. 

I'm being truthful. I have no idea where the kid learns these things.

If I wanted to teach a 3 and half year old how to use a rifle I'd do what other responsible fathers do: take him to a gun show and hand him an automatic weapon. What could possibly go wrong, America? Our forefathers mostly died of old age so that we could have these rights.

After all that, pizza; half cheese, half pepperoni. This simple arrangement took me three attempts at explaining. The girl taking the order kept saying double-cheese because I made the mistake of saying, Well, we want cheese on the pepperoni side, also… She never quite recovered from that verbal trick. She's probably still drawing circles with a line down the middle, trying to do the math. The place was called Round Table Pizza, so she's just trying to derive pie, the ratio of its circumference to its diameter.  I had to finally cancel the order and re-order it as: half pepperoni, half cheese. That was the only mathematical language that worked. 

The phrase full cheese with half pepperoni somehow kept getting translated to double-cheese, no matter what I did. There are no whole numbers in all of Fort Bragg, only fractions and multiplication. A little bit of knowledge is a job requirement in a dangerous place. The vetting process must be brutal for a position like that. The front lines of pizza at the farthest edge of the final frontier.

Then, we did just as we promised, the biggest bubble bath in history. The front desk had a $10 full bottle of the stuff and we used every drop. It was absurd, pre-school paradise. Neither of us wanted to get out. There were so many bubbles that at one point we drained the jacuzzi and refilled it and they were still flowing over the sides. Best $10 I've ever spent, and that includes the pepperoni half of that pizza with all of that delicious cheese.

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Even the Mexicans…

I had no idea what I was doing driving up here with the boy. None. I only wanted to get away. 

This is the place where all the unwanted pocket change in the nation collects. They haven’t seen a shiny new quarter in decades. I have declined each handful of change that someone has tried to return to me. The coins seem fuzzy, a color other than nickel or dime. 

I had no intention other than to ride a train with him. It has all worked out, though only by the boy's standards. He doesn't care. He's just happy to be with me. It is an adventure.

We checked into a $200 a night hotel because the first two places I checked showed the Vacancy portion of their signs lit, yet somehow had none. I didn't bother inquiring about the functionality of the No portion of the signs. This area does not exude a sense of professionalism, nor even mild competence. I tired of the search quickly, and the selling point of this room was that there was a jacuzzi in it, which I figured might be a novelty for the little guy. He loves all things water, particularly water in motion. 

For $200 a night I'm going to let him turn this room into Wet and Wild. 

It just so happened that there was some sort of traveling carnival right across the street from the hotel, which ignited the boy’s sensibilities. What harm could come from it, I wondered. So, after trying to get him to nap in the room for a bit I gave up and walked him across the street.

Oh boy… It was a carnival, and of the wandering type.

It was populated with tremendously shitty contraptions, hobbled together from broken wheelchair parts. The type place where, at the right age, a broken arm would be a summer novelty, a rite of passage. The popcorn was kettled in bulk the previous summer and then warehoused, in a state that allows such things. The boy claimed that he loves ice cream more than me. What these upstarts don't understand is the history that I've put into each of these pounds. I have a well-pedigreed love of rocky road. 

We wandered from ride to ride. The boy was still an inch shy of the 42" requirement to ride most of the traps by himself, so I had the joy of heaving myself up towards my final moment of life. I got my money's worth. These things creaked and strained against my 225 pounds. What were meant to be circular rides wobbled into ovals. The other kids complained. The roller coaster was running much slower than normal, barely able to crawl up the modest hills and curves. Even the Mexicans looked concerned. 

You just knew that somewhere there was a retarded girl showing off her pussy for three tickets. I simply couldn’t find the right trailer. You could probably poke it with a stick for five, take a picture of the poke for seven. The First Aid trailer was closed for repairs. There were groups of creepy Christians wandering around trying to convert people. High-school focus groups. I was offering them 20 tickets each to come to the dark side. No questions asked.

In the hall of mirrors Rhys’ body looked thin and elongated. Somehow, the distortions lacked the power to correct for my physique. I watched the boy walk into a pane of plexiglass while I was trying to take a picture. He recovered quickly, but still… I recognized the lapsed moment of parenting. What sort of father pays to have his kid tricked into hurting himself, I wondered. I could have saved some money just by taking him to dinner and telling him he’s stupid and then laughing at him. I’m sure some families do, as an alternative to the carnival. 

Some of the “attractions” leave you wondering.

As soon as I stopped being myself I noticed that it was fun.

The kid was able to find a date pretty easily. 

The tea cups were one of two rides that he could go on by himself by being above the 36” requirement. 


Once the spinning stopped they each lost interest and wandered their own ways, already drifting within what will become those same ways of the world. 

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Rat Patrol from Fort Bragg

This morning, Rhys and I will depart on an adventure, the Skunk Train. We will drive north for a handful of hours then take a train trip through the woods, up into the mountains. I want the boy to become accustomed to traveling with me. Later this year, or perhaps early next year, I want to take him with me on one of my bigger trips, possibly NYC or Florida. I think he's old enough, or getting there. He travels with mom, so why not dad. Why not, indeed.

We'll drive up to Willits, then West to Fort Bragg. I've never been. The girlfriend that I mentioned yesterday was there recently and seemed to think it was worth seeing. I have always known that there are great adventures to be had North of here, all the way up the coast to Alaska. So, that's what we'll do, have more adventures. 

She also agreed that "Combat Rock" was a better choice for album names than "Rat Patrol from Fort Bragg." It seems like a no-brainer, in hindsight. 

A friend is in town to play an important party in SF. What a phrase, an important party… But, there is truth there. It is part of what he has dedicated his life to, and significant as such. I do not mean just for him, but for all of us that were part of that group, and others. The desert kisser will be going, and reached out to see if I would be, but my life calls me elsewhere. I am dedicated to kissing her again, at least once more. Perhaps each year at Burning Man. We'll see. As I said, I am in the market now for some new kisses, and kissing. And she has lips.

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How to outlive a rock star

(A constant foe to the bad guys)

Ah, the beginning after the end. Lots of good advice has come in from all sides: a fresh start, brighter days lie ahead, embark on the adventure of a new life, try not to fall in love, give yourself time to heal, let's hide from the bad guys, etc.

It's all true, of course, such helpful advice always is. The last part was Rhys' most recent recommendation to me. We were playing in the courtyard, dashing from one palm tree to another, to foil the plans of the imaginary ne'er-do-wells. 

All truly wonderful advice, though... Little do most of my friends realize that in my new life I will primarily derive joy from drowning kittens in the name of Satan, but their hearts are in the right place and I always appreciate the thoughts, kind words, and even prayers of those who love me most. 

I only get emails from LinkedIn any more, but my Facebook page is on fire.

Today is an ex-girlfriend's birthday. She is 35. We met more than half of her life ago, when she was just a young 17 and I was a spirited 28. I had outlived  Kurt Cobain at this point and was working my way backwards towards Jim Morrison. I have said much about this girl, who is now a woman, many years ago but not as much on this site. My relationship with the current ex-wife acted in a somewhat preventative fashion in that regard. That is the way of things. Wives can engage in a form of personal sharia law. It is unwritten and recited only from the eyes. It is as fundamental as the desert sands, and equally menacing. 

Oh, did I mention...? We signed the divorce papers yesterday. Now, we just wait to hear back from the court. It could be as little as three weeks or as many as five, we're told. For all practical purposes we are no more. 

So, ladies…. my remodeled underpants are now open for business. 

Jesus, that made me giggle. I can't imagine having sex with anybody right now. I can barely remember it. Women feel nice, as lost thoughts so often remind me. 

Well, I can imagine having sex, but can't imagine it being an unpaid reality. I'm sure that it will… I hope... though I can't tell yet if I have raised or lowered my standards. 

You, dear readers, will be the third to know. 

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The broken circle is complete

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Once more shall we part

Well, we were supposed to go sign our divorce papers about a month ago. Instead, we chose to contest things that are ultimately meaningless, spend loads of money doing so through a lawyer, and then losing whatever little faith that somehow remained between us along the way, and now... we have arrived at the same spot we were over a month ago, prepared to sign almost the exact same papers.

Something that is supposed to happen today.

Never involve lawyers in your life, if you can avoid it. An argument is never solved, it is explored at an hourly rate; possibilities are inflated, fears stoked. One thing that you will never hear a divorce lawyer say: Well, that sure was easy. We all seem to be on the same page here. Let's get these papers signed, I'm on the clock!

They are the very sleaziest of the trust merchants. The ones that I've been unlucky enough to interact with have been, anyway. Let me know if you find otherwise. I just don't feel as if his heart is really into our divorce.

I almost wish to publish the email exchange that I've had with mine here, just to elucidate the point.  Too much content would need to be redacted for it to make any sense. I'm not entirely sure that it would make much more sense with none of it redacted, and those same parts highlighted instead. It is all a maelstrom of stupid pain and drifting circular confusion, out of which two healthy parents are supposed to magically appear once the smoke clears.  

We're off to yet another good stop.

A few months back Rachel had asked me to stop using her picture on my blog, but today is a sensible exception to that request. It is one of my favorites. She was pregnant with Rhys at the time and had that "glow" about her. I was very happy to have taken the picture. This one image, in its own way, has a part of each of us in it. Do not think, though, that I am being nostalgic for her lost love. Those sorts of thoughts will only gut you like a fish, and I have lately turned the corner on them. 

Many will tell you that you must learn to accept that it is over, completely finished. Many others will tell you that nothing really ever ends in some universal sense. Many others will tell you both things at different moments, or even within the same conversation. They seem to forget themselves, a bit, as to what might be true. Few have the courage to tell you that it is both over and that it will never fully end. 

Though, there is the little matter now of getting both of our names on the same document one last time, for old time's sake, as it were. To make official the final idiom that we have been working towards for all of these years, that one about parting.

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Bad Intel

(Produce)

I was operating on what is known as "bad intelligence." We go to life with the army that we have…


The woman that my eyes kept noticing flew out the day of the barbecue, so she was noticeably absent from the villa festivities, where I had arranged what would have been our first conversation.

Such is life.

It saved us both the unpleasant moment of me having to explain anything.

Now, I'm home again. I go to see the boy in about an hour. I will take him to the Farmer's Market where we will play, dance, eat, and have fun.  Festivities. 

There will be women there, also. Things are starting to occur to me, again. The "groom" pulled me aside and told me that I need to drop a few pounds, to get back into fucking shape. The eye of the tiger, all of that. I agreed with him, having no other public options.

Coincidentally, if I were the King of Spain… I would change the word for "panties" to "festivities" as they mean nearly the same thing. 

I would also have the word shift from being a noun to a conjugatable verb. 

Though, I think that might already be the case.

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"Half of the man's age, plus seven"

I should not write about actual people as if they are part fiction. The danger is that they will find out and perhaps not quite understand. Last night, I discovered that the young woman that has captured my imagination, whose name I now know, is almost twenty years my junior. Of course I have no moral qualms or otherwise with this, but it furthers the imaginary distance in the complete and total absence of communication between us. I don't understand it. When I look at her she seems perfect for me. A type of destiny, as it were. 

How could such a thing be.

She will be coming to the villa today for a birthday barbecue and I will need to communicate to her that, regrettably, things simply would not work between us. It is for the best. 

I will accomplish this in the same way that I have accomplished all of my other communiques to her, through silence.

A few people read my post yesterday and commented that it said much more about me than about her, seeming to forget that I wrote the piece, so it would be impossible for it not to. Though, it can be dangerous to write partly fictional personal essays. 

I never wrote in detail about the first night I saw her, important details concerning her light and lengthy dress with a slit up the front, nor the way she occupied it; her haloed blonde hair as it swept past, changing the weekend forever. I found her easily to be the loveliest person in the courtyard, more than only pretty but charming in all of her laughter and movements.  

Charm is the ability to make somebody say "yes" without ever having asked a question. That is just what she did to me.

It was my fault that I did not write more about that. Her dress was a pattern of soft pink and white, allowing me to understand things about her body that would require intimacy under other circumstances. It has been some time since I have wanted so much to hold a person in whom I had no personal knowledge. To hold, and to hug, and to etc.

Then, what I wrote yesterday was done in partial jest, tongue almost entirely in cheek. I have yet to have a single conversation with her, the person that has captured me for three days now. 

Late in the night last night I received a text urging me to come to my friend's hotel room, the groom, that they were having a party and the subject of my interest had just arrived. I decided to retain some mystery and tried to go to sleep. Here, as in most all other places, my efforts were met with restlessness. She has unstrung a part of me. I am an unusually shy person, though I rarely seem that way. In part because I surround myself with couples and people with whom flirtation need not mean anything, nor have any particular direction or purpose. It is of no harmful consequence, as such it allows me to do almost as I please.

It is when I am left alone with a woman that I am attracted to that this shyness makes itself evident. Few ever get to witness that, so they assume that it could not possibly be true. That I have not had a conversation yet with this lovely woman after three days, with many opportunities before me, should be proof enough. 

In another decade perhaps she will be deeply in love with me. At this pace it seems a near certainty. 

She is not far off from Elijah Muhammad's equation for the correct ages between a man and a woman: half of the man's age plus seven. In fact, I think she sits perfectly in the sweet spot. 

She certainly seems to.

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