chapter two.

i have a strange love-hate realitionship with food. sometimes i can go on and on about the sheer pleasure of the palate, about sweet and sour tastes mixing in a saliva-filled orgy of taste buds. and i can cook for hours, trying new recipes, new fragrances mixed with old ones, and a picture can make me sweat of envy. i can also dissert on the proper use of cooking apparatus and utensils, being a firm believer of the right tool at the right time, and of the sheer sensual pleasure that can be brought on by using a small fork or a small spoon, to eat delicately and orgasmically. but mostly, the idea of eating repulses me. unless i'm hungry or baked. or tempted by availability. but most of the time, you can offer me chocolates, you can dangle a taco in front of my nose, and i will only feel disgust. it's all or nothing. and it's a little ridiculous, although i have not quite attempted to modify the behavior. it has gotten to a point where i do not know the difference between hunger and nausea. they feel the same to me, like a two headed snake looking into its own eyes, mesmerized. two sides of one acidulated coin. such opposites that they can only be one and the same.

most days, this whole crazy food thing makes no difference in my life. i manage to eat by myself mostly and at my own hours, in my own way. some nights i'll eat like a maniac, some days i'll have fries at 11 and be content. it's just easier to be by myself, to not be bound by the social niceties that others bring about. the idea that one must eat three times a day, for one. circa noon is lunch time. uh - ok. but how about asking me if i'm hungry, if i feel like eating, if i need lunch? perhaps what i want - what i've created (the illusion of) for myself is a completely customizable world, set to my whims. it is not easy living that fantasy and yet interacting with others - in fact, the illusion is more complete when others do not meddle - but i do manage to live on a bridge between my world and that of others. it's a disease, perhaps. i've always questioned everything. the why, the how, the what i want. what i want and how i want it is a big thing for me. not that i get it always or that i have the power to make others make it happen - but i focus on small things and make these mine. i'm high maintenance, but only for me - i do not hold others to my standards (although they get bonus points if they facilitate...). now the question is whether this makes me happier, in my customized skinned world, or simply more of a nervous wreck. jury's still out.

if you were interviewing me for a job, i'd say i'm detail oriented. and you'd believe me. people just believe me on that one. i don't know if it's visible in my face or my clothes, but people trust my honesty instinctively. and they should, i guess. i'm honest, mostly. i'd say i'm detail oriented, not anal retentive, and that there *is* a difference, and you'd laugh gently a fake laughter, or rather, forced. and so would i. and you'd hire me. and you'd know nothing more of me. but you wouldn't have any need or opportunity to complain about my analness, which would be demonstrated daily. i'm the brave companion that brings along trinkets that you've forgotten, to bring them out when you most need them and most are biting your knuckles, full of rage and having forgotten. but lo and behold, here i am, to save you and make myself feel worthwhile. i'm the potted plant - you don't see me but i'm always there, and i see you. i don't seem like much, until i leave. and then you'll see. and then you'll try to figure it all out. good luck with that.

i live in a silver mine and i call it beggar's tomb. no, not really. but it strikes me that it would be cool to be able to say that. for some reason even saying silver mine, really what i see is the chink from even cowgirls get the blues, alone and horny is his cave, surrounded by his musical time keeping machines, chiming and sighing in the breeze all year long, now clanging, now whispering. sometimes my life is more fantasy than action. even though all i say can be false. likely is, i guess. and what i do is the only reality. i can repeat that but i don't know that i believe it. time to break into a song.

the cock
cock a doodle do
solidly planted in the grass
he raises himself
proud and superb
the cock
cock a doodle do
cock a doodle do,
answers the echo
and on his head
his large cockscomb
reddens like a poppy
cock a doodle do

i've been known to prevent people from sleeping with my frightening singing. too bad.

last night i got so blasted i have no memory of it. that's a lie. i do that (just don't tell anybody who has that irrational faith in my honest face). i only wish i had no memory of it. it's hard to pretend, though, with the scattered debris all over the appartment. the boyfriend might have been snoring, but he was snoring halfway across town so i wouldn't know. and i popped a few pills. no, but that makes for a nice image. i popped a few whatever. doesn't matter to you, does it? the point is, the result is, the art is, that i have enough broken glass and terracotta, enough squirts of liquid on the walls and enough pieces of collectibles and jewelry here to last me all week. a week of sundays, cleaning like a mad philippino lady, promised a green card faster if she can clean like wonderwoman did if she wasn't so busy dodging bullets with her wrists. or something. well it probably ain't happening. well, the philippino lady might, although she might also be mexican or whatever else she pleases, but i sure as hell won't be cleaning that up. i could pretend, but i'd end up on the phone all day complaining about all the cleaning i have to do, trying to avoid conceitedly the nature of such cleanup and the reasons that made it necessary. so i'd rather be honest (see what a good girl i am?) with myself and fess up to it: no way am i cleaning this mess. ever. my mess. no way.

at least this time i stayed clear of the dog feces littering the front lawn. at least this time i only massacred my own place, and left everyone else out of it. no blinking light on the phone this monring, the landlord kindly for frighteningly telling me of the upstairs guy's complaints. even sober, honey, i figure that if you don't mind your dog shitting all over the lawn, and that shit baking slowly in the august sun, well there's only one explanation, and that is: you like shit. so have it on your door and on the hallway walls. revel in your (dog's) shit, roll in your shit, and when you open your mouth, enjoy the fistful of shit i'm very ready to deposit on your swollen rabid tongue. i've got nothing against dogs. dogs are good. it's stupid humans i can't take. well, i can. just not for long and not all the time. and it enrages me to see an animal get stuck to a shitty (pun pun) master. mind you, it also annoys me to hear the dog's nails go clinck clinck clinck above my head all day, but i twist that around and manage to hate the non cutter of toe nails human once again. i don't mean to kid you, though: the problem has nothing to do with the dog. and everything to do with the shitbag neighbor. he's been rather quiet, though, since the shit on door incident. not what i expected: he's such a testosterony guy that i expected more hardship. but perhaps mr. landlord was right when he said i - get this! - scared the shit out of my neighbor! how appropriate.

but let's forget the neighbor for a while and come back to what it is i'm really trying to forget. last night - that's right, everything that ever happens to me always happens last night, but really there is only one night and i keep reliving it and recalling it and retelling it, last night this and last night that. i don't know, it just happens - those nights start with a bottle of wine and finish in uglyville. i'm just happy when i'm alone and it happens. i can hear myself right now, and i sound like a whining werewolf: i don't know what it is about me, i'm just glad when i don't hurt anybody, i can't predict the onset, only see the results... it's pretty much it. except nobody bit me to begin with, a no extra bodily hair is involved (phew!).

i think what set me off last night was a combination of sappy tv commercial and side neighbors action. i was way past drunk already. way past the moment when the bottles and vials and pots should be sealed again and put away too. then this stupid stupid show on tv finally pauses (why i watch stupid shows i'll never understand - sometimes the brain makes requests it is better to not question and go along with), and i sit there, idle and complacent, a stupid smile on my face even perhaps, and watch this dad taking such good care of his kids, and as the story evolves he helps with homework and cooks dinner and hugs them and whatever else that could make him endearing and sweet and oh what a good dad, and they end up kneeling on a tombstone, and of course it's the mom's, and by then it is clear that i've been taken in by one of those stupid church sponsored commercials urging everyone to be good (and therefore join the church). that was bad enough, but there's a close-up on the tombstone and guess what, the mother wasn't burried alone, she had another child with her - cut to flashbacks of a car accident in the rain at night (right, cause her being drunk on a sunday afternoon's drive to the park would not convey the same message). that stupid detail, the added death, really annoyed me. i mean, i was being manipulated from the start (fucking church), but that was the little extra i couldn't take. it made me feel stupid and used and launched a rambling rant about consumerism and religion and emotional blackmail. nobody was around to hear it really, but the wine bottle seemed rather impressed. at least that's how i interpreted her silence.

and then the neighbors. the side ones, this time. their heating vent is connected to mine, clearly and solely for my eternal torment. i bet they can't hear anything from my side. you know, because i'm such a good honest person. but on my side? ha. i can hear the baby turning in his crib, i can hear whether what they're having for lunch is creamy or crunchy. and i can hear, believe me, at three in the morning when the baby wakes up and the dad uses his hard earned child psychology to yell at the baby. because we all know that the way to shut a baby up in the middle of the night is to scream at it. right. well i don,t know if it worked for him as a child, but his stubbornness is not paying off with his own offspring, and regularly, three, four times a week, the baby wakes up to be yelled at in the night. which in turn wakes up their older child. who screams. and gets screamed at. i've considered getting them all ear plugs for christmas, but i never acted on it - instead i spent an evening imagining what i would do to them if i could. i took notes, too. could always be useful, you never know.

last night it started with the mother. she was screaming at her sweet hubby (i've tried to imagine why in the world those two would have decided to mate, to no avail. but sometimes even when you know they were both better looking then, and the sex was good, it's hard to believe it years later, so without having ever seen them happy, it has proved impossible for me to discover the why and the how). screaming about their lack of money. i've followed you here, she said, followed you for what? i used to have tons of money, i'd never go out without a thousand bucks in my pockets, and i left it all behind, and you haven't been able to provide. my father begged me to stay at home, not to follow you to this crazy country, and i didn't listen and i trusted you and i i wore armani and now i shop at walmart and do you know how it makes me feel and blah blah blah. a long uninterrupted spiel about her victimhood. well bravo sister.

sure, it gave me some insight on their situation. perhaps being a frustrated immigrant couple is not all the fun it's cracked up to be. perhaps even they don't enjoy the shit smell from the front lawn either. perhaps it is hard to go from being rich to having normality (and a screaming husband). but i just wanted her to shut up just the same. my stupid show was back on, and the only thing worse than a bad tv show is one that you can't hear because of your neighbor's screeching. i was getting more and more upset (did i mention the wine and its friends?). until i heard the blows. and realised if she had been screaming before, it wasn't the loudest she could do.

from what i could hear, and that was pretty much everything (thank the universe for thin walls and air vents...), he started to hit her. beat her. slap her. punch her. and then the screaming cries came, followed by threats and more punching. and of course the two kids soon joined in, the baby wailing madly and the other one screaming stop stop stop stop (and then a sudden silence from that little voice). what do you do when that happens? most people will wish they didn't have to get involved, will hope the situation will stop without an intervention, will turn the volume up on the television and whistle for a few minutes, before facing the facts, and calling 911. by then the neighbor woman could be dead - which if you're as fed up with your neighbors as i am is not such a bad prospect - with her dead and him in jail, at least i'd have quiet. but that's not a very christian thought. not that i care. anyway, by that point i was besides myself with a drug induced... let's see, what is the opposite of stupor? let's call it rage. i know that i yelled at the violent bastard through the air vent. i know he yelled back. and i have some vague notion that i eventually, after quite some time and a lot of yelling back and forth across the vent, scared the fuck out of him by talking trash and trashing my place - and by the looks of it, it's very likely the jerk thought there were more than one of me in here. i somewhat remember an ambulance coming to see her (i recall a conversation with a 911 operator, but i can't quite piece together when it was that i called). i don't know if the ambulance took her (or the kid for that matter) or not, or if the cops took him away or not - i must have been passed out by the time they left. or so i imagine, because logically they would have wanted to talk to me. there are just some moments when even an elephant's drum solo wouldn't wake me up. and that's one of the things i appreciate most about my lifestyle - the times when nothing can interfere and i can be sensorily deprived and be only in my head and live only what i see. fuck those cops, and fuck those neighbors - i was in a happy place, a black black place where no sound reaches my eyes and no light my skin. if anything else can truly be called happy, i have not encountered it.

i should really be cleaning. or at least put some shoes on so as not to step on broken glass. masochism is not a bad life choice, the way i look at it, but with the headache i'm sporting, i'd rather not add a shard of glass to my anatomy. plus, where would the novelty be? when i was a child i stepped on glass and felt it in slow motion entering my heel. it was green and thick, the bottom part of a wine bottle that had been broken before it was properly cleaned for reuse, to store some crappy do it yourself in the comfort of your own backyard and then get stuck drinking grape piss for the rest of the year type wine. i seem to only have memories of trauma and injuries from my childhood - which is strange considering that i'm an adult now, or so my passport says, and my hands are bruised and scratched, and my lip is swollen, and i have a nasty cut on my skull (it looked worse than it was, it turned out, once i had cleaned all the caked blood off) and i must have done it all by myself last night, but i have no recollection of it. i guess the brain gets trained to remember only what it will, after a while. and it has allowed my survival so far, so that might be an indication that i can trust it. anyway, all is now calm here and over there, as far as i can hear. even the fucking baby is quiet. maybe she's one of the very few women who have enough survival instinct to get the fuck out at the first hint of spousal abuse. i doubt it though. i doubt she's got anything remotely resembling a network or anybody to turn to.

a few years ago i would have gotten involved, would have brought her at least a helpline number or something, would have told her to call me or drop by, or would have offered to pay for the cabride to a shelter. a few years ago i wasn't who i am now. it's not that i don't give a fuck (but i don't) or that i fear for my own safety (a thought that would have crossed my mind a few years back). i just don't care. i've been called bitter, but that doesn't really encompass it. time to break into a song.

i have two eyes, so much the better
two ears, it is similar
two shoulders, it is funny
two arms, it's okay
two buttocks - they know each other
two legs i think that I have
two hands, very well
two elbows - sulking
two hips - they balance
two feet to dance
two knees, it is all!

i don't always make sense or try to. i was driving one day and i was tired and i could kill myself sleeping at the wheel and i had a passenger, somebody i loved but didn't realize how much, and he's the why i've since stopped caring for many things perhaps - or perhaps that's giving me too little fucked up-ability, and he was tired too but for some reason we wouldn't stop and i sang and i sang and i drove him nuts and then his heads exploded and i kept singing until the next exit, and i sang nonsense and praise, and i rolled him out and lay him by the side of the road, but nothing ever got the stench of the exploded head out of the car's upholstery and when i sold it years later - months really - the buyer asked about it but i haven't been able to smell anything since that day so really this is only hearsay.