My Last Night

...in my apartment. The moving day is just a few hours away.

I have to admit that I am not entirely thrilled about this move, but it is what it is, and it will happen if I am less than thrilled or not.

I fully recognize that I am someone who puts down roots rather quickly, especially when I am happy. I see the idea of "home" as being very transient. Reasons that I will just leave untyped for now...it isn't germane to this blast of self-indulgence. The idea of "home" to me is where you are and where you are happy, not some mythical place of my youth or some idealized version of what the future will hold. Regardless, this apartment is home to me. But...it is more than that...

I think this apartment will have a special affinity for apartment the way I have for Plattsburgh. To me both places have been oasis's in the storms of my life. I ran to Plattsburgh to escape the scum sucking shithole known as New Jersey. I have run to Las Vegas, my desert oasis, from the scum sucking shithole known as New Jersey. I love Las Vegas and it has been good to me, and many of those times revolve around this place.

I still remember seeing this place for the first time. I swear to you that I know how Moses felt when he saw the promise land...except my journey was in a car...but we did go to a desert. I honestly felt liberated the night we moved in...we went to a bar, got drunk and celebrated our new found freedom. What a wonderful evening. The warm dry air, the lights of the Strip, the newness of the city, the euphoria of coming off a grueling road trip. It was truly special.

I am trying to see this move as a cleansing of sort, and keep it in perspective...I am only going ten blocks away. Still, in my mind I associate that escape from New Jersey and this apartment so closely that I am not able to be really happy about this, yet.

I will be offline for a few days.

I wept because I had no shoes, until I saw a man who had no feet.
- Persian saying

Bottomless Pit Of Joy

Several pieces of good news....

1) I have titled all three books that will never be published and never be read. Despite that sad fact, I am rather excited by it all. I never thought I would have titles. I would like a series title, and I think I have one...but for now the books are titled and that is good enough for me. I came up with the last one tonight and it really works. (4 and 5 aren't titled, but they aren't finished yet...I am sure a brilliant stroke of mediocrity will hit me when they are done.)

Interestingly enough, I have thought of all the titles of my book, save one, at the gym. Ok, that wasn't very interesting at all.

2) I have accepted a job and decided to return to the world of the living. Contract job...let's not get crazy. There aren't too many people living so why commit to it fully? Seems like a good situation for 5-6 months.

3) Arsenal won their first match. Hleb scored the winner...yes...Hleb.

4) I move into my new and improved apartment in the next couple weeks and that is a very good thing.

5) After years of dreaming...after years of planning...after years of making Christmas as white trash as possible without being Britney Spears...I have topped myself. Yes, I the inventor and sole creator of White Trash Christmas Eve...have out done my white trashiness...my Christmas meal...will be...a Cajun favorite...slightly south of the epicenter of white trash (Arkansas being the dead center)...we are eating...TURDUCKEN!!!! Yes, ladies and germs...a turkey, stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken, and two kinds of stuffing to hold it all together will be our meal. 15-20lbs of the finest dead animals a human being, who is usually married to his cousin, is allowed to eat by law. It will take lots of white trash planning...and maybe a shed that can be converted into a marriage altar, but it will work! Fear not...my white trash Christmas knows no bounds. Penny slots, cheap watered down drinks, 3 dollar blackjack, Marlboro Reds, extreme drunkeness...and the cherry on top....TURDUCKEN!!!!!


(The response to my last blog was so overwhelming I am not going to get into it now...but I complement the ones who got it...the one or two who think that I was not equally as hard on myself should really be lobotomized and sterilized for the good of society. Thank you.)


"...I'll admit in front that I have a special affinity for things that don't quite fit into any given demarcated category, partly because I'm one of those perennial misfits myself by choice as well as fate or whatever." - Lester Bangs

Clearing The Arteries

On this Saturday night I have decided to blog. Some interesting things have happened...to me... both in the mater of it being interesting and to whom it happened. Now sure I just used "whom" correctly, but fuck it. Stick with this I think it gets better.

First, I have a new housemate. My friend Karl has join the Weber casa, and my old roomate Dave departed. I had two blissful months to myself and that was wonderful. Now Karl is here and it is going to be good. We have a lot in common and I think this is going to be a good temporary partnership in strictly the most heterosexual of terms.

Second, I left my last job, for many reasons and I have been living the Vegas life for about two months. Depleting my savings, using unemployment and playing poker...and let me tell you this...it has been the greatest respite of my life. I didn't tell anyone earlier, but between no flatmate and no job I was really able to invest in a little me time...to put it in the gayest way possible...but it is true. I really needed some time to explore some things. When I started I wasn't sure what it was that I needed to think about, but I knew that there was something not right. Something askew. I tried like hell to think about it, write about it, and examine the thoughts that came from it, but to no avail. I can't say that I have fully examined every speck of my soul and found all the secrets of what it is to be me, but I will say that this cathartic time-out from life was exactly what the doctor ordered...Dr. Mengele...but still it was a doctor.

Since my writing went well recently, especially today, and I am in a particularly truthful mood I do want to share one of the things that I learned, but I am going to keep it as shrouded as possible as to protect the innocent and the guilty alike...this revelation came to me mostly a while ago...but an inconsequential event and my TIVO made me think about it a little while ago...so...here it goes...

When I was in my youth I dated someone for a long time. This relationship was tumultuous and stormy to put it mildly...bat shit fucking crazy would be more apt. Well, long after the mutual insane hurtfest ended I reconnected, in a way, with this woman. We were able to express our side of the relationship in a very open and frank way...to ABSOLUTELY no better understanding of each others position...I was as guilty as not being able or willing to understand as she was.
What I thought was just a minor issue turned out to be a major sticking point to my lack of appreciation for the situation, which I didn't fully understand at the time. She used to repeatedly tell me that she never loved me, not ever, during the course of our unholy union. For some reason, despite all the pain, suffering, misery, stupidity, lies, deceit and game playing, I really truly believed she loved me. Chuckle all you want, but it is true. There are several obvious reasons that I wanted to believe it...the time we spent together, vanity, ego, and the sincere belief that she told me just ONE THING that was true and honest and sweet during our hellacious bunchalliance (I like that word.) Also, I truely believed that the reason she told me that was because she wanted to hurt me, it was her way of trying to dig at me.
A while ago I came to a true moment of clarity. Something triggered in my head listening to an argument between an equally stupid couple. At that moment when we were talking later at a bar and he was complaining...I heard my voice and it scared the shit out of me. I had said a million time to her and to others that she never really loved me and she never really liked me. Still, when she said it to me, I didn't want to believe it...the infamous Weber ego reared its bulbous bus head. At that moment, in that bar, drinking an ice cold Blue Moon (great beer), I had an epiphany...that moment of true clarity. I understood....
...she never did really love me. She never did really like me. She was being honest with me and I ALWAYS knew it...and that honesty caused me to act out in stupid ways with her. Stupid, self-destructive ways. I was hurt, I didn't know it, I wanted her to hurt, I didn't know it...I was embarassed and humiliated, I wanted her to be embarassed and humiliated and I NEVER KNEW IT! I NEVER FELT IT! I NEVER UNDERSTOOD IT!! Sitting in that bar I felt like I was going to laugh, cry, throw up, jump for joy...I was all over the place in my mind. The next morning I saw more. I never loved her either. I never liked her either. When we met I was REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY hurting from a relationship I had prior. Over a year prior, but I was wrapped in angst and guilt and I was unable to let go. When I met this girl, I saw she was lost, I saw she was broken...and I was stupid, arrogant and conceited enough to think I could help her, I could save her, I could fix her. I didn't understand the most basic thing to life...YOU CANNOT FIX SOMEONE ELSE!!!! THEY MUST FIX THEMSELVES AND YOU MUST FIX YOURSELF!!
In this girl I saw a way to make up for the wrongs I had committed and prove to myself that I wasn't the total worthless fucking asshole that I was feeling with every ounce of my being. I was in a midst of a depression and self-loathing that I covered with arrogance and bravado. I was NOT in a place to fix anyone even if it could be done. I was a raging mess inside. I never loved her, I saw her as a way to make me whole, and I stayed with it because I quit my last relationship without a fight, thought i did the honorable thing and fell on my sword, and was ushered out the door...ALL by design. This time I was NOT going to do that. I was going to stick with this. I was going to stay in this WAY PAST THE POINT OF ABSURDITY! Which I regrettably for both sides did. I didn't like her, I flat out hated her fucking guts 99% of the time and never, ever felt comfortable with her because of her highly bi-polar state. So it was always an extreme high or an extreme depression, and it always kept me off balance.
Here is the part I want to get across, because I think this is the most important thing. NEITHER OF US WAS RIGHT! NEITHER OF US WAS WRONG! One was good while the other was bad! One was not better or worse than the other! We were totally incompatible from the SECOND we met, and if either one of us was a healthy, complete, whole human being we would have run fucking screaming from the other one like our hair was on fire! I blamed her for everything. She blamed me for everything. We hated each other. We tortured each other and LOVED doing it. Our internal misery and the desire to unleash that on another human being was the only tie that binded us together.
To my most recent insight which completed the picture for me...and stay with the stupid beginning. I LOVE the show Cheers. Tivo has brought that back to me and I watch it religiously. "You get 25 in the city?"...is one of the greatest lines ever. I digress. The first 5 years is the relationship between Sam and Diane. Two polar opposites with their own baggage who delight in making the other one miserable and living in that misery together...because of their own inner bullshit. Watching the show I realized something i didn't understand when I was 12...Sam wasn't wrong. Diane wasn't wrong. Sam and Diane was wrong.
That silly show got me to really think, and it really released my anger, my issues with her...not that I am saying that I want thing one to do with her as long as I may live, because we are so different...but I am over it. I have accepted my role in it...and i have accepted that if I was not participating there would have been no "us." That weight off my shoulders, off my soul, off my brain has been truly and utterly remarkable. I don't hate her anymore. I don't hate me anymore...for that episode at least. I don't feel an ounce of resentment and I don't feel an ounce of regret the way I did for so long. I used to curse the day I met her. Now, I don't. She wasn't wrong. I wasn't wrong. We were both NOT right. We were both not right for each other. That's it.
Dunno if this helped at all for anyone. I hope you are all a lot smarter than I am. I will say one thing to her, even though she isn't going to read this...thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you never told me what you told me, that you never loved me for a minute...I wouldn't have been able to work through my biggest problem...pride. Pride comes before the fall, they say. Well, hopefully this lesson will keep me from falling quite as much. I do thank you, and if you said it to hurt me or said it because it was the truth it doesn't matter. We must own our own feelings and I have finally owned mine.

CAUTION: TO THOSE WHO KNOW ME I AM SURE YOU THINK THIS DESCRIBES SOMEONE YOU KNOW! IT VERY WELL MAY NOT!!!!!! SO DO NOT JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS!! I AM OBVIOUSLY STUPID ENOUGH TO HAVE MULTIPLE SHITTY RELATIONSHIPS!!!! THANK YOU!

(P.S. Arsenal won the Amsterdam cup!!)

Love is patient, love is kind; it does not envy, it does not boast. It is not proud, it is not rude, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices in truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love.