by sam paul
Jim still had the acid I mailed down to him a few months ago and the following day we tripped our balls off at Natural Bridge Caverns. It’s the place whose burnt orange yet cracked and aged dinosaur signs had inspired me to visit Carlsbad Caverns a while back. You know, the ones that looked like a retard person painted them? It was a different experience than I expected and it was almost creepy down in the cave but I really enjoyed holding Jenifer’s hand and watching the walls melt and then reform. I think I must be getting old because lately when I trip I get slightly scared when the raw intensity of the hallucinations overpower me. I feel the acid more, which should be good but it just isn’t that fun to me anymore and almost by unspoken agreement, Jenifer and I hardly even mess with it now. I guess acid is just something people grow out of. This was just a special rare occasion, and besides I’m a sucker for exploring caves.
The cave was pretty freaky but the tour of the caverns only lasted about an hour and a half, so by the time we got back outside we were all still peaking really hard and we were too fucked up to think of anything else to do that might be cool. On acid it’s hard to quickly adjust to changing situations and going from being in the total darkness of a cool cave to back out into the hot sun was disconcerting. Still, it was a clear sunny day and we made the best of it. We were all still slightly tripping when we eventually went to meet Simone over at her parent’s house and hang out. Her little brother is a schizoid with a motor mouth, but in all probability he’s a genius that will do great things if he can learn to focus. Still, he was kind of annoying given the state I was in at the time.
We went and ate breakfast at Simone’s house the next morning, which tasted wonderful despite my hung over belly. A traditional Mexican breakfast with chorizo is a great cure for what ails ye, especially after the weird night we had. Jenifer, who is allergic to everything on four legs, had a severe asthma attack in the middle of the night that was triggered by Jim’s foo-foo dog. She didn’t have the “machine” with her and I tried suggesting all sorts of remedies in my overreaction to something I couldn’t control. We even tried going out and sleeping in the car to get away from the pet dander but eventually we had to wake up Jim and get him to drive us to the nearest hospital for her special steroid mist treatment. After arguing with the bone head doctor, who seemingly felt threatened by Jenifer telling exactly him what she needed in an amazingly ridiculous battle of wills, she was all better.
I hate seeing Jenifer in pain, her attacks hurt me with worry and her tough attitude sometimes makes me forget she is as fragile as a desert flower and could spontaneously keel over. She often tells me she almost died when she was born from this asthma and I’ve personally witnessed what could have been her second death (twice!). Bad luck happens though, so if we can get through her ‘little death’ number three with no repercussions, her life should be kissed with blessings forever.
Cramming our San Antonio adventure into just a few days was a whirling dervish of an experience but loads of fun. Seeing the power of Simone’s family cohe-siveness made Jenifer and I pine for one of our own, but I doubt it will happen anytime soon. I psychically sense distraction ahead of us. Visiting Jim was like visiting a favorite uncle and he treated us really well. Respecting his sleep patterns we pulled out early in the morning without waking him up to say goodbye, but it was necessary to make our timetable. I hollered at his little brother who was awake, and told him to say goodbye to Jim for us and to keep his fingers nimble so he could retain his title as Super Nintendo champion. We drove the rest of the way down to Laredo and crossed the border into Mexico on foot to buy some roofies. Many nights of Dominos pizza and relaxed loving are in our future now. Jenifer smuggled the Ro’s across in her pants with no trouble and we’re on our way home with yet another mini-vacation under our belts. We’re so cool we went to San Antonio and didn’t even see the fucking Alamo. Even Ozzy had to stop and pee on it when he went there, but I guess that he’s even cooler.
I feel so incredibly mammalian today, what with the heat and all. Having body hair is like having parasites all over my body, sapping my crucial minerals and the calories that I need to grow. I think maybe evolution is weeding hair out of our human genetic pool because it is past serving its purpose as a survival mechanism. All the thinning patches do now is give lawyers and businessmen sunroofs of insecurity for their heads. If I ever start going bald I’m going to shave my shit off like Michael Jordan instead of trying to cultivate a flap. A flap is when a person grows out the hair on the side of their head and tries to comb it over the balding area. It’s what the military might refer to as a strategic deployment of available forces. A mullet is a fish? My body hair is sucking me dry to extend its roach-like antennas up through my skin. I’m metamorphosizing[1] into a giant Kafka bug! I worry that this incessant hair growth will eventually turn Jenifer off. It certainly turns me off when I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror after a shower.
My life is at the point where if I found a picture of the Virgin Mary weeping on some strange surface I wouldn’t even call the Catholic church to try to cash in on it. Say she appeared on a tortilla; I would probably eat it thinking “damn that tortilla tasted heavenly!” savoring the pleasure all for myself. Maybe I’m fearful of exploitation due in part to my anger at the discovery my education wasn’t always based in truth, which makes me fearful of exploiting things myself. Focusing on the small pettiness of life is making me increasingly atheistic, yet when I let my mind expand enough to take in the vast infinity of the universe I know there is a God. I know it, even when I don’t want to know it. The only problem I have with Him is that the world I live in reflects a laissez-faire policy on His part and that’s even scarier to me than not believing at all.
I’ve come to the personal decision that I believe in a higher power, and I know God wants me to question everything, including Him. There are enough people with blind faith based in ignorance; wouldn’t it seem logical to love the people that find out God exists on their own?
“Expedit esse deos, et, ut expedit esse potemus—It is expedient that gods should exist, and, as it is expedient, let us deem that gods exist.” I take comfort in knowing at least my God isn’t a tool invented by the man to control society, and so despite his anonymity I have to be content with the knowledge that He’s doing the right things. The fucking Baptists around here would censor the entire world if we let them. It’s almost as if they think God favors sterility.
If I ever decide to write a book, that Great American Novel we all have inside us, I sure hope I don’t prostitute it out by hiring somebody to write “compelling” or “spellbinding” or “a real page turner” or “Mr. Paul is a master storyteller” just so I can slap quotes on the cover and induce some soccer mom into buying it. Maybe blurbs are needed to sell books to the average American but it sure gets repetitive and hokey when I go into a bookstore and I’m barraged by all the quotes taking up space on the covers. They yell out at me like a circus ringmaster hucking fifty cent peeks at a five-legged elephant. I think saying that a book is “a real page turner” bothers me the most because what’s that really telling me? That I want to turn the pages quickly? That could be good or bad I guess, but it all seems fucking hokey to me. When I write a book, I want to hire somebody to say, “This book is a nasty evil piece of shit and you should not buy this rot under any circumstances.” That would be much better. I found this great quote about Abe Lincoln the other day that I absolutely loved.
“Filthy story-teller, despot, liar, thief, braggart, buffoon, usurper, monster, ignoramus Abe, old scoundrel, perjurer, robber, swindler, tyrant, field-butcher, land-pirate.”
—Harper’s Weekly magazine, 1852, on Abraham Lincoln
I think maybe those words helped inspire me today. Sometimes it’s my day to sit and vent about all the stupid things that are out of my control in my life, so please forgive my tangents. Thank you and goodnight. Elvis has left the building.
“I have always loved
marijuana. It has been a source of joy and comfort to me for many years. And I still think of it as a basic staple of life, along with beer and ice and grapefruits—and millions of Americans agree with me.”
—Hunter S. Thompson ‘71
Greetings sports fans. Welcome to the wide and wacky world of occasional journal writing. Apologies to me for not writing for the past few months but various important things are occupying my life right now. Things that are SO damn important that if I wrote them down I would have to shoot myself after forcibly ingesting this paper. Okay, okay, I’m really just slacking, I admit it, but my life has been stuck in the doldrums of ennui due to familiar routine. Interest lies in the everyday details but I just can’t justify taking the time to write down what I’ve done each week when the majority of my journal entries would just read: “Smogged out on pot, went to class, went to work.” (Repeat and combine in any order)
No, really though, school is school es una escuela. It IS getting more interesting now that my basic bullshit classes are out of the way and I am strictly focusing on my major. I chose the RTVF major after seeing the type of assholes I would be working with for the rest of my life if I’d kept going after my Business degree—the frat jocks with jobs already lined up at their daddy’s companies, whose butts I would be kissing for the rest of my fucking life just to reach middle management. RTVF is also the major I chose after suggesting to my parents I was likely going to take a semester off (while secretly already in the middle of taking a semester off) and suddenly seeing their over-the-top willingness to financially support me with school rather than see me descend into gradual blue collar hell. If I had known the threat of dropping out would make them help me pay for school I would have tried that tactic much earlier. Who says the caste system is dead? The long and short of it is that in the midst of figuring out why I was happy, I personally concluded money is not as paramount to my happiness as I thought it was and with the renewed financial support of my family I’m taking classes that I not only excel in, but also enjoy. Except for the technical terminology textbook aspects of my classes, most of what I’m doing seems too elementary to me to be viable for a practical career application, but who knows?
The television studio production course I’m enrolled in now is fun because I can rely on my raw creativity to cover up my laziness, just like in high school. Our last project was the production of our own 15-minute TV show and mine was titled “How To Carve A Pumpkin” because I had limited resources (no money) and it was right after Halloween so I could steal some pumpkins for props. It was very bogus but I pulled it off with aces.
Keeping with the pumpkin motif, Jenifer and I went to see The Smashing Pumpkins the day after Halloween at this place down in Dallas called the Bomb Factory. Her ex, Kristoff, was there back from hobnobbing around Europe but it was cool because we became fragile friends after he realized that I treat Jenifer with more love and respect than he ever did. The new Pumpkins album, Siamese Dream, is totally bad ass. After working all night at the Tomato on Thursdays and Saturdays, we crank up the jukebox and play their whole disc. I think it’s so good that this might be the last time we’ll ever get to see them in such a small venue. Of course being the pre-stadium gods that they are, they completely rocked my dick off. To kick off the show they played that one song by Arrested Development over and over until the whole audience was pissed off and ready to rock. Jenifer did her own thing and watched from her own little world, letting the waves of sound give her orgasms, producing that humming buzz only live music can generate. I stared and danced like a white boy on ecstasy, just having a good time. It had been a while since a worthwhile concert came through Dallas and we really enjoyed ourselves. Jenifer’s 21st birthday was on October 23rd and it was about as uneventful as mine, even though I racked my brain trying to come up with something special for her. I made a point of asking her what it felt like to be 21 on the morning of her awakening into true adulthood, but her only response was a beautiful smile for my asking and remembering or reminding her of the awaited day. It was a dumb question but I wanted to see if anyone else thought growing older was as anticlimactic and indifferent as I did. Maybe we should relish this time together because youth is fleeting and 21 is a great marker for our midway point, if we can even last until we’re 42. We’re an official part of the big bad world now, the odds are against us, we don’t know what we want, our suicide pact is firmly in place, and we’re deeply entrenched in the typical generation X notion that hard work equaling happiness is a bunch of bullshit.
I heard an advertisement the other day that summed it up for me. “Tell me what it is, what it does and don’t play the fucking national anthem while you do it.” Well it was something like that anyway. I suppose I could go off on the whole philosophy of my generation but I won’t. The truth is everybody thinks differently but there are a lot of us who are depressed by it all. We’re tired of being classified by the clothes, drugs, religion, race and wealth that don’t seem to bring anyone happiness. Hey, I don’t mind being marketed to or exploited by you, just please remember I will never be you.
I’m an American adult with the mind of a teenager that’s jaded like an old war veteran. I’m the descended bastard child of multiple European countries. I have no fucking ethnic pride so I don’t feel the burden of cause placed on me by my ancestors. Pride is a crutch of the insecure. I’m an amalgam; you made me and now I make you. The end is the beginning is the end. Ad nauseum.
My diversity is often shown through the use of my offensive vernacular. My favorite word right now is “FUCK” and its many uses. I really don’t even consider it a swear word anymore unless I substitute “FREAK” or “FRIG” which sounds worse to me because then I know I’m drawing attention to the fact that I meant to say “FUCK”.
By the way it’s sounded out “FUCK” can describe pain, pleasure, love and hate. “FUCK” falls into most grammatical categories. It’s used as a verb, both transitive and intransitive. It can be an active or passive verb, or an adverb, a noun or an adjective. Hey buddy, “Fuck You” (insult). “Fucking-A!” (positive exclamation). “I’m hungrier than a mother Fucker” (denoting extreme hunger). “Fucking beautiful” (very). “Un-be-Fucking-lievable” (when ordinary adjectives just won’t suffice). “Who the fuck are you? (possible aggression). “My fucking feet are killing me” (curse those darn feet!). “I want to fuck the shit out of Cindy Crawford” (Just me, Cindy and passionate sex). And there are thousands of other uses that people have contributed or suggested to me whenever I’ve brought this up in conversation. It seems like everyone has something to add and there are inventive wordsmiths coming up with new uses for “FUCK” everyday. I’m not a historian. It would take too much time to write them all down and most people already know what they mean already.
Anyway, happy birthday Jenifer, I love fucking you. I mean I fucking love you.
My little sister, who’s not so little anymore, came to stay with me during the raucous Thanksgiving holidays while my parents took off to go sailing in the Virgin Islands. I’m not mad at them because I would also rather go where it’s sunny and warm; I just hope I won’t have to watch their god-awful vacation videos like the last time.
So my sister got pawned off on me for a while, which is cool because she and Jenifer still interact well together and Alecia’s been having trouble with school and at home so I hope she can relax around us and observe that life does get better and less constricting later on if you let it. I had to remove my bong from the living room so she wouldn’t accidentally stumble across it and I also told her she could invite some of her friends up to hang out. I even bought them some wine coolers and beer like a good big brother should. Basically everything my parents said to not let Alecia do I’ve been letting her do.
Alecia and I go through phases with my parents where one of us is the better sibling of the moment and then my parents try to play us off each other. It’s just part of their fucked up psychology and they don’t
even know they’re doing it. Because it’s my turn to play the good child role. I wanted to prove to my sister that I’m just a regular human like her and that I won’t participate in their game anymore. I believe that being cool to the children in your family should come first so that if and when you ever need to be strict with them, they will respect you enough to listen. I think Dr. Spock said something about that in one of his books, not the pointy eared Spock though. The units must have felt guilty about leaving Alecia with me because I got to pimp Dad’s Grey Impala (which made Dan jealous) to chauffer her around for the week, but I accidentally hit a yellow pole in the McDonald’s drive-thru the other night that I’m going to have to own up to. Doh!
The Lansings graciously invited us both over to partake of their Thanksgiving dinner, which was also supposed to be my big introduction to the more conservative and debutant branches of Jenifer’s family tree. However, a freak ice storm the night before Thursday prompted a massive cancellation by everyone except Jenifer’s Grandma who had arrived a day early and didn’t give a fuck about any icy weather. I’ve met her Grandma before. She’s hip and we bond quite nicely. I sense a strong undercurrent of femininity running through her blood that hasn’t diluted across subsequent generations and I can see a little of Jenifer’s hellion streak in her also. The conservative look of old age doesn’t fool me. The meal was great and Alecia behaved with the same beaten dog politeness that I use in unfamiliar formal surroundings.