Literature XI

Being as horrendous as I can be,

I come up as good.

What if I was corrupt?

Then I could start winning.

I could be the one behind the genocides, the starvation, the incels, the career women, black rock, feminisation, docility, dronification, credit system, totalitarianism.

However, who is to say I am not corrupt?

Golf.

My books no longer reflect my reality.

My reality is grinded gears, drug powders, abandoned ideas, sacrificed wealth, a loopable scam.

Oh, how precious.

What pace of life reflects the ability to read a book?

This is a slower, more wholesome and home-centred life.

The creeping charlie is that an apartment is not a home.

My upper class nest is set aflame.

The baby cries because of the richness of the milk.

Oh—

I am looking at the 80 hour work week

And it is all success

And it is all money

And it is all laurels

And it is all ceremony

It is all finished.

Ok—

I could say NEgro streets, Ginsberg could say Negro streets..

The modern gay movement cannot say Negro streets.

Just like I cannot actually condone Burroughs unless I want to publicly condone digital sex.

OK, Burroughs is mine.

If I could understand it!

So post lost generation and nilling the Beat Generation we end up at a stranger crossroads, which is these fucks that got famous in upper classes and NO WHERE ELSE, JOHN UPDIKE, CAPOTE, JAMES JONES, DH LAWRENCE, (had to look it up, goddamn me) JAMES BALDWIN.

That’s it if I am playing the sympathetic, prestigious, poor white boy role then I can remember poor (had to look it up again, god bless my soul) James Baldwin after I learn the ancient whippings of the rest.

I was just thinking about this at work, one has to be rich before one can be liberal, false.

One can be conservative when poor then.

So if that is true, ye Gods, what a bloody choice?

Where is the sense?

If I am liberal I let the bed bugs in.

But if I am conservative, I keep my lovers out.

Death, death and more death if I want to keep my head on the swivel.

Egyptian love uncasked.

No, no, no, keep it on, keep it on.

I was slammed by RAINWATER CASSETTE EXCHANGE.

SO DANMNED GOOD — AND HE WAS GAY.

JUST LIKE BURROUGHS.

WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK ARE THE HOMOS WHO ARE EVERYTHING A STRAIGHT WHITE COULD HOPE TO BE?

HONESTER THAN FUCK.

THEY WANT TO FUCK ANOTHER MAN?

BAM.

FUCKED.

THEY WANT TO FUCK A BOY.

FUCKED BOY.

WANT TO MIX IT UP?

AN ANIMAL? A WOMAN? SOMETHING YOUNGER THAN A WOMAN?
BLAM. SOMETHING JUST GOT FUCKED.

HOW COULD I EVER BE THAT HONEST?

Myself: “No, honestly judge, all I ever wanted was to fuck myself.”

The Judge: “Maybe it is time to think differently. BAM! Case closed.”

One of the exciting things about life is the limitless amount of things one can take responsibility for: birds, feet, sports, soybeans.

What the fuck is a priority? I would like to go to work tonight.

I won’t go to work tonight because I am not operating on that level of discipline to take advantage of every opportunity given to me. 

Halt the rage.

Build a life.

Books and walks and magazines and tv shows and documentaries and great courses and music and walks and road trips and family and religion and work and conversations.

What? Big deal. I drank in high school. I had a sedan at fifteen with a learners permit so it was full of Catholic girls and my longtime buddy. We all piled out into someone’s house when the adults were gone and the liquor cabinets were raided. Friends clustered and couples found beds in rooms they had never seen before. The girl I was with over the course of hours of sweat, dry humps, gasps and half-moans asked me a question, “what do I want?”

Apparently not to lose my virginity. I had not figured out yet that besides making as much money as possible and maintaining one’s status that there are two games played in America and both have to deal with how many holes one can fill. So, the church boy was only willing to tease the waters of American power politics, sex and corruption with a drunken night and a flirt. Teasing myself and a woman to the brink of insanity is not the only reason I would dally with alcohol. There was always mischief with the boys. My first beer was on the Gulf of Mexico beach during a side quest on a mission trip. My first liquor was with the boys as we broke into our friends home while the family was on vacation.

That was how I got started as a kid. All memories worth writing about but anyone who is familiar with such stories has their own or is brutalized by such experiences shared. Skip forward to having become a member of a church after high school and doing all the clean living things until I came across a new sub-group of people I had never experienced before : the intellectual liberal living Christian. 

Outside of a church after a wedding I drank the liquor, shivering from immorality, immediately joining my blood stream. Gone were the days of drinking for camaraderie and sensuality I was now drinking for the sake of sophistication. This sophisticated man spent much of his time alone whether it was reading, writing, playing music, listening to music, creating art, binge-watching television, movies or porn. I set off on a journey of self-discovery with a cold pack of Budweiser in the fridge and a handle of jack daniels on my desk and my favorite porn star on the computer screen. I worked through a carpentry gig, the stock room of Forever 21, a stage hand at One Percent Productions, a bouncer at a club, a door guy at another club, a parking lot attendant, a driver, an employee at a ranch, a school, a grocery store, a parcel delivery service, a state park and a restaurant using this model of life and thought.

In between I got laid, did some drugs, played music, wrote, read bookshelves, published zines, bicycled, walked, ran, partied, went to strip clubs, traveled, climbed mountains, met new people, stayed in touch with family, updated social media, scoured rock and roll history. Key to all of this in my mind somehow was to use as much tobacco and alcohol as I could and find the most iconic porn.

Two months sober and a couple days tobacco and porn free I wonder :

What is it that I want?

The first thing to pop into my mind is a bizarre reply I got from my father when I interviewed him for a zine when I was seventeen and he was thirty-five:

“Avoid jail-time.”

“You don’t hold the cards.”

“The legal age of smoking tobacco is twenty-one.”

Those are valid discussion points but maybe it would be better to write about sports.

Sports indoors, sports outdoors, sports in Iowa, sports in Nebraska, sports in high school, sports in college and sports in the minor leagues.

Sports in the minor leagues are making a rise.

Lots of ads and billboards for the Supernovas.

The sports that matter in Omaha, Nebraska though are the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

Although sports at UNO for the Mavericks are also making their mark.

Hockey.

Men’s basketball have won their League championship for the first time.

No one in Nebraska can escape the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

Traditionally this has been a state religion that rivals the mania of the Aztecs.

Football and more football.

Everyone pining for the glory days of Tom Osbourne.

Now the Volleyball team has reached national prominence due to the Caitlin Clark effect.

Like Caitlin Clark wherever they play sells out even if normally no one attends the women’s volleyball program games when the Nebraska Cornhuskers are not in town.

I have entered into the world of sports mania myself.

Although I will be honest I have not attended a game that I was not payed to attend.

It all started when I needed a job and applied to work operations at UNO.

I had experience in management and being a stage hand so it was a perfect fit.

I attended hockey, volleyball, basketball, softball, baseball and soccer games.

Four years later I got a gig where I am the caretaker for an older gentleman and take him to a different sports event almost nightly.

Cornhuskers and Roncalli Catholic high school are his main gigs.

I dropped out of the UNO sports scene this year although I am able to keep up with their success through social media.

Social media has been a boon to the local sports community, while many social scenes have dissipated since COVID, the professional organisation of sports has enabled the sport scene to dominate.

Sports can be the only common ground between political tribes these days.

Apparently liberal fans at UNO hockey games did not rise for the national anthem per Reddit but they stood and shouted for everything else.

As I drive my client from game to game I have earned a unique insiders view to a community that I would otherwise not be a part of.

Nebraska volleyball games at Bob Devaney, Cornhusker football games in the club seating at Memorial Stadium, men’s and women’s basketball at Pinnacle Bank Arena and next up is Cornhusker baseball at Haymarket Park.