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.

Theology III

I have been a damned miserable son of a bitch for about as long as I can remember. I don’t have enough money. I don’t have enough status. I don’t have enough WOMAN! SEX! Drugs and rock and roll. Pursuing these things whole heartedly for as long as I can remember except for the occasional perusal of love before it dies young has left me with more money, status and vice than I started with but only in the way of experience because as Anthony Green of Circa Survive suggests, “Accomplishments are transient.”

I have this innate ability to tend towards excess, exhilaration and acceleration so since I am a damned miserable son of a bitch on a long habitual streak of pursuing things that are beneath the domain of the prince of darkness than I only know of one way to become an even more miserable son of a bitch besides falling in and out of love again is to embrace Jesus Christ through my Christian faith. If a person is suffering because of their worldly condition than it has been my experience there is no quicker way to raise even more hell in their life than introducing the moral agent of faith into the realm of darkness. 

I will turn to Christ because I can’t beat a certain boogeyman in my life and lo and behold this shining of a light in a dark place is certain to awaken every goblin, troll, and orc in the building. Come one and come all. What is even worse is when a person is pursuing money, status and corruption ruthlessly and decides to summon Jesus Christ for help in reaping this plunder. How self-destructive. Yes, so let’s get miserable, lets get it for all the son of a bitches out there! Welcome to Bible Study!

Do not grieve, wise warrior! It is better for each man that he avenge his friend than to mourn him much.

-Beowulf

I had a faith that was part of different communal bodies. When I became a man I realised that there was a relative gap between my worldly wealth and the rest of the people in the community. To my shame I decided to pursue worldly wealth on my own. My sins, mistakes, and corruption have become my own to take responsibility for and thus any faith that I can muster shall also be mine. I will not mourn my faith but avenge it. 

If you can relate, or find faith an interesting subject I invite you to read the Gospels of Jesus which are the first four books of the New Testament. They contain the actual words of Jesus and His word is the Word. If you find pursuing faith in community to be a community you would like to engage in amongst people who are broken and messed up I would suggest AA. Alcoholics Anonymous is a very bizarre group of people who are most like the early church of Acts than anything else I have come across.

If you would like to dive into the deep end of my my thoughts on Faith then we will dive into the deep end of the ocean somewhere above the surface of Marianas Trench and start with the book of Isaiah chapter one. Hope you have enough oxygen. 

Theology II

When I was a junior in high school I dropped out of classes second semester at Omaha Central High School. I developed my own academic discipline as the McCoy homeschool.

I had read in a book about different ways to homeschool a child and the options that I came across included unschooling.

This is a discipline of not having assignments for the child but rather allowing them to pursue their own education at their own pace in an environment that provide the resources to learn.

Other disciplines focused on classical education, eclectic studies and the general “buy your own textbook curriculum” sort that most homeschool families used including my own.

When I dropped out from Central high school I had become as popular as I would ever be.

In the span of a year of going to school there I had become president of the ultimate frisbee club instead of playing basketball in Coach Eric Behrens state title winning program that I had gone to training camps for since I was old enough to attend.

My popularity came naturally since I was friends with the most popular kids in school from attending Dundee Presbyterian church where I was a natural charismatic personality.

Living in Dundee at the time of my drop out put me in the dead center of the intellectual community that was left in Omaha.

I would read Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “Notes from the Underground” at Blue Line Coffee shop, F Scott Fitzerald’s “This Side of Paradise” in a tree at Memorial Park and buy books like “Naked Lunch” by William S. Burroughs and The Anti-Federalist from Jackson Street booksellers downtown and Pageturners bookstore down the street. 

In my room I had a type writer, a record player, a desk, a bookshelf and a bike. I worked at Homer’s record store and liked to go to music concerts at Slowdown, Sokol auditorium and underground and the Waiting Room including Wolf Parade, Broken Social Scene, The Faint, Vampire Weekend, MGMT, The Black Lips, Capgun Coup, Bear Country, Tapes n’ Tapes, Aqueduct and Cold War Kids. 

I would go to Film Streams and watch Joy Division’s “Control”, a documentary about Hunter S. Thompson, another about Chet Baker.

I would have friends over and we would talk about art and have impromptu jam sessions.

Camping and biking were hobbies of mine.

This was my education and it was an elegant one.

Then it hit me that I would need to produce something from this experiment at a crucial moment of my social development so I published a zine with my friends creations and my design. 

It was called Bad Taste.

Looking back and probably knowing at the time subconsciously that my dropping out and freewheelin’ to create a shrine of hipster knowledge and a record collection that included Bob Dylan’s Freewheelin’, Rolling Stone’s Between the Buttons and the Flaming Lips “Hear It Is” was actually a power move in the long term designed to attract myself and others to destruction.

I returned to Central my senior year in the second semester with McCoy homeschool credits in hand and taking classes from zero hour to ninth with an extra couple of early summer courses so that I could graduate in the eyes of my peers.

My charisma flew out the window my senior year. My quest for truth through studying existential classics on my own led me to realise that I would need a high school degree from an establishment in order to survive in society. My greatest strengths as a person is my ability to make people admire me and inspire myself. Without a high school degree it would be hard for people to admire me since I rely on my creative intelligence and if I didn’t have a high school degree it would mean that my inspiration was an idealised fraud. My senior year I became all business for my own journey to the truth and to get my degree.

When I went back I had two AP classes that actually allowed me to continue my classical education the way I had been on my own. In AP English I was in a group that read Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”. This book really shook me and hit me in a deep place. In AP World History I read and made an essay on the book, “Aristotle’s Children.”

I got my degree by the hair on my teeth. In my pursuit of truth I had put my faith on the rocks. This journey was essentially my introduction to reason. The cold, hard kind that enabled the Union army to beat the Confederates. After I graduated I realised that my faith in Jesus Christ was who I was and that without pursuing my faith I would not get far with truth.

My integration of my new mode of reason and a recommitment to my Christian faith led me to finding Reason with a capital R. I came across this naturally but found that it was an idea that Thomas Aquinas established to bring the Catholic Church and Europe out of the Dark Ages by uniting the philosophy of reason through the senses of Aristotle and the Catholic Faith.

Poetry IV

You are hired.

When can you start?

And he’s off.

Out the door and into the light after his first punch in.

He is now turning the corner and he is in his place.

Meeting all of his wonderful new co-workers.

Some are young and some are old.

Some are boys and some are girls.

Some are women and some are men.

Some are underlings and some are managers.

There are customers.

We’ve got business.

Unending business.

He is off to the dock to get more product.

The product is out of the door and into the cars.

People are always buying.

The employees are always smiling.

I am making new friends with my co-workers.

What’s this?

Adoration?

Huh, and the forklift is zooming down the road.

The pretty girl is talking to me.

The pretty girl went to the same middle school as me.

The pretty girl was born the year I went to Beveridge middle school.

The fork lift is back zooming down the road with more product.

The customers keep coming.

Sadly it is time to clock out.

You are hired.

You start next week.

I am speeding through a blizzard to get to work on time.

There was some snow and ice on my windows and some snow I had to shovel out of the street to start but I made it to punch in.

Was I late?

I think so.

I am off to the jets.

I am inside of a cargo jet.

I am marshalling tugs. 

I am marshalling planes.

The people seem to like me.

I am now a permanent employee.

You are hired.

This is where you work.

This is who you work with.

“I am the manager.”

I was once a manager but I left that job.

I ran out the door when no one was looking.

Now I am here and this is a mighty big place.

Would you like another job?

Let me think about it?

Yes.

I can start next month.

And he is off.

Here we have a promotion for you.

We would like you to play the lead.

Ok.

We have a promotion for you.

We would like you to play the lead.

Ok.

Hello.

It has been an honour to work here but I no longer have time in my schedule.

I am going to have to leave.