Supplemental Inclusion SI.02.02 Author: Unknown Rev History Found: Rev .00 - 05/06/2014 Recompiled for print: .01 - 08/09/2014 Digitized: 03/11/2022 Editor’s Note: This was found as a series of hand-written journal entries, photocopied into near ineligibility. The writing was found May 6th, 2014 at the hollow haus, in Little Rock, Arkansas, during a punk show of the bands The Curse, Black Horse, and Herding Kittens. It was found stapled together like a zine and left as toilet reading in the bathroom.
Tuesday, August 6th, 2013
If the plane had crashed upon decent, I’d have died coming home. My 300k life insurance policy would have gone to her and the boy—not enough for a happily ever after—but maybe enough to forgive past debts and give them the new start they both deserve. My love would have been remembered with fondness – never as a burden. Her moving on would have been a blessing and not a knife in the back. I’d be dead and happy—decomposing in the ground instead of from the inside out—on the knowledge of how sweet he found the taste of her lips or the thought of cumming all over her tits. No one would need to feel guilty about the things done wrong or the monsters made in the process.
But the plane landed.
I had moved to California.
And there would never be a place I would call home again.
***
Monday, August 12th, 2013
I don’t think that was how “healing Journals” are supposed to start, but Dr. Slover said I need to write the feelings real and not practiced, if I am ever going to move past them. And I guess that is where this steaming pile of shit hits the fan running.
- Martyrdom?
- Is that the real feelings?
- Do I want to have real feelings?
- Do I want to really get past this?
- Can telling myself I do make it true?
- Fuck it, the real feelings.
- I really feel like I am getting fat.
- Selling out.
- Getting a desk job.
- Eating food that should be garbage instead of garbage that is still delicious food.
- These things do not improve your figure.
If I want to feel like a sexy bitch again, like a real human being that interacts with a real world instead of runs from it, I need to start living in that world. Work. Food. Pretending to sleep. These things just pass time.
Which can be good right?
Because time heals all wounds right?
But I don’t think sitting around wishing I was playing dungeons and dragons and hating everything I am actually doing is what I want my life to be.
There are always steps that can be taken if real life isn’t really worth living, but I think I want to try giving this living thing a real shot before I take more drastic measures.
Maybe I should buy a bi-cycle with my next paycheck. To give one aspect of my daily routine a little razzle-dazzle and help get this (T)tub-o-but(T) back into sexy man form.
***
(No date)
It is hard to love a silence,
but it is easier to show respect
with my mouth shut
than by letting my tongue
lash against
the only friendship I have left.
***
Tuesday, March 27th, 2014
I’ve never owned a REAL BIKE before!
WHOL—ESH—IT!
What a ride!
I have found true love and it kicks my ass in the best and most beastly ways. I can tackle the steepest hills California can throw at me and keep riding.
All day long baby!
Ok not really. My ride home from the bike shop was a mile and a half and I am fucking toast. I really thought I was going to die. Fuck I still can’t hardly breathe.
But I did survive,
And even if it does kill me at least this bike will make living an adventure in the mean time.
An additional plus is that I am so exhausted all I can think about at this exact moment is passing ou
***
Friday, August 29th
So far so good!
Three days riding, constant exhaustion, but bullshit free!
My muscles are feeling it, but the pain is welcome and kind. I have had had no time to dwell on the dwelling stuff and she and I have even been able to have normal, friendly conversations, without my face being crushed so far back behind my eye holes that all the water falls out of my brain.
I invited them all up to hang out this weekend and play Battlestar Galactica—the board game.
I’m looking forward to a fun time.
***
Sunday
BIG FUCKING MISTAKE FUCK FUCK FUCK–ING FUCK
DISASTER
New boyfriend = shitbag.
Pete Zaparti. What a fucking Joke.
After dinner he handed his plate to her.
WHAT THE FUCK was that?!?
I almost lost it right there. Instead, I took all of the plates, and spent the next hour doing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen while they played my favorite board game. I am pretty sure if I would have tried to play I’d have lost my top. I could not have handled it. I did not handle it, and I am still not handling it.
He makes her feel wanted….
I want to burn everything I own and crawl under a rock.
Worms need food too.
He is the upgrade.
AGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I need to ride. Right Fucking NOW.
***
Monday—wee hours—March 31st, 2014
I write these words here because there is nowhere else I could put them, nor with anyone whom I could share them—and not sound out of my mind.
My bike spoke to me last night.
That looks even dumber in writing than it sounds in my head. I must be losing it—or living as much in a world of delusion as in reality. I can only share my experiences and hope that this descent into madness can at least entertain the poor fool who finds it—if it cannot be informative or, more hopefully, transformative.
I hit bottom last night.
Barely able to see through salt-blood-and-whiskey-shot eyes. Riding—literally—for my life. Abandoning prayer in a desperate plea for silence, I paid no heed to destinations or stop signs, Street lights or car horns. Had it not been an empty hour of a sleepless Sunday night, my marauding would have ended with me in a cell or a morgue.
My heart/brain at war.
My chest/head pounding
as twos rolled over ones in horrible asymmetry—to the rhythm of tires on the asphalt.
I could not separate conscious thought from raw physical emotion. I do not know how I was able to stay upright on a bi-cycle, but then again, maybe I wasn’t—maybe it was She that had the strength to hold course against my every effort to collapse.
Yes, my bike is a woman.
Black Beauty, and she saved my life.
Black beauty.
The woman who saved me from myself.
The blatant sexist and racist nature of this experience humiliates me. This is such a pathetically cliché expression of male dependency upon the “nurturing” nature of the subservient woman of color that this delusion must just be a cruel joke my subconscious is playing on my decaying psyche.
I have nothing left to become—save everything I hate about men—whiteness—and especially myself.
ButI digress.
I was reckless abandon—riding wild on streets and writhing in internal agony—when finally a conscious thought was able to penetrate the toxic fog inside my head.
“I am choosing to live with this pain.”
This—Life—was a choice
A choice I do not have to make.
With one dark thought on a moonless night my entire body calmed.
I inhaled and felt a dry cool sweep inside replaced by the warm wet vigor on every exhale.
I was no longer lost in a world of ego at war with id. I was a present inhabitant of my surroundings, and they were an environment well suited to the choice over which I now deliberated.
Choose to live
Or choose not to.
I had come to an overpass that looked over Interstate 15 atop the crest of Rocksprings Road.
There was no dilemma.
Only clarity between a sizable gap in the rail, about 30 feet above the few speeding cars below.
I halted momentarily to breath…and then say good bye to breathing.
My feet were back on my pedals and my heart calm in in every turn of the crank. My bike was picking up speed as my pulse slowed. I let go of everything but the handle bars.
“DO IT!”
I startle easily and the voice of a nearby observer sent my arms to shivers. I jerked my front wheel sharply to the right and slammed face first into a no parking sign instead of oblivion. My bi-cycle flew out from underneath me and I fell sharply onto a combination of sidewalk curb and street. I lay there awkwardly on my back, my body/mind in silent, screaming pain. Eventually, thoughts about my unexpected savior—and the humiliating shame of having been seen doing what I had almost just done—forced my body into movement.
The hurt eminated sharply from my butt and spread as a dull ache across my back and legs, but—by some strange miracle—I had escaped hospitalizing injury. There would certainly be bruises—but I would live. The stupidity of what I had nearly done was nearly overwhelming—especially since it had been observed.
The witness!
I looked around for my unsought salvation but found no one. The street was empty save for me and my equally un-scathed bi-cycle.
Perhaps the witness, equally embarrassed by the events that had not quite unfolded, had decided to run or hide? In order to avoid further embarrassment, I got to my feet and made sure that everything was in working order. No broken bones—but the wetness on my shin was blood from a nasty gash—nothing I couldn’t bandage myself, but not an injury to leave long untended. I had ended up a good 5 miles from my apartment and was only marginally certain as to the quickest route back.
I picked up my bike.
This was not going to be a jolly ride in the park, but the pain:pain-in-the-ass ration of bike:walk was no contest. I pushed off with my left foot, mounted my pedals, and began moving when the same gruffly feminine voice assailed me from the darkness of the night—
“Pussy!”
Startled again, I nearly repeated a disastrous head over handlebars dismount. Luckily the labor of moving was challenging enough in my current condition to keep me from getting up to a speed where I could not get my feet to the ground before my face. Still atop a bridge, there did not seem to be room for my uncouth inquisitor to be hidden from me. The hairs on my neck crept skyward and a chill slipped spindly down my bones. Whatever was going on, it was best that I removed myself quickly from this disquieting encounter.
I started to ride off again, and again I was verbally assailed.
“Calm down, Swamp Ass. There is nobody here but me and your mud-butt.”
Somewhat expecting this berating, I stopped more gracefully and shouted as I dismounted,
“Who’s there?”
Silence.
Fearing for the safety of both my body and mind, I put down the bike and gingerly sat myself down at the edge of the curb to clear my head and think. Maybe I had landed harder than I realized and hit my head without knowing it? But my head felt fine and there were no new lumps or bumps up there.
In general, I can be a real moron at the best of times, but with a tidal wave of evidence and no other logical possible explanation: I was hallucinating.
I hadn’t had a good night’s rest in over a month. I’d been drinking obscene amounts of caffeine to compensate for the lack of sleep and emotionally I was chugging along somewhere between a train crashing into a school bus and a mechanical contraption designed to kick yourself in the ass. Of course I would start hallucinating a vicious voice to berate my conscious self. I just needed to get myself home to some place I could clean my wounds and go to sleep
Confused, tired, and still bleeding out of my leg, I picked up my bi-cycle and committed to riding back come hell or highwater. I kicked off and started pedaling.
“Jesus Fuck! You are one dumb wannabe-mother fucker.”
I tried my best to ignore the hostile voice, finally coming to terms with the fact that—at least in my mind—it was emanating from the two wheels spinning between my legs.
“Oh so you just gonna ignore me because I don’t talk with your white-man-eloquence?
Fucking pig.”
My bi-cycle continued to correctly identify my many shortcomings, but—in the tradition of white men with the power to do so—I paid no heed to those seeking to call me out on my bullshit as I turned my attention inwards to my own thoughts.
A talking bi-cycle!
I know I had been losing it for a while but this really was some weird-ass shit. A part of me knew that I should not be encouraging myself to descend any further down the steep slop of madness…but—counterpoint—would it really be diving any farther into the deep end to play along and start talking back? Thinking about the bi-cycle again, I realized that I could hear no further scathing criticism from below.
Assured I had hit the bottom of this absurdity, I responded
“Why are you talking to me?”
The bi-cycle wasted no opportunity to belittle me.
“Well the man-baby has a tongue after all. Doubt you got a clue about how to fucking use it, but least I won’t be the only asshole around here talking to herself.
So why I’m talking to you, shit balls?
That is a good question.
I’m sorry, calling you shitballs ain’t fair, it implies you got a pair of testicles to get shitty, but to an…”
I cut the Bi-cycle short,
“Ok, ok! I understand. You have a lot of good reasons for not liking me. I’m a disrespectful asshole, we are in agreement. But if I have so little to offer the world, why did you just stop me from bowing out of it?”
Interrupting my bi-cycle in the middle of its monologue was rude and I should have anticipated a snarky response.
“Fuck No, I don’t like you! As far as I can see, this seat wasn’t made for dicks, even ones as little as yours. But my own sexual preferences aside, why the fuck would I like you when you don’t even like you? What the fuck were you expecting me to say to you in that position?”
The bi-cycle adopted its best pathetic stoner voice, “Don’t do it man?”
Then returned to its harsh judgemental tone,
“Like that would have made a difference.”
With surprising sass, I replied
“Um, I probably wasn’t expecting for you to start talking to me in the first place.”
Her vengeful response was swift,
“Well fuck you too!
What, I’m just supposed to be another silent woman of color to be ridden by a white man?
Right off a fucking cliff?”
I was instantly shamed.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Shit! That’s not what I’m talking about at all. YOU ARE A BIKE! I didn’t realize you had such strong feelings…or any feelings. Oh, God, did I almost kill you too? Should I stop riding you right now?”
I squeezed the brakes to slow down and prepared to dismount.
“NO!”
She shouted before I came to a complete stop.
When I started pedaling again and gained momentum she continued.
.
“Of course you didn’t know I had any feelings. You’ve never thought to ask. You are no fucking God-Almighty. You won’t never know shit if you don’t start asking the right fucking questions.
As to having your fat, white manhole all up over my cushions? Well, it sure ain’t pretty. And yeah, its rude as hell! But I’ll choose to help your stank-ass for now, because it is the only way either one of us gets out of this mess.”
.
I laughed as I responded,
“DO IT?
Helpful?
Yeah that’s real helpful.”
She replied,
“Attitude fat boy!
There may yet be juice in this fruit to last. And yes, DICK, I was sent here to help your sorry ass. Deserved or not, I’m your Genie in a fucking bottle—but I am only granting you one wish and it sure as shit ain’t going to be for free. So, What is it—turd stack?
What is your heart’s true desire?”
Still doubtful of my mental health, the improbability of this situation did not deter me from contemplating its potential. I rode on in silent contemplation mulling over the concept of heart’s desire. Eventually I realized that I was no longer debating what my heart’s desire truly could be, but if that desire was for something I was allowed to wish? I said nothing but words were apparently not necessary when it comes to magical bi-cycles that talk in your head.
.
“Are you fucking serious?
You are such a shit-sniffing loser.
An-y-thing.
ANYTHING.
Without limit.
And THAT is what you are going to wish for?
This isn’t Disney land.
Your wish doesn’t have to be pretty or PG. You’re the one in the gutter here. Why don’t you stay there? Get Crass. GET CARNAL. Stop lying to yourself pretending to be something you’re not.”
Forgetting to feel guilty for the first time that night, I interrupted with anger.
“I’m not lying to you or to anyone.
You ask me for my one true desire?
Steal that dream out of my heart and then call me a liar for daring to wish it could come true?
Fuck this.”
My bi-cycle’s hostille tone dropped immediately into a discomforting softness, like Icecream long-melted and now molding in the sun.
.
“Ok all high and mighty. You want what you want.
And if in the bottom of that broken useless little lump inside of you wants this, well then you can have your cake and eat it too. There is no reason that she cannot be happy for the rest of her days, sharing those days with you.”
.
“NO!”
.
I shouted loudly into the night.
“If that is what she wanted, I would never have needed to wish it to be true. If I forced my way into that picture it would all be a lie. I want her and him—to be safe—to be happy—and never know that I had anything to do with it.”
There was cold distain in her response,
“Fake fucking Nobility.
Hallmark white man/white knight/white wash the humanity straight out of yourself—hoping to leave behind a ghost whose shit don’t stink as bad as you do. Its sickening and pathetic. The opportunity of a lifetime and you decide to screw the pooch instead of the beautiful woman holding the leash.
Well, in the end, this is your golden goose to butcher with a butter knife. I can do it—but you are not giving me much to work with here. At this point we might as well drop the bullshit.
I am here for your soul.
Usually, I get mine by giving you yours—but in this instance—I don’t think this is going to cut it. I think we are going to have to start talking about some heavy hitters to seal this deal. Now before you shit the pants off these negations—with your preconceived notions about giving the devil her due non-sen…”
I quickly interjected.
“So you are the devil?”
She replied to my question with indignation,
“See here we go.
First of all—dumb-shit—you think the devil is a foul-mouthed, queer-as-fuck-bi-cycle of color?
Your conscious is really comfortable with that?
You’re not going to have to crywack yourself to sleep over pictures of men having large dildos shoved up their asses to keep that fact from skull-fucking your liberal sensibilities?
Secondly, WHO the fuck are you to label me with that archaic moralistic terminology—that attempts to force a good and evil duality on a complex world holding billions of different people just trying to stay alive in the chaos that is living on this dirt ball.
Is that really what you are going to let this entire—once-in-a-lifetime encounter between a hurt man and his guiding bike boil down to—A devil myth?”
Nervously, and not yet satisfied with her response, I replied with a question of my own:
“But you do want my soul?”
She responded with a calmness that began to unnerve me,
“Everyone wants something.
You just want to disappear and leave behind nothing but pathetic creature-comforts to a woman you will never hold any true emotions for again—save guilt. I want some make-believe thing you call your soul? Who is to say which idea is more full of shit?”
She had a point that justified consideration.
I had been riding aimlessly for over an hour. I wasn’t even sure where I was at anymore, geographically, much less philosophically. I used this brief pause in our conversation to take stock of both.
Tired of riding my bike up and down the steep hills of North San Diego County, I saw a nearly empty parking lot surrounding a 24-hour nacho-fusion fast food joint that had taken california by storm in the last couple years. The parking lot seemed like the perfect place to be able to ride in slow circles and continue my perhaps-imaginary conversation without fear of getting further lost or runover.
I returned my thoughts to the proposition at hand.
“So lets say for a second, that I am considering your proposal. What exactly are you offering?”
My bi-cylce, having courteously given me some time to think in silence, was ready to resume her sales pitch,
“To you? Jack fucking shit except the promise of a quick death if you have the dangly parts to go through with it.
To your love lost and her son? I think 350k sounds fair. It will come in the form of a life insurance policy that you accidentally signed up to pay in full for 5 years before leaving your last job. Thus when you are killed by a broken brake-line on your bi-cycle—that left you unable to stop in time from being smashed head first into a wall by a semi-truck making a delivery to an area nacho shop—they will be the lucky reciprocants of your ill fortune.”
I felt compelled to interject,
“Those are not exactly the terms we had been discussing early are they? I had said I didn’t want any association with where the money was coming from…also 350,000 seems a bit low.”
She replied with the smoothness of an expert negotiator,
“Come on now, I am just supposed to make a million dollars appear out of thin air and you expect her to just take the money without questioning where it came from? I’m not a miracle worker here. You have to give me something to work with. The death will truly look like an accident as will be reported by a tie dye T-shirt wearing bystander who will see you try to brake and scream out too late for the truck to stop—and be sober enough by the time the police and ambulance to arrive to serve as a reliable witness. The money will look and feel like a legitimate inheritance, but how big of a life insurance policy do you think she will believe you were capable of sitting on? Too much and it is going to raise some serious questions about your death that very well could ruin the too-holy-to-shit atmosphere you are trying to create for yourself here. 350 Gs is enough to give them a decent start without being so much that the kid grows up one of these california trustees that loses all touch with reality and feels the need to bury himself in drugs or go off on a psycho spree.”
Her argument was rock solid.
I could not have fabricated a more likely and plausible scenario with a year’s preparation. There was still a lingering concern over my connection to the financial security, but at least it would look like an oversight on my part and not a deliberate effort to play the paternalistic guardian from beyond the grave. There were no more small details to hide behind or delay over. It was time to make a decision that I would either live with or not.
On the surface it looked like I was being offered everything I could have hoped for on a silver platter. This was exactly the scenario I had dreamed of over a year ago when my entire life felt like it was falling apart. When every decision I had made in my life felt like it was setting me up for a bigger and bigger fall. Looking back it was easy to see how rashly and blatantly I had scoffed in the face of every bit of evidence and friendly advice telling me that the brighter you force your torch to burn, the worse it is going to burn you when there is nothing left to hold on to. This was my chance to give purpose to an otherwise random quest of a rambling madman.
This was the glimmer of a fairytale ending that everyone looks for in their prayers for death.
And yet…
…somewhere inside of this pulsating blob of blood and bile, there is there was the Jew in me. There is a question begging to be answered in forty more days and nights of punishing uncertainty that all of this was not just another test.
Maybe the condescending words of my bi-cycle were cause for deeper thought than surface level fantasies about dying with dignity and purpose as a man is supposed to.
Who am I to decide the value upon my life for others? Is the only hope for man to love a woman—to love a child—to conquer their hearts—or die trying? Is the only alternative to victory monstering or martyrdom?
Is my desire for control so great that I must hide the weakness and uncertainty of being a living, breathing human being behind the promise of certainty that comes with scripted death?
Is it worth picking myself up one more time from the dirt beneath me—the ashes and dust from which and to we all belong?
To watch again the sun rise on a world filled with dreams, wonderful and horrific—certain all to become truth before the end?