All good dogs….

My favorite old wreck is alive. Discharged from hospital, living purely on spite and whiskey, and the ability to torture me with a telephone. I lost my temper. One thing he can’t do is bullshit me like he manages to bullshit people who haven’t been there. It is always tomorrow that they will sober up, always tomorrow they will go to the clinic, always tomorrows, tomorrow, until they have no more tomorrows left at all. I just wish he wouldn’t hurt me on the way down. He doesn’t seem to see the issue, he seems to feel entitled to my warmth, my love, my understanding, my conversation. He seems to feel I owe him. I can’t hide my contempt, I can’t hide my disgust at the slurred giggling stupidity of the long term drunk. In his head he is a rock star, a poet, a footnote in beat history. In reality he is a pathetic old man who used up every ounce of goodwill and love he ever had.

You can tell someone to go away, to fuck off, to get lost, that you are tired of them, only a certain number of times before they run to San Francisco and say to hell with it all. To hell with the past, to hell with the shared history, to hell with my grand play for freedom, to hell to hell with it and to hell with you.

I used to have faith. I say used to. I don’t dare whisper it. Where is God in all of this? Where is he? I just see the right wing Christian conservatives judging and judging and hating and lecturing and think…to hell with you too. If this is Jesus, you can stick it. If this is love, it don’t feel like it to me. If this is acceptance, I don’t feel it. If this is decency, then color me indecent. It all seems like so much superiority jag to me.

Dangling eternity like it’s theirs to give, promising salvation, loved ones lost back in your arms again, no tears no suffering. Who are they to presume to give this to me? Who are they to claim to own it? Mr. Righteous out there with his bottle and his meth and his dmt and his pipe? Mr Holier than Thou, reciting Corinthians as reason to listen to his bullshit.

No thank you.

Ill throw myself on the mercy of the future, of death and oblivion like a petal on a windstorm.

I got called old today…”You are a young woman,” declared the social worker, pointing…”and you…you are a young woman, and you…you are young,.” He looked at me, glaring and declared me not young. Well, no shit, but do you have to throw it in my face. The damage one man can do to a day.

This is why I’ve said no more. I’ve been asked on dates since I left. Handsome men, a little older, handsome men a little younger. I’ll tell you all right now, my friends, no man had better ever even try it on with me again. I’m not interested. I’m not interested in anything other than friendship with any XY male person. No more damaged days for me. Perhaps in time I’ll find a nice girlfriend, a cool woman who makes a good cup of tea and knows how to wear a Keith Richards tee. I don’t hate men, I enjoy male friendship very much indeed, and have a warm friendship with my son. I find men easy company, interesting. Im not one for fripperies or femininity. In another life I’d have ended up a butch dyke with twenty cats, but I just couldn’t cope with what people would have had to say. People that I don’t even talk to now.

To be frank, if I had never let men into my life it would have been so much better. Just a tiny bit of bravery and all would be well. Oh well, I’m going to make myself another cup of tea, and listen to Kind of Blue. Miles Davis sounds so good.

All good dogs go to heaven, Billy told me, slurring through his drunken haze. I don’t think I even care anymore, and that destruction of the best the world has to offer is the saddest thing of all.