Sobriety

Sobriety is a distant lover's claw-scratches, long since healed, mostly forgotten, and unnecessarily mystified

I find myself in some kind of lost pet situation. I'm looking damn hard, under every corner, obsessively compiling clues, traveling to the ends of the earth, and in the end I still have no goddamn idea what it is I am looking for. I am looking very hard for something. I don't know what this something is. The only sensible solution is to search harder.

Why am I so masochistic? I hate these human people that surround me, and I keep going in further. Keep stretching it out, wondering how everyone else experiences happiness so easily, seeking to fit my puzzle piece in, and as consistent as broken clockwork it never does.

And what of these altered states of consciousness I keep traveling into? I wonder what the point is. Like a cheat code to enlightenment? Philosophical confirmation of the nonsense of perception? Or just a way for dumb kids to get fucked up? I sometimes compare it to a sort of literary poseur lifestyle, gateway to copying one's idols without understanding any inherent tragedy of their art, me a wannabe fuckup pretending I was in a book.

There's a dark side to it. There is a risk involved. Perhaps the greater the payoff, the greater the death trap. Or perhaps I'm simply an idiot and I never learn.

Meanwhile, after being ripped off last week (3 more tabs of Ex and they did nothing?! I can't be that medically deficient in serotonin, can I?), and a backup of funds so I am applying at jobs incessantly with at least a dozen restaurant applications fulfilled. But Ramsey is here and every single night we got to go somewhere new. Poetry readings in Long Beach, garage rock in LA, clubbers in Hollywood, and on Friday we settled for fire-spinners in Laguna, OC. Friday night I heard about it and we went down Pacific Coast Highway, a longer drive than I thought, to check out a little beach I've never been to.

I don't know Laguna that terribly well, but I took the directions as given and we found our way down the stepping stones into a rocky beach. It was foggy, and dark, and it was like a dream. A beautiful landscape I'd never seen before, giant rocks and big waves. Not like the flat scapes of Huntington, or Venice, and surely nothing like Long Beach. "This is what I've been looking for," Ramsey excitedly said. "Something you can't see anywhere else!"

I concurred, it was a beautiful sight. We walked around and found another path to the fire-dancer scene. A little mini-Burn, and I coincidentally bumped into a Burner I already knew by the by, and it was rather chill. So I decided to eat the eighth of psilocybin fungus I'd been saving, as this seemed as delicious an opportunity as any. Takes an hour or so to kick in hard, but I watched with intent eyes and heavy breathing, as hula-hoops attached to burning coal and spun, like glow-sticks of the ancients, lighting the sand as a microcosm reflection of the stars above.

It was cool for a while, and I had no right to any complaints. Then the tide came in deeper, and my shoes got wet, and technically the beach was closed off this time of night anyways. So we walked upstairs, climbed over a fence to exit (there would be many fences to climb over this night), and talked and met with some people, and then went to a girl's house to drown our sandy shoes in sweet hose-water. And being cotton-mouthed as chemicals tuned in pictures wavy in front me, I proceeded to drink of the hose-water and look around.

So, with these new people I was meeting, we decided to hit up the nearby bar district. I wish I brought my iPod and sunglasses, detach myself into my own world, but the car was the other direction and I was full-in to experience the loudness and the brightness. And we walked down the sidewalk, past the Orange County art galleries and guitarists and drunk college kids sneaking behind the PCH off-streets, arriving somewhere or other, always going never getting there.

I tried to keep up a good conversation while on my personal trip. Drugs, I find, must be taken again and again, more and more, if you are to re-learn how to walk and talk and connect (and then, hopefully, be even better at it while sober). It takes a lot of experience to get used to the new set of controls, like playing on familiar video game but on new system's controller. I thought that I'd been getting better at it lately. Get fucked up again and again and again, like any other practice in life, and eventually it becomes easy. Evidently I was wrong, and later on I did indeed freak out a little bit.

Frat bars, it turns out, are a goddamn terrible place to typtamine trip. We walked to Hennessy's and I sat next to a Finnish neuroscientist-doctor girl, but really I was all alone, and watched them eat while the paintings on the wall vibrated to interesting colors as liquid patterns emerged. Also, hanging out with academic types tends to make me feel stupid. I, but a humble novelist, am completely unable to thrive in a schooling environment. Either I'm not smart enough or I'm too smart, and I have no idea which, but I'm no good at it. I was in no condition for philosophical conversation anyways. I didn't eat, just sat around, wandered up the stairs on occasion to see the shitty band, and periodically stepped out to bum cigarettes, and make awkward phone calls, with my weird cell phone device that all of sudden was much brighter and 3D-ish than usual. Most of all, I enjoyed sitting on the floor and looking at the hieroglyphics of the sidewalk pavement.

One time I stepped out and asked a group of college assholes for a cigarette, and then this slutty blonde drunk girl stepped up to me. "Can I ask you a question," she asked, "but don't be offended." "I'll probably be offended," I joked. "Are you gay?" she said. "No." Fucking dammit. Well, I get that from time to time. She was very touchy, caressing my chest, and I touched her soft arm in return, and she recommended that I meet her at the other bar Ocean's later on. "Come down, it'll be hot." And then I noticed her pulling up her skirt and showing off her crotch and beautiful bubbly ass, to an audience of onlookers, feeding from the attention. "Whoa," I reacted. "I'm an amateur stripper!" she yelled. "Hell yeah," I said, "everyone should do whatever they want all the time." This girl was fucking crazy and I thought it great.

So Roxanne met up with her friend and called me and soon arrived, and then the Laguna fire people left, and then me and Ramsey looked for other shit to do. I demanded we go to Ocean's next door, and then I immediately regretted it when we got there. The blonde girl, flirting with a million other guys and now done with toying with me, told me some random fellow was "my boyfriend" - obviously lying just to fuck with me. Whatever. The good lord would not see to grace me with a sex scene to write about on this night. Fuck Him. Fuck her. Fuck everyone.

This club, blasting shitty hip hop music, filled with trendy well-dressers who can't dance, and among them I felt so ugly. So unconfident. So terrible at the simplest human maneuvering. Louder and louder, glass breaking, near-fights, aggression mounting, I panicked, surrounded by freaks with giant heads and shark-faces and Amazonian Asians. I could taste the hatred. It was a complete nightmare of narcissistic hollow nothingness, of which normally I should fit right in as such, but with such exaggerated lighting-bolts of perception so clearly digging into my soul I was ready to bleed protoplasm out my ears. O my God, fuck all these people.

I hate you I hate you I hate you you hate me we hate all God get it over with and kill this sinful blight of pathetic animal fake phonies of lies lies lies lies no truth lies lies and I am no better, death kill hatred fuck fuck FUCK FUCK FUCK liar killer get it over with lonely lonely lonely NOBODY WILL EVER LOVE YOU NOBODY WILL EVER LOVE YOU NOBODY WILL EVER LOVE YOU goddammit this fucking sucks

This was an absolute nightmare. A panic I've never dealt with before. And all you can do to cope is fake that you're fine. But I'm no good at it. Simply put, I didn't like being stuck inside me. It didn't make any sense. Why must I be stuck inside this thing?

Last call and then we left. Thank fucking God. At this point I was sobering down anyways, but the lingering experience still resonated. "Fuck!" I said, "I hate all these people so much." "How are you doing?" Roxanne asked. "I am an embarrassment, a void, a lifeless fuck deserving to be taken out and shot." "Um," she reacted, "sometimes I feel like that." "Good," I said, "fuck everyone."

The others were peppy and ready to continue the night about town. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be asleep. But it was still a walk to get to the car nonetheless, still time for quietness and a transition to relax, and I did feel better by the time we got back to starting point. "Let's go to the beach!" they said. Okay. I split up and wandered alone; and I turned off my phone, daring myself to throw it in the ocean but I don't have the guts evidently, and went off to my own thing. Ah . . . now that I was back at the car I could get out my lovely iPod, my only friend that hasn't betrayed me, and so I jumped over the gate on top of the cliff, sat on the sand, listened to some music, and looked at some waves.

Ramsey and Roxanne and friend were off by the rocks, sitting around having conversation. Ramsey, by the time I joined them, looked great as he sat cross-legged on a science fiction scenery, no doubt contemplating all the mysteries of Creation. "You know," I was saying, "I don't think it's fair that we don't get to hang out with Trent Reznor (music: I wanna be everything...I wanna fuck everyone...I wanna do something that matters). Or Connor Oberst, or Neal Stephenson, or Grant Morrison, or whoever. It's not enough that I listen to the music, and read their books. I want in! I feel entitled to be their equals, and discover the secret society of fame." "I know," he agreed. "When is it my turn?" I said, "I keep digging so deep, searching so hard, and I don't have any goddamn idea what I'm looking for." While Roxanne tried to say wise things about "detaching yourself from the lust for results," I just didn't agree. Not really. Deep inside I goddamn want results and I admit it. "You should leave me alone," I told Ramsey. "I need everyone to avoid me if I'm ever going to write anything that matters." "Okay man," he said, "it's cool." "HA!" I laughed. "I just can't offend you no matter how hard I try."

"Let's go skinny-dipping," I suggested. No disagreements; we walked over the rocks to the other side of the beach, alone in the darkness, and I took off my clothes and ran into the bitter cold water and jumped inside. The others took off their clothes too, Ramsey and Roxanne and her monkey friend. But they wouldn't graze the seasalt past their toes. "Get out of there," Ramsey yelled to me, "you'll get hypothermia." "I won't!" I screamed. "I'm going to live in the water from now on!" I told Roxanne, breasts bouncing, to jump inside. "It's cold," she said. "Life is suffering!" I retorted. "Life isn't suffering!" she said, "don't say that." "No, I said, "life is suffering and that's okay. Just jump inside the cold, and sure it hurts, but then you get used to it and it's not such a big deal anymore. That's what life is about." "You're crazy," she said, perhaps not entirely inaccurately. "Well," I accepted, "if anything my philosophical fallacy is a common one; to expect that what works for me should work for others. I have no right to tell anyone else what to do." I still think life is suffering though, and I still recommend that everyone jump in the cold, because the only non-naive optimistic viewpoint worth a damn is that: life is suffering and it's not that big a deal. At least that's my conclusion lately.

I've never hung out with Roxanne and Ramsey naked before. Really, like everything in life, as I've been saying, it's not that big a deal when you go through with it. Nudist lifestyle, who cares, I'm down, because where all animals underneath. Perhaps I should be ashamed of my shriveled cold manhood, shrinkage in bloom, but I didn't care. And I screamed and I sang and the ocean sang back, and for a brief unrelenting moment I think I kind of felt alive.

"I'm going to be sober from now on man," I promised (I lied.) "This is just such bullshit. I can't handle it." Sand in my nether-regions, skinny-dipping dared and done, I put on my shorts and so did the others. I listened to my iPod, but still waded in the cold (Placebo said it all: Since I was born I started to decay ... Now nothing ever ever goes my way!). By all rights my iPod and my cell phone too, thoroughly wet in this instance, should be completely broke by now. But they still work even today, and hence I have nothing to regret.

I did wish I had a girl of my own to hang out with, to be naked with and all. Sometimes I want to fall in love and believe in something pure, and sometimes I want meaningless sex with every slut in the world and a right to brag about nothing. Then again, I talk a good nihilist game, but what am I really doing about it? I'm not so good at either path. At least I had acquaintances to accompany me, and I least I could fake a little bit of connection that night.

So we eventually dressed and walked back, and I was totally good to drive by now - neurologically sober but stomach in whirls - and they decided to extend the night by finding a Jacuzzi to steal. Dropped them off at Roxanne's car, and followed them down to a gated community somewhere in Orange County. Luckily, synchronicity with us, a car left and it opened the gate and we sped inside right after. I suspect though that these gated communities have "white beam" technology, and will let us in as long as we're all white. Or, if not, I think that's a good idea for an invention down the line. Patent-pending, don't steal the idea from me.

We went to the closed pool area and jumped over the fence, and disrobed once again. This time there was far better lighting than the dark beach, more to be ashamed over, and even more symbolic to just not give a fuck and hang out as the vulgar animals we all are. No doubt insomniac apartment residents stared from their windows, but we didn't care. It was a memory to cherish, fighting the dawn, hot bubbles soaking into the skin, penises floating, soul siblings together.

Selfish asshole that I surely am, I've been a bit mean to Roxanne of late, secretly behind the scenes. Disconnected, and resentfully so. But in actuality she was a good friend, and know now that I should be grateful. Ramsey, and that other guy too, cool people to share the night with and pretend it will last forever. I have no right to this hidden anger, these people are just trying to do good and I am lucky I have them.

But all things must end, and we jumped the fence out the other side, and I drove with no shoes to the toll road to the 405, and made it home to sleep before any birds chirped and the sunlight got the chance to interrupt my perfect nighttime bliss.

I'm fine now. A bad trip can be the ultimate therapy. It's an accelerated perception, as in the course of several hours years of reality rush through your brain. In one moment the whole world is darkness and it hates you deeply (and you know you deserve it). Soon after, its back to a yin-yang equilibrium, with positive interpretation if you like that outlook, and you wonder what the big deal was you were freaking out over. I am recharged and upbeat after a terrifying experience, and I would never take it back.

Still, maybe I should learn something by now and maybe shouldn't rush to the next experience. During my previous declarations of sobriety, I told myself I wouldn't smoke for the next 24-hours. I stuck to it the next day, and actually it was rather easy. I don't think anyone is really addicted to nicotine, I think we just all like the habit of it. I gave an honest try to get addicted this past year, and I suppose I'll keep on trying until my specified quite-due date of next year. I want to experience that suffering of addiction-and-quitting, if only the universe would let me. I haven't suffered nearly enough to deserve to be alive, you see, and I'll take whatever little attempts I can scheme in.

I don't know. I don't fucking know anything, truth be told. Have I gotten this ridiculousness out of my system yet? There's still so much more. I'm still promised to a host of future neuron re-wiring experiences with various other degenerates, its still on the schedule. It would be rude to choose straightedgism at this point. Heroin, acid, DMT, ayahuasca, dilaudid, tweak, Ecstasy, coffee, cigarettes even, and booze booze booze (I do know I'm done with pot though). Hell, maybe I'll add cocaine to the list too while I'm at it.

Do we ever grow out of this? Is it always to be necessary? That's what I'd like to figure it out, and I'd definitely like to learn it the hard way. I know I haven't learned all I can learn just yet. I certainly know of more than a few drug addicts, or at least mind-explorers, who I thoroughly respect as brilliant people who've greatly added to our pool of culture. And likewise, I know certain other respectable humans who went through it and now since despise drugs, and lead a far more disciplined lifestyle than I seem to have the innate willpower to muster.

I think I'm almost ready to get it all out of the way and try the sobriety thing. I gave myself a date, but now I want to push that date sooner ahead because I'm getting a bit sick of it all. Conversations about scoring, on and on and, "so let's meet this guy this time, and that other gut that time, and I heard someone can get this, and did that other shit arrive yet, let's see if I can buy some at this place, or some more at that place." And then you wait, sweat it out, and waste your money on poison. And honestly it's a dull lifestyle. There is nothing worse than being bored. Can I do better? Or am I destined for dull burnouthood?

So, no job yet confirmed on the horizon of my timewave ... and I just decided to spend a mere $140.00 on a ticket to San Francisco. Leaving in a few days. I figure I should go somewhere new, the stir-craziness has risen to the surface and every once in a while I have to get the hell out. I have no idea what I'm going to do when I arrive to SF. Something interesting should happen. Can't bring drugs on a plane though, and I really should be on a budget and not spend any when on that when I get there either.

I guess I'll do shit, and observe it, and meet some humans, attempt a communications, and come home to write about. Please wait patiently.

Well, my gentle readers, do tell me, was this all self-indulgent enough? Or, dare I claim, is this thing I live interesting?

Encourage me to keep going. We need all the help we can get.