In This.

Here We Go...

I can feel it circling. I can feel the light I've so fought to create and then preserve begin to corrupt. He's not here anymore. Burn, gone. He will never be here again and now I am alone and making this new push, to get over the top and over the edge. I am being asked to get back in, to go back in and live in something that shakes me and fucks me and scares me. It scares the hell out of me, going into this alone now. I can feel myself changing, and if he were here I would call him or consult him or ask for his bid of confidence. I would ask him for everything. I always asked him for everything.

I'm writing again, actually, and I wasn't ready for this, wasn't ready to be anything but glancing for the next 10 months of my life, 11 months, 12 months. I can feel it circling. I can feel my paranoia, feel it flooding and maddening me. I can feel myself becoming madness again, unseated. I am John Durban and now must find John Durban again, beyond John Durban, beyond great expectations. Fuck you for being here, for meeting me, for seeing me. I'll never forgive you for that, for this, myself for what is to come.

Fuck you.

He said...

I need you ready for what's coming.

That was it, almost everything. He said don't tell me where you are, then that something of a dramatic turn of events is fast approaching. Then he said it again, exactly, I need you ready for what's coming. Burn hasn't been acting like himself lately, which I suppose isn't much of a surprise, seeing as we have never had the luxury of occupying the same space long enough to find legitimate understandings of one another. I love him because he is there, somewhere, always...and years ago, when I didn't know I was capable of saying the thing I am about to say, that I need him there, I needed someone there. I hate him because his push is relentless, so fucking relentless it would put me down if I tried to explain...because he's asking for a million words before we can even begin. One million words. Before. We. Even. Fucking. Begin. I need to put myself down.

I am far away and feel far away, so distant from everything I know or knew in the world, for a time long enough that when I do return to wherever it is I return to, everything will have changed. Please. I don't know what I am doing, specifically now or ever to be completely honest, only that I have committed to a cause I must now see through to the end. Words are leaving me, thousands at a time, a need to express what I never knew was inside of me, needing to fight the world, to piss on the face of it and offer no apologies, to destroy the ramparts designed to protect it from voice like mine. I find myself laughing about it and often, how we ever found a place in this world together, my boy and I...how we will ever continue to find a place in this world together. I am turning into something new entirely. Every day that thought crosses my mind - not something better, goodness fucking no. It's more like this - I am evolution. I am the definition by which these generations of our species, past and present, will later be judged. I am moving through the world, leaving stains on it, not waiting around to watch my caused flowers bloom. I am here but I am not. I am at the far end of the world, alone. My designs are both necessary and intentional. I am in complete control. I have never been able to say that before in my life. Some days here, I look out onto the world and can see it fitting into my hand. I am not delusional. Actually, far from it. The world will fear me. They should. I will be like nothing that has ever come.

North Island...

Motherfucker Burn shows up here and sits me down and says something like sorry buddy, this one isn't going to go down like the last one did. I said something like I know, different part of the world - we've come too far, are different men than the men we were stomping around the world in our former lives. He said then that I didn't understand and suggested I listened close. He told me he wasn't writing the second book, that he couldn't, that it wasn't about him anymore. Then he told me the second book had to be written, said something about a process of elimination but by then I was already walking away from him. I don't like surprises and I don't like being abandoned and he was giving me both and nothing else. Nothing else. He said we each have a job while we're here. His is to train for the Ironman and mine is to write the book, the whole fucking book, on my own. I haven't been hanging out with him much because I feel like I've been betrayed - no, not betrayed - I just feel so fucking responsible for this now and that's not a corner I want to find myself in.

I took a couple days, alone, before agreeing to meet up with him again. We had a couple drinks, dinner. He told me at the beginning that I could not walk out on him, but that he was standing firm, that he would be a chaperone, at best until I didn't need him anymore, but that things weren't going to change. I've been through a lot, he said, and I'm going to go through a lot soon, he said, and then he said that he wasn't doing this for any other reason but for the sake that it's what is best for me, absolutely best for me. That's when a crazy thing happened. I believed him, no...I understood him and accepted him. And now I'm here staying in a house on North Island and he's off somewhere else while I get my head wrapped around this. I don't know what I expected this second edition to be like, but I didn't think it would be like this, even after the promises we've made.

I need to understand what is happening here. I need to understand. Something happened. Something terrible happened and I am detached from something, right now just floating.

They Call This Ravenous...

Like fucking a girl and telling her you don't want to fuck her anymore but letting her get your mail or let her hang around your house and suck you off from time to time and day to day, it's unhealthy and unbecoming and it's what my life feels like right now. The world is trying to suck my cock and I'm letting it, have to let it because I can't pull my calendar fast enough, can't come to terms and accept stillness here, in London, as we're thawing out and the world is supposed to be coming alive again, as I am supposed to be coming alive again. Every face I have to face and every word I'm forced to spit feels forced and unnecessarry and for everyone but not for me, nothing for me anymore, nothing satisfying me anymore. I need to move out and away and it's a good fucking thing I am...because I don't know what I would do if I weren't. There are necessities in my life that I absolutely must see through, and when this trip and this departure arrived in my mind, I had to do everything in my power to let it line, to make certain it would line for Burn. We have accepted our pulls in this world, and that this one is heavy and still 9 days from ripe. I talked to Burn yesterday and he is my echo. He may be even worse off than I am - the kid is struggling, fucking struggling and he still has a face to paint and I don't envy him, his everyday day to day when I can sit here and get blasted and ignore and shut out and shut away and he needs to remain present and available. He can't stand being available - he is the most shut away motherfucker I have ever known, so if you know him as anything other than that - he's been lying to you - everything he has ever been to you has been a lie, a huge fucking lie. Go ahead, chew on that. By the time you're ready to spit, maybe you're big enough to understand it's exactly truth. But you're not. So you'll pretend to understand and won't because you can't. Because you're not capable. Incapable. Exactly.

London town. London. I'm going to take some drugs and walk around and take it all in, maybe say goodbye. Because it's necessary. Because I'm going to continue to not only speak for myself, but also my friend Burn...

Because we're tired of dipping, and hosting, and pulling along and willing acceptance from the world for the forms of our expression. Because sometimes when we think about it, we think the worst thing in the world might be to get exactly what we think we want, what we thought we wanted. Because if someone ever came up to me and told me they knew me or that I connected to them because of what I wrote in my book, I'm pretty fucking certain I'd find a clever way to make someone kill me.

Because Burn will never say the things that need to be said. Once we go, we're gone. Never coming back.

Because Truth Is Our Currency...

I was sitting here tonight, the nearing end of April. In May, I'm setting off to better lands. Faraway lands, to take care of a large handful of business with my friend, Burn. I think about him every now and again, wondering what he's up to and what he's thinking, knowing that when anything sweeping is happening or coming in his life, he starts to lose his shit and come unfolded or at least as unfolded as someone like him is as capable of being. I don't know if he would want me to post something like this, but I feel like it's necessary, because if he's only sending it to me, then that's both not what he needs and not what he intends when it comes to letting himself out. Because he's my boy, because these moments must go down...

JD,

You want to know what's going on. It's late, my body is tired. It knows what's coming. All it wants is to rest and lock onto as much comfort as it can for the next 3 weeks in this town. It knows we're going to see things and feel things and experience things that will make us foreign. It knows you and me, that we will smash our pretty faces in it - to break them, to seek out the things that destroy us and build us and show us we were right to come searching.

I want to say something to you my friend, because truth is our currency, the one thing we will always get by on. I don't know what would have become of me had I never met you that night. I wouldn't want to know the person I would have become without you. I've heard you say that I've saved you before. I've read it and taken it in and always let you have those words because you said them first. This world out here...if I wasn't leaving...if we weren't going to go where we are about to go, if we weren't about to chase the things we are about to chase, I would not make it. It's maddening, fucking maddening. It's constricting and swallowing and asking me to be exactly what I'm not every day and every day and every day. These hands in my pocket, these fucking hands in my pocket always and pulling and trying to pull me in and take me on and lift me, and fucking lift me, and fucking lift me. I've forgotten how to breathe, strangled, hands on my throat as I smile and smile. I want to breathe again John. I need to get out John. I don't know what I would have done if May 15 wasn't circled. I don't know what I would have done without your push. You are the truest friend I have. I don't need to say it, anything, and you've got it. You've got it all, you got it all from that first night.

Sometimes I think of the world. I wonder how it will accept us and our perceptions of it. I wonder which one of us it will rub out first, afraid of the truths we might expose, with fire in our fists and in our breath. I can see what is waiting for us at the end of that plane ride. Buses, cars, strangers. I can see what's waiting for us when maps can no longer tell us where we are. I can see how we are going to handle what it gives us. I have no idea. I can see us begging for more, always begging for more. At some point, I thought the first book might calm me, getting it out, putting it out. I am drifting further. Further and further. I need you to drift with me now. I know that I don't even need to ask. I know that I never had to, never will. May we extend false courtesies to one another for the rest of our lives, and then trounce them wildly. May every day that passes make us unrecognizable to our former selves.

Quite soon now. Never soon enough.

Burn

Now That's What The Fuck I'm Talking About...

Burn,

You motherfucker. Here we go. So I get a note from my friend Burn, my friend who I haven't seen in too long. It said something like here I come be ready for me and that was all I needed to hear. We've gotten good at feeling life's pull, and the pull is taking us somewhere new, to start something new for an undetermined period of time - the finest period of time there is. On May 15th, Burn is leaving from Los Angeles to meet me in Bangkok. That means I can't get there a day before the 18th, before he recovers, before he settles, before me and that crazy bastard take a torch to that fucking town.

He wrote me a month back, told me we were going to have to erase these lives we've catapulted onto the web, that people were telling him we would have to preserve our anonymity(talent) when the real stuff starts to move out into the world. Or at least mask it. Or at least make sure we were getting paid for it. Truth is, I don't need any of anyone's fucking money and I know that's not why Burn is doing any of this. I know it. I know him to his fucking bones. I don't know how much of what we've put out into the world is on here, or on Burn, miniscule amounts probably and none of it matters. I think at the end of the day, me and Burn share a lot of the same demons, and whatever it means that we have to run around the globe to find out what it takes to exercise them...then that's our truth. That's the only thing that matters. At some point, our first is going to light a fire. At some point, people are going to expect of us what we expect of ourselves. At some point, we are going to have to take on the responsibility of being the best that exists. That motherfucker turned me...

Believe it, we're ready. Me and my boy...

Burn and Berlin...

Burn will tell you there was something wrong with me and maybe that's true. I don't know what to say about that, am in no mood to attempt a defense. I didn't want to talk about it, couldn't much talk about it with Burn, what is going on because even I don't know or can't describe it. Things will always hurt and I'm just trying to get through it and respect it fucking respect it but keep moving.

We were out on the town and there was one glaring problem with all of the beauties we ran across. Germans are fucking schooled in language, meaning that they know mine too well and last night, I didn't want them to. There's a body sleeping in my bed. I don't even know where I am right now. There's a computer in the room that I'm using that I must have ordered at some point last night when I got home. I'm still drunk so I feel okay and she's naked so I must've fucked her quite a bit because I feel like that's the mood I must've been in last night. No, I remember...

She didn't speak a lick of English. When me and Burn parted ways, I was approaching girls on the street, as long as they were pretty enough and I was asking them if they didn't know English. They all did, all so fucking educated make me feel like such a goddam peasant. But sometime around four, I found a girl. She didn't understand a fucking word I was saying so I took her hand and dragged her back here...checking the note pad on my desk - the Hilton in Mitte, and we fucked and fucked and fucked. I don't know what I said to her and I'm not sure if I care to know, but I can tell you that it was a lot, likely, because I had some stuff I needed to get out. I'm sure I fucked her for hours, talking the entire time, my lips and mouth and words moving out of me...about my life, about my hurt, about my fallen girl. I wonder what she was thinking as I was fucking her - my never shutting up, maybe crying a little bit - whatever it was she handled it because she's still here, her bare ass staring at me from on top of the covers.

I think I should order her breakfast - at least feed her before she leaves, which she has to do almost immediately. I have much to do but mostly just compose myself before I see my friend again, because we have business, much business.

Every now and again, I see them laying there and motionless and I get scared, fucking scared. Is she dead? Did I kill this woman? Intentionally or unintentionally? I usually then do what I am about to do now, like take this pen off the desk...and throw it at her. Missed. I take this bag of nuts...and throw it and hit her in her bare ass.

She stirs.

She is alive.

Now I can move on.

Burn is coming to town...

He's been talking shit about it for a long time now -- and now I've got to go to Berlin to see him. I haven't been there in a while. Actually, I don't remember anything about my times in Berlin. Maybe it's time to start something new. Absolutely, it's time to start something new. Burn is coming to town.

He wrote me at some point and told me he gave our book to the guy who wrote that book that that cunt Oprah bastardized. I shouldn't call her a cunt. I don't know Oprah. I don't want to fucking know Oprah. Frey, that's the guy's name and I never read his book but I certainly heard about it. I remember hearing from people that I should read the book when it came out, when it became an obsession - from people who thought it would help me get over my "problems." My "problems." Fucking wow. A Million Little Pieces. I read the wiki article on it and on him because I think in the end, me and Burn are going to have to meet him - because I feel like we are going to need him - a bright shining star to help us shine because I feel like that's how it works. That has to be how it works.

Or not, I don't fucking know. Burn keeps sending me these shorts that he says he wants to go shoot and make and bring me to life. I don't know what to say about that. He says he wants to being Jenny to life - to make her real - as if she wasn't real enough already, as if everything that happened between her and me wasn't real enough already. I don't know what to tell him. I think so much of everything is so fucked up. Burn is coming to Berlin and I am going to meet him. It's strange to think about. It makes me nauseous. Fucking nauseous because of the promises we made - because of the world we have to live up to. And now every time I see him, I have to become all and everything I am capable of and I think he feels the same way. We would be crazy if we told you that this was light...any of it...any of the time.

He said we might need a new chapter. Might. I guess it depends on how this turns out. I'm worried. Because at times I have no control, and I'm afraid about bringing him in on that...pretty Burn, safe Burn, collected Burn.

We have no choice but to rip this apart - any part of the world that dare host us. Berlin. Hello. Here we come.

After A Long Hiatus...

Burn just sent me an e-mail. He didn't say much about our book. To be true, I don't really care at this moment of my life. I know all the fucking wheels have to turn, a thousand fucking wheels to make anything concrete happen right now - and I suppose we have to sit back and wait for it to an extent. He had some good things to say, some encouraging things but honestly, I drift between wanting our words to get published and wanting them to be ours only, to keep them away from the shit world that would pretend to understand them so that they would in some way, give definition to aimless lives...something to talk about, something to live vicariously through. It's all shit, all of it, and I'm only doing it for the power of it all, to say I am something that I always wanted to be...a writer that people read, so that I can drift myself further above and remain there forever. The shit I've seen...the shit I've been through. Would stagger the soul of the world.

There's at least one person who knows this. His name is Burn. And this e-mail he sent was something new, like I said. He said he had to keep moving forward with something, to keep working on something because he was starting to go insane...was starting to feel normalized again and rested and stable. The last thing I knew, he was working on some script that he was calling mindless - because it was some big comedy, still vicious but supposedly funny - and I don't know what happened...if the wheels came off or what, but he wrote me this morning and said something exactly like, fuck I'm too obsessed with you. Then he said that there was something he had to see - the idea of me on screen, Clive Owen playing my bastard father. He told me he was writing the story of my fucked up existence (personally, I don't see it that way and it kind of hurt to see Burn describe it that way), from before the two of us met under the Eiffel...a story constructed from the stories I'd told him over our drunken times in the cities we shared. He said he already started writing it and that he didn't want to change my name and that he didn't want to make it fictional because he didn't really have to. I am simply that riveting.

I've never met Clive Owen, only seen him in Soho bars or in Harrods buying some sort of fucking scarf and perfume. Burn says he sees him all the time. I think Burn can pull off anything he wants in this world. He'll tell you this too. A lot of people will tell you things like that and never come close. Burn isn't like that. He wont be like that. Clive Owen will play my father. I'm more interested in who will play me.

If This Isn't Legit, Then I Don't Know. My Boy Can Roll...

This Fucker Burn has been posting me for some time now, dropping my testicles on the cutting board and keeping his tucked inside his pants.  True, he's been doing all the edits so I don't have a ton of access as per my request, but today I told him to send me a chapter he had finished, the most recent one and so he did.  I'm a self-loving piece of shit, there's no denying that, and you should throw a flag at the fact that I'm posting his writing that's essentially all about me - but this one has to go up.  I know Burn's cadence, and if you don't sometimes it takes a paragraph or two to get down - so my dropping you right in means you have to pick it up on the fly.  But I got through the end of this chapter we lived together and I felt a chill - because I'm a smart man...a very smart man...and if this isn't everything we need it to be, then I'm going to give up...because it is.  My boy can fucking roll. 

John moved to Emmett and Malkia and said exactly, it’s true we came here to give out the money and it’s true I have close to 1 million Rand in this suitcase…I was going to spread it out but now I don’t want to do that anymore…I want to leave it all with you.  There was a long beat, silence before Malkia wound up and slapped John across the face.  Tisha began to cry and grabbed my hand.  Malkia saw this.  She stepped to the kitchen and grabbed a knife.  I looked down to Tisha and told her everything was okay and that me and John were leaving.  Then I looked to John and saw he wasn’t finished, and from that point, nothing was vague for me.  I can recall his words, word for word, because everything he then said and did changed my perception of him.  There are moments I hold onto.  This was one of them.  John stepped into her and said exactly, I know you’re proud I know…but I also know that you love your children…I can see it and I could feel it when you walked inside…it’s up to you…you can take them away and you can have bright days or you can stay and have bright days but whatever choice you make you can’t deny what I’m trying to give.  Then he told her with less eloquence that money is bullshit, all bullshit but that we weren’t leaving Langa with the briefcase.  He said if they didn’t take the money, we would walk the streets until someone found us, then exactly, if they kill us they kill us…me and Burn made a pact to be dead before we were 30 anyway so if that’s how it’s going to happen we’re fucking ready for that.  His eyes stayed on Malkia and he asked her if she would be ready for that, admitting he now had love in his heart, in that moment, maybe for the first time in his life and that she would be responsible forever for extinguishing it.  I think he was implying love for them.  I think she understood.  Then he asked her again, shortening his clips into a rapid succession of would you, would you, would you – faster and with growing intensity.  Malkia looked to Emmett and said something we didn’t understand before he darted out the door and jogged away.  She told us to sit, stabbed her knife into the wooden wall and asked if we were hungry.  Durban actually said yes. 

Been A Long Fucking Time...

And I just got this e-mail from Burn and it said something like, "Think you might want to get off your ass?  3 months...what you want, applause?  Even you're not sensational enough to keep someone checking in after 3 months.  Even you, Durban.  This is just the beginning.  I bet you tied one on last night, huh partner?  What are you celebrating, I'm curious?  We're just getting started, brother.  Just getting started."

Burn.  Burn.  And I'm laughing as I say it, laughing as I'm repeating his name to myself and out loud.  We just finished a book.  I know it's not done, I get it...and Burn will be the first to go on and on about re-writing, about this discipline you have to have, about the shit you have to carve out of rough words to make them presentable and I get it, I fucking get it.  Something happened in the course of the story we were telling that I can't divulge, but what happened...basically and exactly, was that I had to write the last 10,000 words myself.  He sent me this e-mail at his 3am one night and he went off on this rambling tangent - I think he might have been sleep walking on his computer because most of it was non-sensical, but the jist of it was this epiphany of where we had to take our tale - and it ended up leading us to a place where all the work was mine.  I had to bring us home...me.  This was Burn's fucking idea and I'm doing the heavy lifting and then he has the nerve to drop me the cute little fucking hate e-mails.  Fucking Burn.  He's amazing to me - because he is such a pussy, really, truly...such a pussy.  And then he's ravenous and he's pressing and he's the scariest motherfucker I know in the world and I think that's amazing.  And now, we've written a book together and it's going to be huge because how could it not be?  How could something forged from the efforts of the two of us not reach out and topple the world?  

So yeah, I sent my draft of the last chapter, Los Angeles, to Burn sometime yesterday and he sends back this reply that said something like, "Now we go.  Tighten your belt."  And I have no fucking clue what that means and so I sent back this response that said something like get fucked and I haven't heard from him.  I think he's brooding or working on his chapters and he's going to send me another e-mail in a little bit that's going to tell me where he is and he'll imply that I'm dragging ass and that I need to get moving and I'll say something back like go fuck yourself and we wont really get anywhere but for some reason, I'll end up guilty and so I'll work and so maybe he's got my fucking strings tied around his fingers after all...just like he always does.  Fucking Burn.

I'd tell you the title...mostly just to spite him, but I think he'd fly across the pond and cut my dick off.  So no, you're just gonna have to wait. 

This Is Hard.

I'm writing a book with my compatriot across the pond.  I didn't know what the it was about until Burn wrote what he thought it was about and so I'm stealing that slick fucker's line that goes something like - "Me and Durban are out to jerk ourselves and each other off for 200 pages.  That's our idea."  I couldn't have thought it better myself.

Here's the problem with writing a book...it fucking sucks.  I'm sitting here in front of my laptop and I'm in Berlin right now for a couple weeks and the world is happening out there - all the fucking time in this city - and I'm sitting here taking my turn writing a chapter about time I spent in Prague, alone, when I was broke and had to pull some shit to get out of that country. Actually, you can read the abridged in my back logs - "The Worst Shit I Ever Got Into."

Fucking Burn.  Fucking Burn pulled me into this shit.  When we agreed to do this, I figured I could binge out a weekend bender and float a couple ten thousand words his way and that would be that - he would take care of the rest.  Instead, as it turns out, I'm responsible for whole fucking chapters - I have to hold up whole fucking chapters.  And not just that but Burn wants to do this thing where it's all in order if you can believe the fucking stones on this guy.  It means that our story starts the day we met in Paris and we do this tag-team narrative that totally worked for me but then we finished Paris and now I'm up on Prague, alone, and Burn can't do his chapter until I finish mine for what he calls sake of avoiding repetition or theme or maybe it's just so he can babysit my juvenile tendencies and completely absent work ethic and he's writing me every fucking day just nagging and pulling on me and giving me shit and keeping me in line and I've been sitting here for the third day in a row because the fucker is whipping me from behind and my eyes are bleeding and my brain is bleeding and sometimes I think I haven't a fucking clue what I'm doing.  Fucking Burn.  Fucking Burn.  Fuck you Burn. There is nothing easy about this, nothing enjoyable. 

I don't mean all that.  Because, well...

Reading back what I'm getting down goes something like this - just a taste...

"I woke up the morning of Christmas Eve on the hardwood floor of my Boscolo Carlo presidential, covered in cold, rank piss.  Someone was pounding on the door.  I ditched my pants and approached to find the general manager standing with 2 heavy brutes.  He was holding a copy of my bill in his hand, telling me that my card had been over-extended, that I was no longer welcome at their establishment.  In Paris, London or Rome, or anywhere in the states, or anywhere but what seemed to only be Eastern Europe, I could have made a phone call and been fine - and would have been graciously accomodated.  Problem with Prague, it was my first visit - no one knew or gave a shit about who John Durban was.  They didn't know of my worldly status or worldly friends and I wasn't going to begin to tell them.  To them, I was just a broke deadbeat with a bum credit card.

I did, however, still manage to negotiate 30 minutes to take a shower and change into some clean clothes, all the while trying to piece the pieces of the previous night together.  I've always found the shower to be an excellent avenue for recollection and thought and right as those warm and resurrecting ropes of water hit my face and ran over my scalp, I remembered everything.  We were at Girl's house the night before, somewhere just outside the city, having dinner with her family. They were serving Goulash of some sort - I think that's what Girl called it in translation.  I remember trying to eat it and my entire face being so numb from the cocaine -- that's right, we had picked up an uncut key on the way over -- that I couldn't chew.  I put a bite in my mouth and just sat for what seemed to be either two hours or two minutes. Everyone was speaking Czech and arguing and I think they were insulted by my being there, some rich American/Euro boy fucking the life out of their overnight rich Czech Italian Vogue cover girl and I could see it in their eyes, their bleeding envy, every one of them wondering when their cut was coming."

And I'm not even the anchor.  Fucking Burn...

In Dreams...

Burn Used to talk about this shit all the time.  He still talks about this shit all the time, about going to sleep and of a mind that wont let him let go of the parts of his past...long after he believed to - some kind of hitch in his kingdom of giant calves and closeted homosexuality...his pristine and simplistic Los Angeles life of trophy fucks and a righteously unstable, insatiable and judging mind...of the men he's killed and of the skilled crimes he's escaped.

Some of the aforementioned are true...

He talks a lot about going to sleep and always dreaming, odd shit, yeah...but relevant shit too.  Mostly of people.  People that held a candle somewhere along the line.  I don't know if I never noticed it before...like if it was always right there but I never paid it any mind -- that or that I wasn't capable of paying it much mind -- that or that I was always too bent to remember anything in my life, let alone my dreams. 

When I stopped getting so fucked for a stretch -- and I've actually been holding semi-steady lately -- I was dreaming about Jenny almost every night.  The girl clipped herself, knifed her wrist and just hung out and bled out and sometimes, I think about the things she must have been thinking -- right at the end there, as the world finally calmed and slowed...maybe for the first time in her life.  And I always wonder, because I'm self obsessed and because I loved her and because I don't have to justify my fucking right to wonder if I crossed her mind, if I ever crossed her mind.  Maybe I did, maybe I didn't.  Maybe she knew me, too well, knew that all I was was a fucker, that I was probably coked out somewhere across the globe, fucking some nineteen year old hundred pound Chanel model...because that's exactly what I was doing, not thinking of the girl I left behind -- not thinking of Jenny -- like I should have been -- the only girl who had what it took - to put me on my fucking feet and her entire life was pouring out on that floor and in my dreams, all I want to know, the only thing I want to fucking know is whether or not she was thinking of me.  I'd give my life for that knowledge.  

Enough.  You know the story.  Excuse my obsession.  Excuse and forgive.  I close my eyes and most of the time, that's exactly what I see.  I think about it now, what I've affectionately labeled to myself as the incident, even just for a flash and something in me starts to take over and buries it and buries it because guess what, it's 2009...and it's a new year and in the new year, we're moving away from self-destruction.  For now at least. 

Everything that happened...it would have been as good a reason as any to jump back in...into the painies and Jack...back into the stuff I don't ever want to talk about anymore.  I didn't.  And I'm not proud or anything, and I don't want any fucking props, it's just relevant to the tale.  Something about the pain was clearing.  Something about a look I'd get in the dream, something about the feeling I'd wake up with - this mess of regret, of some kind of sick fucking yearning and the rest of it just pain -- just grief and fucking sadness that I only recently began to recognize, let alone talk about.  Burn showed me a thing or two about being a pussy -- that sometimes, being a pussy is acceptable -- that sometimes, being a pussy is absolutely necessary...if you can believe that - and coming from my mouth.  Fuck me.  Fuck us all -- after all that's all we all are...fucked.  Embrace it. 

I'm okay.  I'm sitting in a hotel room in London and it's fucking cold and dark.  And I don't know why I keep coming here, to this city.  Something about it keeps pulling me back.  

I'm tired but I don't want to sleep.  She's been there for 3 sleeps in a row.  It's not that I don't want to see her...I do.  But coming out hurts.  Coming back here, it can hurt like nothing else.

Not always, though.  Sometimes, sometimes, my eyes open and I feel right, like I know she's waiting for me out there, somewhere, somewhere down the line.

All It Takes Is An End Date...

I've been growling, literally, ceaselessly lately.  Like, the verb, the action - at people on the street, dogs I'm passing, anything that can fucking breathe and see and feel my hostility and hatred because that's what I've fucking got.  I'm done.

It's been some kind of month for camp Durban.  I recently came to a conclusion that I want to be checked out by the time I'm 35.  And ever since I've come to that conclusion, things have been simple - and my life...simply simplified.

Oh, Jenny...  

Truth, I haven't been drinking.  Truth, I've been clean of everything lately, really, completely. And two weeks ago, I was on a flight from London to Tokyo because I'd never been, something in me thinking I had to see the lights and people of a country only defined by the perceptions in my mind.  Like there was a craving inside of me - a void that the trip was supposed to fill. That's what I was doing on the plane.  Since I've been sober, she's been on my mind, constantly. And it's been hurting, really fucking hurting and I know how easy it is to chase it away, I know ways, believe me, I know ways.  But I've been sitting in it, feeling it, trying to work my way through it and the badness and I'm not going to say that anything I was doing was working, but I was in it and for the time being, that was good enough.

I was sleeping in super first class and was having this dream about her where realities reversed. She was still alive and existing in the world and the pictures of her death, of her blood spilled out on that white tile floor, and her pale, naked body and her cut wrists that I demanded to see because it's "what I was owed," because she was "mine and mine alone," was the dream.  And maybe for the first time in my life, I felt truly happy - like I was going to get a second chance at it, this beautiful it, this beautiful girl that I had loved...

My eyes opened and truth rushed through and took hold of me.  And it wasn't until that moment that I realized...I had loved her, absolutely.  And now she was dead, and she cut her wrists not because of me...but maybe - and I was there close to the end, and I left, and then she did that to herself and she died.

I was awake but something was way fucking wrong...

I remember needing to stand, so I did.  I remember needing to scream, so I did.  I remember no longer being able to be on that plane, or seated, or still or silent.  I remember the panic and fear in the other passenger's eyes.  I remember no control and then a bump on my head and heat running down my forehead and off the bridge of my nose.  Then I was on the ground, hands pinned behind my back and felt this cool, slow burn running through my veins.  And the last thing I remember was the expression of this stout little Asian man in glasses.  He pitied me.  I wanted to die.  I felt like he knew. 

I woke up in jail, in Arakawa, had 14 stitches in my forehead and was released after the airline decided to not press charges.  Apparently, one of their male stewards struck me in the head with an undisclosed blunt object and both parties agreed to part as amicably as possible.  I was having a psychotic episode, yeah, but the attack was poor protocol on his part.  The airline, which I can not mention, (but you can certainly narrow it down not only by carriers who offer that itinerary but also by the distinct few carriers who could satisfy my shameful Champagne tastes) has done a decent job keeping the incident under wraps, but sometimes if you Google, "Man Goes Berserk On Airplane From London to Tokyo," a story pops up.  It was on YouTube for a day, for real.  And it was fucking amazing.  Keep it in caps, oddly, you'll have better luck. 

That was two weeks ago.  

People sometimes tell me I live an eventful life.  And in the past, maybe that would have made everything worth while.  Probably.  I don't know what I feel. I'm just coasting, have been coasting for some time...and I can't stand it anymore.

Last week, after spending an entire week at the 4 Seasons in Tokyo, laying in bed watching American TV and crushing room service, I jumped a flight to Amalfi.  It would be the first time I'd been back since everything went down.  People told me about a small service that I didn't attend.  Honestly, how could I have?  And without me there, they let her ashes go into the Mediterranean.  

I went back to the spot where we first became, thought back to the words she pulled out of me, that she was like nothing I'd ever known - and standing there, thinking back, I realized what I had meant.  

The wind picked up and started to rush around me.  I closed my eyes and imagined her ashes still floating.  I imagined that maybe, maybe there was still part of her swirling in that wind, part of her that had all along been waiting for my return.  I imagined her ash finding me and soaking through my skin and flowing through me and finding my heart and calming it and quieting it and telling it that everything was going to be alright.  And forgiving.  And for a second, it settled me, being there, paying tears to that coast that we owned, together, forever.

I looked over the edge of the cliff and thought about it, how easy it would be, to take that step. And it'd be something short of honesty to say that I don't dream of a day where that would be my reality, to really, truly toe the edge of that thing called clipping life.  I fucking wish that was in me.  It's not.  Not like Jenny.  Because I stood on that cliff and realized two things, that I hold no value on my life...and that I'll never be able to take her path.  Because whatever hurt comes, I'll never be capable of that.  

And something came over me.  I felt fearless.  I wanted to live, fucking live and be dead by 35. Easy.  Simple. 

It's funny the way people always talk about the dead.  Because when we die, we all become heroes and saints and visionaries.  And we all have these priceless smiles and flawless hearts. 

Sure we do.  

Jenny was totally fucked, she was, but that was her, and I don't know what that made or makes me...but it makes me something.  And whatever that is, I'll take it.  And when I close my eyes, I see her face in the way she came, and I could see everything she was - and I may never know another beauty like that, ever.  Every day, the thought of it changes my life.

My goodbye came in the form of a hope that wherever she was, a part of her might feel the entirety of truth in me...and a scream, vibrating along and down the coast... 

"I fucking love you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

...

Finally.

Fucking London...

I flew in last night - and nothing about anything that's going to follow here is anything Durban.  Let me make that crystal fucking clear while I try and sift my way through this newfound shit I'm in and everything that started back in Argentina.

I was recently swapping stains with this English bird who was caravanning across my country - or at least my country of choice for the moment - Argentina.  And before her, there were dozens - in the span of like a financial quarter.  I mean, like every other night, sometimes two in a single.  That's what I love about Argentine women, they just don't give a fuck so they just fuck.  And we're talking the beautiful and the distinguished.  They have this look and this superiority about them -- but it's all appearance and no attitude so they're highly fulfilling.  It's not like I'm paying for the women or picking them up off a corner -- I'm charming them.  I'm laying my wit and style on the line to see what's what, and it was my new and fully fulfilling hobby, like I was amassing this great collection...or so I thought. 

Cindi -- the English bird - was part of the game, no doubt.  First night I saw her, we're talking 40's Hollywood, spotting a dame from across the bar and that need, that fucking need.  I haven't had it in a long time - a long time.  That's why when we woke up together the next morning and I was still there - actually, we were at my place - my place of residence, I knew I was walking into something uncharted.  I'm not saying that this was building or that there was room for growth or that we didn't fuck that first night because we did, but there was something different about it.  Something sweeter.

Jesus, I'm starting to sound like Burn.

We hung for a couple weeks, and we actually did shit.  Like shit, like renting a car and driving places...actually going out to dinner and -- I don't know -- the point is -- I don't know what the point is.  This is sifting.

I don't know why I bought the video cameras.  I don't know why I needed to put her on tape - kind of against her will.  I'm not sure why I did this but am pretty sure why.  This is fucked up, but maybe because...

I've been trying to call her for a couple weeks now, ever since she left to go back to London.  She picks up the phone and just sits there.  Then when we finally do start talking, she just fucking yells and hollers and tells me I'm a fucking pig and that she never wants to see me or talk to me again and all I want to do is calm her down but she's yelling and I'm trying to reason with her -- trying to convince her that me filming her was my pedestal, that me filming her was my honoring her.  It's not like I was going to show my friends (I only have one and he lives in the Angel City) or post it - it was for me - for my personal collection.  Although it may sound like I've done this a lot, I fucking haven't.  I've never done it.  I was honoring her, and I'm not thick enough to think that she is going to ever understand that or even let it slide a little bit, but that's exactly what I was fucking doing. The shitty thing...

Is that I think she does, I think she understands it, exactly and all too well. Because, man, she can't lie to herself and she fucking knows me better than to think I would waste a single breath with a lie.  I know, again - same guy who kinda duped a girl into making a fuck film, but I've got principles. I've got fucking principles.  

Shit.   I'm messy.  So I'm in London, because everything about this has been eating me and I thought it was the only thing I could do.  I thought maybe I could come here, clean up and maybe run into her on the street or something.  London's alright - and it's too hard to score any drugs so at least I know things can stay clean for a while.   I could use clean for a while.  Right now, I feel poisoned and I don't feel right and there's this fucking sickness in me and I could grab a quarter key no prob and chase all this shit away...but I don't want to chase it away.  I want it.  I feel like I deserve it or maybe need to feel it and keep it around.  I don't know what it is, exactly, and further investigation may and could do me well, maybe could set me -- not straight but something. It could set me something.  And I'm wandering in another country again and nothing feels like home and maybe this was all I needed.

Mr. Sensitivity...

So I was out last night, had this great night - nothing like a bottle of red and an Argentine steak.  I've been seeing this girl from London - she's been down here the past couple weeks to tour the country.  I don't know what she does, but I know she has a lot of money.  Because she kinda acts like me or tries to.  Anyway, she made this great plan -- that me and her should jump town and head to this place called Medanos.  It's wine country.   I don't really know what that means, but I drink wine, especially on cocaine and we fuck like it's nobody's business and she's leaving next week, so if I didn't go with her, I'd be out in the fucking cold.   

I could dive into shit from the trip that would be great -- but I don't really know great.  We saw a sunset and it was big and red and to be honest, I just don't get it.  I leave that shit to my friend, The Burn.  Me, I dig other things.  Like, for instance...

Last night, when we were both drunk and running low on convo, I told her that I wanted to tape the two of us fucking -- because she was leaving the next day and I wanted something to remember her by -- my fancy line.  But of course, this wasn't the reason I wanted to film her.  Don't get me wrong, she's brilliant, really is.  Last summer, girl did the London half triathlon.  Girl's taut.  Girl loves to fuck.  Girl fucks solid -- so solid. But I was more interested in me. 

When I presented the idea, she laughed.  I held out my hand, told her to say no more - that was all I needed to hear -- obviously, she was totally cool with it.  The previous week, I had made an investment on three mini HD camcorders.  And these things are fucking tiny -- James fucking Bond.  And I hid them all over the house.  One in the laundry room because I fill the washing machine with golf balls and start it and fuck her as she sits on top of it.  She likes that.  Another one went in the living room because I purchased a fuck sling -- which is mostly like a hammock but for fucking but I don't really like it all that much.  It was okay the first time, but too hard to come. The last one went in the bedroom.  It's boring, but I knew this to be a safe fallback in case scenarios A and/or B failed. 

So we get home...so drunk, I had already driven the car into an embankment and we had to walk it the last mile.  So by the time we get home, we're already sweaty and the whole way, I'm telling her of all the awful things I'm going to do to her.  I told her over and over, how many times I was going to make her sing.  I talked about the washing machine, and the amazing bed -- trying so hard to steer thoughts clear of the fuck sling.  I couldn't deal.  Thank this godless world I didn't have to.

So she's already wildly wet without any real prep.  I'm telling you, fucking soldier, and...

You know that scene from the Departed where Jack Nicholson throws coke all over these two bitches and tells them -- I don't fucking remember what he told them.  Okay, so now I tell her to take me in her mouth and pull away.  When she does, I dust it with coke and tell her to do it again and off we fucking go.  We start in the laundry room - this high angle shot from the corner ceiling.  It could have been so good but the lighting was off - and I kept on trying to get her to lean back - for the shot, but I couldn't tell her. And those fucking golf balls -- they just bang so fucking loud.  So fucking loud.  I didn't even think to think of it.  Terrible sound.  And she was pitching gems.  Oxford educated, but the mouth on this girl, my fucking goodness. When she talks dirty -- I didn't even know what some of the words meant, I just knew I wanted them for my arsenal and that I was so high, I was literally trying to grab them out of the air and eat them and consume them and absorb them so they would become a part of me and so I could at a later time utter them with utmost intelligence.  On several occasions, she asked me what the fuck I was doing.  I didn't have an answer, just told her to keep talking vicious because vicious was keeping me hard.  I fucking live for vicious. 

Thank godlessness I had the bedroom camera. The house I'm staying in has this digital clock on the wall -- huge, obnoxious.  Because of it, I can tell you something about our duration -- the memory card ran out long before we stopped fucking.  We started at 3 on the kitchen floor - it moved into the laundry room until 4 - until we found that bed until 8.  Seriously.  I don't know how either.  Okay, maybe I do -- cocaine and lube.  And she loved me -- and this was supposed to be our goodbye.  Poor girl, someone besides me should've told her I'm soulless -- which I did, in fact...over and over.  I was constantly apologizing for my actions because I'm starting to feel like it's the right thing to do.  At least decent. I don't know.

She left today and when she did, I sat down to watch the footage. And I gotta be honest, I don't know if I like what I saw.  There's this curl that folds in on the bottom of my left ass when I'm fucking -- I don't like that.  And when she's on top and riding me, I don't like my face -- looks like I gotta piss real bad with nowhere to piss.  And I want my cock to be bigger.  I want to be the best there ever was.  I want her to go back and tell all her friends about some guy who fucked her like no one has ever fucked her.  I want to be the one she talks about until the day she dies -- the one she rubs to when she's got nothing else - the thought that works, without fail until the end of her time.  I want to be legend.   Durban.  

And I'm watching her and the way she moves and the way she rocks and the way she comes -- oh fuck, the way she comes.  And I'm thinking I should buy a ticket to London.  I'm thinking maybe I should follow her there.  No, I decide I'm going to follow her there, to her home, her country, to surprise her when all I can hear over my shoulder is what the fuck John -- and with much exclamation.  And she's standing there, watching me watching me fuck her and her eyes are gaping now that they're free of blow and Malbec and all I can tell you...she isn't happy.  

She came back for her passport -- always the fucking passport -- and I try to explain my interpretations of her claiming it to be fine, doing what I did.  And she isn't buying it and asks for the tape, which I have no choice but to turn over.  I ask her to stay and she says she doesn't think so and she grabs what she forgot, her fucking passport, and she walks out the door and I wait until she's gone then watch the video from the laundry room and I must say, with the lighting -- and sounds -- the crooked angle...it does have a sleight French New Wave look to it. And I have to admit, in that one I look pretty fucking good. 

Like a star. 

Why I Have Problems With My Friend, The Burn...

Burn,

First of all, you are a fucking moron.  Excuse my lacking sensitivity but if that's what you're looking for, you could always wrangle up one of your California pussies to weep to.  I lack patience.  

So you fell in love.  You fell in love in 6 weeks?  No, wait, sorry -- 4 weeks into it, you tell this girl that you love her.  What the fuck are you thinking, man?  Do you realize how long 4 weeks is?  I was kicked out of Princeton in 4 weeks.  Remember that?  No, you probably don't because you didn't know me then.  But even if you did know me, you wouldn't remember and you want to know why, because I was only there for 4 fucking weeks!  Wrap your head around it.

Now, I don't want to be an asshole and put words in your mouth.  So, what I'm going to do is quote you, thus letting you speak for yourself and then piss all over everything you're saying.  Let us begin.

"We had a lunch today that began with a heavy kiss and ended with her gift-giving and a heavy goodbye.  She drove away and I didn't watch -- some kind of conquering perception of mind -- my illusion of strength disallowed it.  I opened the gate and had to stop.  I felt light, like something was pouring from the soles in my feet, bleeding out into the concrete -- this force vacating my body, instantly replaced by another force, something heavy and daunting, a familiar thing to me."

A kiss?  You ended with a kiss?  Really?  So this girl cracks your fragile heart and doesn't at least have the decency to dish out a break fuck?  Obviously your head is shit.  Obviously, you're midway through one of your epic spirals, trying to talk your way through it, saying things like, "I'm gonna bury myself now, Kim and Val, Kim and Val.  Work, work, work.  Fuck the world, better alone, better alone, better alone."  Asshole, you always say it in threes.  And you'll get bitter and distant and fucking sensational.  Your hatred for the everyday man'll come back in roaring waves.  I like you dark.  You're more interesting that way so let me help.  You'll probably never find another one like her(6 weeks), you'll likely never love again(6 weeks), you'll never get hard for another woman(6 fucking weeks!).   She won, every sense of the word.  But I'll bet that if she spent time blogging the shit she was going through, no way she can write like that.  Who can?  You obviously have that on her -- what else matters?

Time for the speed round:

"I remember the world disappearing -- inside her -- I can't.  Too much."

Know what, I was going to go off on that.  Then, I Googled the bitch again.  Sorry, don't mean to call her a bitch, I'm sure she isn't - you speak highly -- but again, you're a fucking moron.  She injured my boy.  Fuck her.  Anyway, her pics...yeah, I'd get lost inside that too.  Confession -- I may have already.

"This great competence I praise in myself often fails."

I'm too lazy to even find a synonym for fucking moron.  Have I mentioned the 6 week thing yet.  Bag 'em and tag 'em.  Self investment is the only play.  These aren't difficult concepts.

"It's not an easy thing to do -- to let it go, when you want to fight for something you can't fight for."

Shoulda fucked her one last time.  That's raw, her non compliance.  I don't blame you for aching.  But think about this, she ain't fighting nothing.  Remember all the stories you'd tell, washing failed flames away, and freedom and breaking free and they'd cry and fight and all you wanted to do was wash them clean, move onward, move upward.  Name of the game is cut and run and you played it better than anyone.  Tables turn.  She's their revenge.  Eat it.  Tastes like shit but enjoy it. I'd tell you to go out and find another but you'll go off on one of your ridiculous shit spews, devaluing what you deem to be, "heartless, recreational fucks."  You'll tell me about how you rarely fall, that these things don't work for you and I'll god damn puke and I don't need to god damn puke right now.  Recreational fucks power the world.  They do. 

"I feel like this girl pulled 2-3 songs out of me.  2-3 songs that at any given moment could have cured all that ails and ailed.  Now that she's gone, they're gone.  They're lost.  And I'll never know.  I'm worried a night will come and the thought wont let me sleep, maybe for weeks.  Maybe I worry too much."

Jesus Christ -- and I don't even believe in the fucker.  Can I ask you a question?  Do you even know what you're talking about?  Okay, that's a bad question.  I know you know. And I get it dude, I do.  Or, actually, I don't, but I know you enough to pretend like I know, and that I get it.  I just see you down, I hear you down and I can feel it, and it ain't right. 

I read your shit right now and I thought back - that night I met you in London.  I think you were on your way back to Chicago and you told me to come meet you in the airport, in Heathrow.  They wouldn't let me in the terminal, and I had to buy a fucking ticket to Berlin but I met you in that bar and we drank Guinness and Patron the entire night and got so drunk.  They closed the bar and we had to wait outside gate 16 for your flight and had another 7 some hours to go.  I had already picked up a gallon of JD at duty free for no reason and we sipped on it and listened to your I-Pod on that shitty carpeting.  Everyone passed us, suspicious.  You started talking about this feeling you had, that nothing had come like it recently - that it was this calm, like you trusted your way in the world for the first time in your life.  Not surprisingly, I hadn't the clue what you were speaking.  You reached out to your I-Pod, changed the song - Modest Mouse's "Trailer Trash."  And you said, "It feels like this."  And we sat there and listened, passed the bottle back and fourth.  You had this look in your eye and I felt like I understood. I fucking got it, even if it was only for that second.  That was the moment I began to envy you. First man ever.   And I may never stop, even when you're a fucking moron, like now. 

Let her go.  You'll be fine.  You'll always be fine.  You're the fucking Burn, man.  The fucking Burn.

The Worst Shit I Ever Got Into...

Prague is good for two things -- hookers and cocaine.  

When I'm in town, I go to this place called The Palace.  It's good for the first part, hookers. But that's not to say I can't get laid.  I can, quite effortlessly and by women of high caliber. It's just...who doesn't need a tasteless fuck from time to time.  

The Palace is like an apartment building - four floors, 10 rooms per floor.  You go to a room, discuss the terms of use with the tenant -- handy, blow or fuck and off you go.  Most of the rooms are themed, that's to say the hookers make each their own.  Eastern Europeans in the sex biz know home decor. 

Excellent establishment. Full Durban stamp.

The only problem with The Palace is that I only go when I'm flying -- on the fringe of out of control.  The only other problem is that it's easy to score blow in Prague, in high quantities. Something about the market, the lagging transfer rate...it means I go to The Palace quite often.  

While we're on problems, let's talk about mine and that I come with a qualifying trust fund. See, before my father died, he knew me enough to know I'm a fuck up.  This he declared on many occasions.  He left me nets along the way...meaning that on my birthday every year, I would come into about a quarter of a million dollars.  It always happens sometime in the first quarter...mid February.  And by December, I'm usually broke as fuck, stuck somewhere far from home.  Three Decembers ago, I was in Prague.  Freezing fucking ass cold Prague.  I was there because I was chasing this girl, this model you've seen in dozens of mags, because I was swooned.  She literally spent 65,000 of my USD's in 8 days.  8 fucking days. She left to shoot in Bermuda when I was in semi-coma, left me with 400 dollars and a half key of coke.

The only way for me to get out of Prague was to sell it.  I had to get out of Prague.  I had to sell it.  

So I go to this address on Zlata -- room 6.  That's all I remember about it.  The abandoning bitch told me about a guy who told me about a guy who sent me to Zlata.  Okay, so at this point, I had never unloaded anywhere near this much narcotic volume.  I was fucking scared.  Eastern European men are fucking scary.  I didn't have a gun, but decided I needed to bring something in with me in case things got hairy.  On the way, as I was walking, I found a rusted hammer lying on the side of the road.  For some reason, I decided it to suffice. 

I got to the address, walked in the gate as someone walked out and climbed up to the 6th floor. Rooms 6-1 to 6-7 aligned.  At the end of the hall, I found room 6, knocked on the door, relieved to find this little fucking weasel on the other end.  He spoke shitty English, but well enough for me to understand and called himself The Baron.  This part I remember clearly because when he told me, I remember a band of snot flying from my nose as I fought to self-contain.

He was shaking, hopped on something.  He looked like he hadn't slept in weeks, all 40 some pounds of him.  I could have literally thrown him across the room with my cock.  Literally.

But he started acting bizarre.  In hindsight, I believe it's because he had Turrets, but at the time, he was only acting bizarre.  I started to think back to that scene in Scarface with the chainsaw and ambush and watching my brother getting carved to pieces, his blood and guts flying all over my face...me not closing my mouth -- and the stuff going in my mouth.  I didn't have a fucking brother.  It didn't fucking matter.  These emotions transfer.  He was pacing and yelping.  I was coming down and freaking out.  He put the cash on the table and reached into his pants when it happened.  I swung that hammer clear into The Baron's teeth...

There's a very distinct sound that happens when you clear out a man's teeth with a rusted hammer, like breaking through an egg shell -- soft, delicate, yet there's enough fortitude there to actually give the metal of the hammer a slight ring.  Unbelievable.  I stood over The Baron as he curled on the floor, weeping.  I said I was sorry, that I thought he was going for a chainsaw. He went into shock.  I called him an ambulance, took the money, left the coke, left half the money and got the fuck out of that country. 

Something In Her Way.

I thought it then, knew it when she disappeared.  This bird I knew when I was in Amalfi. Jennifer.  Don't know her last name, didn't think to care.  All I remember, her face, something in her stare that bled me.  It ripped through me.  All I remember, being inside her, watching her shake, feeling her quiver.  Those eyes.  Those fucking eyes.  I was electric.  For 2 weeks, we paired.  In cars, in alleys, in bedrooms we would never leave.  She was electric.

I didn't know anything about the pills we took.  I didn't know what had brought me to the Italian coast, but I was driving, fucked out of my mind and she was screaming at me and I couldn't hear a word of it.  Nothing was processing.  I was winding the coast in an old Alfa Romeo - topless - trying to hit a hundred miles an hour, screaming back I want to die I want to die I want to die. That much I remember. The cliffs were high.  I wanted so desperately to miss a turn, drive through the guardrails and fly away with her.  I wanted that to be it. I wanted to fucking end it and at every last second, I'd pull away - some guardian guiding my hand, pulling me back to the road.  I think she was egging me on.  She wanted me to do it.  I wanted to do it. Something in the pills, something in them bringing out something in the two of us, something vicious and exquisite and we both knew...everything too much.

We stopped.  We had smashed into a cliff.  Blood was running through her hairline, running through her dark strands.  Two days later, I would learn three of my ribs had cracked.  The car was fucked.  We fucked.  Her blood and my pain, everything so sobering and clear.  She told me then she loved me, the first and only time I had ever wanted to hear it in my life. We hitched a lift to Positano, got a room and stayed there, in bed, our hands and bodies twisted as the rain fell against our shutters and I thought that was it, our apologies and the end of me and anything I had ever thought I needed. 

When I woke, she was gone.  No note.  All I had left was the dried blood on her pillow. Fuck her.  Fuck her, all I could think - I would kill her if I ever found her again. Those words, those fucking words how dare she let slip.  I would kill her.  I'd take her back to Amalfi and show her my might, that it could be done, that I could put an end to everything - and be content, being with her...I'd tell her it was all for her - kiss her as we fell until the end found us.  I thought of the things I'd say, the things I'd do to touch her again, to have her there again knowing I'd never let go.  To tell her I'm never going to let go.

But I never saw her again. I knew I never would.

-- From my friend Romero, a friend of travels...that I received today --

"Durban.  I love you man.  Know that before everything. I'm sorry.  Jenny's dead, found her this morning.  It was her. Her. Nothing we could do. Nothing she left.  I'm sorry.  We all miss you. Come back soon.  I'm so sorry."