hide your bad habits underneath the patio.

if you’ve got an impulse, let it out.

1317 words. I’m growing. I think. I’m not sure. Who knows. This one, again, was written in two bursts. As usual, comments are more than welcome, they’re encouraged. Critique critique critique.

The flowers bloomed all wrong that year, and I knew it would be a dangerous spring. After the lilies came back to life, we had a freak hail storm that had them huddling close to the fence, and you would feel guilt walking past them in coat and scarf and gloves.

I like to drink, I really enjoy it. There’s a moment when you’re tight, but not drunk, and in that moment you make the tiniest of choices. Go forward or go back. Somehow, I’ve never chosen to go back. I believe it is always better to yes to the world than to say no. It’s why I give bums change, and why I always kiss back, even if I shouldn’t.

Yes, yes, yes. And this word has gotten me ino trouble, surely, but I sleep well every night, unless it’s really hot and I’m sweating. Of course, I can always turn on the fan.

My bedroom window sits about seven feet from my neighbors window, and when I first moved in, the apartment next door was empty. Soon though, we saw evidence of people moving in. At the time, my bed was positioned so that my head was at eye level with the window, and I cannot deny that the first time a light went on in the window across the alley, my heart lept a little.

I believe that everyone is a passive voyeur. If given the chance, we will always look, will always say, ‘yes. yes show me’. You may disagree, and that’s ok. You should write a story too then.

When the light clicked on, every adolescent Mrs. Robinson fantasy went off in my head. At worst, I would see a beautiful naked woman. At best, we would start an affair of the shadows. I thought of watching her every night - figuring out her routine. Knowing what she liked and disliked. Knowing what she was like when she was alone. I think voyeurism appeals to people not just because it is allegedly forbidden, but because you get to see people stripped of pretense, in all their insane honesty. And I think most people, when alone, are beautiful. Yes. Yes. Say yes along with me now, because I’m not wrong.

Somehow it never occurred to me that a man would move in next door. I never learned his name, but called him Trashcan.

That first night when Trashcan flipped on the light switch in his room, and when my heart skipped a beat, and I debated for half of a millisecond over the morality of looking or not (yes YES look), I discovered Trashcan’s fondness for walking around the apartment in the nude.

His shade was drawn to roughly his nipples, and the ledge came up to his just below his knees. Framed dead center in the window frame was Trashcan’s penis, overgrown with the largest amount of public hair I have ever seen in my life. His hair was very bushy, and ran from his stomach to his lower thighs, thinning at the bottom. Dead center, the bright white head of his willie poked out as if from behind a hedgerow.

It was terrible to look, but I could not look away either. My eyes were drawn to his nakedness, and the reality that he was staring at closed blinds made me wonder what on earth he was doing. For many nights afterwards, I forced myself to sleep with face towards the wall, curled in the fetal position, in fear of the gravitational pull of his nudity.

It was difficult to look Trashcan in the eyes when I would see him outside his apartment chiseling the VIN number of his 86 Taurus, or cursing the snow as he shoveled in his boots and boxers. I had seen this man’s junk, and no amount of neighborly comraderie could change that.

As the winter bore on, random people seemed to move in and out of his apartment. Regularly, I ran into a woman outside the house, and we’d nod hello. One day, waiting for my slice of basil and fresh tomato pizza at Niccolo’s, I discovered her standing next to me. She bemoaned having to hock her guitar and amplifier, and I felt guilt for looking down on my neighbors.

For a short period, a young girl of perhaps fifteen was there. The room previously occupied by Trashcan has seemingly become a living room of sorts, and I found myself undressing more or less in front of this girl as her eyes were glued to the TV across the way. I had moved the bed by then, but being a small room, was still required to undress in the middle of it. I developed a habit of sitting on the edge of my bed, back to the window, and quickly removing my pants and throwing blankets over me in one deft move. I wanted to avoid being naked around fifteen year old, a desire I picked up when I was eighteen.

It was on my birthday that I first heard the arguments. My roommates had thrown a lovely party for me, and I went to bed very drunk. As the room spun around me, I began to hear strange noise.

‘AsdddfASSHOLEsddkfj;j?FUCKWADas;dkla;BITCH’

‘YAHWELLasdlkajDON’Tasd;lkjsdINTHEASS!’

I chalked it up to a lover’s quarrel, albeit the kind I had never participated in.

These arguments escalated in the following weeks. I was at a loss, since the young girl seemed to have left, and the guitar-in-hock woman had been out of the picture since February. In fact, it seemed that Trashcan was living alone, a move I fully supported. But who was he fighting with?

Around this time, the blinds were fully close more regularly, even as the argument increased in intensity and regularity. I became more frightened as words like ‘cheating bitch’ and ’stupid self-centered asshole’ became elements of my dreams.

I would be there, perhaps in the seminary having a conversation with Jesus, or riding an elephant that was actually a monkey, or just pulling my teeth out over a dirty sink, and the yelling would start. A squirrel would scream at me, ‘you fucking bitch, how could you do this to me?’. I had no idea what that poor little squirrel was talking about, and I stopped keeping my dream journal, a habit I had picked up in the eleventh grade.

That night, the night of the hail storm, we had had company at our house from out of town. Several bottles of wine were drunk. Packet after packet of cigarettes were smoked. Laughter and joy filled our house, as outside the hail came down torrentially. A little at first, but building to a couple inches at the height of the storm, and occasionally one of us would strip off our t-shirts to do a run around the block as the hail beat into our chests.

It was the last night I saw Trashcan. As I made my second lap around the house, I saw him in the alley, next to the dumpster furiously emptying boxes of paper into the large green receptacle. I ran past him furiously as ball after ball of ice struck me bringing up squeals of insane joy, and saw that he was weeping tears of rage as he flung the last of the cardboard boxes into the dumpster.

That night, I went to sleep with my eyes glued to the window across the way, hoping for a sign. Somehow, I wanted Trashcan to be ok, but I was met with nothing but darkness. As I slipped into sleep, a dream began. I was sitting on the edge of my bed, and was clipping my toenails. I started with the pinky toe of my left foot, moving methodically to the right, saving the big toes for last. When I was done, I clipped my fingernails, read a magazine, and took a nap.

listen here my sister and my brother

I’m sitting at the picnic table, and should be ‘writing’ but instead have decided to post this quick thing.

All of Dirt’s friends are out at some kind of free screening for the new Transformers movie. The other night, when I turned down the invitation to attend, a friend said, ‘But it’s the defining movie of our generation!’ I held fast and am now sitting in an empty house, which is quite nice.

On one hand, I have to point out a few things. Lost in Translation? Rushmore? The Royal Tenenbaums? Me & You & Everyone We Know? Those are defining movies.

But here’s the real thing.

When I was a kid, we were poor. Somewhere I still have one of our old food stamps as a reminder of what life can be like, and how I should be happy with each and every day of my current life. I don’t mean to shout ‘cue vioins’. Life has hard, but good growing up and there was no shortage of love.

But, when the Transformers came out, the toys cost a crazy amount of money - $20 or $30 each if I remember correctly. Of course, many kids had them, but we did not. Being subconsciously aware of the family’s financial situation, I don’t know that I ever even asked for one, and instead grew to secretly hate them. Which I still do today.

Ironically, my friends just got back because they were locked out of the screening. And though I want good things for my friends, inside I’m smiling a little bit.

I got a hand, so I got a fist, so I got a plan. It’s the best that I can do.

A great opening line came to me yesterday, and I’m excited to attempt a story to go with it. It’s good. Thanks to ______  for giving good feedback on the previous story, and yes, I’ll go with some first person sometime here, you’re dead on.

Every day, when I come to and leave work, I see an ad on the bus stop saying, ‘Do Love The Baby’ and it’s an ad, well, against shaking your baby to death. It’s a little sad that an organization is needed to tell a set of people not to kill their children.

Though, as Stephin Merritt pointed out, ’something dark will happen to them anyway’. So perhaps I’m overreacting.

I’ve been getting more and more deaf in my left ear over the last year and a half. It’s kind of awkward, and it seems the ear itself doesn’t produce wax anymore. It’s kind of funny though, because I keep misinterpreting people, which makes for some great situations.

Say what you want, but I feel my heart beating

After the advice from Little Miss Sunshine last week, I thought I’d give another view of dating on the off chance that any readers have big dates coming up soon, and are perhaps a little nervous.

From the genius that is Damone.

You tell me I’m not not cute.

Holy shit, I couldn’t heart Stephin Merritt more if I tried. This is him doing an am interview on ‘Good Day Atlanta’

Best part of the exchange:

Interviewer :  The kids absolutely adore it, I’m sure they’re gonna love the music as well.

SM :  They better.

Interviewer : They better — or else

SM : Exactly

Interviewer : Something dark could happen to them

SM : Something dark will happen to them anyway

I can only imagine someone got fired for booking this segment.

when you looked in my eyes, i got soft inside. and the sound of your voice sent shivers up my spine.

When I lay down to sleep I have the same dream. A world famous actress in a pick cadillac.

Story #3. This one was written over the span of two days, again with little to no editing. At first, I couldn’t figure out how to end it. Then I did, but I’m not super confident, since it reeks a little of old time endings, kind of a knee slap/raised eyebrow thing. But, I just fished reading ‘Bagombo Snuff Box’, KV’s collection of 50’s era short stories, and they all sort of end this way, so I feel I’ve been influenced. How’s that for an excuse. As always, please comment, critique, call me lame.

If you went out the front door and walked a block and half to the north, you’d find the best sushi in San Francisco. He couldn’t ever pronounce the name of the place, so it became known as ‘Johnny Sushi’, which may have been racist, but he wasn’t sure.

When Jeff first moved to the bay area, it was the height of the dot-com-boom. At the time earning less than 20K a year precluded him from actually renting an apartment. For the first few months, he would travel up and down the coast of California on the Greyhound visiting other offices in his company, and crashing with colleagues. This worked fine for a while, but he found it difficult to sleep in the nude, as he had done since the eighth grade.

For a period of time, Jeff believed the Greyhound was where ‘real Americans’ could be found. He had a speech on the subject prepared for his boss, who would’ve preferred him to fly, and save the company some man-hour travel time.

‘If you want to get to know America, just take a trip on the Greyhound from Sacramento down to Santa Cruz,’ was part of the speech. Of course, after getting into a fistfight with a gentleman over the relative morality of sleeping with 14-year olds in Thailand, Jeff made the realization that Southwest Airlines was the Greyhound of the skies, and flew all over California much faster, and with more free peanuts.

On his first trip to San Diego, he suggested to his co-workers that they go to the beach. Having grown up in the most overcast region of the country, he was ecstatic just to see the sun for three whole days in a row, and felt he should take advantage of it. On the way over, he suggested, naively, that they pick up some sunscreen.

‘Nah, you won’t need it. The sun in California is really mellow,’ Troy said. No matter how much he grew to like Troy, this one sentence would make him always hate Troy a little bit.

Once at the beach, they laid out until Jeff felt a tingling all over his skin, and decided to hop in the ocean. After ninety minutes of jumping in the surf, Jeff realized Alexa had given him her keys, which were nowhere to be found. Having met Alexa the day before, he  was slightly embarrassed to have so completely fucked up.

Weeks later, still peeling, he found himself back in Berkeley. He called a friend, Mel, and asked if he could crash for the night. It was a tight at her place. She lived in a vaguely cooperative ’space’ (for the six years he lived in there, Jeff could never understand why people didn’t live in ‘apartments’ and go to ‘bars’, but instead seemed to exist solely to go from ’space’ to ’space’), and her co-housers (roommates, you mean, he thought) were upset because she had missed the previous three week’s house meetings, and hadn’t cooked one vegan kosher meal. 

‘Fuck it, c’mon over,’ she told him. 

Mel lived in the converted basement of an old victorian in the part of Berkeley that is actually Oakland. You entered Mel’s room via a trap door in the mud room behind the kitchen, going down a ten-foot ladder. The only rule of the house Jeff was instructed to follow was to always close the trap door. 

The first night there, Jeff and Mel picked up a twelve pack. They were two-thirds through it when they heard a scuffling, a scream, and a baby’s howl coming from the next room, where the ladder was.

Jeff, it turned out, had left the trapdoor open and Agnieska, the polish refugee roommate, had fallen through the opening with her baby in her arms. Remarkably, nobody was seriously injured, but as she screamed at Jeff in Polish and broken America about what a ‘bad bad bad man’ he was, he realized perhaps he should not spend the night after all. 

That was the first night Jeff spent in a motel in years. On the west side of University, towards the highway, were perhaps eight or nine hotels ranging in class from a Marriot to the Pink Flamingo. Something about the Pink Flamingo spoke to him. Perhaps it was that is a motel and not a hotel. The ‘mo’ brought up lovely memories of the road and the time he spent roaming around the country in his old station wagon, with no specific destination. 

While traveling he had once camped in New Mexico. Having driven from the plains of northern Texas in the night he missed the landscape change as the miles brought him into the West (always with a capital ‘W’, thank you very much) for the first time. When he was lulled awake by the sun, he stumbled out of his tent and we was for one of the few times in his life, speechless. 

How could the Pink Flamingo Motel be any different?

When the police broke down the door of the room next to him, Jeff casually thought, ‘This isn’t really like camping in New Mexico at all.’ From then on, when in the Bay Area, he would alternate between staying at a slightly better Motel and sleeping under his desk, which was actually a folding table. 

Between travels throughout the state, the low-income motels, and the spot under his table, Jeff was able to live, rent-free for nine months. In the process, he lost much of his temporary sanity. Never cooking his own meals, never being naked, and never having any SPACE (’holy shit, that’s IT,’ he thought) drove him a little insane. 

One day, in a meeting with his boss, Jeff outlined his idea for staff recruitment. His plan, which consisted of buying an old ice cream truck, painting it psychedelic rainbow colors, getting a PA system mounted to the roof, and doing ‘drive-by’ campus visits, struck his boss as odd, and perhaps, not up to the caliber of Jeff’s previous work. 

‘But it’s a fucking BRILLIANT idea Tom!’ Jeff cried into the phone. 

‘Jeff, I’m just asking you, as your friend, are you ok?’

Jeff began to weep quietly into the phone while assuring his boss that everything was fine. 

‘What the hell is going on out there?’

When Jeff explained the situation, Tom instructed him to take as much time, fully paid, as he needed to find a place to live of his own. 

That night at the 3300 Club, a third-shift bar in the office’s neighborhood which thumbed its nose at the state smoking band, and had no issue with ‘guest bartenders’, Jeff met Robert. Bob. Bob lived across the street, and had been there since 1978. Thanks to San Francisco rent control, Bob paid about $500 a month for a top floor, four bedrooms, wood-trimmed victorian. Bob was a freelance photographer, meaning he liked to take pictures and didn’t have a real job. He afforded to live by renting out the other three bedrooms to  ‘good people who needed some help’, and mentioned to Jeff that he had a room for $375. No deposit needed, no first and last month’s rent, just $375 a month, due whenever it was convenient for Jeff.

As they stumbled across the street to the apartment, Jeff stopped at an ATM machine. The daily limit was $200, but it was 11:50PM, so they waited 15 minutes, and Jeff took out another $200, handing it all to Bob with a teary hug. 

‘Well, the thing is, I’m….well, we’re getting evicted. You see, the owners sold, and the new guys want to turn all of this into condos. I’ve been fighting it for three years, and the state Supreme Court is looking at it this month. We could either end up set for life, of find ourselves with 10 days to move our shit out.’

With a nine-day work trip starting the next day, this seemed perfectly all right with Jeff. After all, the best sushi place in all of San Francisco was just a block and a half away.

let’s sit down a little while. some wine. you will find the same thing.

Ok, so I was bummed to not win the lottery last night, and then I realized that it just puts more money into my jackpot. Up to 89M for Saturday’s drawing. When I win, I’m so buying www.dirtbag.com from those clothing people.

Seriously, I play the lottery a decent amount. Maybe 1-2 times a month I pick some numbers and go for it. The funny thing is, I’m 100% convinced that I’ll win, which makes me not mind losing. But it’s strange that I’m so confident about it. There was one time I was a little short of money, and was like, ‘oh wait, I may have just won $50,000,000, I should get that ticket and check!’.

Allrighty gang, poll questions - what would be the first three things you did, if you won $75M? I’ll add mine to comments if people get trucking on it.

Bunch of work to get done today, or at least, I feel weird writing this stuff at work (though evidently have no issue checking lottery numbers at work), so I’ll leave off on a clip of the great Alan Arkin for all my young viewers out there.

Sorry - forgot two things.

Happy Solstice, you fucking hippies.

12 years ago today, ole Dirt went to his last Dead show, a mere 49 days before Garcia died. They played the longest Row Jimmy EVER. Could I be cooler?

i won’t say it if you won’t say it first.

Holy crap. It’s Dirtbag’s 75th comic. Enjoy this historic moment.