Life on the Fringe

People ask me why I’m so angry. I can only wonder why they aren’t angry too. This is a generation of fear. Every week there's some new scientific bullshit assertion to declare that everything we use is trying to (and will eventually) kill us all. Cell phones give you tumors; the internet makes you stupid; jerking off causes blindness. Don’t be fooled though, everything is trying to kill us. And why shouldn’t it? We’re terrible.

I grew up on the fringe of suburbia. It’s filled with low income housing and nefarious landlords looking to squeeze out every dime they can. It’s where all the people who were too poor to live in a real house had to go as there was no inner city nearby to hold our kind. It’s the place that people like to forget because there’s nothing in it for them. It’s for the people caught in a social purgatory. People on the Fringe aren’t pathetic enough to warrant sympathy from the powers that be, but those powers that be sure as hell aren’t inviting them to their Tupperware parties either. Instead the residents of the Fringe were forced to wedge their way between worlds where they didn’t belong.

No one in the Fringe really dreams. If you can stay out of prison and manage a C average then that’s as close as a victory as you can come by. The Fringe is where ambition goes to die.

Tired mothers would send their kids off to under-budgeted schools. They’d do their hair big, let their asses get wide and tan their skin to leather all while waiting for their limp-dick husbands to bring home the proverbial bacon from their dead-end, blue collar jobs because he could barely manage the community college he attended for two years before giving up entirely. The teens in the Fringe are the skinny white trash that dress like meth addicts. They stand on street corners tonguing their overstuffed girlfriends, rubbing up against parked cars and ramming their hands into her tightly packed, bargain-bin jeans trying his best to maneuver a decent fingerblast below her sizeable rolls. They stand in the street because it’s better than being inside the tiny apartment with their family who are inside yelling out their mutual resentment of each other.

You’ve probably seen them, the people of the Fringe. They’re the ones you avoid in supermarkets. The neighbors who get the cops called on them. The ones you don’t want your children to be friends with.

I was lucky enough to get out of there. I’m not a particularly nostalgic person, but I still believe that you should never forget where you came from. Whether I like it or not the Fringe is part of me. It’s taken me a while to want to visit it again, afraid it might try to suck me back in. I’ve driven past it for years, working up the courage to visit the streets I knew. Finally, I went to see what had changed, but it had only gotten worse. While I was there I saw a friend of mine that I had grown up with. Now he lives a couple blocks away from the apartment his family lived in. He was recently paroled from prison, too late to see the birth of his daughter. Her name is Celeste and she’ll grow up in the Fringe too. Not the Fringe that I grew up in though, the new one that’s worse.

So, if you ever want to ask me why I’m so angry, this is why: because I’m constantly disappointed.

A Dog and his Vomit

I have been thinking crazy thoughts. Thoughts of will and rage; love and blindness; of evolution, revolution, degeneration and redemption. I’ve thought of pride and then the fall, crime and punishment, life and then death. I’ve thought of misery and Misirlou. I’ve thought about fate and I’ve thought about God. Mostly, I’ve thought about myself.

And in thinking about myself I’ve had two realizations:

1.) I am an addict.

I’m addicted to the edge, to the next day, to the unwritten life. I’m addicted to the hunt, to the chase, to the uncertain end. I’m in love with a cruel mistress and her name is the blank page and I can’t help myself. She beckons with her sultry sway and seductive call; a siren waiting to sink me. She’s always there when I need her; waiting to use me as much as I use her. I can never say “no” to her because I never want to. And I’m left to wonder if it’s better to fight the urge or to try to fill the void.

A void that deep will make anyone a miserable son of a bitch, which leads me to my second revelation:

2.) I am a dog.

And a dog will always return to his vomit. Like the fool I am I want to return to my folly. Given the options, it might be the best one. We live in a world that’s constantly trying to kill us all, but that’s not called “insanity” that’s called “life.” So if I do go back to that place then logic states that I deal with it the same way humakind has dealt with the world: try to conquer it before it kills me.

Maybe the should have killed me the first time because they've only made me stronger. Or angrier. Or dumber. Or all of the above. And now the real dilemma: should I be miserable fighting my way through the mess or miserable wishing I was?

Any guesses on what happens next?

Being Alone: A Love Story

I spent Valentine’s Day alone. I wanted to.

The honest truth is that I went most of the day forgetting it was even February 14th. The day was mine and I spent most of it in book stores. I didn’t really even consider the significance of it until I went and bought myself a steak at the local grocer and the invasive cashier asked “cooking your valentine a dinner tonight?” Realizing what the situation looked like, I smiled and answered “yes.” Of course, she didn’t know what I really meant, and I didn’t expect her to. So, with love on my mind, I took some time to think about loneliness and what it means to be alone.

Now, in a rare instance of unabashed honesty, let me open up to you a little and share an intimate secret about me that I think will help illustrate my point. I wish I could say I’ve never told someone that I love them; it would make my life seem less messy. It’s not a word I like to throw around carelessly. It carries a very significant weight to it. Checking through my laundry list of insignificant others I’d be lying if I said I never told any of them that I loved them. Within context and relative to each given situation and understanding, I did love them, or at least some part of them. Now, before you assume I’m referring to certain tangible (i.e. jiggly) qualities, let me assure you that while I am only human, I do operate on levels beyond the superficial. What I’m saying is that each woman has a unique, individual part of her that makes her beautiful. Sometimes it’s a smile, a laugh, a brush of the hair that’s seductive in its carelessness; other times it’s an idea, a secret, or knowing just how dangerous she really is. These beautiful parts vary as widely as each woman does. So when I say that I love women, and that they’re all beautiful, or have the capacity to be beautiful, it’s this singular and unquantifiable quality that I’m talking about. And when I told those girls that I loved them, what I really wanted was for them to love themselves and to find that part of them that was beautiful.

A lot of people ask me if I believe in love, while I could write chapters about that idea alone I’ll simply answer “yes” on this occasion. Yes, because I have to believe in love. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen it, or felt it or if I ever will feel it, but I have to believe that it’s out there somewhere. What I do know about love though is that it’s impossible to love someone who doesn’t love themselves. That’s what my day-after-Valentine’s message is really about. I sat alone last night, eating a perfectly seasoned steak I prepared myself, but I wasn’t lonely. Despite my self-destructive tendencies and tendency towards self-loathing, I enjoy who I am, and so when I spend nights alone I don’t pine for a lover or scoff bitterly at happy couples. There’s a whole year before the next Valentine’s day and I think this year, instead of searching for meaning in someone else and finding existence in co-dependence, it’s time to follow the old adage and “know thyself.” You might just like what you discover, and then you can show that off at your younger sister’s wedding.