Confessions of a Jerkoff

The following post was written the Sunday before last, while in the midst of feeling like a failure.  

“You get your story and you hold onto it, and every time you tell it, you forget it more.”
-Laurie Anderson, Heart of a Dog

There’s nothing ironic about writing this at a Starbucks in downtown Austin while they play The Beatles.  The Beatles aren’t my favorite and neither is this coffee shop, but I’m left alone here.  It’s perfectly copacetic and American.  No haircuts, no 80’s music and plenty of space between me and the only other customer in here.  The Beatles are too terribly cute to resonate with me and my junkyard mind, but it’s not insufferable, certainly nothing earphones won’t fix and heaps better than the hipster coffee shop near the mansion.  I can never work there, can barely sit there without choking on good vibes with the urge to kill rising.  Which is all strangely prescient, being that the intention of this post is to demonstrate what a jerkoff I’ve been, and that in a slovenly state of mind even the universe can conspire to distract you, fuck you off and prevent you from getting the work done, if you let it.

The months following the publication of September and my return from Portland haven’t exactly been stagnant, but things never passed the speed of agony.  I’ve been busy but not busy enough.  I’ve kept up with gigs.  I did a book release at the mansion, performed for a packed house and sold some books. That week I appeared as the guest on Writing On The Air.  I was Chicon Street Poets featured reader in March and played their year anniversary as well as their presentation of Popsicle’s Departure 1989 by Maydee Distefano.  I was a featured reader of Blood Jet Poetry Series in New Orleans in March with great poet and friend Bernard Pearce.  I played a short set at the first Story Barn and my monthly gigs at the Airport.  I tagged along with fellow poet Brian Grosz and writer Kent Grosswiler Jr. for Writer’s Roulette and Spokenandheard at Kickbutt Coffee, and I opened the Ice Cream Social at the end of April.  I’m playing House Wine Thursday and then heading down to Houston the next day for Songwriters Roundtable Vol 8.  I’ve been able to support my community and made appearances at performances by Grosz and local favorite Nathan Hamilton.  I’ve been out to see Ebony Stewart read at the Bedpost Confessions‘ book release and also Testify semi-regularly.  I went to Joe Gray‘s first show on Wednesday and been listening to my homeboys on the Broad Street Breakdown.  I wrote poetry and posted a poem every day in April, kept that going throughout May.  I’ve had some poems featured in PoetryInk‘s 20th Anniversary Anthology as well as a tribute to Lamont Steptoe, and spoke and read at NSFW: Poetry For Wankers in May.  I’m sitting on about 10 new poems and hope to have them submitted by the end of June.  Meanwhile, I’ve submitted “You’d Be Alone Here Too” to the No Extra Words podcast and hope to get some stories together for submission to Backyard Story Night and Testify before we hit the road for upstate NY in July.  Lastly, I had some work appear in the Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review and am thrilled to be featured in The Waggle Magazine again.  In my interview with Chicon Street Poets I mentioned that I hope to break into twelve new markets by 2017, including Boston and NYC in September.

If you think that I’m tooting my own horn, you’re goddamn right I am.  At the request of my therapist I’m doing away with thinking that I am not an Artist.  It was my mantra for a while- twenty years or so but who’s counting-but thanks to the professional help of a good therapist, I won’t need to think that way anymore.  Also it just ain’t true.  Point is, it’s become terribly necessary to toot my own horn.  Remind myself.  As much as I feel like a jerkoff, I’m still getting work done.  I’m not moving at the speed of my heroes and I may never.  The only way a little light’ll get in, and the only chance I have in this chase, is that I voice it, here and to the universe.  That even with the proof of shows and print and interviews and performances, I still feel nowhere.  And even though I’m not nowhere, and am in fact somewhere, I know I could do so much better.  If I can’t rightfully say that I’ve beat depression, I’ve certainly won the round.  I haven’t smoked a cigarette since December and I hardly ever have the urge to drink or drug.  The difficulty is this yearning for otherness.  I’m stable.  Clear.  And utterly boring.  This way of feeling reminds me of similar crossroads in my life when I knew I’d have to perform-do work or die.  I can only imagine that this time I’ll be able to hit unimagined heights.  I’ve got sobriety and health on my side.  A stable gig, money saved and lots of time.  I hope to see you on the road, good reader, and the next time I get up I plan on jamming this fucker all the way home.

10 Years Stayin’ Young

“I am large, I contain multitudes.”-Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

I got into town just before midnight on a warm and balmy night in 1999.  The skyscrapers of Houston rose up on me as I climbed the hill from the train yard.  “I am a long way from home.”, I thought, and I was free.  I got up on stage at the club and I poured myself a mugfull of Evan Williams white-label.  “Houston.”  I said, and the crowd was with me.  They were with me until I had spouted all my words and finished the mug of 100 proof. 

It all came back to me walking down La Branch on Sunday.  Ruby Wring and her Texas Rollergirls were competing against the Houston Roller Derby.  I was playing a show at Café Mango’s that night and we were meeting up with an old friend who I hadn’t seen in 10 years.  When we got out of the car and began walking, it wasn’t just a memory that came back to me, it came over me.  With a memory, it’s kind of linear, you remember something that happened like you’re reading it off a page.  This was a feeling-and not just any feeling.  I felt the same exact way I felt 10 years ago, succinctly, and hadn’t felt since then.  The exotic warmth of Houston in November and the giant reach of anonymous skyscrapers downtown took me back to a fearless time in my life when I was walking tall down these city streets for the first time. 

We met Josh outside George R. Brown Convention Center.  We walked around checking out all the souped-up and shined cars on display for Autorama.  We cheered Ruby on as she and the TXRG beat the Houston Roller Derby 120-108.  We hung out at Lucky’s for the afterparty.  Throughout the day and into the beer-drunk night it was revealed:  we are still game. We’re still up for the next adventure.  We’re older now but that doesn’t matter any more than it did then.  By the end of this whole adventure me and my friend were confessing our love for each other.  I know it’s silly to have fondness for an old oil-town but I do.  Because when I got off the train back then I knew I had made it.  It must have been 12 degrees when I left Philly.  Not only was I doing a two-week, 8-city spoken word tour, I was making friends.  And the thing about friends is, when you see each other again it’s like no time has passed. 

Rachel from Philly joined us that night at the show.  I had an audience with members from:  Alabama, Houston and San Antone, Vermont and Philadelphia.     

When we left Houston, I watched the skyscrapers drop away.  “I’ll be back.  We’ll see you soon.”  Texas 10, the musical highway.  How comforting it is to know there are other heart-lights out there, beacons really.  They’re with me when I’m walking down 6th, I feel them out there, and I contain multitudes.  This feeling of  connection, it doesn’t make the world smaller, it somehow makes me bigger.  There’s more room out there and there’s more room in here.  It’s anti-small town walls closing in.  It’s everything.