iwasaboy

And she wanted to go. I don't know what it is about trespass that makes any place more lucid. 6:00 a.m. is the best time of the day. Because if you are still awake at that point you know you had quite a night. Everything is pale, everything is low, everything has no one awake and ready to tell you no. 6:00 a.m. has little consequence. I don't get to see 6:00 a.m. very often so I don't get worn on it's company. The railroads are my highways. The hidden corners of your backyards are where I want to crash. She asks me why I'm shaking. And I sooner think she knows. She'll be asleep in two hours and I'll be watching over her wondering why we ever need to sleep at all. Why every place I sprawl out on has a title attached to it that tells me I can't be there. 6:00 a.m. is mine. Cause no one is awake to take that away from me. It's restless while at peace. It's the metaphor of a highway thats a mile away. Close enough that you can hear it's noise but far enough away to where it's just a hum now. It's not real. My life is not real.

I want to know the value of resentment
I want to know if I'm a decent man
My music might have always been mine
Not matter how much I wanted it to be hers
I have come so far to not even be close
You shouldn't be reading this
If I stay quiet long enough you might come to know me
If I stay quiet long enough I'll never say anything to you
I didn't love her for not meeting my expections
I love her cause I never had any expections when she was around
I would have never done that to you
I have never seen you in my life without wondering when I could see you again
We will never have good timing
We will never have that conversation
We will never have each other
We have everything else, though
You are in my thoughts
You are my thoughts

With all the hours in the room with my head on the floor laying on cheap carpet next to a tape deck in a bare rack in a dimly lit room staring at one lit candle and a sheet of paper with sparse lyrics that make no attempt to rhyme. I think with every question I raise about about any given year of my life and what questions I raised for myself in the year when I was living it. I might not be able to disregard that I was happier when I was an workaholic. Holding my life on some dramatic step every time I shied away from people who had easily earned my respect, wondering how I could ever explain that I had no room for anyone at all in my life. Not really sure if it was really my lack of my willpower or the reality dawning on how alone I was that broke me of those patterns. Loving people so much right below that threshold where you really get to know who they are. I loved her cause she rejected me and I loved him cause he couldn't forget that I rejected him. I needed them to love me so much so I could write them off.

Maybe I stopped cause I could see reget at the end of the tunnel. But god... I can see regret now before I even had the chance to start. I try to stay and talk, or I try to leave and it still feels exactly the same. My days are very black and very white in the beginning and as time goes on nothing bothers me as much but nothing feels as much either. It all mixes together into gray. An unsure gray where I don't know if my outlook is watered down or if the people I'm surrounded by are watered down. All my childhoo playgrounds are suburbs and parking lots now for a city that is losing its people anyways. No one I loved has stayed here. So why did I come back? And why do I call it a hometown? Everything that made it home is gone. Is there anything in life that stays the same? It's not that everything needs to stay the same. But god damn it. I wish something did. Just one thing.

Brian says that as time goes on he doesn't believe in love anymore. He said it with no forethought or foresight. He just wanted to say it cause it was obviously on his mind. The thing that makes him so interesting is all the things he doesn't say but you know anyways. I know he lost a serious amount of weight in a few weeks. I know his girlfriend of 9 years left him. I know that socially, he always fall short on his face. He has said things in passing such as "I think I have things to teach because I have gone crazy before and have come back from it." So you just mention in passing that your faith is collapsing. And I wonder what sort of response he might be looking for from me? Does he want me to acknowledge it? Doesn't positive reassurance just really lend itself to more bitter responses?

I remember one of the more moody nights with Kar. She was making accusations. She was being really hard on me and I was really buying into it. I felt like I was such an asshole and everything I was doing was all coming from buried bad intentions. And in my desperate searching for that genius phrase that somehow makes things alright. I told her about how when I was in a situation that wasn't nearly as bad as hers how I managed to stay optimistic. Basically my version of a "gray skies are going to clear up" speech. And she scoffed and said "Jason... do you know how you sound when you say things like that?" And I backed off and tried to reestablish my point and she wasn't listening. She turned to me and said "You know what? You don't have to worry. Cause theres some girl out there for you. Someone who understands you and will always be there for you and won't judge you. And she's out there just waiting for you to find her..."

Fucking christ... She really called me out. She read me alot better than I thought. And despite those very obvious ways of letting me know that she has never loved me. She still asked time and time again for me to stay. To help take care of her and be a part of her family. Cause she was well past the belief that love has anything to do with it anymore. I remember once after me and Bobbi had split up, I was in a car crying with her cause I'd heard she was fucking strangers in strange places and she was being seriously cold to me. And she kinda come back for a second and said "it's okay, don't cry, give me a hug" in this very disconnected and sort of obligated way. Like she obviously didn't care how upset I was, but just felt like she had to say something. She knew how in love with her I was. And she said. "Don't worry, you'll find someone..... er, I don't know. You're pretty unique" Its like one of those statements you can't take back. Not that she tried. If I mentioned it to her now, I'd be surprised if she remembered it.

The whole concept of theres someone for everyone might be the greatest lie ever told. Maybe that might not be the case for me. But thats definately true for alot of people who are alot worse off than I am. To speak for myself, I know that I have so much more hope for myself when I believe that I can manage life without love. That what I have on my own is enough. I'm okay.

I remember when I lived with Steve. How he involved me in one of his little sacred rituals where every new years he would sit in his room with a collection of pictures and inheirted belongings of the prior year from ex girlfriends and anyone who'd hurt him that year. He'd make a little shrine of it and burn it and say he was moving on. And at the stroke of midnight if we were at some fantastic night club on one of the more memorable dancefloors of my life. He'd grab me and Emily at midnight and we'd do a group hug and press our heads together and he'd say that this year will be a better year. Fuck, I miss that guy. And though I don't move on from my past in such a manner of drawing the line in the sand. I have to wonder if he's onto something.

I have never been naive enough to not know that some of the people I run the gamut with will never have some sort of story with me with happy endings. I never pursued a happy ending cause I don't know what one is. I don't believe in the American dream. Cause if the American dream is a fat fuck C.E.O. who justifies all the people he fucks over with the belief that it's okay just because he was willing to work harder than they were, it's a dog eat dog world and all. If that's our dream then I don't want to be an American. If a happy ending is true love, I don't think that's in the cards for me unless she's as fucked up as I am. Cause when I'm in love I can't seem to keep my shit together long enough for any long term plans.

A happy ending to me used to be the idea of burning out. That sort of love in passing that felt so intense you could convince yourself it was real just long enough. Having no thoughts for the future cause you assume there isn't one there. Not so much any sort of conscious thoughts of suicide or anything like that. But feeling so alive that you know your life is going to kill you. Sooner rather than later. Just quick enough to not feel any guilt or to really come to terms with how ugly some people can be. So you want to be involved with everything cause you want to see how far it will go with a serious denial of what you'll see when you get there. That was my great denial. That life would just go on.

With Misty, Monique, Yeah and Marcy everything was better in passing. If I passed Yeah in the hallways when I was highway I'd gaze on her to see the most beautiful girl I'd ever known. The one who disappeared constantly and felt perfect in that way that I could imagine where she was running to and what she was running from. And not be around long enough to know the truth about ourselves. To really know what sort of places she was in and to really know how much of a fool I was when I spent time with her. You assume that whatever pain you feel at the time is enough to pay the piper so to speak. I knew that Monique was using me, I knew that Yeah would forget about me. Isn't that enough? Misty had killed Tristan. Wasn't that enough? You just assume that the nature of all these scenarios only have so much pain that they can give you. That hole only goes so deep and you yourself can go deeper than that and not get hurt anymore. But it wasn't bad enough cause I hadn't learned enough. It was only chance that kept me from getting in that car. From staying long to really know who I was. It was chance that made me go home that night. It was my own social shortcomings that kept Yeah from ever taking me somewhere I couldn't go. Not my unwillingness to get involved. I didn't volunteer the option to walk away.

The line was drawn in the sand for me and I don't know if I believe in God enough to give him credit for it. My line was drawn the last time I had seen Yeah standing next to her boyfriend after he had nearly beat her to death. My line was drawn when I was in a car with Marcy outside a police station after I spent the day trying to help her be a runaway and she kissed me because I was the only guy who ever tried to help her out rather than fuck her like everyone else in this town had. My line was drawn with Misty and Monique the day that I drove around with them after Misty had been wrongfully acquitted for murdering Tristan. Tristan was an incredible guy. Generous and loved and at the time I didn't want to know that. I didn't want to think that I was on the wrong side cause I was so fucking angry at everything and everyone that I didn't want to let myself care about the fact that I was on the wrong side. I loved her anyways. And I didn't want to lose her but she didn't leave that up to me.

Life does go on and after you've had time to think about things you think it's enough to feel guilty even if you never really got your hands dirty. You think that it's over. You think you lost enough. But I think that hole goes as deep as you might have been willing to.

Years later, I was in Seattle. Writing songs about what happened. And I decided to go back home for a week in the summer. I hadn't been there in a few years. Sam was the first person I'd seen. She was so excited to see me. That might be the only thing I miss about her. I used to think she was strong and all those things. She drove me around all day. She said she'd been in touch with Marcy. And Marcy had wanted to see me. I felt better for knowing that Marcy had not wanted to forget me. For all her serious shortcomings, I liked that I knew a side of her that not alot of people did. I knew as soon as I was going to see her I was going to ask about Misty and Monique. I seriously missed them and would have wanted so much to get back in touch with them. I thought about them every fucking day.

So on the way to Marcys home me and Sam had gotten to talking about her. I knew that she'd gotten pregnant around the same time that Misty had. Marcy was seeing someone. I asked Sam if it was the father of her baby. Sam said that the father was dead. Marcy had gotten pregnant with some guy that Marcy would as soon not really try to ask to face up to his responsibilities as a father. He'd had alot of children with different girls and there was one girl in particular that he was trying to get back involved with but she didn't want anything to do with him. "So he went to her house and shot her once in the chest with a shotgun and once in the head. There's not much left when you used a shotgun at that short of range." Sam said. "When the cops finally caught him they'd shot him for 'resistanting arrest' but they'd definately took his actions pretty personally." "Jesus Christ" I said. Seemed like I was better off to not bring that up to Marcy.

As soon as I saw Marcy, I was a little impressed with how well she seemed to be taking care of herself. Her place was pretty decent and her boy seemed healthy despite the constant traffic of guys that probably came through Marcys home. His life wasn't going to be easy I'm sure though. I asked Marcy if she was still in touch with Misty and Monique hoping she'd have a phone number. Despite everything, I still had this infatuation with the both of them. I hadn't learned enough. She told me she had no interest in keeping in touch with them because of how selfish they were. I knew all this, but I wanted to know how they were doing anyways. Marcy said that Misty was doing okay living in North Carolina. Monique on the other hand wasn't doing so well. So before the conversation had gone back to Monique the conversation stayed with Misty who had gotten pregnant around the same time Marcy had.

Marcy told me all sorts of things. That Mistys boyfriend had fucked both of them a number of time. He'd fucked thier mother too. That Marcy was there the night Misty had gotten pregnant. They'd gotten all cracked out one night and fucked a group of guys. And the one that everyone was most sure was the father was a gang member who was one of the ones involved with the "Spa murders". I remember her telling me this so vividly. I remember Sam turning down 20th ave. And everytime I ever drive down this street, I think about this. I asked Marcy about the Spa murders. I knew nothing about this. She took a hit of her cigarette and paused. She was surprised I hadn't heard about it. "That's right, you haven't been home. This was quite a big deal around here the summer it happened. One day after being on a coke binge for a few days these guys went into King's spa." Kings spa was an asian massage parlor about two miles from where I grew up. I remember joking about that place constantly when I was a kid growing up. Marcy said that they had gone in there to rob the place but just went absolutely fucking crazy. "They'd killed some of the prostitutes there. But they didn't just kill them. They did alot of fucked up things. Like they'd took one of thier eyes out. And used needles to inject one of them with bleach." We were driving across the bridge when Marcy told me this. I wont ever forget this. I remember her telling me quotes from some of the surviving prostitutes and how these guys locked them in and tried to burn the place down before they got busted.

I remember we were driving next to church on 20th avenue that looks like an old school building when I thought that if Misty was doing okay now after having father a child with one of these guys then what was it that was putting Monique in such a bad place. So I asked her. She'd told me that Monique had gotten involved with a guy named Tony before her and Misty had left to go to North Carolina. She'd had a serious relationship with him for years before she'd left. And he had just died of aids. And last she'd heard Monique wasn't doing so well. This was the girl I had taken to prom. I had felt so much for this girl and yet the news of all of this was being dropped on me. I remember looking at that church and thinking the words that I never said. "Shut the fuck up..... I don't want to hear this anymore." I felt like I was broke in half. I had never heard of anything more fucked up in my life. Maybe alot of people would think of the gratitude that they aren't involved with these people. That it's all just trashy and fucked and they're glad they didn't go down that road. And feeling like maybe you're lucky to be alive now that you aren't part of it anymore. And if I had heard all of this today, that's probably what I'd be thinking too. But at the time, it was so much more raw and surreal. All I could think of was how much I loved them and how much it scarred me to know that this is what happened to them. I know alot people in this city and all of them have lives that seem disappointing to the dreams they expressed when we were younger. But every now and then the word disappointing doesn't even come close to suffice for how these stories end. Brutal. It is brutal. It takes away my naivete that I don't want to volunteer losing. And for as deep as my masochism has been in the past. On my worst days, I could not look that thing in the face. I don't want to see anymore.