Respect My Disbelief

I didn't know it at the time, but in the months preceding my forced hospitalization I did make a few half-hearted and ultimately doomed attempts to "get help" for my drinking.

Jenny was one of those attempts. Jenny was a girl that I worked with during my on-again/off-again temp assignments at Bank of Generica. She was slender and bookish, keeping her long auburn hair in an unfashionable bun and wearing unflattering, baggy clothing with minimal cosmetics.

She looked like the kind of girl who would play Dungeons and Dragons with you- the sort of chick who would allocate more points for her character's Intelligence than for Strength or Charisma.

She wore librarian glasses and sensible shoes.

To me, she was hot. She was real, and it made her the most attractive woman in our department, so I was delighted when she approached me as we were leaving a meeting.

"Do I know you from somewhere? You look very familiar- have we met?", she asked.

For a drunk, this is a tough question to answer. Drunks have bad memories and worse behavior. If she 'knew me from somewhere', it was probably from me being drunk and hitting on her in some stinky-ass rock club.
Perhaps I had sold cocaine to her?
Hmmm...I like this woman. Did I know her?
I wanted to.

"I don't know...are you into the local music scene?"

Maybe she had seen me at a radio-sponsored event. Perhaps she'd even seen me play guitar or bass on-stage!
That would be cool...but the look she gave me indicated that she wasn't aware that there was such a thing as a 'music scene'.

"No...that wouldn't be it. Have I seen you at church?"

"Uh...no, I don't think so."

Church? When was the last time I went to church? I have never attended church in my adult life. I'm sure she hadn't seen me in church.

"Well, it's from somewhere...I feel like I know you..."

She likes me, I thought, but work intervened before I could follow up.

A few days later, we were working together and she picked up our truncated conversation.

"I think I did see you at church."

She named a church. Sure enough, I used to attend AA meetings there when I was on probation, but I didn't want to tell her that.

"Oh, yeah...I have, uh, been there before. It's been a long time, though."

Jenny smiled and said she was glad she figured that out- she'd been thinking about me for several days, it seems. That turned me on. She likes me, tra la la...

We worked together quite well, Jenny was smart and funny and our tedious tasks were not so bad when we did them together- over the course of our talks, I learned that she was into Jazz Dance and liked to write fiction. Cool.

She rarely drank and she didn't do drugs.

I did both daily, but I didn't tell her that.

I didn't want to keep doing those things, I just didn't have a reason to stop. I didn't even know that I wanted to quit- all I knew is that my head was full of really bad ideas and I was desperate for something...but what?

One of my really bad ideas involved Jenny.

I thought that if I could get Jenny to date me, I would find the strength to quit. I would get my courage from her, not from a bottle.
For a woman like Jenny, I believed, I could do anything- including quitting booze.
I hadn't had a significant relationship for years, and the women I did know were at least as drunk and fucked-up as me. Eightballs and benders...I didn't 'date', I binged.

One time, my girlfriend stole all my dope and then tried to sic her half-wolf/half-Shepherd hybrid on me when I demanded the return of my drugs, which she had already sold and shot.
I was the one who usually fed the poor dog-beast, it liked me a lot so it just sat and whined while we fought, but the whole scene was fairly indicative of my success in relationships.

Hey man, can I crash on your couch for awhile?

Why?

My girlfriend threw me out. She tried to attack me with a wolf.

What would happen if I dated a a girl who didn't have a coke dealer on speed dial or a wolf in the backyard?
Maybe if I dated a 'straight' woman, I'd get clean- that was my hope. At least in hindsight, I think that was part of what I was looking for- Jenny was much too bright to date a fuck-up, so I thought maybe she could magically "fix" me just by sleeping with me on a fairly regular interval and doing whatever else it is that people do when they aren't fucking or getting wasted.

That was a false and wholly unfair hope if there ever was one, not to mention a completely ass-backward approach...definitely not a moment of clarity or reason for me. I had completely bottomed-out and didn't even know it.

But the bad idea seemed like a good one at the time.

Of course, first I had to get her to go out with me.

This was really easy to do. A friend of mine was playing at a local Jazz club and I had free admission. When I asked Jenny if she'd like to go, she readily accepted.
She'd been waiting for me to ask. So we went.

We had dinner in the club's quiet dining room- when the waitress cleared our plates, I noticed that I had three empty beer bottles and two shot glasses on my side of the table.

Jenny had consumed about one-third of a glass of wine.
Jenny was aware of this disparity.

"Look, I need to ask you something and you might not like hearing it", she leaned towards me.

"OK."

"How can you be a Seeker if you drink so much? How can you find anything in that condition?"

A Seeker? What is that?

"Um...what's a 'Seeker'?"

"A Seeker of Christ. Of the Truth. I thought that's what you were."

"Uh...well...honestly, I'm not religious..."

Oh no. I can't have this talk right now, I thought. I have too much liquor in me to be tactful and I'm not drunk enough to tell lies. Why is it assumed that I am a Christian? We've never even discussed religion before.

I raised my arm- another beer and a shot over here, please.
I am not ready for this.

"You do believe in God, though. Right? Don't you?"

Make that shot a double!

"Ah...no. I don't."

"What? How can you not believe in God?"

"I just don't...I'm an atheist...or maybe an agnostic. I dunno. I haven't really thought about it much."

This was true and it still is- except for the thinking part. After that night, it occurred to me that I might stand to benefit from giving religion some thought. I figured I 'd better learn enough about it so that the next time a woman asked me if I was a 'Seeker', I'd be able to give the answer that got me laid.

That's how I saw religion. As a tool to be used to coerce others into doing something that they might not otherwise do. A means to power.
Sure, I'll pretend to be a Christian if it means getting laid. Or a raise. Or elected.
Or at least I used to think that way.

After sober reflection, I have no faith that any 'God' exists, but I do believe that using religion as a tool for manipulating people is inherently wrong. It's how wars get started and it's a pretty shoddy foundation for a healthy relationship.

The truth is, I don't really care if there is or isn't a 'God'. It doesn't much matter to me.
I can change myself , but I can't change God. Can I ? Would I even want to?

The beliefs of other's shouldn't be cause for killing.

Does this exchange make sense?:

"Why do we hate them?"

"They worship in an improper fashion."

"How do we know that?"

"Our Book About God tells us that."

"And that is worth killing for?"

"Yes."

"But our God tells us not to kill."

"Die, infidel, die."

It doesn't make sense to me, but it happens every day.

When I was dying, coughing up my shredded guts onto the cold white ER floor, I didn't pray.
I didn't think about God at all. I wanted to live. I was afraid of dying, but not of judgement.
I was bleeding to death and I needed surgery.
God wasn't a part of the decision to go to hospital instead of letting the darkness fall.
Pain was. Fear was. God was not.

Who will feed my cats? I remember thinking about that, but I don't recall saying any prayers .
I remember wanting an ice cube really, really, badly and suddenly feeling quite cold.
No praying.
Whomever said: "there are no atheists in foxholes " was wrong.
I've been in a foxhole of sorts and I didn't convert.

But that was to be in the future.

In the past, I am still talking to Jenny.

All I needed to do was to lie to her and say I believed- and I would have been in her bed, making her cry "Sweet Jesus and Amen, Hally -Yoo-Ha!" all-night long...all I had to do was lie...but I didn't. Looking back, I'm glad I didn't.

"How", she asked, "is it possible to not believe in God? How can you even live like that?"

"Jenny, I really just don't know. I guess I just muddle along. I never really give it much thought."

Jenny was a bit stunned by my revelation.

"You haven't thought about it much? That's not possible."

Maybe I should have lied. She didn't believe the truth. Maybe I should have asked what particular faith she was...not that I much cared. She wasn't a puritan or a tee-totaler, I knew that much.

"Uh...it just doesn't come up much."

This was true, but it wasn't well received by Jenny, who was Seeking Truth.

Jenny took a long sip of her wine and stared at me. She looked stricken. She glanced down at her wine. I thought she was going to gulp the rest of it but she set it down, pushed it aside.

I thought, she's ready to leave and the band hasn't even started yet.
I'm not getting any tonight.

"I respect your beliefs."

That's what she said.

"I respect your beliefs."

It was a concluding statement but I was too drunk to let it go. Mistakes were made.

"You can't respect my beliefs. I don't have any beliefs.
I know things or I don't.
Things are or they aren't.
Whether I believe or not doesn't change reality, so I choose not to believe in anything."

Of course, I was too much of an asshole to keep that belief to myself.

"Are you sober enough to drive me home or do I need to call a cab?"

"I believe that I can drive."

"Liar."

Anus in the Morning

Don Imus is a raging asshole?
Who knew?

I think I was the last person in the world to hear about his remarks about the Rutger's Women's Basketball team- I heard a lot of angry responses and from the tone of the rebuttals and condemnation I thought he must have said the 'N-word' since nobody was repeating his words on TV.
So I Googled it. He didn't use the N-word.

What he said was worse. It even offended me and I'm from the South...I'm accustomed to loudmouthed racist assholes, but sometimes someone just fucks up so badly that there can't be any further explanation or apology.

Once you have referred to a group of women- including a class valedictorian, a future lawyer and a musical prodigy who plays classical piano by ear- as "nappy-headed ho's" you really don't need to say anything else. You have made yourself very clear.

The words define the man with immutable clarity.
His explanations of "context and comedy" mean nothing.

Holy shit.
I just heard Imus try to explain that it was OK for him to disparage and insult Black women because Black men do the same thing all the time.
Wow. That's one of the worst "apologies" I've ever heard.
Who coached him- Mike Richards?
Anyone who doesn't understand how incredibly racist the attitude expressed by that particular "explanation" is needs to do some serious soul-searching.

I mean, you know you've fucked-up bigtime when you have to apologize to Al Sharpton.

But. And this is a big but...

We have a First Amendment. I don't respect Mr. Imus or his personal and political beliefs. I don't respect the man, period.
But I respect his right to say whatever he wants.

We get the entertainers we deserve because we keep paying attention to persons who are beneath contempt and unworthy of notice.
This incident is preventing me from giving proper attention to the breaking Anna Nicole news...you see what I mean? Why do we even care?

There is no law saying that I have to listen to him, so I don't, but there are enough people who do listen that he still has a career- maybe.

I don't think he should be fired. Not right away.

If what he said carries the weight that it should, then his audience will leave him and his sagging ratings will lead to his early retirement. That is what should happen, but it might not.

If there are enough people who are willing to listen to anything that this loathsome slug utters to keep him employed- and I'm guessing that there are- then he should keep his job.

And every time some sheltered white person tells me that we've moved past reactionary racism and sexism in this country, I will be able to point out that Don Imus called the some of the brightest young women in the country "nappy headed ho's" and he still has an audience.

Dr. Furter's Smoking Cure

The Rocky Horror Picture Show affected my life in at least two significant ways :

1) It made sure that I never became addicted to nicotine.

2) It confirmed my adolescent suspicions that I was a
heterosexual.

Let's start with the cigarettes... when I was 15, I got invited to go to the Midnight showing of RHPC at the Key Theatre in College Park, MD.
I was invited by some of my older friends who were , in my young eyes, 'supercool'.

They had weed, acid, booze and Susannah. I didn't really do a lot of drugs at that point, but I liked hanging out with the older stoner loners anyway. They made me laugh- they were all misfits and readily let me into their little group of outcasts.

Susannah was the older sister of one of my friends; she was a really old 17 and , I was to learn that night, she thought I was hot.

That's why I got invited- Susannah wanted me along.
I didn't know much about women then ( some things remain constant) so I was blind to Susannah's deft manipulations- as our group gathered around Andy's GMC Pacer, she waited until I got in the back and then pushed her other pals aside and plopped herself on my lap. There were seven or eight of us, so the lap-thing was mandatory- but she chose my lap.

Well, guess what?

About five milliseconds after she planted her nubile buns on my lap, I started experiencing this certain swelling sensation...at this point, I was still a virgin but I was pretty sure what was going on.

This uncontrollable swelling kept poking itself upwards, like it knew exactly where it wanted to go and nothing- not my Levis, not her panties, nothing- was going to stop it.

"This thing has a mind of it's own", I thought for the first, (but certainly not the last) time.

Of course, Susannah could feel this insistent, repetitive pushing against her fine, fine derriere. She knew what was going on alright- she wiggled around so that she was almost facing me , turned and gave me one of the most intense tongue-kisses I've ever had; grinding , grinding down, keeping perfect rhythm with her hips- it occurred to me that maybe she liked me better when I was swollen, so instead of trying to hide my condition, I pushed back.
So did she.
Repeat.
Repeat.

Aha! I was starting to understand what this was all about...all I could feel was my tongue sliding into the beautiful darkness of her mouth and this unknown ,but wholly natural-feeling pelvic combat taking place- completely out of my control.

There were six other kids in the car and we didn't pay any attention to them- someone tried handing us a joint, we heard them laughing at us but we didn't care- teenagers have been horny and shameless a long, long time before they invented myspace, you know...anyway, it was about a 40 minute ride to the cinema but I didn't make it that long.

Susannah could tell what was happening and she was right there with me...why are you speeding up ? I remember thinking...ah, the innocence of youth...anyway, when we got to the theatre, I headed straight for the restroom so I could discard my ruined underwear and maybe clean myself up a bit...

The Men's Room was full of transvestites.

See, at the Rocky Show, the audience dressed as the cast of the movie and the movie was full of campy cross-dressers (and some Meatloaf) - a lot of pre-movie 'costume' adjustments were done in the restrooms.

Here I was, barely 15 years old , still recovering from my first assisted orgasm and suddenly I was in a toilet full of trannies, looking for somewhere to ditch my scummy shorts.

Hmmm...well, almost everyone else in here has their pants off, I thought- and not all of the men were men- so I might as well get it over with...I dropped my jeans, pitched my nastified FotL's into the wastebin and used a wet papertowel to clean myself as best I could.

People were fucking in the stalls and sniffing blow off each other's body parts...nobody even paid me any attention. It was truly anti-climactic.

So I strutted back to our seats, dazed but needing more Susannah...I had never known that the inside of someone else's mouth could taste so good...I wanted her for every meal, forever and ever...ech. Sappy.

I was sure that after the movie, something very special was going to happen and it was going to be the best, most important thing ever...ergh. You know how kids are.

"I threw my shorts away", I told her.

She laughed and kissed me.

The sweet woman-taste was gone.

She tasted like tobacco, but honestly, I didn't care. I was 15 and all I wanted was more bouncing and grinding- I was pretty much oblivious to everything around me, which is no mean feat considering where I was.

After a long make-out session, she lit a cigarette.

Very sophisticated, she was.

She offered me one.

I accepted it and she lit it for me, using her own cigarette.

Then she kissed me and exhaled deep into my lungs.

This was a night of firsts.
That was my first cigarette.

It made me feel funny. Not in a funny-good way, like Susannah made me feel. The smoke made me feel funny-sick.

Very ill.

I puked on Susannah. All over her plaid skirt and her Doc Martens.

After that, Susannah was done with kissing me. She didn't even want to talk.
If Andy hadn't been a nice guy, they would have left me behind, 30 miles from home.

I missed my first lay because of a cigarette.

The only cigarette I have ever smoked.

Scooter's Fall Vacation

It looks as if Scooter Libby will be taking a Federal vacation, all expenses paid.
In my opinion, he's getting off easy- - he blew the cover of a secret agent who was actually trying to stop terrorists during a time of war, an act I would label as treason.

Libby's attorney had one of the weakest defense arguments heard since Nuremburg.
He blamed his client's incompetence- not his mental competence re: his ability to stand trial- he cited the fact that Libby and his bosses suck at their jobs.
"You can't expect him to be responsible for his own words and actions", explained the defense, " because he was too busy fucking up on a global scale to be bothered with details...":

"The wheels were falling off the Bush administration" in the summer of 2003,
Wells argued. How could Libby, serving Cheney as both chief of staff and
national security adviser, remember Plame's job when 100,000 U.S. troops were in
Iraq and hadn't found the weapons of mass destruction the administration had
cited to justify the war? Wells asked.
"And he still had his day job of
trying to prevent another 9/11" terrorist attack, Wells said.

He's correct in one thing- the wheels were already detaching from the Bushmobile in 2003.
Not that they were ever on very tight in the first place.

This part is a flat-out lie:

"And he still had his day job of trying to prevent another 9/11" terrorist
attack, Wells said.

If preventing another terrorist attack was actually part of Libby's job description, we'd all be blown to pieces by now-by his own lawyer's admission Scooter can't handle his job.

Who would expect the National Security advisor to know that revealing the identity of an American undercover intelligence agent was a bad idea?

Libby deserves a Gary Gilmore award.

-----------

Meanwhile, the "war on Terra" continues to be a smashing success. BushCo has done such a wonderful job of spreading freedom that men in Pakistan and Afghanistan are afraid to shave their beards- because the Taliban might kill them or their barber for doing so.

Wait.

Wasn't "Mission Accomplished"?

If Mission was Accomplished, how come the Taliban are issuing Islamic Fashion Statements that double as death threats?

"The government is unable to protect us so we will abide by what the
Taliban tells us to do and stop shaving beards," said Niamat, a barber in Khar,
the headquarters of the Bajaur tribal agency along the Pakistan-Afghanistan
border.
And the Taliban mean business, On Sunday night, bombs destroyed two
barber shops and three others suffered partial damage after the owners refused
to follow the orders.
"I am a Muslim and I know that no one can force me to
shave or not to shave. This should be my decision," said Nasir, a regular
customer, wearing a green turtleneck sweater and jeans. "But I was threatened.
They asked if I will obey the new laws; I will obey because I am afraid."

"...I will obey because I am afraid."
Uh, that's not what 'liberated' civilians are supposed to say... weren't we supposed to have been greeted by cheering crowds?

Five years after we invaded, the Taliban are still in charge. We control an airport outside of Kabul- barely. Every day brings another step backwards.

If you are a soldier or Marine, there are worse places to be sent than Baghdad, Kabul being one.

Tehran would be another.

If you think that it sucks to be losing two wars simultaneously, consider that it could be worse.

If BushCo gets it's way, we will soon be losing three wars at the same time- bad news for everyone that isn't a war-profiteer.

On the bright side, it won't be three wars for long- history tells us that if one nation starts enough "little wars", they metastasize and become one BIG war.

On the down side, history tells us that the aggressor always loses these wars.