The Journal, A Memoir, Pt 1 contd.

It’s 7pm on a Friday night. I am at a friend’s house. He lives with his girl. I use their phone and book a 9:30 flight. There’s always a good chance of hitchhiking a ride on a plane at night or in the early mornings. Airline employees fly cheaply on their own company flights. My car outside is a rusty brown hotwired 89’ Taurus with no working blinkers. I mostly use airplanes to get where I want to go.

WARRNING!! PLEASE NOTE: Parts and scenes in this story contain graphic, not necessarily violent, but sexual imagery, suggestion, and vulgar use of the English language. Any readers sensitive to this subject matter please stop reading.

Your Friend,
Chet Livingston

Explicit Content: NC17
Content not suitable for young or sensitive audiences.

 Entry Four:

My friend and his girl are smoking some weed, and I decide to have a White Russian. We have some laughs and they hit the town for the night. I work up a nice, warm buzz and head to the airport. I park in the long-term employee parking and hop on a service shuttle. Inside the airport, I rush through security. I take off my shoes, empty the change from my pockets, and step through the metal detector. Security is tight. They make sure I have no liquids, fingernail clippers, matches or lighters. After all this, I am thankful I still have a buzz. It will help me fall asleep during those rocky altitudes.

I search the terminal map for my gate. It’s on the opposite end. Damnit! I’ll have to run. It’s a long haul, and I have ten minutes. I rush down the escalator walkways. Seven years ago my grandfather died in this very airport, rushing to make his flight. A bad ticker they say.

When an employee flies standby, they recommend not checking in any luggage. In most cases it will not reach the same destination as its owner. Hell, I never know if I’m going to reach my right destination.

I know the abuse luggage goes through. I carry everything I need in one small, single strap backpack. Two pairs of boxers, three pairs clean socks, two plain black T-shirts, one change of pants, a hat, toothbrush, toothpaste, camera and a book; William S. Burroughs’, ‘Junky’, and a pair of dark sunglasses. These are my necessities for a two-night trip to Madison, Wisconsin.

I make it to the gate seconds before the Agent is about to close the door. I rush up to her, out of breath, and flash my fancy purple ID badge. Sharee, the Gate Agent, isn’t in a good mood. It’s important to schmooze and be friendly with Gate Agents. They have the power to let another fellow employee board or not. This is crucial when flying standby, stranded in an airport like Boston, far away from home. Hoping for an open seat, in the back of the aircraft, I ask, “Is there any first class available?” and I smile like the devil.

It happened once back in O’Hare, Chicago, waiting at a gate all night, until the last flight left, hoping for an open seat to take me home. Then the doors shut and the plane took off with all my dreams of a warm bed. Stranded in that bleak, vacant airport I slept on blue plastic chairs until the AM flights begin. Not many people fly early bird, so getting a first class seat was easy.

I knew it was before sunrise and a bit premature to start drinking, but I had a long hard night. I threw my feet up, leaned my seat as far back as possible and started snoring, really loud, to annoy the well-dressed businessman next to me. Maybe he got wrinkles in his $2,000 suit.

The Gate Agent says she has already called my name for standby passengers. She is being difficult. I butter her up. She doesn’t like my dress attire. I have holes in my jeans. It is mandatory to wear semi-formal business attire on all airline flights as an employee. I convince her to let me on if I change my pants. I pull a superman in the men’s restroom. I pass the test, and Sharee grants me access. All she needs is a good hard lay to fix her cranky mood. Maybe it’ll take away a few of those alcoholic years.

The CRJ lifts off. I have a window seat and the back two rows of the plane to myself. I stretch out the long way, horizontal across as many seats as possible. Each one is an un-purchased $300 ticket. I wish I could fill all eight vacant chairs.

Forty-Five minutes later, we touch down in Madison. The girl I came to visit doesn’t want to see me. I am fucked and have nothing to do. I should have stayed home There’s a family of a mother and two daughters up ahead reuniting with their dad. I almost approach them and ask for a ride into down town. An airport announcement plays over-head, they will be closing in one hour. I can’t sleep here.
I call a taxi.

He takes me into downtown, I notice the capitol towering the horizon like an erect, white nipple. He drops me off next to it. There goes $12 dollars of my $40 budget. Giant snowflakes tumble down around the glowing amber streetlights. A feeling of loneliness curls around my neck like a choking wind. I flip up my collar and light a smoke. I call a friend of a friend who knows someone living in the area. I meet him at a bar about three blocks down. A punk rock band plays on a checker-floored stage. Large wet paintings cover the walls. Spiraling disco balls cast shards of white light among the fancy freaks dressed in black with spiked collars and big black boots. Brotherhood, sluts, whiskey and two-dollar PBR’s, we’re all animals inside. The night turns out drunk and rambling and after bar close we stagger four blocks to his apartment. He lets me pass out on his floor.

In the morning, we hit breakfast and get along like old high school buds chatting it up. I trade him my Burroughs book for Bukowski’s, ‘Factotum’. I tell him I’m not familiar with the author. He tells me it’s amazing and that I’ll love it. “That book changed my life,” he said. “Just your style man.”

The ‘Dude’ has to go to work or school or somewhere, so I have the rest of the day and all of tomorrow to myself. I don’t know what to do. I wander up and down the main street, sitting on park benches, people watching and reading my new book. I find a coffee shop. It’s over crowded with annoying college students, all flapping their tongues, addicted to the sound of their own voices. I decide to leave. I find a museum. Admission is free and the place is quiet. I give the lady at the desk a big ol’ smile and walk in with my coffee. She is cute and old, and she yells at me, “no drinks allowed,” and I have to check in my backpack. I get a number tag to retrieve it later. I drop a dollar in the clear, plastic donation box. I have $20 and some loose change in my pocket. Staggering around and killing time, I go up and down the brass elevators, learning about speed skating while taking pictures.

After the museum, I wander inside the Capitol, snapping more pictures of people, scenery, and the architecture . I find the restroom, polished in marble and brass trimming. I feel like a Roman Emperor sitting on his immaculate throne. The toilet paper is expensive and soft to the touch.

Outside the Capitol, descending the long stone stairs, I catch the eye of a girl wearing a black and gray striped stocking cap. Her long, tan coat lifts in the wind. Her hands sink heavy in the pockets. We lock eyes as we pass by each other. I smile and I don’t look back. At the bottom of the steps, I find a cold, wooden bench. I sit down and begin rolling a cigarette. Giant flecks of snow begin to fall.

“Can I get one of those?”

The girl with the striped hat appears next to me on the other side of the bench. She sits down, allowing as much space between us as possible.

“Yeah,” I said licking the cigarette and handing it to her. Little, white fingertips stick out of her blue, wool mitts.

“Did you ever get that feeling, like you have to talk to a certain person?”

“Sure.” I say.

“Like you’re drawn to them?”

“Yeah.” I said again.

“Have you ever seen the movie ‘I Heart Huckabees’?” She asks.

I finish rolling another cigarette, and lean over to light hers with my golden Zippo. I sit back, and reply, “Yeah.” I light my own smoke, letting the flame taste the tobacco. I inhale gray. She smiles.

“Like two people are supposed to meet?” she says.

I smile with my eyes and say, “Yeah.”

“My name is Briana. What’s yours?”

“Chet, Chet Livingston.”

We get into a rolling conversation while chain smoking. We walk around town keeping warm and getting comfortable with each other. Briana reminds me of an Alice, from Wonderland, wearing black and red stripe stockings.

“Want to go to my place?” she asks.

“Sure, is it warm?”

It’s a rather cozy space, a one-room studio in a large, historical complex. It’s economical and moderate living for a single female and her cat named Charlie.

It has gray fur and craziness in its left eye. Pets take after their owners you know, and this bipolar bastard doesn’t take too kindly to me. One second he’s loving up my leg and the next, he slashing at my face. I should throw the bastard out in the snow.

“You want a drink?” Briana asks from the kitchen.

“Yes.” I thought she’d never ask. I get up from the rocking chair, and meet her in the kitchen. She is standing on a small, wooden stool desperately trying to reach the Jack Daniels on the top shelf.

“Let me help.” I say, easily grabbing the bottle. She pours tall, strong drinks and we polish down one after another while chain smoking my tobacco. We take turns sitting in the rocking chair near the open window. It’s the only window in the apartment and we can’t open it too much because of the cold outside. We ash in an empty pop can while that damn cat, Charlie, frantically and sporadically leaps about in the smoky haze. He hides for a while, pounces, and knocks over his perch tree, then disappears again, only to attack my leg later.

The night moves on, and our drinks reach the bottom of their glasses, only to be refilled. Briana moves from one subject to the next, chatting about her unloving parents, ex-boyfriends, her old drug dealers, how they abused her; tears, laughter, fetishes, more drinks and more cigarettes. Her moods go up and down, and the drunker she gets, the more I feel like an underpaid psychologist. Or, maybe I’m just an ignorant sucker. A mouse trapped in an insane cathouse. I can’t tell the difference, but I keep drinking her booze. It’s entertaining and the alternative would be renting a hotel room, (which I can’t afford), and flipping through bad TV or sleeping out in the cold with the bums.

Four AM comes around and we’ve covered it all from childhood to present, all the horror; daddy and the bad men. Briana is now wearing a leather bondage Halloween outfit with no shirt and that damn striped stocking cap. It’s a security issue with her hair. A month ago, she had long blond hair. Now it’s shorter than mine, like a boy and it makes her self-conscious, a painful failed attempt to run from her past.

Her drug withdrawals are slightly masked by the alcohol. Shirtless, and tweaking, she walks around bouncing between moods, one moment crying, the next laughing. Dried mascara tears streak down her lightly freckled cheeks and across her little white breasts. At some point, I find her tongue swirling inside my mouth. I taste decaying and decide not to unzip those tight leather pants.

We drink some more and she cries some more. We fall asleep on a little bed knotted together in the smoke haze as the sun filters in. It is the worst sleep of my life. I can’t breathe and her phone keeps ringing. It’s her mother, who’s coming to visit in two hours.

11:30am. I leave Briana still sleeping. I walk down the street and find a tavern. I buy a shot of Baileys. The bartender winks at me. I use their phone to call the 1-800 get-me-the-fuck-out-of here, airline hot line number. The liquor is smooth and as close to coffee as I can get at this moment. I use their phone book to call a taxi. I get a lift, and bullshit with the gray bearded taxi driver. I make it to the airport, giving him the last of my money and leave this town.

I am reminded of a Halloween night, in the year 2003, downtown, State St, Madison. I was left stranded by my friends, drunk and tear gassed by the cops, as thousands of belligerent fools all dressed in costumes; devils, pirates, cartoon characters, all half naked danced around bonfires in the street. I should have known then, never to come back.

On the plane, a middle-aged stewardess takes notice I’m an airline employee. She is in a good mood. She sets me up with a window seat overlooking the wing. It’s a small open propeller Saab. Most people do not like these planes because of the turbulence. I think they are fun. I watch the blades begin to spin and the plane moves into motion.

High above the land, the world dropping below, I sip a stiff free cocktail the beautiful stewardess has served me. I feel victory throb through my veins, my soul, newly enriched. The propellers spin faithfully.

We land, I’ve unloaded and reloaded this very aircraft many times. Have I met the captain or his wife? Was he the one sleeping in the dark lounge the other night? Out the window, I see Mark at the rear of the plane. He is unloading the luggage.

We exit. I wash my face and change my clothes in the restroom. I have forgotten deodorant. I brush my teeth and wet my hair. I go to my locker downstairs and put on my shiny orange vest, covered in broken zippers. I punch in. I go to work. Am I hung over or still drunk? I’m not even sure if I work today.

 The Ick

Seeping into pores
of the skin.
That thick stink
building up like
an oily paste.
It won’t wear off
or wash away.

We share bacteria
that mate on our flesh.
breeding new species
without permission.

This disease,
Of being alive,
is impossible to cure,
While living.

That cool breeze outside,
that nice fresh air you inhale,
was someone else’s dying breath.
Or a dinosaur’s fart

 May 1st

I will quit my job today. The airline declared bankruptcy. Employee wages will be cut one dollar. Instead of being poor, I am now paid less than the bums at the intersection.

Slow the lick of life
down her inner thigh
she cries
please

more...

and the smooth placement
of neck and hand
glide at night

in a dark room
we can see everything

in a dark room
with our fingers

we are alone

and that is everything

 May 2nd

A monkey in a mesh potato sack mask is following me in a blue car. Dark eyeholes pierce through the rearview mirror. I stare straight ahead trying not to think any thoughts for him to hear. The lights are red. My car idles, puffing gray cartoon smoke clouds out the tailpipe. The road lifts up and cars file into the distance.

A one-point perspective connects me to the road. Two-lanes are split by a grassy knoll. Cars shrink before my eyes further out to sea. The road stretches into the distance like a string of taffy being pulled thinner. I anchor one side, while the other, keeps moving away.

The monkey behind me smiles through the mask. He talks on a cell phone. I must get somewhere safe. The light turns green. I drive on and into the reference point ahead, this future, where all horizontal lines angle into one singularity, the direct opposite point that we are at now. Damn that meandering dot I cannot touch.

The road winds through a park, golfers to the left, children and a pond to the right. Trees overhead weep over the road cradling a tunnel to travel through. Light glows on the other end. Smoke emits from my lungs.

At the next intersection, two teenage girls cross the street. They carry tennis rackets, and are wearing bleach white tight skirts. Their breasts lead them while three black boys and one white skinny fellow, follow attentively behind. The boys call out saying things I cannot hear through the glass. One girl slows down caught by the cunning words, the whispering words of a smooth talker, tall walker, gentle stalker, and they reel her in. One guy towers over the rest with his large fluff of an afro, comb included. This part of town must be their hood. I saw them yesterday about a block or two south at the Oasis where I bought some tobacco. They shouted at me, laughing as I calmly walked out the store and past them blowing smoke in the night.

I turn the corner driving past a short black man with a cane standing with a wide happy grin next to a tall black man in a jump suit. They are very alert and watching everyone. Both look to be well over forty years of age. This spells business. I circle back to watch the deal go down.

Bending to the left, the road leading eastward. Seldom people use this route, but it’s a shortcut around the busy intersection. I take a quick right going south, another right heading west, and another right to go north. I park my car a block down the street and take a picture. The tall man has crossed the street into the pawnshop’s small discreet parking lot. He’s conversing with a man dressed in black. They make three handshakes, one for greeting, the second for the money and the third for the goods. The tall man returns to the short fellow who has been watching everything. He stands located at an ‘L’ intersection and can see down both lanes of incoming traffic as he leans on his cane. I put the car in gear, drive on and take the next right before passing by them.

Two minutes pass, and I park on the side of the road. I step out of the car and walk down a musty alleyway cut between weather-grimed buildings. Black amateur graffiti coats broken yellow brick walls, dead vines, and an old lonely boot. Garbage chokes the sewer drains: someone’s torn shirt, a bag of fast food torn open, broken beer bottles, sitting in dark silent puddles. Two men stand outside a bar smoking. The white kid is wearing a red sports jersey, the other man is black. They casually stand there joking, talking. It is about three in the afternoon. The skies are gray and there is a slight chill to the wind.

An aged, bearded, short black man, looking like Jersey Joe Walcott wears a brown top hat and walks up the road towards me. A young twenty-something male Caucasian wearing a sleeveless T top basketball jersey follows him. 38 is printed in yellow on his shirt against midnight blue fabric. The kid is much taller than the older man and has the expression like a puppy after its master has beaten it. The kid is holding his left arm. They walk past me in the alley between mesh fencing.

“How you doin’ guy?” The man in the hat asks.

“Pretty good,” I say and they continue walking in the opposite directions. I turn a corner and into an empty lot stretching over broken pavement. Garbage piles of cinder blocks, McDonalds wrappers, paper, napkins, cigarette butts, milk bottles, beer cans wrinkled green smashed bottles, all surround three dead trees. A Muslim woman shrouded in purple walks through the lot wearing slippers. All of her body is concealed except for her eyes. A breeze weaves her veil. She walks through the ever-present death that embraces this morning.

I travel down the street one more block and turn into an alley. A muffler disturbs the otherwise pleasant chatter of birds. A truck with a trailer starts up, rumbles down the single car wide lane past me and blows smoke.

A drainpipe sticks erect out of the asphalt. Metal fences separated one house from another. Old mattresses, broken bunk beds, liquor bottles, a sink, a black leather high heel boot with a rusty zipper lays wrinkled in the drain. An orange cat prowls cautiously. Alleyway entries, two story lofts, green community dumpsters, the human byproduct, black feces, birds begin to chirp again, and the crows swoop down to peck at the flat corpse of a squirrel. I enter the liquor store through the back door. I need liquid medicine to cure this soul’s disease. I make a careful selection. Glass bottles always having more appeal. With my last twenty dollars spent, I exit the front door, popping out to the busy street at a bus stop full of thugs, dirty women, children, and the mentally handicapped. Cars zip in four directions ignoring traffic signals. My brown bag gets heavy with the weight of their eyes. I take the short way home.

The Walcott looking fella with the small brown hat is coming my way again, now returning from wherever he and the kid went. The white boy is no longer following him and the old man is carrying a large, square, black plastic garbage bag. It looks to be very heavy. He has it up in the air with two hands. We cross paths going in opposite directions, both returning from the way we came.

“Know anyone who needs an eighteen inch T.V.?” He asks me. “It’s color.”

“Nope,” I say. “T.V. is bad.”

“Depends on what you’re watching,” he replies, pitching his sale.

“True,” I said. “These days there ain’t nothing good on.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, “our president has been really fucking shit up causing a war we don’t need to fight.”

“Ain’t that the truth?” I said rolling a cigarette.

“Hey, you got an extra smoke?” He asks and he keeps chatting about how the country is fucked up beyond repair.

I give him the smoke so he’d shut up and say, “The tobacco is moist. It doesn’t burn right. Wait a while to smoke it. Till it dries out,” and I stand up. “Looks like rain.”

“Nah-just cool and cloudy,” he says, “and that’s what it is kid, just a cool day.”
We continue traveling in opposite directions, me with my liquor and beer, him with his new eighteen inch color T.V. and my cigarette.

 May 3rd

I am in a bar with very loud bad karaoke in the orange glow. Sitting in a side booth with a friend. We talk, drink and he tells me a story that happened last week at a party. Wild eyes of fire looking out, he jabbers on with large arm gestures. We pull pieces of a Jenga puzzle out while conversing. It is beginning to thin and wobble. At the party last week, the hostess took him into her bedroom and gave him the impression she wanted an orgy with him, his girlfriend, and a few others. It wasn’t his thing he told her.

Sexual encounters with a friend’s girl can really fuck up a relationship. Someone ends up lust-wondering if she liked it, who was better, and wanting more. Just the little taste can feed a big fire.
She placed an amulet around his neck and told him to look in the mirror. ‘The stone has powers,’ she said. “You’ll see your true self.”

He leans over the table towards me and whispers, “Don’t tell anyone this, but what I saw in that mirror freaked me out man! My face was different. I didn’t look like me. I was all distorted and weird looking.” He distorts his face with his hands. Immediately he took the necklace off.’ The girl asked him if he had Native American blood in him and somehow, because he does, that explains it. They left the party right away.

“Crazy.” I say sipping on my seven and seven and leaning back in the red plastic cushion seat. I lift the drink in the air. “That’s some crazy shit man-cheers to that!” We continue talking amongst ourselves pulling the rectangular pieces from the bottom of the Jenga and placing them on the top. A waitress comes by. Tugging on her short skirt, I beg her for some cherries. She comes back moments later with three red berries and a smirk in her eye. Voices go numb and blur into a harmonious ‘um’ of unified chatter. Static crackles over a low frequency. A laugh erupts far off in the distance. Perspiring glasses sweat on top of stained tables. Moisture collects on my thoughts, leaving puddles to dry up in half circular rings. Mouths move, opening, closing, opening, closing, nonsense, speaking like wooden puppets with an arm up their ass. Fingers move lips and everyone is at a table, standing at the bar, playing pool, doing this dance, shaking from the hip, laughing, the robot drunk fuck waltz.

The karaoke ends. Thank god. Someone has selected a Tom Waits song on the jukebox. It begins bringing me back, my soul sucking itself through a straw and returning. All three sweet cherries go down. I smile at the waitress. She leans over the table with beautiful cleavage. “Another round for you dear?” She asks.

“I don’t think so. Can we get our bill?” I slur. The puppet hand must have fallen out my ass hole a few drinks ago. How I miss not having something to say. We leave a tip and exit into the dark city street. It’s loud with traffic and welcoming. Cars blink their headlights, and sociable folks smoke on a death wagon. Laughing demons at the corner wait for green lights to appear. Fire. True monsters don’t wait. I need to get out of here. I don’t get this joke.

“Give me one of those,” I said to my friend. He hands me a camel. We begin dragging ourselves away from the Red Dragon. Digging dirty fingers in my pockets I find a lint ball, a few loose coins, a book of matches, and a black pen. I strike the match and light the cigarette.

“It’d be good to have food,” he says.

“Yeah, it would, but where are we going to get that? I spent my last dollar on the jutebox.”