WRITING BY CAMERON BEYRENT

RIP CBS

[cameronbeyrent]

https://www.amazon.com/Spring-Break-Story-Author-Caged-ebook/dp/B08CFNDLZZ/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=spring+break+cameron+beyrent&qid=1638668616&s=books&sr=1-1

[cameronbeyrent]

WITCH LOVE

“If you’re going to build something new then you need to build it while everyone is asleep,” the witch tells me. She picks her frozen daiquiri up off the floor and brings the straw to her face. She misses her mouth and hits herself in the cheek with the straw and then aims it back towards her mouth. She sucks back on her frozen strawberry booze, pulling in her cheeks as she stares down at the Tarot card spread she’s laid out for me. I smile. Her boozy heart is warming me up.

“Why do they all have to be asleep?” I ask her.

“Because you don’t have anyone around you who truly believes in you, at least not where you’re living currently,” she says. “If you build it while they’re awake, they’re all going to try and convince you that you can’t do it. Keep your gifts to yourself. There’s no need to splash them out into the public every chance that you get. There are people who don’t want you to succeed because they’re intimated by your candor. Lay your bricks when nobody is looking. Don’t give any away. Don’t let anyone borrow any of them. And don’t let anyone steal from you. Create what you need by building what you want, and don’t let anyone see it until it’s finished. It’s nobody’s business but your own.”

“I heard that,” I say. “Fuck everyone.” The witch reaches across the table and lightly slaps my face.

“Stop that!” She shouts/slurs. “Your heart is heavy enough as it is. Don’t weigh it down with anymore of that negativity,” she says, pointing her finger at me. I smile again. “How long have you been coming here?” she asks. “I know I’ve seen you here before. I remember your energy. It’s always been so heavy.”

“I’ve been coming here since I was 19 or so,” I say. “I got my first Tarot deck here. You picked it out for me.”

“Was it a Rider Waite deck?” “It was, but I don’t have it anymore. I left it down by the river one day.”

“Why’d you do that?” she says around the straw in her mouth. She chews the end of it a bit as she stares at me and then sucks back on her blood-red daiquiri.

“Because I was tired of always trying to know everything. I was so afraid all the time of what was coming, and I couldn’t accept the fact that there was no way of knowing anything for sure.” “So you’re telling me that you didn’t like what the cards had to tell you?”

“Right. I was tired of trying to achieve approval from a deck of cards. And The Rider Waite deck is so heavy. The imagery is too gruesome, too morbid.”

“The imagery is honest,” she says. “Each card is a tangible window into the root of every feeling, and it’s conveyed in a way that people don’t always like to see because they’re afraid of their emotions. The Three of Swords, for example: It’s a picture of a heart being stabbed three ways from Sunday, bleeding and pumping its own blood onto the floor. But isn’t that exactly what being betrayed feels like? When you have your heart broken, doesn’t it feel like your chest is full of knives? People don’t like to confront their emotions; they don’t want to accept their story when it involves someone that they love plunging not one, but three knives into their hearts. The cards are all very subjective, as you already know, but the surface level meaning of that card is heartache, and I don’t care who you are, everyone’s had their heart chained up and dragged through the dirt at some point—but the point of that card is, even though your heart may have been drawn and quartered and splattered and stabbed and stomped on—

—The witch has become very emphatic as she speaks about the heart, and slaps her hand on the table when she says the words “splattered”, “stabbed”, and “stomped”—

“somehow, the heart still manages to beat. Honestly, I find it cathartic to see it portrayed in such a gruesome way, because that’s how I feel when my heart is broken. And when you accept the way something feels, and accept the fact that nothing can be done about it, that’s when you learn how to move on and gain the strength that it takes to progress through the Wheel of Life. The cards are brutal in their depictions so you understand the honesty of your situation—and to help you find the nerve to confront things head on so you can find the will to carry on with your life when everything falls apart.”

She leans back in her chair and dramatically crosses one leg over the other, brings the straw of her daiquiri to her lips and takes a giant slurp.

“But I understand why you gave them away,” she says. “Sometimes you have to spend some time being still and accept the fact that you know nothing in order for the right thing to happen.”

Stillness is a dream I’ve always had for myself; having the water of my mind be smooth and placid for once in my life, even if it doesn’t last forever. I smile at the witch. I’m very fond of her. I’ve been fond of her for all eight years that I’ve been coming to her shop, always dropping in from time to time when I feel like I need someone to tell me what to do.

“Can I tell you something?” I say.

“Sure, kid,” she says. “Shoot.”

“I think I’m coming up on a time in my life where I’m going to be challenged in a way that I may not be able to survive.”

“What makes you say that,” she says, smiling flirtatiously. And her smile horrifies me, because I know what her smile is telling me. She may as well have looked me dead in the eyes and told me that I was right.

I stare at her nervously, and she continues to sit there with that smile, holding her daiquiri up by her shoulder with her legs still crossed. She looks beautiful, poised and elegant. I don’t say anything.

“When life comes for us,” she says, “it comes for us because it needs us to respond, because it expects more from us. What people seem to forget is that survival is an option, and that you always have a say in your own survival. The cards are about survival, triumph, love—how we find our way to those things even when we’re pulled into the darkness. They’re here to guide you to the road that will lead you back home when you lose your way.”

She reaches across the table and takes my hand. “Do you feel like you’ve lost your way, my love,” she says.

I look down at her hand that’s resting on top of mine. I pull my hand out from under hers and lay it on top.

“I’m beginning to,” I say. “And I know that I’m going to, and I know that that’s unavoidable for me.”

“Along the way,” she says, “just remember what I said. Don’t let anyone steal from you. If you lose yourself, hold on to the things that make you who you are. If you do that, then you’ll never be all the way lost. Your identity is what will put you back on the road to achieving your destiny, and sometimes we have to feel like we’ve lost ourselves in order to find out who we were always meant to be.”

She leans back in her chair again and takes a slurp.

“But what makes you so goddamn sure that you’re going to fuck it all up,” she says, trying to be funny, but her eyes soften in that moment, and for a split second I can tell that she wishes that she could save me from what’s coming. I look down at the spread.

“I just know,” I say.

[cameronbeyrent]

10. Mean Girls

Mean Girls, like any other high school movie about evil, tyrannical high school vaginas, is just another rehashed, watered-down version of the movie Heathers. But be that as it may, it’s still Lohan in her prime, rocking a spray tan and red hair extensions. But it’s Rachel McAdams portrayal of Regina that really takes the cake here, in my opinion. Because even although her character is, at times, a bit of an affectation, her performance is still a borderline pitch-perfect portrayal of that blonde, top-tier high school beauty queen psychopath. We all knew a girl like that in high school, and we hated her—but at the same time, we would have sold our souls to be her, even if it was for only five minutes. But it’ll never happen. She’d run you over in her silver Lexus before Satan would ever even have the chance to answer your call. So stop trying to make it happen. It’s not going to happen.

9. Bring It On

Because you still know all of the words to the opening sequence by heart and don’t you dare lie to yourself. Bring It On is a dizzy, silly movie that tried desperately to cram R-rated material into a PG-13 rating (how many times did they flip the bird instead of actually saying the word fuck?). But still, it did its job. I know it made me secretly want to be a cheerleader for the rest of my life, and It probably had the same effect on you, too.

8. Cruel Intentions

Buffy, trying to destroy innocent people on the Upper East Side, telling the boys that they can put it anywhere, strutting around her parents’ penthouse apartment wearing nothing but lingerie in an effort to fuck with her stepbrother. One of my favorite scenes is when she’s blowing coke in the bathroom, and Witherspoon comes out of the bathroom stall on the first day of school and tells her to trust in Jesus right before she bitch slaps her ego so hard that she’ll never make it out of high school alive. She got everything that she deserved, but she still managed to make sociopathy look pretty good on the way down.

7. Carrie

People always say the hardest scene for them to watch is the scene where she gets her first period in the locker room, but for me, the hardest one to stomach is the opening scene where she’s being forced to play volleyball. The camera starts out high, observing a game of teenage girls playing an innocent game of volleyball, all of them at ease, knowing what to do or at least how to pretend. Then the camera slowly focuses in on Carrie, and she’s standing there crippled with anxiety, horrified to even take a step into the game. The look on her face is excruciating. It reminds me of trying to throw footballs and score goals and failing miserably. So what if you’re not good at all that shit? What if you don’t look and act like 90 percent of the people around you? What if you’re offbeat, quiet and reserved, or just plain don’t fit in? Well, if that’s the case, then in the universe of high school, you’re fucked. So if you were the one standing there—an outcast and a loser who just so happened to be telekinetic—and they fucking dumped a bucket of pig’s blood on your head, then don’t even try and tell me that you wouldn’t have done the exact same fucking thing. I know I would have. I’d have fucking burned that bitch to the ground, too. 6. Scream

Everyone always wonders how far they would make it in a horror movie, and everyone always thinks they’re the star—the hero sole survivor that gets to be in the sequel. But what makes you so sure that you’re not the dumb blonde hanging from a tree with her intestines hanging out? Scream is just another movie about upper middle class white teenagers getting slashed to bits, but it broke all the rules, which makes it a cut above the rest, pun intended. Scream mocked the slasher movie genre. Its characters were self-aware, and instead of just simply going down one by one, they tried to put the puzzle together along with the audience as the story progressed. In the end it was still no use, but the damaged Sydney Prescott somehow managed to find her way to the top while simultaneously bringing the whole system to its knees. I love movies where girls kick ass, and horror movies are always making us wonder how badass we really are. There’s no way to know for sure, but if you don’t think you would make it, then you’d better get down on your knees and pray that Jesus can restore your virginity.

5. Saved!

Christians are mean. They’re self-righteous and think they know everything. They’re judgmental and they don’t tip. I love this movie because it had the balls to questions an authority that people feel like they have to cower to in order to make it to those pearly gates. Organized religion tells you to believe in all that is written, regardless of whether or not it makes sense, and if you follow the rules, you will live in eternal happiness for all time. That is such a crock of bull shit. Everything should be questioned. You should never lay down and let printed words run your life. I can’t think of very many movies that pushed back as hard against religion as Saved! did, and it’s a high school movie, for fuck’s sake. A girl tries to save her gay boyfriend by offering up her virginity to Jesus, and in a cruel twist of fate, she gets knocked up and has to live out the rest of her senior year as a pariah. But her actions ignite arguments, discussions, and conversations about what it really means to have faith, and it eventually brings everyone to a better understanding of the God that they’re trying to worship, and of themselves. My favorite scene is when she finds out she’s pregnant, and she stands in front of the cross of a church and yells the words shit, fuck, and goddamn.

4. Clueless

Cher is an American hero, and the antithesis of every high school mean girl you’ve ever seen on screen; she breathed hope into the lives of frumpy losers who dreamed about being taken under the wing of the most popular girl in school. Cher thinks she knows everything, and she knows absolutely nothing, but it’s her naiveté that made her such a fearless force of nature. And although she very well could have used her power for evil, she chose the other side of the coin, and tried to be like that book she read in ninth grade that said “Tis a far, far better thing doing stuff for other people.” Every frame of Clueless looks like it could be found in a 90s time capsule, and I think I speak for everyone here when I say that there’s a huge void in my heart that only the 90s can fill—and Clueless is one of the best fixes there is (not to mention the entire script is basically one giant one-liner). And even though we’ll never get that decade back, Clueless will remain the same for forever and always. I sincerely hope it never stops streaming on Netflix. It’s always there for me when I need to be reminded of better days.

3. Rebel Without a Cause

Every hunky male movie star who came after James Dean is just a James Dean wannabe. And the hardest demon for me to face down every morning, usually, is the fact that I’ll never be James Dean (or Marilyn Monroe), which is what this movie is about. Because being yourself is really, really fucking hard. This movie explores how difficult it can be to have to get out of bed in the morning and face all that anxiety and how excruciatingly painful your youth can be in general. I’ve always found this movie to be comforting, because it felt good to know that the experience of high school was the same for everyone, no matter what generation you came from. And that even James Dean, who was the most popular boy in the world, still had a hard time. I’ll never be him, but I know he never would have wanted for me anyway. He would have wanted me to be myself instead, and I wish the same thing for you. They can never take away our blonde hair and lipstick, so put on the brightest shade of red you can get your hands on. And when your father calls you a slut and tries to wipe it off, spit in his face, reapply and persist.

2. The Breakfast Club

I love every John Hughes movie desperately, but there’s only enough room on this list for one—the best one: The Breakfast Club. It’s a movie about five completely different teenagers that came together and put away the sword for an afternoon to try and find a way to understand each another. They cried together, kissed each other, danced together, and realized that they’re not all so different, and that they don’t have to feel so alone if they don’t want to. It’s a fantasy, which is why movies exist—to take us out of our realities and put us in places with fictional characters that make us feel like we can be ourselves when we’re with them. Because there are pieces of all of us in each of those five teenagers. You don’t feel alone when you’re with them, which can be a hard feeling to shake in high school. Because when the chemistry in your body begins to change and you start growing hair in all those awkward places, you have absolutely no idea who the fuck you are and you’re always one step away from losing your mind. Always comparing, and competing in every way possible. Best tits and hair. Most touchdowns scored. Who got the highest score on their SATS. Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah. But John Hughes always found a way to see the light through the cracks, and by doing so, he gave us characters to root for, fall in love with, and relate to. if only life could always feel like a John Hughes movie. The 80s would never end, and we would all stomp across the end zone and throw our fists in the air together.

1. HEATHERS

A fellow writer once asked me: “What’s the one thing that you wish you had written?” And the answer sprang into my head before he even finished the question. There was no doubt in my mind.

How do I even begin to talk about Heathers? How do I fully express my undying love for Winona Ryder, in all forms, but most especially as Veronica Sawyer, pouring her heart out over her journal, rocking her blazer like a fucking boss and doing all she can to try and stop Heather. Enter Christian Slater. The psychopath boy next door with a head of hair that never quits. Combine the two and you’ve got the best teenage satire to ever be printed on a LaserDisc.

Heathers is about an outsider who somehow winds up in the belly of the beast of the most popular click in her high school by being asked to join by their leader, Heather (Oh hey, Mean Girls). But she comes to find very quickly that there’s really no place for her anywhere within the parameters of the group, and that the morals and principles of each member, all of whom are named Heather, resemble that of every evil dictator in history: their sole purpose in life is to inflict pain and suffering on a mass group of people: the 95 percent of the student body that they don’t think is cool. And not feeling cool is, at times, one of the great woes of life. You know what I mean. Because even after high school ends and the dust has finally settled, that shit still follows you around. Because no matter how much you change or grow up, there’s still always that nagging suspicion that you’re just some loser who belongs alone at a lunch table somewhere.

Heathers fulfills a really dark, like an unbelievably dark (I highly doubt this movie would get made today), fantasy: killing off your classmates that made your life hell, even if they are your best friends in the whole world. It’s a madness movie, meaning that it takes you with it as it begins to go crazy. And the script, Jesus, it’s so fucking good. The dialogue, the one-liners, the outfits, the hair, the 80s. We really don’t have enough time here. So in the last paragraph of this post, I’m going to attempt to use nothing but Heathers quotes and references to describe pretty much everything we’ve explored here today, boys and girls. So strap yourself in, because this shit won’t be pretty. And goddamn, I wish that I’d written this shit.

So you’ve hit a pretty killer spoke in your menstrual cycle, you’re terrified of digesting food, you can’t tell if you’re going to prom or to hell and every day of high school feels like you’re getting fucked gently with a chainsaw. You feel like a bluebird, a brownie, and a girl scout cookie. That high IQ you're sporting doesn’t mean shit, because all you use it for is to help you to decide which lip gloss to wear in the morning and how you can manage to hit three keggers before curfew. If you’re not careful all your teen-angst bullshit might start to rack up a body count, yours included. But god, dying would be so boring, because you know you would just wind up sitting around, drinking Kool-Aid and singing “Kumbaya” for the rest of your afterlife. Luckily that sexually explicit photography exhibit involving tennis rackets served as a pretty good distraction, and gave you shower nozzle masturbation material for weeks. But it’s not enough. Nothing will ever be enough. So wash down your Corn Nuts and that brain tumor you had for breakfast with a glass of Drano, puke everything up on the floor in front of everyone, walk away from the mess and tell everyone to lick it up. Because you never would have gotten into Stanford anyway, baby.

So lick. It. Up.

FIN

[cameronbeyrent]

BRITTANY

I'm grateful for my ass  and how it bounces when I dance I'm grateful that God gave me boobs that don't need breast implants I'm grateful for my high-heeled shoes that raise me up so high the air up there is thin and bare but I can touch the sky  love cut me like a razor blade that left behind great scars so I was grateful for those boys that I picked up in bars I'm grateful for the voices that plague my mind everyday they're here to keep me company they'll never go away I'm grateful for the way  my boyfriend used to beat me up it gave me every reason to not ever give a fuck

and I was even grateful when my ship never came in because I built my own boat and set sail without the wind 

[cameronbeyrent]

I start moisturizing and exfoliating. I exercise and work on bettering my credit. I drink plenty of water and I watch the news. And throughout that devastating pulse that sucks me feet first into the flow of having to grow into an adult, all I want is to go back in time and watch all of my responsibilities evaporate against the glow of my youth. I fought and kicked and bucked against the stream for as long as I could, but I eventually gave into the tide. I’m a cancer, after all. And the pressure of the moon can move water in any direction that it wants to. I was powerless, but I still looked for myself out there when I had the time. I studied the bones of people’s faces for who I used to be. I flipped back through the fictional characters that I loved who used to ring the bells of my identity. I rummaged through the bin of memories that built up the narrative of what was supposed to lead up to my wildest dreams coming true. And at the end of the day it all felt like it added up to nothing. But the echo teased me into believing that it was still out there somewhere. It bounced throughout the tall ceilings of my mind from one corner to the next, making my eyes dart around the room, trying to find out where it was coming from. But it always moved too quickly and I could never seem to catch up. But as my life begins to pull me below the undertow of the inevitable, I still look for all of it. There’s a part of me that still thinks that I can find it and I pray to fucking God that never changes until the day I wind up in a wooden box and they fucking throw dirt in on top of me.

CAMERON BEYRENT, AN EXCERPT

[cameronbeyrent]

I think the hardest thing in the world is having to admit to yourself that you're the one to blame for everything that's wrong with your life. But the reason that it’s the hardest thing in the world is because it’s also the scariest thing in the world—because people don't tend to live very long after they finally realize that the call is coming from inside the house.

CAMERON BEYRENT

[cameronbeyrent]

[cameronbeyrent]

STILL YOUNG

Drop out of college. Refuse to work and move to a different city every time the world starts to catch up with you. Defer your loan payments and tell your parents to go fuck themselves. Show up out of the blue on your best friend’s New Orleans doorstep when things start to get rough. Cry to her in the living room about how you fucked everything up. Dance on bars in your underwear for money. Learn how to read Tarot cards and hold people’s hands when you give them a reading. Tell them everything will be okay even when you’re not sure. Go home with a boy you meet in a bookstore. Go to second base with him while listening to The Smiths like a teenager. Never talk to him again. Overdraw your bank account at a Bourbon Street ATM while drunk so you can buy a Lucky Dog with extra chili. Call your parents and ask them to send you some money and pretend that you don’t feel guilty about it. Remind yourself throughout your days that you’re a wild horse amongst sheep to help cope with the idea of possibly being insane. Dance by yourself in the living room when everyone’s at work and pretend you’re a pop star when you’re having a bad day. Leave the blinds open so the neighbors can see you. Ride the streetcar at night by yourself for no reason because that’s what Tennessee Williams would have done. Go out to bars in the Bywater hoping to make new friends. Try to ignore the fact that you don’t feel cool enough to talk to anyone who lives here.

Run back to New York. Sleep on the floor of your other best friend’s studio apartment. Pull the comforter over your head and warm up to the cats when the heat goes out at night. Drink cheap wine at Elaine’s and talk about how you wish you had been born in the seventies. Take an hour and fifteen minute subway ride from Manhattan to Brooklyn at eleven at night when a friend texts you about some warehouse party. Pretend to know certain people so you can get into certain clubs. Do cocaine with bored Upper East Side housewives in the bathroom of The Boom Boom Room.  Do ecstasy and wind up at a party in the East Harlem Projects when you were told the party was on the Upper East Side. Wake your best friend up by coming home too late. Apologize by cleaning the apartment and attempting to make her dinner. Apologize again for pretending to know how to cook and take her out to dinner. Share an innocent kiss with her on a stoop in the West Village while the sun’s going down. Walk in Central Park when the leaves start to change and pretend you’re in a Woody Allen movie. Get a new serving job every week because you’re always late and you always get fired. Lie on your resume. Go see Wicked by yourself and don’t tell anybody. Eat leftover Chinese food for breakfast and a five dollar footlong for dinner. Walk around Manhattan at night while listening to Joni Mitchell. Wonder about that boy you used to love and what he’s up to. Think about calling him and change your mind.

Make an obligatory visit to the town where you grew up to see your family. Run into old high school classmates at the coffee shop and try not to kill yourself. Make awkward small talk and find solace in the fact that you haven’t gotten fat yet. Meet up with your childhood best friend and go out to the gay bars in Harrisburg because you both said you would go together one day when you were old enough. Sit on her back porch the next day naked and hungover and let her paint you because she’s majoring in art at HACC. Laugh when she shows you the painting because it’s only from the neck up and being naked was completely unnecessary. Drink your grandmother’s cheap wine and steal her expired Valium when you get bored. Sit in the living room with her and listen to Frank Sinatra records while she shows you her jewelry. Beg her to leave you her pearls. Walk to your old elementary school later that night while you’re still drunk and swing. Get high and go play miniature golf at City Island. Go into the ghetto of Allison Hill because you’ve always thought it was beautiful and want to take pictures. Play chess with your father. Beat him for the first time in all the ten years the two of you have been playing. Take it as a sign that maybe you won’t become him now. Scold yourself for always being so melodramatic.

Run home to Nashville. Don’t tell anyone you’re coming. Jump up and down and wrap your arms around old friends when you surprise them. Go to open mic nights and listen to people sing with amazing voices who will never be famous. Go to places where you still know the bartender so you can get free drinks. Drink lots of PBR. Do a keg stand at some Vandy girl’s stupid party. Drive on the back roads at night with your top down and scream for no reason like you did when you first got that car because you were free. Sleep with that guy you used to fuck because he still lives here and was one of your favorites. Shrug it off when everyone calls you a whore. Convince your friends to eat at Cafe Coco with you because they still have the best wings. Get pulled over after leaving Springwater after having too many beers. Sweet talk the cop into not making you blow the Breathalyzer. Go to a house party in East Nashville and try to ignore the pretentious music talk. Go to Play and take cell phone pictures with the drag queens. Smoke weed in Centennial Park late at night and get paranoid about getting caught. Walk up to Love Circle afterwards to get a better look at the moon. Complain to yourself about how that country star whose name you don’t remember built that awful house up there. Sit down and think about how everything turned out so differently than how you thought it would. Try and keep your mind calm as you ponder your next move. Think about all of the places that you haven’t been yet.

Tell yourself that you are still young.

[cameronbeyrent]

Artwork by murnewyork--based on “For the Losers” by Cameron Beyrent

[cameronbeyrent]

I flip open the book in front of me and land on a picture of Peter Pan leading Wendy out her window to Neverland, which warms and breaks my heart at the same time. It reminds me of my childhood, and when I believed in shit like that. When I believed that when something goes wrong and the monsters decide to come for you, some fantastical imaginary friend from the box of VHS tapes under the tv would somehow just know that you were in trouble and would come to your rescue. It’s such a bitch when the day comes where you finally have to shed your fantasies, and no matter how long you try and put it off, you eventually and unfortunately have to grow up. Because after your teenage years start melting away, after all the beer bongs, backseats and premature broken hearts, life will inevitably start dragging you kicking and screaming headfirst into adulthood, and you have no say in the matter. There’s no rewind button, and you can only put yourself on pause for so long after the moment when you realize that your parents aren’t super heroes and that they aren’t always going to be there to fight your battles for you. There’s always going to be periods of time in life when it’s going to be just you, and that if you’re going to make it, you have to be your own hero within a reality that can be so hard to stomach. In my heart I know that nobody’s going to come rescue me from this, and that it really is all up to me. Nobody’s going to come for me in the way that I want them to. Nobody’s going to save me. So whatever, fuck it. I guess I’ll just do it myself. I’ll save me instead. But god fucking damn it, I wish he was real. I wish that I was someone’s Wendy Darling. I wish that someone braver and stronger than me would show up out of the blue and rush me off to the sky and to a place where I would be young forever. But it was in that moment, this moment, that I let the fantasies fade and accepted the reality that I’ve stumbled into, and that I will learn how to fight my monsters on my own if I have to. But if for whatever reason all our fantasies ever decide to switch places with our bitter realities, and it does actually fucking happen, if I ever break free from this rusty cage and fly, then so help me God, if you’re like me and you’re ever in trouble, expect me, because I will fucking come back for you. I promise. I let out a melodramatic sigh and roll my eyes at myself and my constant stream of overly-analytical poetic thoughts. I stare at the picture for a few seconds, reluctantly pick up a green crayon off the table, and slowly begin adding color to the blank page.

CAMERON BEYRENT, AN EXCERPT FROM CAGED BOY SINGS: A MEMOIR. NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Caged-Boy-Sings-Cameron-Beyrent-ebook/dp/B087Z51P2N/ref=sr_1_1?crid=319JJ9ALM0VW6&dchild=1&keywords=caged+boy+sings&qid=1590080047&sprefix=caged+boy+sings%2Caps%2C385&sr=8-1

[cameronbeyrent]

There are razor sharp split seconds where I consider telling you the truth before the automated stock answer falls out of my mouth. The front end of that moment is laced with the thrilling prospect of freedom, and then the backend of that moment quickly reminds me that I would have nowhere to go. There’s a rhythm and a beat to this routine that repeats hourly all day long. You ask, I answer, and everything stays the same. And freedom—the thorn in my side—still finds a way to shove itself to the front of the line before it’s molly wopped into the back row again. It still has the claws to get to the front, but it doesn’t have the strength to stay long enough to plant roots. Maybe one day it will grow from the back and upend the whole system, like a frustrated wisdom tooth that just wants out.

CAMERON BEYRENT, AN EXCERPT

[cameronbeyrent]

CAGED BOY SINGS

I want to be a writer. I want to be a dangerous writer. I want to be a writer who goes against everything that you believe in. I want to write something that they keep behind the desk at the library because its content is too explicit, too honest and too real. I want to write something that’s so bad it’s good. I want to write about whores and drug addicts and homeless people. I want to write about losers and long shots and underdogs. I want to write about the people you try to ignore because they live a version of life that you don’t like to think about. I want my writing to feel like a pie in the face to those who perpetuate intolerance. I want to give you characters you can root for because you see yourself in them. I want my writing to make you cry. I want my writing to make you want crawl across the bar and swing your hair when they play heavy metal. I want you to read my writing when you’re traveling across the country on a freight train because you’re young and you’re bored and you're searching for freedom while nursing a broken heart. I want to write everything in a pair of stilettos. I want you to worry about me when you read my writing. I want my writing to be flawed and unorganized and difficult to follow. I want my writing to be rude. I want my writing to make you feel the way you did the first time you heard Britney Spears. I want my writing to be on John Waters’ bookshelf. I want to be a writer who didn’t have to get a pretentious overpriced liberal arts education in order to make it. I want to be a writer who tells his editor to fuck off and then publish it on my own. I want my writing to give you a boner. I want to write about all the ass holes I’ve met in my life and change all their names. I want my writing to be trashy and I want you to feel guilty for enjoying it. I want to write something that breaks too many rules and never wins any awards. I want to write something that makes you want to delete your Facebook and go play outside. I want you to masturbate when you read my writing and I want you to question your sexuality. I want to write something that makes the popular kids from high school feel stupid and unwelcome when they read it. I want to write something for the people whose coin landed heads down instead of heads up. I want my writing to make you want to keep going. I want my writing to make you feel like you are not alone.

[cameronbeyrent]

I just feel like heaven and hell are a place that’s inside each of us and we’re the ones who choose which one to explore. I mean, like, you know, I think you have to have both to have an understanding of why they exist. Shit wouldn’t be balanced if we didn’t have hell. I don’t think you’d be able to appreciate how amazing it feels to sit on a rooftop with all your friends as you’re watching the sunset listening to your favorite Lorde song if you didn’t want to kill yourself sometimes. You know and I think we’re all like, you know, a step away from both. I feel like both universes are so near to us. I don’t really think that heaven is all the way up at the top of whatever all of this is, and that hell is all the way down at the bottom. I think it’s all right here in front of us. I think they layer onto our realities like filters on an Instagram image. We see our lives through heaven and hell, and I think we always have a say in which one we can choose. You know because, even when your life is dog shit, heaven is just as close as it was before. You don’t really get further away from it, you just lose the ability to take notice of it, I guess. But I know how you feel, man. I feel like God is really quiet sometimes in my stupid life. But I still know that it’s all still right there in front of my face. It’s not really a matter of looking or searching, it’s a matter of seeing things for what they are. It’s all so much closer to you than you think it is. It’s all just a breath away.

CAMERON BEYRENT

[lowrezmagic]

[cameronbeyrent]

Rock bottom feels something like getting hit in the face with a shovel at the foot of a deep, stone well, blindly tumbling backwards into the hole, and falling to the bottom with your feet in the air.  It will feel like getting your skull bashed in. It will feel like you’re dying. And when you settle into your hole of stone, the thing that will ultimately pull you out of it will be the fact that you can still see the light. You’ll have one small piece of truth to guide you out of that space, even if it takes you ten times longer than you ever expected. Eventually, you will find the strength to the climb out of the hole. Now, let’s introduce clinical depression into this tired metaphor. This will change the game entirely, because after you land, laying there on your back at the bottom of the well, depression is the spherical stone that slowly inches its way across the top of the well, blocking the light. You’ll be laying there helpless and crippled as the stone eclipses the light for however long you’re in the well. Nobody is going to move the stone for you. Somehow, you are responsible for finding your way to the top of the well and moving the stone yourself. Depression, or any mental illness for that matter, and I’m talking about the real kind of mental illnesses here, not the basic bitch version of mental illness where you assume you must have seasonal depression because you get sad at the end of fall when Starbucks stops running the pumpkin spice latte. Example: You run into someone you know at Walgreens, and they’ll be like “Deborah! Hi! I haven’t seen you in ages, how are you?” And you, the clandestinely mentally ill person, will have to look at Susan, or whatever the fuck her name is, and say something along the lines of “Oh, Susan! It’s good to see you!” Here’s the first lie. You don’t like Susan. You think Susan is a fake-ass bitch. “I’ve been well and good, how are you?” The power board of mental illness will still be active at this point. You’ll be standing there doing the best that you can to scrape through the small talk with Susan while your mind is simultaneously throwing anxious intrusive thoughts into your imagination where you can’t stop envisioning Susan taking a shit on the ground and eating it off the linoleum, paralleled with the inescapable impulse to slit your writs with one of the pimple poppers that’s on sale on the rack that sits on your peripheral vision. You’ll stand there as the tower of your mind continues to ravaged by the storm as you inexplicably imagine Susan sucking on her own tampon while simultaneously thinking about how many bottles of nail polish remover it would take to make your heart stop beating, smiling and nodding at someone you barely know as the two of you discuss the weather. Susan will have absolutely no idea. She’ll say goodbye, prance out the doors of the Walgreens, click open the doors of her Subaru and rush her way into her car because she’s late for a 'thing', and you, the mentally ill person (and when I say you I mean me) will hang your head in the back of of the drug store as the storm of your neurosis continues to chip away at the foundation of who you are. This is a pretty solid example of what it feels like to be legitimately mentally ill. I’m not sorry if that made you uncomfortable. There’s one thing that I’m 100 percent certain of when it comes to people who suffer from a mental illness: We’re all sick to fucking death of having to constantly apologize for who we are.

CAMERON BEYRENT, AN EXCERPT

[cameronbeyrent]

IN ROAM

I waited for you in the rye full of hope, and truth and rhyme but at the end you turned to stone and let the fear into your bones our love, it grew like wild thyme but couldn’t puncture through the lime so I remain a beast in roam for you would rather be alone

[cameronbeyrent]

FOR THE LOSERS

I shout for the fuck-ups who where dealt a bad hand from the start and never learned how to bluff. I live for the uninsured backwoods trailer park pink flamingos who pull their teeth out of ears of corn and superglue them back into their heads. I write for the lonely middle-aged woman who does her hair up pretty and puts on too much blush and still goes out to the bars on the weekends looking for Mr. Right and still rocks the Jane Fonda VHS three times a week after work. I rip my hair out for the kids whose moms didn't say anything the first time their new stepdad yelled at them. I touch myself for the people who can't lose the weight and sit in the parking lot of McDonald's and drown themselves in the dollar menu. I dance for the drag queens who had to be homeschooled because they always showed up to homeroom wearing lipstick and refused to take it off. I weep for the decaying souls in all the shitty nursing homes being cared for by people who take their time changing the bags. I set shit on fire for all the girls who went to that party and woke up the next morning with intimacy issues and a headache. I laugh for all the straight guys who ridicule homosexuals and then go home and ask their girlfriends to lick their assholes. I cheer for the strippers who motorboat strangers for dollar bills because that’s how they’ve reclaimed their sexual power after experiencing abuse. I raise my glass to the social workers who change peoples’ lives but don't make enough money to afford things like organic groceries and HD cable.  I smile for the lawyers and the doctors who have more money than god but are fundamentally unhappy and create alternate reality personas on the internet and practice walking in their wives’ heels when she isn't home. I stand next to all the people who ever purposefully made the same mistake twice hoping for a different outcome. I stand for all the people who have to blindly take on a tunnel that never had a light at the end of it in the first place. I sing for the losers.