The Kitty Cat and the Con Man

These are anecdotes of my life, shared with, and addressed to, someone I've lost. Main blog: paulsolorzano.tumblr.com facebook.com/paulsolorzano

[thekittycatandtheconman]

04.25.14 – Watching the dogs.

Went to see your mother about watching the dogs. I can’t even look at her in the face because you look just like her. Haven’t seen your mother in a minute. Haven’t seen her since I saw you. It wasn’t awkward at all. But that’s all me I suppose. I talk to everyone as though I’ve known em my whole life. I just assume rapport with people. It’s an old pickup trick.

Why do I punish myself? Even months later like this. I have it in my head to stay friends with your family. Like some sort of just in case. My back up plans I’m always dreaming up.

Watching the dogs over the weekend. Just showing up to feed 'em and pet 'em twice a day really. I park the truck in the driveway. The truck you smacked out the windshield with a hammer on my brother's birthday. I sent you to jail on accident that night. I lost a shitload of sleep over that one. Sorry. Our plum was already growing in your belly by then. I have half a song written about it. Lyrics anyway. They’re up on the lyric wall. New years resolution was to write an album about you. I’ve got seven months left.

Brownie has to eat out of my hand for some reason. He’s tiny. Zooey and Shane take pills twice a day for some shit or other. The house looks like a garage sale; mostly because your mother’s wife buys garage sale shit and sells it auction and makes a bundle. I squeeze down a hallway of mattresses to get to your old room. It’s full of stuff for sale. There’s also a lot of your old shit in there. Which some of it is actually our old shit.

I left you high and dry in that one room apartment. It’s why you moved back in with your mother in the first place. God am I a selfish fuck. I dipped on you even after you told me you were knocked up. I should’ve just manned up and come back. Saul was 33 when he knocked my mom up. Here I was, 33 and in the same boat. I should’ve come back. I was a dick, even after you lost it. Didn’t want you back until the next guy scooped you up. What the fuck is that shit? As much as I try to learn about humans and psychology, shit still baffles me to no end.

I poke around piles of shit you left at your mother’s. The couch we used to sit on and watch Netflix until it was time to fuck. That plastic drawer thing from the bathroom you used to keep pads and tampons in, and hair things and the blow dryer, and the flat iron. You fucking took forever to get ready to go anywhere, but goddamn if it wasn’t worth it.

I saw a pair of shades I thought were the pair of Ray Bans I used to wear even though they were yours. You bought these after I lost the pair you gave me at Sea World. The glasses I found were Old Navy lookalikes.

Lame. I Left em.

The flat screen TV we got from a couple of gay dudes who were moving out from the second story of the house we lived in. You and I were on the third story. I named it ‘The Penthouse” so it would show up when I checked in on Foursquare. I kicked your ass at Wii tennis on that TV. We kicked each other’s asses really. We beat Catherine as a team on that TV, and fucked in between levels after cut scenes, or if we kept dying and got pissed off.

When I first met you this was your room. I would come over here and hang and it was a whirlwind of a mess because you were working on moving out. You would apologize for the mess and I said no worries. I helped you scrape the paint off a bass guitar you took out of the trash in hopes of repurposing. No paint scraper, we took turns using one of those bartender style bottle openers. It was tedious, but I didn’t give a shit. I just wanted to talk to you. This was a year and a half ago, before we even so much as kissed.

This room was your old room. I’m standing in it now and it’s a whirlwind of a mess in here again. I stole back a rubber band ball that I made when I was working at the Postal Service. I need the rubber bands to wrap up your mail that comes to my PO Box still. Medical bills that remind me of our little plum that never made it. I wasn’t even there when you lost it. I was too busy accusing you of trapping me. Like a fucking joke of a human.

The dogs are fed. I pet them and tell them they’re good dogs. I leave a light on. I hit the little clicker that arms the alarm, lock up and leave. Such a quiet neighborhood at dusk.  A slight buzz from the power lines in the empty field adjacent. We used to fuck in that field in your car. Like high schoolers. Although I never did shit in cars like that when I was in high school. Never mind, yeah I did.

I peek at the sky. The stars were lovely as usual. We would chill in the back of the truck with your telescope and look for aliens. It was freezing then, so it must’ve been December or January. As freezing as it gets in Florida anyway. Also you would make fake food for me out of Play Dough you got from the Salvation Army: Chicken leg, a sandwich, and a third thing I don’t remember. A hand; it was a hand.

I grabbed the paper delivery sitting in the driveway so people wouldn’t notice.  I sigh and get into my truck. I take the back roads to get back to my place, just like you showed me. We were explorers. Now I’m my own copilot.

[thekittycatandtheconman]

04.26.14 – I’ve known a lot of lonely people.

I must look like a mobile drug dealer to these people. I’ve been taking the same path twice a day since Thursday. And since there’s speed bumps all along part of the way, I just leave the truck in second gear and coast. Like I’m in some Doctor Dre video from ’92.

Ever since the front end got smacked in after that Halloween party a few years ago, I’ve been without air conditioning. It’s oppressive in the summer months. But of course the dang heater works. Not even brutal when it’s semi warm, like it is now. I love how people cry about how hot it is in April/May. Talk to me in August when I cook my breakfast on the hood of the truck for fun. No AC sucks. I don’t recommend it. Why don’t I fix it? Because I fucked around for ten years and I’m just now halfway through school. I always use the phrase “when I’m making that college graduate money…”

I’ll have that DeLorean I’ve always wanted. Then I’ll get a house.  I know it’s materialistic, but I like materials. In the almost fifteen years I’ve been in Orlando, I haven’t felt like I’ve had a proper home.

The bulk of my shit has been in storage for the last two years at least. Ever since I almost got married. It’s basically art, prints, and a shitload of vinyl toys. Dvds, CDs from when they were relevant. Books: fiction, psychology, body language, pickup artistry, neuro-linguistic programming, books on Catholicism (from when I converted as a sort of unspoken stipulation to getting married). A filing cabinet full of poems I wrote in 2004 when I lived in a studio that got semi-trashed by Hurricane Charley (or whichever one it was; there were like four of em that year); notebooks of poems and lyrics and analyses of popular music (mostly Weezer songs); beginnings of ideas and research for fiction novels. All my vintage video game shit and handhelds: Super Nintendo; Sega Master System; Gameboy Advance; Gameboy SP; Nintendo DS; DS Lite; a first generation Sony PSP.

A giant box containing paraphernalia of all the major girlfriends I’ve had up to now. The shit from you hasn’t gone in there yet. You have a separate makeshift box. Not much to it. A couple of letters, a list of stuff you wanted to get done when you wanted to act, and the Constitution we wrote together listing all the rules we needed to follow to stay together. Not a single picture of you though. That shits all digital. You’re on my MacBook, staring me in the face every time I plug my phone in. I have to figure out how to keep iPhoto from opening every time I charge up.

My whole life in a 5x7 cube. Nice to know I have insurance on that shit. The closest thing I have to a home. I go there every so often and spend time with my stuff; go through it, reminisce with it, organize it just a bit more. Physical track marks. Tangible paper trail.

Back to the drug dealing. Everyone’s just sort of looking at me as I’m rolling by: Colored kids playing in an inflatable pool while the mom washes the car. The old black fella with white hair running the shittiest yard sale I’ve ever seen. I usually only have my window open and the passenger side cracked (otherwise my long hair gets all jacked up by the wind) but I’m like screw it at this point. Windows open, I’m blasting my white music. 

The Annversary singing: “I’ve known a lot of funny people…”

What the hell is the point of anything? I get these nihilistic thoughts when I’m doing my busy work. Driving to and fro. This is the time when I notice there a lot of people in this world. Just existing and doing. I want to go back to the house and do nothing. I’ve got a woman coming over later. I want to cancel it. My roommate is on a cruise. On a boat in the middle of somewhere. I don’t want to do anything but stuff my face with this chicken salad I made last night. Watch Hulu. Noodle on the piano; work out the new riff my friend Frank came up with and we’re expanding on the theme together. I’ve known this dude for sixteen years now maybe? Back when I was in high school in Bradenton. My hair is long as shit. I don’t even care. Thinking of going shorter for the hot months. I keep saying I’m going to get an Ombre. My diet is shit. I’m fat around the edges. I’m on break from school for a few weeks. I’m not doing nursing anymore. That was a dream for two people before I almost got married. I’m thinking Physician’s Assistant now. I need to get that straightened out at school. It’s on the list. I go between wanting to be in huge crowds of nightlife people and wanting to live on the couch watching downloaded shit no one else ever watched. Either way I’m by myself.

The Anniversary continues: “I’ve known a lot of lonely people…”

At your mother's house again. Dogs fed. I dropped one of the pills while feeding the black dog, Zoey. She has a thyroid problem or some shit. I couldn’t find it, so I pulled another one out of the green bottle and shoved it in a treat and gave it to her. Shane is the other big dog. She has incontinence. She gets the bigger pills. Twice a day this regimen goes on. I’ve watched your mother’s dogs before, but this is the first time I’ve done it since we split. I wonder if that means your mother still likes me, or if she just can’t find anyone else to do it? You and I would do this together. I remember hating it. It was a chore. We had to drive all the way over from downtown at stupid hours and do this shit. I’m such a dick. I don’t ever want to do anything unless it’s self-servicing. Jesus.

This is what it ‘s like to have a family who needs you. To do these menial tasks when they’re away. I don’t own a pet. This is why. I’m too neglectful. I’m a deadbeat son. I haven’t seen my father since probably my birthday in September. He lives in Kissimmee, forty fucking minutes away. I’m bad. I tried to fix that once. It was on a list. Maybe I’ll revisit it.

I sit there on the floor and hand feed Brownie, your mom’s actual dog. The other two pill poppers belong to your mom’s wife. You and I argued at their wedding because I was in the middle of not knowing whether I wanted to be with you or bang other chicks guilt free. I sit there and hand feed Brownie now, even though I trained him in the past to eat out of the bowl instead of being a finicky kitty. It doesn’t matter anymore. I sit there and miss you, and curse my idiocy, and wonder where you are and what you’re up to. Last I heard, you were in Miami with him. 

[thekittycatandtheconman]

04.27.14 – Animals, Asses, Old Tables, and Samurai Buns.

I wear the same clothes days at a time. Screw it. People in cartoons do it. These ‘basketball’ shorts I have on, you got ‘em for me when we decided to start running together around the Lake Eola. Someone got sexually assaulted when we lived a few blocks from the lake in the one room. After that we started calling it Rape Eola. Now I just lounge around in them, stretching out the elastic with my gut til I decide to do something about it.

---

I ogle the mother across the street wearing black gauchos. That “Mom” ass. She’s tossing out some trash. I think about going to the bedroom to grab my binoculars. They must’ve come back from the beach. The dad never drives the mom’s car, but he is today. Actually I don’t think I’ve seen all of them in a car together. The husband is Hispanic. The three kids look Hispanic. She’s the only one who looks white as shit. I heard she was a bitch, but I haven’t confirmed. Oh, that “Mom” ass. Frumpy, but she was decent in her day I’m sure. Not so much in the face, but bangin’ in the body.

They have this German shepherd puppy that grew exponentially over the last few months but still thinks it’s a puppy. It fucks with the older dog they have. I always wonder about those people who have an animal, then it dies, and they go out and get another animal that looks just like the dead one. Swapping one life for another.

---

 I pull my hair back into one of those samurai buns. All the back roads look exactly the same on Sunday, except there aren’t any cars. This is the last day of my ‘drug run’. Its hot as shit out. Not August hot, but indecisive April hot. April is the last hurrah where a couple cold snaps come in before the real heat, usually after an overnight rain happens. I put Misu and Squiggy into the truck and head to your mother’s. They ride shotgun and are in charge of the iPod.  They are our babies from back when we lived in the one room downtown. You took ‘em after we split. You let me take ‘em after we got back together for a minute a few months later. Then you left me for him. They’re my babies now, but they ask about you all the time.

I see this woman walking home from the store with a big bag of dog food balanced on her head. I think about those black and white pictures of African ladies carrying baskets and shit. It can’t be good for the spine. I contemplate offering her a ride. Then I contemplate using the creepiest old man voice I can muster to ask her. I just drive by, happy to own a vehicle.

Your mother’s house. Dogs. Food. Their pills. I take a piss. I would shower in this bathroom on occasion. Standing room only.

I’m petting Shane, the big white one, and I notice the end table. We grabbed this table out of some rich person’s trash. We were gonna sell it on craigslist, but kept it instead. I stare at the table. Dark wood with glass tiers. Probably from West Elm or something. Rich assholes. I plan on being one someday (Don’t worry; I wont break rule #19 of The Constitution). I would drink water or soda out of the blue ceramic ōm cup you stole from the Salvation Army, and set it down on a folded paper towel on this table. Now there’s just a dusty old boombox with a cd player on it. And dog hair. I still have the cup. I mostly only drink water out of it now.

I take pictures of the pictures on the wall:

 Your high school graduation. You with blonde hair. Pretty odd looking on a Rican. American flag diagonal across the background. Class of 2007. Eight years after I graduated. Ruby red cap and gown. Five years before you met me.

Some cruise your whole family went on. Your brother looks so young in these pics. He’s like almost six feet tall now. Your mother told me he got his cell phone jacked recently. I haven’t seen him since the night you smacked out the windshield on the truck with a hammer. He pulled you off of me. He’s old enough to be here alone and feeding the dogs himself. But I think he gets treated like a baby and has to stay with his titi Sandy.

You in your old lacrosse uniform, smiling huge. Before you had any tattoos or were engaged to men more than once. Before our plum came and left us. Before The Constitution we (mostly I) ignored.

Nothing recent on the wall.

----

I went back just now to grab some money and to return the clicky thing that controls the security alarm. The dogs were less than impressed to see me now that there were other humans back in the house. Saw your brother, messed with him about getting his phone stolen. He’s old enough to get his permit; he just hasn’t done it yet. Something about a four-hour class he needs to take still. Saw your mom’s wife, told her happy late birthday. She asked if the dogs gave me any trouble. They didn’t. Your mother was in the shower; I could hear the water going. A few minutes of chit chat and I’m out. I told the wife to hit me up sometime whenever they go out for drinks. They would come up to your work sometimes when you were working at Café Annie’s. It was right around the corner from our one room, but I would drive you there and pick you up anyway.

Hearing your family say your name in conversation makes my heart sort of palpitate. It makes my skin flush. It’s easier to pretend you’re dead most times, instead of out there in the world living without me. Living with him. Wherever that is at the moment. I don’t know why I’m so worked up about it. Not the bloke; he’s just next fella to come along. I mean, I didn’t want you, and you fought so hard to get me back, and when I finally came around, I was just a shade too late. I wanted freedom from the shackles of a relationship. I made a monster and now I’m upset that it turned on me. Idiot. I’m not going to say this is what I get (I don’t believe in Karma), but this is what I wanted.

Irritating.

Most days I just want you back in my life. And our plum too. 

[thekittycatandtheconman]

04.28.14 – The night of the kitty cat, the cougar, and the naughty nurse.

Looking through OkCupid profiles on the toilet. Distractions. We can’t even have a shit to ourselves these days. I just do it to do it now. Flicking through profiles like I’m picking out an avocado at Publix. I constantly tell my roommate that I’m bombarded with tits and ass every single day of my life, and that I can’t make it a day with out seeing skin. She says I do it to myself. That I would have to lay off the computer and my phone for a day to avoid said flesh.

I kept my Cupid profile turned on even when you and I were together. I didn’t look at it or check it until the end. You would rifle through my Internet history, probably more than I was aware of. I remember once when we were living on the top floor of the five-unit house on Broadway Street (dubbed The Penthouse by you and me). I needed to look through my history to find some website. This was when we first started dating. Maybe a month into it. I went to my history and it had all been erased. I never clear out my history, and you were only other person with access to my laptop (hesitantly I gave you the password to the lock screen; I had to. That’s like a real rock and a hard place situation). I asked you about it and you were kind of embarrassed about the situation, and explained to me that you saw a few things that bothered you, or made you uncomfortable, or something.

That was after I had already gone in and systematically deleted things and pages that I thought would be disturbing to you, back to the first day we met. Porn mostly. Probably some disturbing shit off 4chan also. And any other traces of messages with other women I was talking with at the time. Halloween 2012 pops into my head. The night of the kitty cat, the cougar, and the naughty nurse. You were the kitty cat. Four days after I met you at the Why? concert on Oct 27th. You were dressed as a leopard cat that night. Halloween… now that was a good night for "Doctor" Solorzano. It definitely made up for that little dipshit who crashed into the truck a few weeks earlier. I called you kitty cat for a time.  I almost got "kitty cat" tattooed on my upper inner arm in giant Coca-Cola style letters.

So yeah. Tits and ass. Like every day. Ok Cupid, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, 4chan, Nudevista. I suppose I set it up to be like this. It would be hard to undo. Especially since  I don’t want to undo it.

Even my emails: Lily Pulitzer, BCBG, Venus, Victoria’s Secret, Frederick’s of Hollywood, the random porn spam that made it through the filter somehow. Pushing it on me. Boobs and butts. It dominates my life. I can understand how people flip out and shoot up places.

I’m not saying I don’t have other shit in my life: Music, writing, poetry, school, constantly learning pickup and analyzing the human condition. It just revolves around women. They’re pretty much my endgame. I surround myself with them.

I’ve been with the needy: I’ve done the supplicating. I’ve changed religions. I’ve chopped off my balls and left ‘em on the mantel (a mantel in Florida?), suppressed my inner caveman, had sex only on Sundays because it was convenient, mowed the fucking lawn after working all night til 730 am, cut my hair, shaved.

I’ve dealt with psychos: the day I moved in with one, she took all my Playboy and Maxim magazines, tossed ‘em in a giant Tupperware tub and filled it with water. Her parents and Saul and his wife Mayela were in attendance for this lovely display. I remember Saul pulling me aside later: “Are you sure you want to do this?”

The psychos were psycho because they loved themselves; you were psycho because you loved me.

I’ve been romantic: written and recorded full albums worth of material solely meant to woo (on a side note, sometimes writing songs works, and sometimes it blows up in your face; I’ve had both happen), endless lines of poetry, constructed elaborate valentines cards purposely looking like a 1st grader made them, proposed marriage with a guitar in my hand. Pretty sure the last classically romantic gestures I made were with the ex-fiancée. I don’t really do that stuff anymore.

Now I just charm. I basically sell snake oil. I’ve studied pickup artistry and body language and self-help, and how to lead a successful life and set goals and blahbiddy blahbiddy.

As I say to one of the few male pals I have at my school: Always workin’, straight loungin’. He’s seen me work some magic. He gets a rise out of it every time. The ratio of girls to guys at my school is ridiculous: Once, I was on the shuttle from the parking lot to the school and I counted eleven girls and me.

I got involved with you after the fiancée (gotta get back on the horse).

After the girl who tried to kill herself once (she’s in the army now).

After the woman who got fake tits the size of regular tits (what?).

After the woman who I made cry on her birthday (God I’m a dick).

You showed up after all this, and for whatever reason, you stuck. You became a permanent fixture in November, after I had a textual conversation with you while I watched Weezer by myself two nights in a row at House of Blues here in Orlando. They played the Blue Album and motherfucking Pinkerton in their entireties. I remember touching Rivers Cuomo on both nights as he walked by during an instrumental version of Burndt Jamb. Some weird awesome gift I gave to myself.

I was apprehensive about getting serious with you. My roommate told me to stop burning girls and properly date the next one. So I figured what the hell. That was you. My kitty cat. I was over the notion of being with any one person. Then we were together. And for a time, I was over being with anyone else.

The cougar still performs in plays, and the naughty nurse is still widowed. 

[thekittycatandtheconman]

04.29.14 – We were all from Bradenton once.

Eight am. My phone alarm goes off. The alarm sound used to be Stumbeline by Smashing Pumpkins, but I took all the music off the phone so I could take as much video as I could of The Reign of Kindo show earlier this month. So now the alarm is just some stock noise.I have it set so a message also says:

“Don’t forget. You’re attractive and charming and smart.”

It reminds me when I forget to remind myself.

When you and I first got together you had this notion of us being professionally good-looking people: “Let’s just work on our bodies and wardrobes and go around being good looking.”

Now I’m a vain dude, so this appealed to me. Also, Derek Zoolander would also use the phrase “professionally good looking”, so that was hilarious. There was a point where I would watch Zoolander up to twice a day, when I was living in the first Hampton house, with four other dudes. This was like 2001. No, 2002. Yeah, because that’s when our friend Teri Harrison from Bradenton became Miss October 2002 in Playboy magazine. We were all from Bradenton once. Let’s see, you were either twelve or thirteen when this was happening. Wild.

I took this Instagram picture of you. You had this leather jacket on. You were on the stoop outside of The Penthouse, reaching up with one arm to put the key in its hiding place. But the way I cropped it made you look like you were doing this badass female Freddie Mercury pose. I actually made that pic into a magnet, along with a batch of other pics, from some site that makes Insta pics into magnets. You ended up taking ‘em off the fridge in the one room after we split the first time. I don’t know where they are. You aren’t really the type to toss out memories, so I imagine they’re in a box somewhere. Probably with the rest of our life.

Professionally good looking. You forced me to go to Ross or Marshalls and get running shoes. I really didn’t want to, but my sixteen-year-old high school body knew I should. I was in marching band back then. Drumline baby. Just as cool as being on the football team. And Kung Fu too. Saul made me and my brother get into it. I think mostly because we didn’t live with him, and my mother’s new husband was a drunk back then.

So, you and I got the gear. We ran around Lake Eola. We did ok for a while, and then got a bit lazy. But we would still always walk around the lake and talk and hold hands and paradoxically make fun of the other hard bodies running around the lake making us feel bad. The black swans and ducks. The dogs on leashes. The children on leashes. The shitty ass bathrooms that the bums would take sink-baths in. The wind always kicking up around dusk. The giant fountain in the middle that looked like something out of 20,000 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and lit up at night. The Mediterranean plate at Relax Grill.The steakhouse I used to work at, Spice. The farmers market that only showed up on Sundays. There was a guy who sold all kinds of dip there. I cant remember which one you would always taste; maybe the olive or onion. There had to be fifty flavors, sweet and savory. I’d sample the crab dip with pretzel sticks the guy would hand out. We bought one and tried to make a batch of it once; it didn’t turn out as good as the guy’s. We still ate it.

I drive by the old one room apartment every so often. Usually after I get my mail from the PO Box. Someone lives there; I can see the light on if it’s late enough in the day. I wonder if his couch is on the same wall ours was. Or if he covered up the bloodstain that was too strong for the Oxyclean. That was after we lost our plum. I wonder what’s in the little nook between the bathroom and the kitchen. Your organ fit exactly in that spot. I hung my Keith P. Rein print of Christina Hendricks above it. She’s holding a bloody shovel, and a syringe filled with green liquid, presumably arsenic. Red hair done up, and rocking a blood spattered white corset. I love her. She kills every second of screen time she gets on Mad Men. This print, two other Rein prints and another picture I took out of a magazine of Hendricks in a Johnny Walker Black advert, these were all above your organ, arranged around this vintagy looking clock of yours that didn’t work, but looked cool.

I wonder if the new tenant painted over the blue accent wall in the bedroom. Or the matching one in the bathroom. I wonder if the fake grave with flowers is still in the back yard, from the time those film kids wanted to make a Casey Anthony spoof video. Coincidentally, they ended up premiering the thing at your work on one of the comedy nights you guys hosted.

I drive by the apartment every so often, and my skin gets hot. Like you’re still there. A misguided Spidey Sense. The guy who lives next door is a pediatric surgeon. His daughter goes to my school for nursing, but I don’t know her. I haven’t seen a single ex-neighbor on any of my drive bys. I wouldn’t want to.

Do I do it for the nostalgia? The self-punishment? Some weird therapy? I function normally day to day. You aren’t debilitating to my life; not any more anyway. But I harp on you every day. Misu and Squiggy have helped, weird as that sounds. I talk to ‘em every day. It’s definitely a Wilson from Cast Away type situation.  Three way conversations with myself. I tell people who ask that they’re my therapy dolls, or that I won them in the divorce. My roommate thinks I‘m loco.

You and I just call ‘em “the boys”. They miss their mommy. 

[thekittycatandtheconman]

04.30.14 – Metaphorical Hello Kitty Crock Pot.

An 8-bit version of the Radiohead album OK Computer blasting out of my studio monitor speakers. If you don’t know what 8-bit is, think Super Mario Bros. style music. Stuff off the old Nintendo Entertainment System. Now, mash that shit up; the Radiohead and the Mario. As Fozzie would say: Waka waka!

My roommate came home with a depression pizza, and we ate it. Dual food comas imminent, she asked me what it was that I liked and loved about the last two women I was with seriously. Those two women would be the ex-fiancée, and you.  The first thought that popped into my head about the two of you was: “polar opposites.” Horrible jumping off point. I’ve never had a type. I’ve dated blondes, brunettes, and redheads. Sounds like a bad joke. Petites. Tall drinks of water. Kim Basingers. Ally Sheedys, Jessica Rabbits. Boobs and butts will getcha in the door with me. Trying to scientifically quantify the chemistry of why I stuck to her and you, now that’s a dilly of a pickle.

The ex fiancée, she made a man out of me. I’ll forever be grateful for that. I’d been walking around in circles for 28 years before she came around. She also happened to emasculate the shit out of me. I’ll let that slide off because we’re supposed to forgive people, for they know not what they do. She was the reason I went back to school. Some of the best songs I’d ever written up to that point were about her.

You, well… you’re you. It would take words and pages, notebooks and novels. Issues and volumes. Sentences, paragraphs, footnotes. Citations. All the poetic licenses. Inks and pens. Crayons, pencils, sidewalk chalk, whatever. I would use my own blood. Magazines. Sunday edition newspapers (the big ones with all the coupons). Academic journals, peer-reviewed articles. Keyboards, typewriters, word processors. Monitors, hard drives, floppy disks. Chisels and marble slab tablets. I could never fill enough space writing about you.

I’ve got my hair back in a loose ponytail. I always say I look like Redcoat in a wig like this. Except fatter with a trimmed beard. “Get skinny” is still on the list (refer to rule #23 in The Constitution), along with my other resolutions:

Look good in a suit

Look good naked

Kick ass in school

Step up game w/women

Get a piano

Album

I actually crossed the piano off the list a couple months ago. Snagged one off Craigslist. I haggled ‘em down from $200 to $160. I borrowed a trailer from Billy the neighbor. He’s a retired something or other. One of those guys who has a garage full of everything you need and loves to help. He mows peoples’ lawns on the block just because. Like Forrest Gump.  I’m sitting here right now watching him help dig some kind of flower garden trench for the neighbor right across from me. I’ve lived in this house two years and I don’t know any of these peoples’ names.

Anyway, he had a trailer. We hitched it to my truck. He had these strap thingies to hold the piano down with; I chucked ‘em in the back of the truck, told him thanks and left. I grabbed one of my best friends, Tobin, and we rode out to grab the piano.

Tobin and I have been friends and played music together in various outfits since 1999 I would reckon. He used to work at Panera Bread with my old roommate Earl, who moved up here with me from Bradenton after high school in ’99. He brought Tobin back one day to the apartment in Heather Glen, where we lived at the time. Tobin and I have been pals ever since. Earl and I moved up here to Orlando in  August ’99. You would’ve just turned 10 a month before, in July.

The piano was not in tune as I would’ve liked it to be, but hey, dirt-cheap piano. The husband spoke limited English, so I spoke to him en español. The wife was selling the thing for her mother, who was there too. It sucked because the husband was telling me that they learned how to play on the thing, and their kids learned on it a little bit too. And here I was haggling them and hauling off their heirloom. Dick. They didn’t seem strapped for money based on the condition of the house and the stuff inside it though. Maybe I’m making it into a bigger thing than it is.

One New Year’s resolution down. Several to go. Including your album.

---

My roommate, who is also the landlady, picked a mild fight with me over the Hello Kitty Crock Pot I bought for you shortly after you smacked out the windshield of the truck with a hammer. I know you love Crock Pots, and at the time you were on a Hello Kitty kick after we split. We got to talking about it and I was like “I wonder if they make Hello Kitty Crock Pots?” Turns out they did. The cheapest one I could find was on the Target website. They didn’t deliver to PO Boxes, so I had to have it sent to the house. My roommate was like “What’s that?”, and I told her, and she proceeded to yell at me for being an idiot.

I wrapped it up and gave it to you. You said it was the most thoughtful gift anyone’s given you. You brought it along when you took your mini weekend road trip to Savannah, claiming you had the “travel bug”. You were already seeing him at this point. You let Misu and Squiggy stay with me that long weekend. They were mine after that. Also, that Sunday was the one-year anniversary of the day we met at the Why? show. October 27th. I didn’t disturb you at your request, as you needed to “think things out”.

So, in a secondary fleeting fit of rage, six months later, my roommate again went off on me last night as to why the hell I bought you a goddamn gift after all the devilish shit you’ve done. I defended you. I always do, and will. I’m the person who brought out the crazy in you, with my indifference.

I’ve been called “emotionless” more than once in my life.

I don’t know how we got on to the Crock Pot story, but getting mad at me for some shit that she’s already gotten mad at me for in the past? That chapped my ass a little. Woman logic.

One night, before Savannah, after we screwed in your gold-colored Kia in the field adjacent to your mother’s house, you mentioned you were seeing a lawyer and a mixed martial arts fighter simultaneously. After Savannah, after the Nine Inch Nails show you and I went to on Halloween, I crept his Facebook. I gleaned that he wasn’t either of those things.

My roommate wasn’t pissed about the Crock Pot. She was mad because why the hell doesn’t anyone want to buy her a Crock Pot after she’s done some crazy woman shit? She and I spend hours dissecting each other’s relationships. As Dale Doback would say in Step Brothers: “This is a house of learned doctors!”

To be fair, I think every woman wants her own metaphorical Hello Kitty Crock Pot.

[thekittycatandtheconman]

05.01.14 – Cada Segundo.

Every second I love you.

In my dreams, I would speak perfect Spanish sometimes. When I’m awake, it’s shit. Mierda. I want to go to Ecuador for a year and get immersed. Come out a champion. It would make Saul proud. I’ll stick it on the list.

When we first started screwing you would call me papi. It was so fucking hot. I had never had sex in Spanish before. That went away after awhile. I don’t know where it got off to; I guess it just sort of evolved into comfortable.  The sex was always badass though.

I went on a date with a married woman once. We went to Fiddler’s Green in Winter Park off Fairbanks. I had a pint of Guinness. She had a pink colored girly drink. She was a brace-faced teacher. Holy hell. That was the initial draw, the braces. Absolutely insane, the things that get people going. A sex-starved hormonal teenager can find porn for whatever the hell he’s into on the Internet. That concept didn’t exist twenty years ago. Kids will have no clue what it was like to stick a dirty movie into a VCR and have to fast-forward to a scene. And that was out of like, five scenes per cassette.

You and I found an old porno tape at a garage sale once; the kid didn’t even know what he was selling. I asked him, “You know this is a porno, right?” He didn’t seem to care one way or the other. Said he was just watching everything until his mom came back out. It was just the tape, plain white label with black type: Bonin’ in the back of the Bus. You and I looked at each other and had a giggle about it. We bought it for the memory. We never watched it. Didn’t have a VCR.

Back to the married woman. This was about five or six months before I met you. She and I hit it off. This was at a point in my self-imposed pickup training where I would have to remind myself to escalate physically when I would make a girl laugh. So, giggle giggle, touchy touchy. Not overtly sexual, just a touch on the elbow or a little smack on the thigh or a high five. We went into the bar around happy hour; it had just gotten dark by the time we got out. I ended up making out with her by her “mom van”. Yes, she had three kids. No, that didn’t stop me.

The next evening, the white trash dipshits who used to live next door broke in and stole my MacBook Air. At least that’s who I think it was. I had just bought that fucking thing like six months earlier, before I started college for the second time. They busted in through my roommate’s bedroom window, jacked the laptop, and this huge desktop monitor I had also. They left the two external hard drives, which have every song I’ve ever recorded on them. Thank Christ; I would’ve died. They left the PS3; they left all my musical instruments. It must’ve been a smash and grab type situation. I called my roommate while she was at work. I told her what happened. She started crying over the phone. I called the cops. They came round and took my statement, etc. I ended up hitting on the female officer after she got some possible fingerprints. That would’ve been a good pickup. Always workin, straight loungin’, even when I’ve just gotten ripped off.

It’s like a person can’t have fun one night without some bullshit happening the next. The roommate and I were discussing the event later on that night; I asked her, “Do you think this happened because I went out with that married woman?” She didn’t really have a response. All the shit I’ve done, and all the shit she’s done, we’ve remained pretty nonjudgmental about each other’s cavorting antics. Except that time she held my Jon Knox resin toy collection for ransom after I abandoned her to shack up with you.

Jimmy Eat World blasting out of my monitors: “A catalog filled with nothing good…”

I love you every second. Or something like that.

---

Froot Loops with marshmallows added. It’s like I’m eating a bowl of fucking sugar. All the nutritional and medical training, and still I punish myself with crap cuisine. This shit is just as bad as smoking. And I’m not normally a sweets eater. But I am on a cereal kick lately. Eat a bowl of Grape Nuts? Well, you can just fuck right off with that. That ain’t cereal; it’s old person food.

I go to my friend Tara’s OkCupid profile. I do it on purpose cause I know she’ll see it and probably text me. I’ve known her forever. Met her God knows how long ago, at Crooked Bayou downtown. The bar isn’t there anymore. It’s some other watered-down shit now. We exchange epic and awful dating adventures. She was there for me with a couch when my fiancée and I split. I own that red leather couch now. It’s here at the house in the living room. She’s been learning how to make an Old Fashioned, Mad Men style. We were on a huge Old Fashioned kick there for a minute. I guess we still are; I just haven’t gone out in a while.

Whiskey. You and I would pregame on the little stoop of The Penthouse before walking downtown. Downing hooch and taking pictures and getting dressed. Accessorizing, blow drying and straightening. Rings. Jewelries. Perfumes. Getting hot for reach other. That phase. Just a couple of good looking people.  A million wardrobe changes. You were the mountain of clothes type girl. That huge mound that wasn’t really clean or dirty. I was the ‘hang the clothes back up every time without question or irritation’ boy. The things we do unwaveringly when we love hard.

I don’t believe in karma by the way. That shit with the married woman was just a coincidence.

Cada Segundo te amo.

[thekittycatandtheconman]

05.06.14 – World wait forever never.

The other day:

Smucker’s natural chunky peanut butter on a spoon. Just shoving it in my mouth. No regard. Watching it rain here under the carport. Third day in row.  It could go on forever in my book. I need to make that trip to Seattle. Maybe when I’m making that college graduate money. My catchphrase.

When it would thunder at our one room apartment, the whole place would shake. When I say “apartment”, I really mean the part of the house you and I lived in that was split into a smaller unit. Our little apartment on Harwood Street. Directly in view of The Penthouse we were in on the corner of Broadway Street. You ended the friendship you had with your roommate after a just a month of living there, then found the one room for us. I can’t help but feel partially responsible, as I wasn’t working at the time and was always over. Like, always. I was that guy. I don’t think I’ve ever been that guy. Whatever. Everybody gets a Mulligan.

You ended up in a physical altercation with her. You fucking sparkplug of a woman. I love you. You’re this tiny frame of a thing and you aren’t scared to throw down. Your rage has gotten you in trouble before. It got us in trouble too.

---

Death Cab For Cutie: “This is fact, not fiction, for the first time in years.”

The aforementioned record always reminds me of being in the mountains in North Carolina when I was with the first Jen. The new age one. Not the crazy Asian one. We would drive up and down and around in her Honda Element until we got to Asheville. Camped out. Made love with the stars and bugs and fire. She doesn’t call herself Jen anymore. Legally changed her name to something more aligned with her something-or-other. I barely paid attention to the Facebook post.

It’s the best Death Cab record; the one they dropped right before they got famous.

You and I had our fantasies of changing our names and hitting the road: New York to see your dad, Savannah (fuck that place now, you snuck off with him there), North Carolina (fuck that place too, ditto Savannah), or just hopping on the next flight leaving to wherever it was going. I never considered leaving Orlando until you.

---

The lyric wall.  Sheets of hobbled together lines, clips and phrases. Freestyle writings. Grip it and rip it. On 8x12 plain white printer paper. All pinned up onto a blank wall in the third bedroom that used to be the music room when I first lived with the current roommate, before you stole me away from her. She still gives me shit for that.

The lyrics to your future album. I haven’t recorded full songs since three summers ago, in the man cave before the fiancée and I split. I get pieces of ideas down on my phone here and there, but I never recorded a thing when you and I were together. Except for my Jesus and contemporary societyclass. I recorded the names of the books of the New Testament. The professor loved it. I work for her now as a teacher’s aide.

---

After you and I split the first time, I came back to my roommate. The text to her was simple: “Broke up with Xxxxxx, need place to live.” And that was that. Back in the saddle, like nothing had changed. There were even still bendy straws for me to drink Cokes out of in the silverware drawer. Time moves forward, and it stays still instantaneously. My paradoxical life.

You and I would go to the Salvation Army on Wednesdays. Half off clothing. You had some crazy obsession with jeans. A denim fetish. To be fair, your ass looked amazing in jeans. Why wouldn’t you exploit that? You were so short that every pair needed hemming. Lazy as you were sometimes, you just ended up with a dark blue sea of too-long bottoms.

Half finished projects. You definitely had your share. That bass guitar from the trash that we stripped. The Elvira Halloween costume. The huge ass mirror you had that we took apart and reassembled to paint the frame. Kidding. We actually finished that one.

---

At the laptop, a Beethoven piano concerto on the headphones, drinking a Coke with a straw. Sonata 30, in E major. The second movement is prestissimo and frenetic, the way we would argue at times. The way you would argue. Powpowpow! And then quiet. My arguments were like movement three pretty much: Andante molto cantabile ed espressivo. Just going and going logically and then sing song, with emphasis on the why.

My friend Frank had a dream where he came up with this riff on the piano, then we worked it out one day when I came over. Then I texted him later, “What if you’re still dreaming and you’re still asleep working out the riff with a dream version of me?” The Inception riff, I called it, because of the movie. You loved sci-fi movies just as much as you did an art-house lesbian flick.

I should’ve just stuck it out. I’m so impulsive. I want what I want. New and shiny. Self servicing. I punish myself and look at old pictures of us: Your birthday at Bahama Breeze with your mother and her wife and your brother; One of the nights we got angry and physical and I took pictures of my ripped shirt and scratched arms; You smiling with a mouthful of flatbread pizza from that restaurant on Church Street that didn’t last too long.

My eyes get as misty as they’re going to get without leaking all over my chest. I sort of sit here and breathe slowly, and blur my vision. It should be raining for this. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Le sigh. I sip from my green tea with a splash of lemonade. Wipe the residue off my mouth with my hand. Where are you? Your mail is piling up. Wrapped in another rubber band from the ball I made over so many nights working at the Postal Service. I slump in the computer chair. Look off to the side at nothing.

Jeremy Enigk drives a spike into my sarcophagus: “World wait forever never, take the time, don't break my heart again.”

I made this casket; I suppose I’ll expire in it. 

[thekittycatandtheconman]

05.07.14 – Kalamata, Calamity, Kale, Kali Ma.

Wake up. Guts hurt from eating shit food in the dead of night. Hummus and Kalamata olives. Like I’m at a swanky restaurant for fucking brunch. Shower. Let my hair air dry for once. Too much blow drying and straightening. Plus, it’s hot as shit lately and I’m on that samurai bun kick, so I’m not bothering to primp. I still want to get that ombré for the summer too.

You would use the straightener on my hair and give it a light wave. That was how you liked it. “So handsome!” you would say, sitting there topless, working on your own hair simultaneously. One of the first few times we had sex I remember you telling me afterward: “Wow, you’re actually good looking.” I found this statement to be hilarious, and would mention it with a smile at appropriate times.

            I’m alternating between mild depression and “just ok”. It isn’t genocide, or the Black Death, or “kill every male child born to prevent an heir”, but over here at the house, it blows. I’m occupied to the point where I don’t check your Facebook every day. You haven’t updated it in almost two months anyway. Who knows what you’re up to. He does, I would imagine.

My first world calamity, on a day-to-day basis.

---

“Don’t eat shit food all your life or your dick wont work when you’re older.”

Sage advice handed down to me from the heavens. Actually it was from a woman I know who is slightly older than I am, but married to a bloke 20 years senior. One of her kidneys broke; she got it replaced within the last year. And here she is having a pint. We’re at the Red Lion Pub, where my old roommate Galina tends to the bar during the day. This is the roommate I had before I met the ex-fiancée. Galina doesn’t get out too much now since she’s been married, so she has people come up on Sundays for board games and drinking and laughs.

I think about Kidney Woman’s advice.

Kale. One of those sex foods to make your dick work better. Chock full of folate. It reduces inflammation in your arteries that encourages plaque to stick. Frees up the blood flow. And we all know how erections work.

You and I would screw thrice a day on occasion (see rule #25 of The Constitution). When neither of us had anything to do. We would blast off to the moon during those marathon missions in the third floor of The Penthouse. Akin to dirty high schoolers fornicating for the sake of. Banging like we didn’t know when the next time would be. My dick was out of control then. I didn’t even have time to jerk off. We were chemical magnets. Diatomic pairs.

Oatmeal to increase testosterone; Dark chocolate for the phenylethylamine.

And now to think of you between the sheets with him (I exhale slowly with my eyes closed). Ten years ago me would have flipped my shit. Young romantic me would have come to blows. Now I just pop open a Coke and stick a bendy straw in it.

I gave you away anyway. It’s not like I fucked up and did some shit to make you hate my guts and cast me out. I up and left. Like some deserter. I jumped ship when the ship was tiptop. In search of shiny. Always workin’, straight loungin’.

Salmon for Omega-3; Red wine for vasodilation.

When we split the second time, you plucked my heart from my chest like a bloody thief.  Or the guy from Temple of Doom who snatched the dude’s ticker, chanting the whole time: “Kali Ma Shakti de!”

Mother of the universe, deliver me your spiritual power!

And dude on the receiving end of the coronary larceny prayed to Shiva the whole time it was happening: “Aum Namah Shivaya! Aum Namah Shivaya!”

Auspicious One, ensnare my spirit, that it wont be destroyed!

I wrecked myself the second time around. I didn’t have to come back. I saw that you were going to finally move forward, and I pulled you back. The self-servicing narcissist. It is my way. I didn’t say it was fair or right. Should’ve just left it alone.

Grapefruit, oranges, and peaches for increased sperm counts; Green tea for increased fat burn.

I just boiled a cabbage; it’s also on the sex food list. I also happen to love it in conjunction with corned beef. My mother always asks me if I want her to make it any time I tell her I’m coming to Bradenton. You enjoyed a bit of corned beef too. One of our first dates you took me to an Irish pub downtown that had corned beef sandwiches, served with spicy ass mustard. I can’t remember the pub’s name. It was downtown on Magnolia, between Central and Pine Street, across from that ghetto ass club that’s always changing. We ended up buying that mustard at Publix and putting it on everything. Can’t remember what it was called, either.

I need to get going on some schoolwork here in a minute. You know it was tough to get to business when we were living together. I just wanted to ditch work and spend time with you doing anything, everything. I should’ve never dropped out of school ten years ago. I know I keep harping on that one but it’s a regret I’m not over yet. Saul was right. The older we get, my brother and I start to realize that he was right about a lot of things. There was a small window of time where you and I were actually both enrolled in classes, at different schools. We were pretty busy. I enjoyed helping you look things up when I had a minute. Mostly anthropology stuff. And editing your papers. Then we split, and you went wandering wolf on everyone’s ass. My bad. There’s a check from financial services waiting for you here in your pile of mail.

I know I’m sitting here crying about how I should have done this and that. It’s funny to see the people you thought were going to rule the world in high school. All old and fat and bald and married to each other and knocked up. Then I think, well, my situation isn’t so bad now is it? I made it out of the hometown, went on excellent adventures, blazed some trails, got some tail. Learned some life lessons.

Sisyphus sets me back on the straight and narrow: “Go back to school and expand on your brilliance.”

Education isn’t always something you learn in a book. I learned some fucking hard life lessons from you. I really thought I knew all there was to know. And then you had to shake it up, shitty like a snow globe. 

[thekittycatandtheconman]

05.08.14 – ’92, ’94, ’96, ’98.

The house that a thousand parties built:

Back in Summer ’96, right before you turned ten, three years before I moved to Orlando, a year and a half before I knew what a woman was in the biblical sense, before a prostitute stole my car (and as a consequence, lost my brother’s Piebald cassette, which he still wont shut up about for five minutes), smack dab in the middle of the Lewinsky/Clinton calamity, but after I saw him play alto sax on Arsenio Hall and ended up picking up the instrument myself in seventh grade…

Before all that, I lived in Saul’s house in Bradenton, with all the weekends to myself. He would leave Friday to go to work til Sunday night in Zephyrhills at East Pasco Medical Center. Zephyrhills, as in the spring water. Did you know their tap water is the same shit we pay money for? In ’94, when you were eight, when all that OJ Simpson shit was going on with the white Bronco car chase, I was watching the live feed on the news at EPMC with Saul. I remember my brother being there too. I wonder where you were then?

What do 8 year olds do? Play outside? Third grade? Maybe you were learning cursive by then? I’ve seen a couple pics of you as a kid. Certainly the cutest thing I’ve seen. You and I had a pic of your Christening in the bathroom in our one room. Your mother looked pretty hot, kind of like an older sister if you had one. Well, you do, but from another mother.  At least I think it was a Christening; you looked eight or nine in the pic, so whatever church event that is.

---

The party house. Saul’s house wasn’t really that much of a party house when I was there. I think my brother used it more than I did once he finally ended up living there. Every bedroom, bed, couch, has definitely seen a lot of action, I’ll say that much. Endless summer.

Lots of character in that house. My still best friend Frank (eighteen years at this point!) spent the whole hot season there with me once. He and I and Earl and Adam were in Bright Line Spectrum by then, practicing there. We went through six bass players before Frank came on board. He was the seventh and last. He and I have since played much music together. My musical soulmate.  I’m going to his house tomorrow to work on some stuff. You met Frank a couple times; usually after we played a show. We were called Frank Friend and the Enemies. It was me, Frank, and Aaron Tobin, my other long time music partner/bestie.

Before the party house was a party house, before my brother lived there with his wife who he is still technically married to, when Saul still lived there by himself, there was my mom’s place.

I left my mother’s house when I was fifteen. She married a drunken asshole the second time around in ‘91, and after four years and a fistful of altercations with him, I moved in with Saul. I felt bad leaving her behind. I felt even worse leaving my brother behind. It was only a ten-minute drive away, but people live their whole lives and die in ten minutes. I don’t know when your parents split; I don’t remember if you told me or not.

Yes, these are white people problems, but they were mine. I don’t remember a huge chunk of being young. I seem to attribute it to my mom getting remarried. Before that happened, everything was peachy. Then she had my two sisters: Jessica in ’92 back when Wreckx-n-Effect dropped the epic Rump Shaker on us, and Rachel in ’94 when Kurt Cobain died and when Weezer gave us the fucking Blue Album. My oldest friend Jamie’s dad died that year too. I’ve known him since his mom was pushing him around in a stroller. Jesus, ’94 was wild.

I felt like my mother had a new family, and I was just brushed off to the side. Typical emo teenager shit. Angsty and edgy. When I had braces and was skinny as shit from the kung fu and marching band metabolism, and used to write things like ‘kill yourself’ on the bedroom walls. When I used to wear ripped jeans and cardigans with holes in the cuffs for my thumbs to go through. When I thought I was Nirvana.

---

You could pull off a cocktail dress. You could execute pajamas with food all over your face. Jeans and skirts, dressed up or dressed down. Hipster, preppy, business casual, slutty secretary. Cardigans, flannels, leather jackets. Long johns, tights, leggings, jeggings, liquid latex. Push up bras, water bras. Negligées, teddy’s, corsets. Heels, pumps, flats, flops, jellies, crocs (although fuck that; we only joked about them). You would tear up some Plato’s Closet, always finding the hidden gems. I would often find myself sitting in one of the many chairs amongst teenage girls and their moms in front of the waiting rooms, waiting on you. I didn’t care, so long as we were there together.

Hats, necklaces, rings, bracelets, wristbands. Curly hair, straight hair, dark, light, you even threw in eggplant red just cause you knew I like redheads. Bobby pins, hair ties, scrunchies. Perfumes, musks, body oils, lotions. You smelled like home. I want to go back there.

I turned eighteen on September ninth 1998. This was in Bradenton. I went out and did all the shit you could do when you turned eighteen: purchased cigarettes, procured a lottery ticket, and obtained the first and only porno tape I would ever pay money for. It was a VHS called Fuck Everybody. I had to go into XTC by myself because I was the first person who turned eighteen out of my friends. Although, Frank and Tim were in the picture by this time, and they were already 18 in June and July, so maybe I’m remembering it wrong. 

You and I would spice things up with some Internet porn here and there. You would take forever to pick something out. You shopped for porn the same way you shopped for groceries.

Sometimes late at night we would hear the neighbor banging someone through the wall and it would make us horny. We were already in bed at that point. Her bedroom on the other side of our wall. Her soft whimpers turned into full on fucking. Then you and I would screw. Those neighbors you hated and I liked, until I ended up hating them too. You called that one.

When I was eighteen, you were nine. Always nine years behind me. I look into the past and there you are. 

[thekittycatandtheconman]

05.10.14 - Contemporary Cynicism, Selling Dreams.

Watered down world.

Kids. Dogs. House. Yard. White fence. Green grass. All that shit that the movies sell you. Life and love aren’t like the movies. They just aren’t. And that shit brainwashes people into holding out their whole lives for Prince Charming. But hey, I love a good RomCom every so often just like the next bloke. Something I can watch and don’t have to think about.  Like when ice melts into a soda too much. It just becomes this opaque liquid. You can’t see through it; you don’t want to drink it. You just dump it. Watered down life.

My world is watered down without you. I paddle around in this shitty brown liquid every day just enough to breathe. I don’t have time to wipe my eyes or clean myself off. Lost.

Children. I always wanted to name our kid Triumph. I would say, “With a name like Triumph, he can’t fail!” You totally hated on the idea. So it just became a joke. The other name I was gung ho about was Bronco. How fucking manly is that? You laughed at that one too, but sort of entertained it. Bronco Solorzano. We both liked Olivia for a girl though. Livy. We got the idea from watching Scandal.

I pace from the kitchen back to my bedroom. Look at my piano. Walk back to the kitchen. Pop open the fridge with anxious boredom. I’m preoccupied with you. Your name. I say it out loud, over and over. Kind of in a tone that says, “What the hell was I thinking?” or “Why did I toss you out?”

The self-servicing man.

---

I went to get gas up the road on my way to summer classes. Two weeks of vacation from school flew by. I wanted to take the summer off, but I work as a teacher’s aide at the school, and In order to continue doing so, I have to be enrolled as a student. So I was like screw it, I’ll just take one class. Then I remembered I have to take at least two classes to get loan money. Jesus. It never ends.

Loans. I’ll burn that bridge when I graduate.

So I’m getting gas. I see this skinny kid with neon sunglasses and a patchy beard. He’s squeegeeing off the windshield of the Mark III van he’s driving. There’s one of those Lark brand trailers hitched up to the vehicle. Three other scrawny dudes rustle around in the van. Talking and eating gas station shit. Taking a breather from driving. Road tripping as a band takes the life out of you, and these fellas reeked.

Being on the road is a bitch. It’s a beautiful bitch, but it’s work. Night drives between shows. Pissing in bottles. Doritos, Cheetos, and Fritos. Dictating who’s in charge of the music, whose turn it is to drive; whose turn it is to sleep. Who’s going to sit at the merch table after the set, and who the fuck is going to socialize with babes?

I looked at the kid and if he noticed me looking, he didn’t show it. I almost asked them who they were so I could check them out online. Instead I just stood there with my own shades on, thinking about when I was on the road. Shitty shows. Good ones. Kids coming up and telling me they liked what they heard. Kids asking if we had a place to sleep for the night.

I wish you had seen me when I was in Michigan Winter, or Daylight District. Oh well, At least you saw me on stage a couple times. With Frank Friend and the Enemies. But back in the day, those other bands were the jams. (I’ve never dated a woman in a band. I wonder what that would be like).

You actually took a stab at making music. You had this Roland RC 505 Loop Station.  You would mash shit up like a beat from a song and like the DVD menu from a Harry Potter movie. I loved it. It reminded me of myself when I was younger. Just feeling something out. Taking a risk musically. Seeing if you could come up with something new. You were so cool like that. My musical woman.

---

Contemporary cynicism.

Just because I know I’m self serving, doesn’t mean I think everyone else on the planet is. I try to be selfless sometimes, just to balance it out. It’s the same thing I’m doing lately with changing up to the healthier diet. I’m still eating the shit food, but I’m eating the good stuff on top of it. But if I give a hobo some change just because I feel like I should, is that the same thing as actually having compassion and caring about if he makes it in life or not? I’m a step above homeless myself, honestly. Sometimes I give away cash when I really shouldn’t be. Maybe that’s how it works.

My eyes water a little.

That weight of the world feeling. 33 years is not a long time; I feel like a youngster. I talk to women younger than I am and they already call themselves old ladies. Frustrated with their inabilities to find and secure men perhaps, or upset that they aren’t married yet, or they’re never going to procreate, or they aren’t having enough sex.

Sylvan Esso on my iTunes through my headphones: “My baby does the Hanky Panky..”

They lifted the lyric from Joan Jett, who stole it from Tommy James and the Shondells, who stole it from The Raindrops. Every generation thinks they heard it first. 

My eyes stay wet for the world for a few more moments. More permanently, for you and wherever you are. Everything keeps moving, even without you around. Like someone hit ‘play’ on the music and left the room. I don’t want to move forward without you. I keep dreaming of this YouTube video I saw of the sun and the solar system, orbiting the galaxy. It makes me feel like a speck. Tired of vacillating between nothing at all and everything all the time. You meant volumes to me; why did I just give up on that? Oh yeah, the same old chestnut I keep coming back to: I wanted something new and shiny.

My roommate says I should come with a warning label.

I sell dreams.

I’ve come to discover that I’m really good with “the night of”. Not so much “the day after”. I rationalize to myself: I’m actually giving women the best parts of me I have to offer. I make a woman feel good, and important, and like she’s the only person in the world. And then I slip away silently, to peddle my snake oil elsewhere.

Don’t get me wrong, the connections are real. I’m not going to spend time with someone as a fake. I’m a charmer and a thief.  Lothario? Perchance. Car salesman? Never.

---

This batch of green tea I made has a metallic tang to it. I add a splash of lemonade to take the edge off it. Actually, it’s still too much. I toss the whole batch. Maybe I left the bags in too long, or it absorbed the smells of the fridge or something. There’s a lot of leftovers hiding out in there.

You could cook the shit out of some food though. You Rican female genius. The old standard beans and rice, but damned if it wasn’t delicious. Pork cutlets fried up with Sofrito. I would make the Platanos, Tostones, or Chifles, depending on what I was on the mood for, or how lazy I was. You and I would hit up Publix once a week or more. Farmer’s market on Sunday. You and I could walk it was so close. Avocados for guacamole. Fruits and veggies for when we bought that juicer off Craigslist. Apples and carrots mostly. You and I were afraid our skin would turn orange from the carrots. And when it didn’t, the two of us drank more and tried to make our skin turn orange.

Green salads with blue cheese dressing. Balsamic when you and I were feeling fat. I would be in charge of sides, you the meals. You were a bit of a Nazi in the kitchen, so I would let you take the reigns. Didn’t matter to me. Sometimes it irritated me. Chips. Dips. Hummus. Olives. Tapenades. Our little versions of fancy-pants budget dining.

Is that really what life is with someone? Two people go out into the world for the day, schooling or working, and then return home, wiped. A kiss and a hug, maybe dinner together, watch something, maybe fuck and then go to sleep? Chip away at homework and house projects? Get sick? Call in? Talk about their days? Muster up the strength to go downtown? When people already have each other, it takes more work to go out and grab a beer. This is after the stage where they want to get each other off by looking good and going into the nightlife. The point where they still think it’s hot when strangers would hit on the significant other, instead of getting jealous and fighting and not fucking. Then one of them gets an illness? Dies? Life and death in a paragraph.

---

A little Hispanic kid on a bike with a white kid on the back pegs rides by. They don’t know what girls are, or love, or why people have long faces, or unfocus their eyes and stare at walls, or get lost in their own white noise, or feel alone enough to hear their own hearts beat. They don’t know why break rooms are the saddest places to eat lunch. Their world is in color, and it doesn’t extend past their own handlebars or training wheels. They can’t see past the end of the street.

And my eyes are wet again. 

[thekittycatandtheconman]

05.11.14 – Dead mothers, Deadbeat sons.

Nothing like a holiday to make me feel like a deadbeat son: Mother’s and Father’s days, birthdays, Christmas, kids birthdays, Easter.

You would get me cards to send to my family. You would send your own cards too. Your cards would have little doodles and such in them. You would even write ones to Saul and his wife Mayela in Spanish (You took care of Constitution rule #28 for me so many times). I guess I’ve always been like this, not sending out cards or gifts in my poorer years. Which is every year.

“When I’m making that college graduate money…”

Should’ve listened to Saul. He said, “Go back to school. Learn a trade, something. ”

I still could’ve done whatever I wanted. Just gone to school at the same time. Stupid. I wish 30 year old me could tell 20 year old me: “Hey dude, you’re gonna need some schooling or start your own business or something, because you’re gonna be a broke motherfucker otherwise. And as charming as you may be, it would serve you to step up your fucking game.”

I’m a failed business owner by the way. Vinyl toy sales, online. I started it to fuel my own obsession with collecting. I started it too early in the game. If I would’ve known then what I knew about two years later, I probably would’ve been good. Toys, art, prints. I have expensive tastes. I have shitloads of stuff in my storage space.

---

Mother’s day last year. Your grandma Marina’s grave. The Greenwood cemetery in Orlando off Mills avenue. It was you and me and your brother and your mother. Judging on today’s weather, it was probably hot as shit that day too. We brought super yellow daisies, and bright blue carnations. Your brother was decked out all in blue too: Orlando Magic beanie cocked to the side, patterned tee shirt, bright blue skinny jeans. Black nerd glasses without the lenses. He was 14 and figuring it out. He’s a great kid. Good heart. He’ll be driving soon. I saw him the last day I went to pick up cash for feeding the dogs. Your mother did just fine with the two of you.

Your grandma had died less than a year before, in August, just a shade under three months before I met you dressed as a kitty cat at the Why? show.

The grave. You had on that sleeveless light blue denim top I didn’t particularly like, but never mentioned because who the fuck am I to tell anyone how to dress, especially the woman of my dreams. Black leggings, strappy sandals. Hair down and curly. The humidity made it into a Puerto Rican poofball.

That unkempt green and brownish looking grass. Someone always mowing a lawn in the distance somewhere. The hot wet air. People driving slowly by to look for the plots of their own deceased, somehow forgetting where it is every time they come back.

And that little area they had just for dead infants, dubbed Baby Land. Little dolls and trinkets littering the area, like some edgy college kids made a movie there.

I would like to think our plum has an honorary spot there.

You and your brother laughing about whatever before posing by the headstone. Your mother was taking the actual pictures but I was taking pics with my phone too, off to the side. Just for the sake of. I got that from Saul. He took pics of everything. Anyone need a picture of me eating Nintendo Cereal System in 1985? He probably has one of me eating Mario, and Zelda.

---

I didn’t want to be with anyone before I met you. This was after the fiancée thing didn’t pan out, and after the girl I made cry on her birthday. I didn’t even want to get serious with you, but I did, against my better judgment. And after being spurred on by my roommate who kept telling me to stop burning women. I’ve said this before.

Love screws with your senses temporarily. It makes you into a saint. It puts blinders on the other person.

People fall in love, take the walks around the lakes, go on dates. Stare at each other with anime eyes. The doggy dinner bowl look. The hook point. When they have each other right where they want.

People in love fuck every day. They touch each other’s faces. Trace the lines, touch the beauty marks, and the pock marks. The chicken pox scars. Memorizing all those little things, wondering where they came from. Wondering how long the marks were there before they were even blips on each other’s radars.

People in love explore bodies. The feels and smells. The armpits and crotches. The space underneath the boobs. The soft parts. The ashy elbows and toes. Even the taints and the assholes.

Love, the unquantifiable thing. Why did I trash you?

As Commander Peter Quincy Taggert from Galaxy Questsaid: “Never give up, never surrender!”

I didn’t listen. Not one bit. Technically I got what I wanted. If were to break down logically what happened, it may go like this:

Mistake number one: Falling in love. (Don’t do that.)

The Great Gatsby error. Of course I fell in love with you. That was inevitable. You’re brilliant, fantastic. You’re the one who got away. Although, I said that about the fiancée, so maybe you’re the second one who got away. I mean, I walked right out the door.  Something so good could only end badly. You’re the one I gave away.

Mistake number two: “Young love will only break your heart” (as quoted by the great Kenna on New Sacred Cow.)

I’m ten or nine years older than you are, depending on what time of the year it is. That didn’t seem to be an issue til after we split the second time. After you met him. One of your reasonings was he was closer to your age. You had always dated older people. The one you dated before me was even older than I am in relation to you.

Ten years ago me would have been emo as shit about the situation. Eating the depression diet, holing up in a room. Music. Blabbing about it to any and everyone. Ten years ago me was a blithering idiot.

---

The urge to text you a picture of Misu and Squiggy is high. You are their mother after all. They made cards for you last year, with my help of course. Their fine motor skills haven’t quite developed yet. They asked about you today. I tell them that you’re still on your excellent adventures.

I tell them that because that’s how I need to picture it.

---

Listening to the first Foo Fighters record. It reminds me so much of being with my brother in my moms house. Playing Dragon Warrior III on the NES with the volume on the game turned down and this shit blasting. This was before I ditched him to live at Saul’s house. I was selfish even then. That record, and Green Day’s Kerplunk. Both of ‘em remind me of then.

Finally mustered up to call my mother. We talked for an hour.

Talked about her and Saul before they split. This was like 1985. My mother would always describe Saul as: “That man is an asshole.” Now I know where I got it. We talked about how she met him in Ecuador when she was sixteen. My crafty uncle had a hand in organizing that apparently. Saul’s older brother. Watch out for the Solorzano boys.

We talked about how they met and eventually ended it. It’s crazy to think of parents as people who used to be our age and having to deal with bullshit just like we do. Saul was ten years older than my mom. He had me when he was 33. I’m ten years older than you for part of the year, and you and I would’ve had our plum when I was 33, this year. This month actually. Wow. Shit.

I am so sorry for that.

Happy Mother’s day. You would’ve been radiant.

[thekittycatandtheconman]

05.16.14 – Side effects include.

A day where I don’t think about you too much. A day where it should be hot outside, but it rained yesterday so now its one of those flawless days with no clouds and a sweet breeze. Kind of like one of those depression pill TV adverts where the person gets medicated and then it’s smooth sailing for the rest of the commercial. Except for the side effects:

Diarrhea, vomiting, discomfort…

Not a cloud in the blue sky. The white lady with the ass across the street just brought her kids home (that mom ass). Again, I contemplate grabbing my binoculars. The front door is open to let the natural air in. I got bitten by a couple mosquitoes for my trouble. My guts hurt from eating too much again. This time it’s homemade chicken salad. Shitloads of mayonnaise, mustard, lemon juice, capers, tarragon, eggs. Shit's delicious, but not agreeing with me.

Feelings of hopelessness, strange dreams, abdominal pain…

And the green leaves just sway in the wind on the branches attached to trees. Not knowing a damn thing about student loans, homework, the need for a career, dreams that slip through the cracks just a bit more each day, or disgust for this husk of a body (“Look good naked” is still on the list; don’t worry). The computer chair completely knows every nuance of my ass and lower back. I’ll likely die in this thing, with my dick in my hand, or staring at a YouTube video.

Increased heart rate, sweating, difficulty breathing…

You and I would walk to the downtown library on a day like this. About a fifteen minute walk from either of the apartments we had. Holding hands, looking at the houses we liked. One had horizontal slats painted red like a barn; another had a spiral staircase right in the middle of the living room. Oh, the places you and I would live when once school was finished and that college graduate money was in effect. The trips you and I would take. Instead, I tossed you away, in pristine condition.

Pain in the area of the injection, dizziness, general ill feeling…

The library was more of a hostel for hobos than a literary lagoon. All three floors, littered with them. The only place you and I wouldn’t see them was in the children’s section. You and I definitely went through a library phase. I had to use my card because you had a huge tab run up on yours. You didn’t really have a preference for books: cooking, art, how to act, life improvement, biographies… You just picked up whatever tickled you. I loved it. I barely poked through the books; the library is pretty overwhelming to me that way. I have to go there with a specific thing in mind. I just strolled around, holding my arms out to touch the books as I walked by them. The same shit I would do in the clothes aisles when you would go shopping at Plato’s Closet or wherever.

Gnawing bone/joint pain, depression, memory loss…

I would just watch you looking at stuff. Creeper style, but it’s ok because you thought I was hot. And you were so beautiful. Just fucking existing, you would take the cake. And for a time I thought, “This is it; this is the rest of my life.” I was going to marry the kitty cat and have caramel babies, and Saul would be proud that I married a Hispanic. He never said that outright, but I feel like he wants that for me. I could see you as an older woman (all I had to do was look to your mother), and me with a touch of gray in my hair finally (me, casually neglecting Constitution rule #39). Distinguished, like future Ted in How I Met Your Mother. But instead, I just said hasta la vista.

Puffiness, swelling of the face, confusion.

More mosquitoes blow in the door and try to attack me. I kill ‘em good with Lemon scented Raid. I prefer bug spray to a flip-flop. “Bye-bye, you’re dead!” I say to them out loud (the naked and life-preserving Sky Clad sect of the Jain monks would have a thing or two to say to me; they literally wouldn’t hurt a fly). The breeze is nice though. This is the weather everyone imagines that heaven has. The elusive perfect beach retreat. A Ferris Bueller type of day off (side note: I was basically born on the beach and I’ve never really been a big fan.)

I spend my daytime hours alone. I barely work. School is slow too since it’s the summer. I waste so many hours watching my shows and internetting. I really want to get this list of shit done:

Clean: desk, bedroom, music room (Well, those were done, and then undone)

Body: diet, exercise (Other than eating the super sex foods to make my dick work better, I haven’t done shit)

Music: piano every day, meet with Frank every week (Intermittent results on this one)

Motivational: priorities, get happy (Meh)

At the bottom of this list I have written:

“Reasons to get out of bed in the morning?”

I wonder.

You know, I’m working on this school shit and trying to do stuff with music, but when I see stuff like “Foo fighters to release 8th studio album alongside HBO documentary”, I think to myself: “what the hell am I really doing?”

I’m going to school because I’m tired of being poor. Fucked around for ten years, half-assed playing in bands thinking, “it’ll happen.”

It hasn’t.

There’s that, but then there was shit like you who loved me. Just me. The fat fuck who charmed the shit out of you. I wanted to. You were worth it.

You and I would walk home from the library a different way from the way we came, usually by Lake Eola. Just holding hands, swinging them to our rhythm, walking and talking about whatever. Holding hands til they became clammy and then not wanting to let go. I don’t think I’m going to feel that again.

Life in circles. Routines. It’s that every day shit that makes up everything, but gets swept under the damn carpet every time (the Sky Clad carry around a peacock-feathered broom to sweep an area before they sit, so as not to accidentally be seated on any life and end it). Do I think its necessary for two people to make one life together? I don’t. Twenty-three year old me probably would. Man, that guy was an idiot. Forty-three year old me will surely be calling the present me an idiot as well. The things we can only learn through living.

Burning, crawling, itching, numbness, prickling, "pins and needles", or tingling feelings.

The life of Paul Solorzano. Side effects include:

Inability to maintain functioning relationships, lying to loved ones, being a self-serving asshole, burning bridges, severing ties, being a deadbeat family member, breaking hearts, broken heart.

Death by natural causes pending.

[thekittycatandtheconman]

05.17.14 – Skywriters, Mama’s ass, Corned beef.

Looking into the sky on a clear Saturday in May, there are some things going on: The Delta IV rocket launch, clearly visible from Cape Canaveral (I got a sweet Instagram pic of it). I wonder if you would be able to see it from where you are (you’re either in Miami, or North Carolina, according to my Facebook creeping and not so recent texts from you concerning the procurement of your correspondence from my PO Box).

Also, a skywriter over Epcot informing us that “Jesus loves you”. Every time I see skywriting, it’s a religious message. I’m guessing it’s only one guy who does it. It’s a nice reminder. I would rather have that than “Satan’s coming; hellfire raining down soon”, although I would get a good laugh out of that too.

Sufjan Stevens sings: “Oh God, where are you now?”

A beautiful wind blows me home from a sleepover last night. Blasting  Jimmy Eat World  out of the truck with the windows down.  A good day to be alive feeling. Hot high schoolers in bathing suit tops and coochie-cutter jeans doing car washes on multiple corners.

More people smile on Saturday. Nicer people. I grab the mail; it’s on the way home. Three pieces, all for you. An old man in some brand new ragtop Chevy something or other blazes by me on the road. Top down, white hair going every which way. Then another old dude in a maroon Mustang zooms on through shortly after. These old fucks with their new toys. I aspire to be one of them.  

Driving down Curry Ford, the more obscure fast food chains breeze by: Dairy Queen, Krystal, Checkers. I also happen to drive by Karadema Jewelers where I got the engagement ring for the ex-fiancée. You wore the ring for a while too. Had it resized and everything. You wanted to get a gold band for it though; you loved gaudy gold shit. You even wanted me to get a gold wedding band with fucking diamonds inlaid. I said I would think about it. I should’ve known better than to propose with a cursed ring.

You were in my dream this morning for like a minute. We were playing on the Wii or something. I don’t remember. Should’ve written it down. Dreams are cigarette smoke; wispy and gone the second it leaves the lips.

Kishi Bashi croons: “In that moment, you probably were my wife...”

You and I were this close to saying “fuck it” and going to the courthouse and getting married. The one room we lived in was close enough to walk there; we could see the courthouse at night from the Penthouse.

I get home. My roommate is asleep. She texted me a picture of a corned beef she got earlier. I’m plan on crock potting the shit out of it with some cabbage later. You and I loved a good slow cooker. I wonder if you ever used the Hello Kitty one I bought you before you ran off with him.

The white lady with the mom ass across the street is going somewhere with her daughter. The daughter is going to be smoking hot when she gets older. They’re both wearing church style dresses: the future hot daughter’s is black with floral print, with a white cardigan on top. She had like a little morbid/chaste thing going on. The young young daughter has her hair up in a bun and a princess looking dress. The little ballerina. She’s like, four.

The mother has an off pink dress with black micro polka dots. Kind of ugly in the face with cheap looking glasses, but that mom body. I can’t think of anything else. She probably isn’t that much older than I am. I contemplate grabbing the binoculars again. This time I actually go to the bedroom and get them. Good lordy, I’m dirty. Her dress was actually a bit short for church, especially if she were to do any sitting down and leg crossing.

She walked from the front door of the house to the car in slow motion, legs and ass just moving around, slightly concealed by the fabric. The two daughters have been waiting in the car for a few minutes. I know this because I’ve been waiting for a few minutes now for the mom to emerge from the house.

She probably hasn’t gotten a proper fucking by anyone else other than the husband for years. And who knows how long it’s been for them, with three little shits running around the house all the goddamn time. She’s probably aching to have a little fun, to remember what its like to be wanted, to be treated like an object.

Had she gone to the trunk to grab something, the wind would have certainly whipped that little dress up and shown me what she was made of.

Me, the old pervert in a young man’s body.

---

I stole the binoculars from Saul when he came to help fix the truck up after I got into the accident with that dipshit kid who got a new car out of the whole fucking ordeal, I’m sure. I was dog sitting over at my friend Tara’s house. You met Tara once. I think I mentioned this. It was at your work, she had already drunk a bit too much and was just being all around awesome, but you were working and not in the same headspace, so it was a bit jarring. That is to say, you weren’t all in all impressed.

Saul never knew about you smacking out the windshield of the truck with a hammer. He was just there to change the radiator. He found a cheap one and wanted to swap it out. The amateur mechanic. He oftentimes would make things worse by trying to fix them. Radiator is an easy one though, so I was like screw it, he loves doing the shit, so come on over and let’s spend some quality time. Me, trying not to be a deadbeat for once.

We took the hood off and Saul hammered out the hinges so the hood would close a little bit better. I still have to tie it down, but it doesn’t wobble around and make so much noise now. One time before this, I guess I hadn’t secured it so well, and it flipped up while I was driving, totally obscuring my vision. I almost pissed myself. I was hauling ass down West Colonial. I can’t remember if it was before I replaced the windshield. I do recall thanking Christ that it hadn’t jacked up the window.

---

And the day is pretty perfect. And I’ll probably stay inside anyway. Can you feel the wind on your face where you are? Can you feel me missing you? Sensing the absence of something is more of a double negative, an abstract kind of feel. You told me you jumped into another relationship to forget me. God, I must’ve done a doozy on you. I’m such a dick. It comes down to one of those “do I wish I had never met you?” situations. If I never hit on the kitty cat at the Why? concert, how would my reality be different? How would yours?

I love you even if you hate me at the moment. I love you even if you never love me again. I love you even if I get distracted and fall in love with someone else. I never wrote so many things for a person. I never loved so fiercely, and fearlessly, and fucking recklessly. What an idiot.

Someone let more mosquitoes in the front door. Where’s the Raid?

[thekittycatandtheconman]

05.18.14 – Prayers from the shower, Prayers from the bedroom.

Prayers from the shower:

Dear Lord,

Thanks for Misu and Squiggy. They are my best inventions. I love the two of them.

Misu: “We love you too daddy!”

Squiggy: “Squiggy skig skig!”

And please watch over their mother, we all miss her very much. She’s off on adventures with him. I basically handed her over to him, like a fucking retard.

Misu: “Daddy, no swears during prayers!”

Sorry. Keep her safe and deliver her from any evils.

Please watch over the ex fiancée, who must surely have a boyfriend currently, as she hasn’t been returning any texts when I’m in the old neighborhood (she still lives in the house we picked out together). She was always good for at least writing back to say she couldn’t meet up for a while, to walk her dog Boston and have a cigarette (she would smoke, and I would just watch).

Please watch over my loved ones, even when I cant. I have been a deadbeat son/sibling forever. Watch over Saul and Mayela. He just had his balls operated on or something and I had to find out via some fucked up picture on Facebook and still, still I cant be bothered to pick up the damn phone and say hey, lets meet up. Who knows how much time he has left on the planet. He messages me and I just ignore him when he gets to the part asking about when we can meet up.

And Danielito. My brother who lives his life still in Saul’s house in Bradenton. The Endless Summer house that’s seen all kinds of action from both Solorzano boys. My brother who wants to learn Japanese, and make music for video games.

And Jessica and Rachel. My two half-sisters who have their own lives and shares of trials and are coming out victorious.

And my mother, who has always just been happy that I’m alive and existing in this world, whatever I may be doing. And even though she doesn’t call me too often, and I don’t call her either, and we both know the phone works both ways, we can just pick up where we left off with never a hard feeling between us.

And even Bob Beeman, who has since given up being an asshole many many years ago, simply because he was tired of the drink getting the best of him. And now his back doesn’t work and he can barely walk, let alone be violent. And thank you for me never saying that he deserved it. No one deserves anything bad on this rock.

Dear Lord, please watch over everyone else I love, but maybe don’t speak to anymore. Old friends who have moved on, or cut me loose for reasons unbeknownst (help me to cope with that). Old lovers and girlfriends, ones I don’t ever talk to, and ones who I still see face to face on occasion. Family members near and far. From Ecuador and Bradenton and Colorado and Nueva York and wherever else.

To the two old bosses I used to have hate for. They both happened to be Thai. Two separate instances. They were very likely in bad places. I always said they were lacking love in their lives. Thanks for letting me understand them and allowing me to ditch my revenge plots against them.

---

Prayers from the bedroom:

You and me, in bed. The bed we snagged from some rich assholes who had just set them out to the trash. Your brother helped me load the mattress and box spring into the back of my truck. You and I had this running joke that we would always put him to work whenever he would come over, because he always did end up having to do some heavy lifting or some shit. And he never minded it. Never complained. Your mother did such a good job with him. He’s just a good kid with a heart. Our plum probably would have turned out like him.

You and me, in bed. The end of the night, when it’s time to sleep. Me, very likely naked, as my fat body radiates heat in every circumstance, sex or not. You, topless with middle school P.E. shorts that you still fit into. Squiggy and Misu in the bed with us, already passed out.

You and I say our prayers. We would say the Our Father together, then you would say the Hail Mary alone, as I don’t have it memorized (bad Catholic!). Just generic prayers, but they got the job done.  

And then sleep. You told me I snore like a motherfucker. You were pretty decent at it yourself on a good night.

You, so tiny and precious, and tough as balls, in the same breath. A Christmas ornament with a pit bull temperament. You and I spooned until we would drift off, and then turn over. I would touch my foot to yours, just to be in contact with you throughout the night. Or hold hands.

And you, always inviting, even after fighting. Again, you fought because you cared. I never quite pieced that one together. The Spanish sparkplug thing.

“We fight and we make up, and we don’t leave each other.”

Words of wisdom straight from your mouth. And what the fuck did I do? I left, in direct violation of Constitution rule #26.

The tears come to me now, here at quarter to three in the morning.

You and me, sleeping in that stuffy bedroom. The AC unit was in the other room, and we had to blast it and leave the bedroom door open to cool off. We got a box fan from Target to supplement the stifled air.

Dark and quiet in that room, I dreamt of the future. I was a little too old to think anything could be forever. I knew this probably wouldn’t end well, you and me. But goddamn (no swears in prayers!) if the good times weren’t fucking good. Like we were the only two people ever. Adam and Eve in our own Paradise. And the shit times were total shit. It’s the old rollercoaster. A slow, awesome burn on the way up, then woooosh. Upside down and all over and you want to puke by the end of it. But time goes by, and like any good ride, you want to get right back on.

Dear Lord, please bring her back to me.

Amen. 

(continued on the next page--->)

[thekittycatandtheconman]

05.19.14 – Ezekiel Manflower, Vol. 1

The Adventures of Ezekiel Manflower, Vol. 1:

“Paulito gets into half a threesome.”

Before you came around, even before the ex fiancée was in the picture, I spent a wild evening with Aaron Tobin in downtown Orlando. This was 2009. Transitional phase for me. I had broken up with the crazy Asian, but she and I were still riding out the lease together. I was also still hate-fucking her while she was shacking up with her future ex-husband.

Tobin and I were at BBQ Bar on Orange Avenue. We’ve been going there since before I was even old enough to drink. I grew up in there. Coors Light, drink of choice. Except for that one night when I turned 21 in 2001, and had ten shots of Jaeger in ten minutes, and ended up puking face down on one of the tables in one of the booths. I didn’t set out to have a badass 21st birthday, it just sort of happened. Everything before the barf was great: it was after we played at the Sapphire Supper Club before it became The Social. Tobin and I were in Michigan Winter back then. This chick from this band Upstairs, who we opened for, sang happy birthday to me. Rockin.

Back to 2009. BBQ Bar. Tobin and I were playing in Daylight District. You may not have liked this band. Four white dudes doing hip-hop with live instruments. Toward the end of the band’s run, our sound gradually evolved into a more melodic, sing song, cinematic soundscapey thing. During the hip-hop phase, I played guitar (Samick RL-3 semi hollow body guitar; Fender Hot Rod Deville 212 combo amp; the tweed one because it looks cool) and sang/rapped backup vocals/tags; toward the end I had a whole array of instruments: Casiotone 405 Keyboard, CB700 xylophone, Roland SP-606 sampler (same people who made your Loop Station), tambourines, shakers, random floor toms and cymbals set up to add a little flair alongside Tobin and his drumming. It was way more fun that way, playing a million things. I was always the guy who was decent at everything.

It was a killer set. New songs. New versions of old songs. This was one of the last shows we played as Daylight District. The ass end of our existence. The neutron star before we became black holes. We played, and it was pretty flawless. Great executions.

That evening inspired me to lose thirty pounds.

We get back to the house where our boy Tim was living. Riding the high of a good show. Tim played bass in DD with us, and I’ve known him since high school back in Bradenton. I was all about an after party. Tim was Bassman; I was Guitarman, even after I switched to the smorgasbord of instruments. These names were given to us by the late Greg Marchak, who recorded Daylight District in Tampa at Audiolab Studios on more than one occasion over the years.  Marchak lived two lives worth of life in half the time of a normal life, so he went ahead and died right after he recorded our second album “Beautiful, Historic”. The last thing he put his stamp on in this world.

So, Bassman was down to have some people over. And Tobin is always down to do something after. A true modern rock drummer he is.  Like I said, I was split up with the crazy Asian, so I didn’t have anyone to answer or come home to (she didn’t want to leave til the lease was up, and neither did I, so, fuck it. Yes, we backslid plenty of times. Again, I was literally sticking it to her and her new boyfriend/future husband/future EX-husband. Revenge fucks. Whatever; we’re friends now).

And when I say after party, I mean me, Bassman and the chick he was dating, Tobin, and the lovely subject of this whole three-way memory of mine: A woman who can only be described as China Vagina.

China Vagina happened to be my birthday twin (along with Adam Sandler and Colonel Sanders), born September 9th. I’m sure that I was exploiting this fact somewhere earlier in the night, in some attempt to establish rapport with this chickadee. I’ll tell you, men will say any goddamn thing to a girl. Me included.

So she plops down on a couch and Tobin and I are on either side of her. Bassman at this point has scampered off outside to talk with his girl, never to be seen again til like seven in the morning.

We chitchat, bullshit, banter, whatever. Passing time before its time to get physical. Nonsense talk before it’s time to walk. Moving along.

Tobin starts making out with China. Not to be discouraged, and since I’m just sitting there with my thumb up my ass, to hell with it. I start feeling her up. She’s receptive. So Tobin’s working her mouth, I’m working her tits.

We should’ve just pulled her back to Bassman’s room. The things you think about afterward, when you aren’t prepared. There were too many variables really. The threat of people coming and going. This wasn’t going anywhere. I was over it, so I made my way to an adjacent couch and crashed for a bit. I think Tobin fooled around with her a bit more. So neither one of us ended up sexing her. Lose-lose.

You were never against the idea of a threesome. Probably because I never brought it up. If you and I would’ve both agreed on someone at a bar or wherever, like spur of the moment, I think it could have happened. But you and I were happy screwing each other, blasting off to the moon as a duo.

Afterward, at like 7 am (consequently the time that Bassman had finished whatever shenanigans he had gotten into and returned indoors), I gave China Vagina a ride back home. The night is literally over when the sun comes up.

She lived off King Street down by the Florida Hospital, behind which, I have been going to school for the past two and a half years at Adventist University. It was a relatively short ride, as Bassman’s pad was off Mills Ave behind Will’s Pub.

This woman was a mess by the time I dropped her off. Still drunk, fooled around with, and over all wiped out from being up all night. I didn’t feel shitty until she got out of the truck and knocked on her front door to get in, and her kid answered.

The time Tobin and I almost got into a threesome. 

[thekittycatandtheconman]

05.20.14 – Ezekiel Manflower, Vol. 2

The Adventures of Ezekiel Manflower, Vol. 2:

“Paulito wrecks the truck.”

October 14th, 2012. At a Halloween party a couple years ago; I got into the first accident I've ever been in my life. Fucked the truck right up. Really screwed the pooch, but it wasn’t my fault. I suppose I was guilty of driving fast and furious and singing loud and assuming that people stopped at red lights would stay stopped until red lights turned green. Oopsie daisy.

This was 14 days before I met you. Months before Misu and Squiggy showed up. 352 days after the ex fiancée (I need to come up with a better name for her). About a month and a half after I made the massage therapist cry on her birthday by breaking up with her.

This party was in full effect by the time I made my appearance: Female devils with plastic horns, white mohawked Mr. T’s weighed down with gold chains, chesty-ass milkmaids with blonde braids. Sexy nurses and slutty pharmacists. Meatloaf (the singer, not the delicious suburban dinner) Teenaged looking fair-skinned flapper girls with feathery festooned headgear (hot daughter of the hostess). Pixie haired pirate wenches decked in red (this wench in particular ended up giving me a ride home after the truck damage was done for the evening). Bumblebees (what kind of bee gives milk? A boobie). Zombies.  Nondescript gothic types; maybe I just don’t get the reference.

I always say a good Halloween costume is something people can just look at and know what it is. So, if you’re dressed up abstractly as “Master Baiter” or historically “Amelia Earhart”, ya dun goofed.

Beer pong in the garage. Enough kitchen liquor to sink a battleship. An interesting enough food spread, but I don’t like to eat and drink at the same time. I set myself up with a vodka soda. I alternate socially between being myself and minding my own business.

And then, the ex fiancée calls me. Smack dab in the middle of the party night. Her low husky voice was slurred slightly. I really dug that voice. She thought it was manly.

The only manly attribute you had was that you looked like the chick from Total Recall, when you left your hair all curly. Melina. The movie from 1990. I haven’t seen the remake yet. Although I heard the chick with three tits makes an appearance.

She asked what I was up to. I told her I was Halloweening.

She had been at her own costumed soiree.  I don’t remember exactly how it went but I know she mentioned, “Do you ever think about us?” at some point. She’s called me twice since we split, toasted and reminiscing. I wrote a little something about it shortly after, in the black sketchbook I use as a notebook:

10.14.12

When I broke my own heart

I slept for a day

Inside myself

And dreamt of us

After you called me

At midnight

From a costume party

Red wine cowgirl drunk

To see how I was

You slur your nostalgia

And my eyes water

Maybe you would be mine again

If your emotions got the best of you.

  The black notebook is split into two volumes: her and you. The two great loves of my life. She denied that we ever had the talk. Like flat out said she never said any of things I mentioned to her. She really has an interesting coping mechanism.

Smashing Pumpkins: “And love her when your love goes unrequited...”

I’ve dissected these inebriated talks she and I had at length with my boy Tobin. We decided that it shows us that the ex fiancée actually had feelings about undoing a whole year of doing, in a weekend. And possibly a thickly veiled roundabout of an apology. I never expected or wanted one when I think about it. I always took the blame for not getting married. I was reminded so many times that it takes two to tango. Tobin really took issue with her when it happened. He let me stay with him til I got back on my feet again, like two months. Love the kid for that.

So the shindig ran its course, and I peaced out. This was after I ended up making out with the aforementioned pixie-haired pirate wench. I was driving home at like two am (every story seems to start then), coming down Hiawassee. I was the only car on the road, so I'm driving pretty quick.

I come up to a light; the light is green. I definitely have the right-of-way. There's this brand new looking jet black Honda Civic at the intersection, stopped. So I'm coming up to the intersection, and the car just pulls out, running through the obviously red light.

Screech. Veered right, but not soon enough. I poured on the brakes, but I smacked right into his passenger door. Totally t-boned him. I was listening to the Incubus record "Make Yourself " by the way. The airbag smacks me in the face (I’m just happy the thing worked; the truck is a ’99 Nissan Frontier. Not too old but I haven’t had the bags inspected) I’m seeing stars for a second. Jostled. Shaken, but not stirred. My hand hurts, like I slapped the pavement or high-fived someone too hard.

Smashing Pumpkins careens into my head again: “And I ride in my skin, as a piece of meat does every day…”

So the driver gets out. He was fine. I was fine. He was really young, like 18. He was all like "Man, this is my second accident in like two months". I remember being upset with him. Not even mad, just like upset the way an adult would be with a child. Then he was like “What are we gonna do?”  I told him we’d call the cops and tell them what happened. I got no fucking clue, I’ve never been in an accident. I figure ok, the copper comes and we swap stories and be on our way. So the state trooper came, and we gave him our info. I told my story, and the kid told his. The kid lied and said he also had a green light. This was after the kid’s dad showed up and they had a little powwow. He was blocks away from his damn house. He couldn’t wait two more seconds for the light to change? Since there were no witnesses or cameras, the trooper told me technically he was supposed to give me a ticket, as I was in the intersection. Thanks, idiot kid driver.

Trooper said he wasn't going to however; he was going to chalk it up to investigation. Reason being (why I think so anyway), is that I still had my Halloween costume on. See, I was dressed as a doctor at this party. So I have on a lab coat and stethoscope, all doctored out, grown up and talking all calm and reserved. Then there's this little 18-year-old shit being all stupid and bumbling. Later on, while he was filling out paperwork and we were waiting for the tow truck, the trooper asked me what hospital I worked at; I pointed in a random direction and was like “Oh, just over here at Florida Hospital.” And that was that.

The night I wrecked the truck and got out of a ticket by impersonating a doctor. Certainly an adventure you would’ve been on board with.