February 24, 2010

I don't believe in anything

I wanted to start with that before I forget. Maybe you love me even though I'm ugly and you only want me. Maybe you think my mind is beautiful and you only want me to share it. But maybe that link will take you to a place that understands me better.

I am a 36 year old woman and I am not attractive enough for a man to support me. Last night, however, I went on a date. It was wonderful. He fed me pizza, he baked me cookies, we were in his apartment and he didn't try to fuck me. We just watched his TV. I don't miss owning a TV, but it was nice to watch it with him. We talked too. He took care of me.

I know I'm damaged. I would gladly suck dick for $5 a pop if you could guarantee me 12 dicks a day. I could live off $1800 a month and not have to bother anyone.

I know that's not normal.

Let me give you some advice, Ladies. If you ever think about killing yourself, DO NOT tell anyone. No one can help you. Even the ones who want to won't be able to. Chances are good you'll just annoy people. Worst case scenario you will deal with the police. The will come to your house and ask to come in. Of course you will let them in because that is the kind of girl you are. That was a mistake. They'll look around and not see anything dangerous and be happy enough, but they'll still ask you to come on down to a hospital where you can talk to someone. It won't be until you get outside that you see the ambulance. The police don't want to take you. They want you to ride the ambulance. It won't be until you are in the ambulance and they start taking your personal information that you might start to think THIS is how they are going to bill you.

You can not afford to talk to anyone, Ladies.

"How about you stop thinking about killing yourself AND stop being such a whiny bitch."

It's been a very long time since my father has yelled at me. I know he still drinks, but if he yells he's much too far away for me to hear it. I know what you are thinking, but he never touched me. Maybe if he had I'd be able to make money now.

I know my father just wanted me to grow up. Just wanted me to be a man. It's okay to call a man a bitch, right? It's not misogyny if you don't say it around a woman.

I know why people hurt each other. It's understandable.

I don't want to hurt people. I want to make them happy. I just have a different set of skills that the whole world can't agree should be put to use.

I know how to suck cock. I know how to eat pussy. My hands are soft and my fingers are long. I know all of you don't want to hear this. It's our mutual friend, I'm talking to. The one who wants to hear about the time she put needle nose pliers in my ass.

I know what men don't like about me. I know which of my parts they don't like to look at. I really feel if I just looked different I could be happy.

Please, if you love me, call my bluff. I could really use the money.

A billion words I want to purge from my exhausted mind. Tear-drenched memories of magazine shots in check-out queues remind me that my love could be nothing more than an illusion from the past. Twenty-six years of a life negated by a cruel, dire fate? Oh "to be," and "to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." Funny how the most beautiful and romanticized vision can so quickly succumb to this trite and sour reality. Today, I simply want to disappear. A lifetime of work, money, time and faith manifest nothing much more than debt to me and profit for others. A bitter goodbye to trust gives life to a healthy disdain for all that surrounds me. If there exists a "final straw" in this sick equation, I preemptively concede to fearing its consequences.

In the darkness, when rest is elusive and gut-wrenching pyrrhic blasts leave me tangled in knots between sweat-marred linen and a cold pillow, I clutch a rosary to my chest, pleading for this glass heart to finally and irrevocably shatter. Or maybe just one more epileptic fit to render my soul free of this (dubiously) mortal coil. I was made a liar, though I have spoken nor written any words contrary to the truth.

How did my process of self-discovery lead to the fact that I am literally no one? For that is all I am; a poet and one-man band unable to find my way back home. I am wary to close my eyes, as visions of bridges I once worked so hard to make stable burn and crumble into the sea. Like strings between two tin cans untwining, I still clutch the frail metal of mine for equilibrium. I do not seek pity, nor do I seek empathy. But I do beg for release. I only need to love and be loved back, for once; but until then I will sit alone in desperate want for peace of mind.

I see you and I miss you. And after all these years I still love you more than I have ever loved anything else... and still have no idea why. Your silence has left me paralyzed. So, please help me. Or please just let me go.

The Flynn Lives! campaign (tie-in with TRON Legacy produced by 42 Entertainment) ran a series of retrieval missions today. One was in Portland.

Speculation among the Unfictionauts in Portland was that our much loved retro-arcade Ground Kontrol would be the site. And when Portland's location and shibboleth were revealed we found ... that information for Minneapolis(?!?) A couple minutes later game control corrected their mistake and we found that the Portland site was indeed Ground Kontrol.

Unfictionaut SpaceBass arrived there first. I was next, and said "hi" to the girl wearing a Flynn Lives t-shirt, then had a look at the pre-pay cellphone that he received from her. It had a single number in its directory, with the name Call Me.

We were expecting a couple of other people, including misuba and vectorb, so we delayed calling the phonenumber. If Ground Kontrol's bar had been open at that hour, we would've gotten a beer. As we waited a few people unknown to us came into the arcade, walked around looking at people, chatted to the girl in the Flynn Lives shirt, and started for the door. We waved them over. It sucks to be a late second to this kind of one-off event, and we were waiting around anyway.

At some point, game control got impatient waiting for our call. They just called the cellphone themselves. SpaceBass answered and led us on a walk around the block. I noticed that we were trailed by a different woman affecting the trenchcoat-and-sunglasses style. Behind a gas register a block away was a blue wallet. In the wallet were two game tokens from Flynn's Arcade (home of Space Paranoids), three vintage TRON movie trading cards, a newspaper article, and further instructions. A code printed on a sticker stuck on the card sleeves in the wallet was entered into the online system. A representation of the card appeared there, and each card revealed a section of an overall picture. We passed around the wallet and its contents as the smartphone-enabled dialed-in the codes.

As I type this, I pause every couple sentences and flip the golden token from my thumb and catch it. There is very little like holding an artifact from another world. It matters little whether or not that world exists. It matters little whether the piece appears mass-produced. What matters is the heft of the thing in the hands. And the sound that rings out as it is launched into a tumble in the air.

Outlinks
http://www.flynnlives.com/
coverage in Wired, http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/02/tron-legacy-scavenger-hunt/
photos on Miss Selector, http://www.miss-selector.com/2010/02/la-recherche-de-kevin-flynn-ou-comment.html