Bat the fuck out

It's a boy.

Anyway, going to Amarillo for the weekend to visit my best friend. Damn, you know you're getting old when the phrase "best friend" looks odd to you. Fuck, the older you get, the less friends you seem to have, but maybe that's just my outstanding personality for you...

The older you get the more you weed out that broad base of "friends" until its just actually the few people you can stand for more than an hour at a time. Anyway, the last time I even left the Lubbock area was last summer. That's way too long. I used to make the drive to see my fav-o-rite Republican once a month. Children and a wife will zap that notion. The wife wasn't too thrilled when I told her I was going away for the weekend, and much less than thrilled when I told her she wasn't coming. As much as she feels the need to babysit me during all non-working hours, I think I will manage to make it to Greg's and back without tripping and falling naked onto a stripper in a hotel. Or at least I am trying to convince her (and myself) that much is true.

I doubt it will be a constant party. Especially since Greg is finally engaged to his live-in gf. He kept her waiting long enough. She's been living with him for the past ten years (no shit!) before she finally broke his will to live. I've got to give her a ten for tenacity. And an eleven for being a sucker for punishment, but love is a blind, retarded drooling god.

I just wonder if "the change" has set in yet. You men know what I'm talking about. Probably you women too, but I'll be damned if I can ever get one of you to admit that. The personality change that occurs in every woman's attitude the moment she realizes the relationship has shifted from "dating" to "I've got the fucker now". He'll probably have to ask to walk outside in the backyard and drink a beer with me. Ah, I'm immune to my friend's wives' bullshit, though. I'll admit I can be a bad influence, but not to the level that my reputation ascended to at one point. I always make it a point to help the wife/gf win at least one argument during every visit. Yes, I'm a bastard, they all say, but I'm a polite bastard who knows when to pay fealty at the altar of their Matronly majesty. "Quit being a dick, man. You need to treat her better!" Sometimes it's just that simple. Even though I generally get hit on the way out of the house to the bar - "Goddamn you, Kirk. I'll be hearing about that for weeks!"

And now, I've always got the "Lauren" card. "Yes, I'm married now, I'm a changed man" during which the women's conversation quickly turns to Lauren's sainthood. Jeez, I'm not that bad, really, I'm not.

Anyway. Getting the hell out of town for the weekend. Since work is slow during these last days, I compiled a book for Greg of what I call the "Rosa Alchemica tales" of Yeats. I put together Rosa Alchemica, The Book of the Law, The Adoration of the Magi, and the last weird winding "letter to Maurice" that Yeats wrote late in life, cementing my vote for his genius. We will probably just get way too drunk, play poker and discuss philosophy all damn night, which this gift is subtly designed to instigate. I'll kill someone for some intelligent fucking conversation at this point!

I put it together all in one nice font, pooled from various online sources, and illustrated with some of my own art and various other black and white pieces here and there. It looks great. Man, I wish I could do something with my ability to put this stuff together so fast. I downloaded, edited, added the illustrations, corrected all the fonts and settings of the four stories (all from different sources) for continuity, printed it, bound it, and had it ready to go in all under about 3 hours. While working. I've seen other people in this office take more time to type up a client letter. Surely someone would pay for zees skill, non?

Non.

Well, fuck me running. It's 6am. Been up since 4:30, even though I pulled a pretty good drunk last night, even got me an arrogant bastard ale. I don't have to be at work til 8, but I'm already showered and shaved, so I think I'll go grab an actual breakfast and show up early. What the hell, I can blog there just as easy as I can here. Might as well enjoy it while it lasts. Which is 2 more weeks. Time ith running out.

Escape!

He rose slowly out of the burning bath water, savoring the heat that reddened his skin and sent wisps of steam rising around him. He was intoxicated by the feel of his hot flesh and the sense of finality that surrounded this moment. He was acutely aware of the purpose that sat upon his brow like a halo of hope; the purpose that had been missing these past four or five years. He didn't bother to drain the water from the tub as he stepped out, loving the cool tiles beneath his feet and tasting each drop of water that dripped from his elbows and hair.

The air was shimmering and for a brief moment he thought might pass out from the pleasure of simple awareness. He toweled off lightly and combed through his hair before returning downstairs to where she lay. Concealing the smile that threatened to betray his knowledge of her duplicity, he crawled beneath the covers and shut his eyes.

She trembled next to him, half fear-half ecstasy, and she was too preoccupied to realize that she wasn't angry at him anymore. Her right hand clutched the kitchen knife under the pillow and last minute pleas of future regrets fought a wild battle in her mind. The smile rose unbidden to his face, uncontrolled. He could sense her apprehension, could smell her sweat. Seeing his grin, that fucking shit eating grin of his cross his face- the anger welled up again and her vision went bloody as the knife jerked up and into his chest. She laughed hysterically as she stabbed again and again. His eyes winked open and gazed into hers. She dropped the knife, falling backwards, terrified.

"Escape!"

The word bubbled out of his mouth on the crest of a wave of blood, and his smile grew even bigger, as he died. She alternately laughed and cried, huddled in the corner of the room, underneath their wedding portrait. No one in the family had thought it would last. They were right, but no one could have predicted this outcome. Her feral eyes glazed slowly over, covered by a transparent veil of insanity. Soon they mirrored his, staring but unseeing, dead but still alive inside, somewhere.

He knew he had won, but not yet what his victory held for him. His
sense of purpose faded from its orgasmic/euphoric glory into numbness as he was hurtled from this world to the next. Multicolored flames sprang into existence and chilled his blood as they fanned over him. He noticed with some shock that he no longer held a form of flesh and bone. Transparent, translucent, ameobic was what he had become. A different awareness washed over him, alien yet wise. Images that he had once known as past, present, or future strobed before his -`vision?' (he no longer had eyes) - and he knew time and existence as it was- completely simultaneous, no paths to go back or forward upon, just the point that was/is/will be -constantly occurring.
(1993)