I DON’T SLEEP MUCH

And I gotta say: I like it that way. I just wanna know, man. OK? I want to see the god darn thing up CLOSE . . . otherwise what’s the point?? Every day I go out there hoping all of this shoots through my skull and scrambles my brain into hamburger. Mangle me, for god’s sake!!! I want to be ripped in half.

My sister says I give people a hard time about Getting Boring, and sure, but man that really is a symptom of spending too much time on this planet. You gotta be ALERT, or otherwise you’ll wake up and find yourself in a vanilla-ice-cream-ass monogamous relationship playing board games and drinking mimosas on the weekends and shit. Jesus Christ Almighty, I just felt a black streak of terror bolt down my spine. Though I suppose some people, maybe most people, want that: to have it all squared away. Which begs the question:

AND THEN WHAT?

I DEFER to THE GOOD DOCTOR:

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!”

In THE IDIOT, Reverend Iggy Pop laments the death of the Dum Dum Boys, whose NOISE he desperately needs as the WALLS close in. I often find myself feeling this sort of feeling, what with being alone in the sense that I wanna get wild . . . wanna bend it till it breaks off! By the time they toss me into a volcano called Mount Terror in Antarctica, I want to be a heavily-scarred, bullet-riddled, cigarette-pock-marked bag of bones someone found on the side of the god damn highway!

My friend Monty and I got loaded and ripped it all to shreds last weekend in Portland, and you know, she’s the last of the Independents . . . one of God’s own prototypes (et cetera). The best types of people I know tend to be Down For Stuff, whatever that happens to mean at the time. I know a few of those people, which is why I ever go anywhere at all, especially to that place, being Portland, where I had the worst year of my life . . . I go because of the blessed angels there who nosedive towards the klaxon wail I sound when I get into town.

Lord, when the sun set, we descended upon Sandy Hunt, which is a total piece of shit. It feels like being inside a nuclear Chuck E. Cheese. There must have been eight or nine of us there, and we got this big long table by the pool table and it sure did feel like The Last Supper. Round about 11, word came down from the mountain to pack it up and go someplace else, and so we got into three cars and headed north to my friends Pallas and Katrina at Florida Room. All you need to know is that Pallas poured hot sauce on my face for the photo booth, and then cooled it down with a frozen corn dog that she found in a backroom freezer we broke into.

Come in, and know me better, man!! Let us JOIN HANDS and ward off the tides of complacency. Do not buy that thing!

QUOTH MY SECRET SPIRIT BROTHER, FROM THE LONG, LONG AGO:

YOU NEED TO STOP
MAKING EXCUSES
STOP GETTING OLDER
AND JUST
DO IT
MOTHERFUCKER

By all means: do what you will . . . but my offered hand is still open to you!! Come in, and know me better, man!

For SHIT’S SAKE, I done went and got me a HAIRCUT on Thursday. It was the first “”professionally done”” haircut I had gotten in six years. By which I mean it is the first one I did not get in my friend Rachel K’s backyard, or give myself. Rachel was pretty good and I gave myself maybe two or three half-decent haircuts, but as time went on I got lazier about it, and so I did not spend as much time layering it. I don’t count the QUICK CUT I got in Koryo Village a few months ago, because all that dude did was even out the damage I had done to myself. It wasn’t a real haircut. But, my god, this woman on Telegraph Avenue did a real good job. I told her I wanted VAMPIRE ELVIS and she went to work. This stylist, who is real swell, she said: “What finally prompted you to get professional help?” And I said, baby, I’m going to see a girl this weekend, and so I need you to fix me up. I’m going to embarrass myself I’m sure, you know, so I may as well have good hair when I did it. She cut me up good. I barely have to use any pomade in it. I sleep with a dime of it in my hair, even through several baths, and so on, and the thing survives. All I have to do to get it all anime villain-looking again is run my hand through it and it snaps into place like rubber (all the while retaining a soft texture. . . ? It’s amazing~).

And so I went to Portland to see a girl, and to see my aforementioned Portland Friends. And we really did have a bender, bless their hearts, ripping around town consuming whatever substances we could get our dirty hands on till the well ran dry . . . sleeping poorly that night, and getting up the next afternoon to begin the thing again. Monty and Noah and I chewed on some of that concentrated spooky stuff in Laurelhurst Park where we rolled around in the grass cackling as an old man with a guitar sang The Eagles and Townes Van Zant. After many miles of incoherent mumbling and insane laughter, we took refuse at Tom’s Restaurant, which is where Matt and Kerwin and I used to eat every Sunday afternoon. It was difficult to not be ten times louder than the geriatric crowd there, though I suppose we did what we could. AS THE SUN CREPT DOWN, Monty and I went out on foot and visited a bar where my friend Chloe works, who I had known for years but had never met . . . and she only charged Monty and me (and later Erin) $3 for all the beer and food we consumed. Whoa!

And then there was Oaks Park, and the black octopus ride, and the roller rink, and the big furry purple coat in the parking lot of the Mexican restaurant, and so on. I drank a fancy drink at this Titanic-ass-looking quote-unquote cocktail bar, which I never would have stepped foot in on my own, but Monty told me we could at least delight in being the worst people in there, which is an offer I can never refuse. Each of the drinks takes like 5-10 minutes to prepare. It’s nuts. I got something with a whole egg in it, in honor of my hero John McCabe, who drinks a double whiskey with a raw egg for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Adding an egg cost $2. TO PARAPHRASE MONTY: “If you invite Ryan someplace fancy, he’ll only order one drink and then complain about how much it cost.” After that I split for the airport and had an EMOTIONAL FAREWELL. I smooshed my face on the passenger-side window of a car, for god’s sake, to leave behind my disgusting greasy sailor residue for the ethereal singing siren at the wheel!!

I wanna get wild again. I got post-Monty-and-Friends syndrome, and I’m crashing hard. I got to get it back. I took some pictures to remember my friends—to remember to get back to them! Lord, I have beautiful, wonderful friends. They are my little tiny baby angels. Here they are. Also, man, Monty and I are extremely stoned in some of these. We were laughing like hyenas all day. We were like fuckin Beavis and Butthead, dude. To be fair: it was April 20th, which is more or less a worldwide celebration of THE SPOOKY STUFF. We sure did go ahead and let ourselves had a good ol time on account of that!

Anyway:

. . . and so I once again slam shut my tome of Pathetic Meandering Treatises on Modernity. “Imbibe alcohol and controlled substances with your friends to avoid buying a fleece pull-over sweater” is I guess the THESIS at work here, followed by a bunch of paragraphs about some college-ass weekend I had in a city I used to live in. Oh well! I had fun. I hope you did too. Good-night everyone.

OKBYE

MEANWHILE, in Ryan’s Fortified Compound in an Undisclosed Location on the Oakland-Berkeley Border. . . .

i’m sitting here in an EPSOM SALT BATH enriched with ARGAN OIL and i got me a BIG-ASS CUP OF GREEN TEA (all in an attempt to drive off the spleen and regulate the circulation) and i’m stir-crazy, jerry! i’m going nuts. that! ghostly wiring in my head! tugging at me! . . . till i am torn asunder! stung! and having dreams of night faces and driving in a black car.

i’m going to get out of this tub and i’m going to shave and finish a letter and then ride my bicycle. i have no idea where anyone is tonight so i’m gonna be alone with it. i need to buy my ticket to los angeles when i get back. maybe i’ll go two weeks from now, after laura and monty and i get back from gambling in reno. hmm.

i think i will make my trip to LA what you might call A LONG WEEKEND. i’ll fly down thursday night and drive back up monday night in a rental, or something. sarah said i can stay with her and i’ll bet amissa and amy would let me piecemeal it out there too. those are the only people i’m gonna hang out with because i haven’t seen any of them in a while. yes, that’s just what i’ll do!!!

earlier dante and i took a nap on my couch and when i woke up the back of my throat felt like the cone of a volcano. i must have picked something up in portland . . . i only kissed someone on the cheek, and only put a few things in my mouth, which i could itemize for the police if i really had to, so who really knows. i have a lot of work to do tonight on some stuff for this website so maybe i just won’t sleep, which will of course exasperate my phantom pain. i’ll make sure i’m good and comfortable while that’s happening~

ok~

love y’all~ ☆彡

p.s. ugh! my precious heart! aches!!

REVERSE THE CURSE

I DON’T SLEEP MUCH

AND THEN WHAT?

YOU NEED TO STOP
MAKING EXCUSES
STOP GETTING OLDER
AND JUST
DO IT
MOTHERFUCKER

OKBYE

I GOTTA SAY:

REVERSE THE CURSE

I DON’T SLEEP MUCH

AND THEN WHAT?

YOU NEED TO STOP MAKING EXCUSES STOP GETTING OLDER AND JUST DO IT MOTHERFUCKER

OKBYE

I GOTTA SAY:

YOU NEED TO STOP
MAKING EXCUSES
STOP GETTING OLDER
AND JUST
DO IT
MOTHERFUCKER