What if I was behind anything you had to offer?

WTF?

Let them in Peter...let them make some noise, although they are very tired.

It is cold. It is raining. It is nearing Christmas.

Remember where the broken bodies lie.

Tell them how they are missed.

With us down here.

I almost quit today. Done. Finished.

My manager, hearing I would not be in for the evening. Big exhale.

I know when I am not up to 100 percent.

I am pretty much, never say die.

I don't know that I can do this, anymore. It really is a tortuous grind. A Goddamned beating. Hi, how are you? Mean it ...love ya...jesus...I am all about you.

It really can be hard.

I shit you not.

It made me so much, so much fucking sorry.

For a living.

A Bus to Maine? Washing dishes? Why the fuck not?

Throwing myself on the mercy of the language. Using a passable intelligence. Could work.

A guest made fun of me, yesterday. Not that that is unusual. Stop it.

I'm not for everyone. But it is a beating.

But it was a version of hell I'm not familiar with.

It did not fail, however, to end. It endured. For the longest.

I assure you.

People normally enjoy my stupid ass.

If yall could just laugh...

A middle aged black woman, for what it's worth. Table-all black. We want butter...wif dis bread.

Mo' buttah'..surving utensils.

All this... every time.

Know how to never make a canoe not tip? Paint it black.

I'm not fucking kidding.

Passed to me by a waiter going to the game. Fuck this. This is your's.

I had packed up her 12 or 16 box of "I'll have some of that..." The matriarch of the table. Sweet creeping Christ.

"We want med rare-we want well done-at the same time. And hot...goddamnit-these potatoes are cold. "

Asked me what box the mushrooms were in. Like I fuckin' knew. Two, three.

"I'm not sure, one of them."

See you next tuesday. Fuck me.

Just fuck me hard....Jesus. These are the tears I kissed.

I had not bothered to label the damned things. I had grown tired.

"duh..." she replied.

I'm not kidding. She said it again. Then wanted seperate checks."It's his berfday...
I'm paying for him. Them two's together, and them two, and him, he's a baby."

"Duh..." she drew it out. They all laughed.

Wow. I was stunned.

Making fun of a middle aged white guy...in public.

Maybe I had it coming.

She wore me out. How many trips...?

I was just slogging it out.

The trenches.

They're not for me, anymore.

The Vet's I know...

I so appreciate you all.

Some, retired and earned it, others cashiered and fucked.

I know that your service allowed me the freedom to live as I did. I know that my service does not make it even-steven.

Sorry. Not the best troop, but I had some of the best leaders.

SSGT Roy Fyffe, Capt. Wild Bill Wilson, and the rest of the 1/16.

You know what?

Okay, there will be more.

Just thinking. Look what the crazy dragged in.

I mentioned you. My oldest. I mention you with venom. Do not be misinformed.

I am pissed. I love you, but I am pissed.

I have made amends. I have apologized. I have paid blood. And yet, it continues....

What more do you want?

The Chilean three...

There are three of you in Chile.

You have read this blog. I want to hear from you.

Why do you read this? Who are you?

Pass this on to the others...there will be nothing further, until then.

A cane non magno saepe tenetur aper - A boar is often held by a not-so-large dog. (Ovid)

I met her, after my last stay at the V.A.

My God, she smiled as she walked in. It burned and I knew it.

I sold Mercedes and Cadillacs.

She-Art major at local college. She smiled- Short hair.

Stunning.

She worked titles. Classes in computers.

I'm not ready to write about it yet. Not entirely.

But let it be known, she was the 'shit'. If anybody ever had "me" completely it was she.

Notes early in the morning, oh my god...

She wrote me a letter-explaining in two pages, telling me to leave if I wanted, as she suffered from Alopecia, and was completely bald, save for a quaint quail patch...I used to kiss it

...loving who she was... beautiful and smooth. Holding each other in a rainstorm, early morning, wrapped in fluffy robes, sitting on the porch. Coffee.

My God-that was the most courageous thing I had ever read.

It truly struck me.

She was open-she was she. She was raw.

After eight years- if there are any feelings left-she owns most of them.

My heart...too much, for too little.

The sad shit-she knows it, and cares-not a bit.

But if she did, she'd never show it.

Plans on re-marrying. Wow.

Good for her.

Our daughter: my last princess. The one I see holding us all together in later-years. For whatever reason...a sense of unity, out of love, because she is who she is...

She and her sisters. Except for the last one, or first, depending on which end you are on.

This is six or maybe seven-trial runs for mom, not the first proposal...just the first she said yes to. But not the last to steal her heart. I was not that lucky.

Known him since high school. Excellent credit. Top notch guy. Has money.

For now.

He is a contractor. Overseas. He will soon be unemployed in Central Texas.

Like 10 thousand other guys.

Three years tops.

I just don't have it in me.

Not anymore.

It's all inadequate, from here on in.

I didn't plan on writing any of this.

A lot of people with damn good sense...

As of today, there are 1,877 readers of this blog in the U.S.

Second runner up-is Costa Rica at 51. Awesome.

Holy crap, up from nowhere, beating the U.K. at 44... 32 in Canada, 11 in Spain (Come on guys-our hearts are in the right place...tappas baby...and passion....and heartfelt slams...,)

Germany- goosestepped in to place with ten readers, as does our beer drinking brethren in Australia. ( I would love to be read in a pub in the shadow of an opal mine.)

But the most mystifying, are the three readers in Ireland. Please tell me.

After all, it was from you people from whence I came. Not too sure about the genealogy...heard a cleric in the 1700's in England-excommunicated and de-frekin' frocked for public drunkeness.

Then a privateer, for the Queen of England, in Bermuda. At war with the dutch...a statue exists, from what I heard.

Died attacking a Dutch warship-drunk and unarmed, just seriously pissed. His first mate had to hate his position.

Do ya know each other? There has to be more than three of ya...there has to be.

(Come on, just set this as your home page-you don't have to read it.)

I would give an organ to have your readership improve.

How's that for shameless pandering?

There are many rooms in the mansion-HST

We go down different roads... sometimes because they're just fun.

If you can balance that guardrail, maybe scrape up an inner knee while you're doing it, and come out the other side-just because it made your heart beat a little bit faster, then you know the call.

And this call is not safe.

Some of you retards run with bulls.

Wild bulls. In a foreign country.

And you are an ill bunch of people.

Some of you take it beyond acceptable into hallucinogenics...my hat is off to all of you.

Others go for the deep physical-travelling at high, and bad speeds...just because.

Stepping off a radio tower into space.

Now what is fucking wrong with you?

The one's I most envy- the one's who make the grade, on time, and believe in it.

How do you do it?

How do you stand it...the same thing, everyday. Maybe a different color shirt, but you know what to expect.

Therein is the attraction? The predictable? I have to look at you again, day after day, until it is over.

No wonder I watch from down here.

My Fathers eye's...

They were a particular shade of brown. Shards of green and gold. They could pierce, like flaming effing arrows, but look kind, while he was beating the shit... dead out of you.

Let me mention. I wanted, so badly to have his approval.

A smile.

A pat on the head.

That look.

Knowing his Dad blasted a 30.06 round through his skull and past a hooker; past his little brother's head, asleep upstairs.

But wanting that approval, all the same.

But no.

He could make me feel like the kicks he was giving me, were truly my fault. That somehow, at five years old I deserved to be thrown to the cold linoleum and kicked and cursed, but I remember more his smell...pipe smoke; apples, scotch, Vick's, Aramis and coffee...

"Dad?"

"What is it buddy?"

"Let's talk about something."

"Sure pal, what about?"

"Tigers, Dad, let's talk about Tigers..."

And I would sit on his lap.

Expanding the 'underside'...

According to the tracker on this website, there are a few, little more than a hand full actually, of countries with two readers per country of this blog. Most countries have quite a few, of which I am entirely grateful. Big nod to my family members in the U.K. Nice to know...wow.

If I needed to take this on the road...could I set up an underside network? An underground underside railroad...pop in, stay a couple of days, write about you, on about my business.

And Bob's your effin' uncle.

Expect a bigger push from my friends in Spain...I know you read this. When I eat, I think of you. Cafe Madrid-Dallas.

When I dare to love, you are there as well. Just not recently.

We share the passion. Please write back.

Out of about 2,000, that's not that many, but my question is, not just for the countries with two readers (Thailand, Switzerland, Slovenia, China, Portugal, Argentina, Mexico and Estonia,) but all readers in all countries: do you know each other? And if you do not, please have parties and read this, even if it is just the two of you...seek each other out... if you do, it will be the three of us...cheers...let me know.

A nod to the past..

A picture. Family gathering. The afternoon of my Father's funeral. I can finally breathe.

A Band had played-made up of his friends-instead of a Eulogy. Stardust. Jesus.

I wept, and crushed my girls.

No mercy expected.

Candid photo. Slipped to me by my cousin/sister over the holidays.

My oldest and coolest brother, three piece suit, cigarette and beer at elbow; my oldest, and only real sister, (although I am closer to my cousins) her weight-spiraling dangerously out of control, and diagnosed by many in the family,to be simply-crazy.

She had been a debutante, the result of Dad marrying for money. California dreaming baby.
I remember a picture of her at two-adorable; her mom, legs folded demurely under her and
Dad posed above the mantle with a pipe-cock of his particular walk.

But he couldn't hold it together. Just another story that begins "...and then I met a woman."

She was connected . Laguna Beach.

Oceanfront dinner jackets. The sound of the surf.

Sammy. Peter Lawford. Phil and Mimi Hines.

Their French Bulldog, Mimi, posed as wiggling centerpiece.

My sister lost her mind early, and behind some truly terrifying men.

I had two nephews serving in Korea, from her union with an Army Officer.

My Brother was the result of urgent war-time sex in the back of a Packard. The hot, Houston night, cloying in the backseat. She has always been a Bayou town. Just big and smelling a bit-much like the last dance at 2 a.m..

Dad, on leave, due to return to England, reeked of gin and eventually an onion field in Belgium, a hunk of his eyebrow blown out by a German .88. shell, burying him. Dug out as if dead. This fucked with him badly.

He wound up at the VA hospital in Waco. My mom and I making the long assed drive. Nobody else.

I remember visiting, in the shadow of huge floor fans. Dad-medicated and vacant. Hum. Hum. Cards were played.

No one cared who won-and the games could go on for days. WWII and Korea, and the starting of a steady stream from Vietnam. Nobody knew from PTSD. They knew from fucked up...cried a lot, too much drink, a bit-of jail, some slapping-given and taken, and say goodbye to sleep.

I arrived in the same dorms in the mid-nineties. His death the catalyst.

I tasted gun oil...he died-three months after my Mom. My ex-wife drove me to the hospital. I was reminded of my first visit, on the government's dime.

I was selling shoes at a Kinney's shoe store in the local south Texas Mall. The military a year behind me.

Married. Wife pregnant. Hopelessly trapped.

Dear Jesus. I lost it. Wound up in a vacant field around nine-one night, dressed in cammo, scoping a deer rifle along the highway, a bottle of Tequila at the ready.

My brother-in -law agreed to drive me to the VA hospital in San Antonio.

Providing they stop for beer. My brother -in -law, his wife (my wife's sister) my wife, and me.

They stopped for beer. I chewed my way through the seat-belt in the backseat. Not easy. Frustration, shaken gently with rage. I was capable.

(Love to have seen the report on the insurance claim.) Just saying thanks.

On the intake form they asked me what my occupation was.

I told them 'Mercenary'...

The black intake nurse looked at me with raised eyebrow. But I think she knew-I could burn it down, if I had to.

They gave me drugs I didn't know how to pronounce. Indian Doctors, in this country to fulfill an obligation, asked me about 'relationships'.

I was kept calm by prescriptions.

My psychologist, cute little white girl; humping that masters degree, turned me on to an Early Christopher Walken piece, and subsequent play, that shed so much light on the 'why' of me.

It was titled, "Who am I this time..." the story of an actor in a community theater that only knew who he was, a sense of identity, with each production.

I started to run... gave me time to think.

A mile, then two...and she was right. I was an actor after all.


I still thought my brother was the shit. Voice like Sam Elliot.

The last time I was eight and he was newly married. Fresh out of the navy, and jail... too cool. My big brother. We were supposed to go to Six Flags. He was in Dallas from Houston. Newly married.

He had a drawl. Looked at our Father with disdain like viewing pecker tracks on a wedding gown.

It wasn't him. She had a lot to do with it, and Dad had been a douche. I didn't blame him, hard when you're eight.

His wife was an Adventist of some kind. Turned him spookily right-(at his funeral she never shed a tear.)

Our Dad- told him to ditch his new bride and go out with the old man and a couple of "Broadies" (Dad's term) to celebrate my brother's wedding..

We never made it to Six Flags. I believe my Father was told to go fuck himself.

My brother turned his back on us until I tracked him down again, a year before Dad died.

I had skills.

I at least did that much. He might have even been proud.

My Aunt, though, anchored the center of the picture.

She embodies my childhood. And my humility.

My brother; dead-a year later-parking lot-outside his pickup truck.

Work. Heart attack.

He had been a printer and worked until the minute he died on a muggy, summer night. Thought he could crawl to the E.R.

My sister, who knows... Arizona?

The high desert? Bagging groceries or reading palms?

My Aunt?...still kicking. Someone God truly loves...just look at her children.

My brother had two blue birds tattooed above his pecs. After his death, I have been known to see bluebirds, checking me out, from time to time.

I choose him..