I have an unfortunate personality-Orson Welles

Yeah, me too.

Okay, I will unveil the curtain for another moment and explain the bank account situation is in progress and not going to be written about in real time.

I need the perspective it will take, that hopefully time will provide, to make it interesting to be read.

Plus, I am not giving this bitch an inch. She has taken enough.

I am told to forgive; to remember my part in the equation. I am reminded-I am the only one on my particular side. I am, after all, Irish. I am also reminded that my alcoholism is much like an Irish dwarf-it isn't big and it isn't clever. But it will get the feckin' job done, all the same.

My goal is to simply outlive her and I will not give her any more time on this blog, at least not in the present.

Her story will best be served cold.

So, where were we?

Nicholson needs a drink...

It's that moment in The Shining. Jack needs a drink, in the scene right before he completely loses his shit in the bathroom with the dead, old naked broad.

"I'd give my damn soul for just a glass of beer." He meets Lloyd the Bartender.

It is that conversation-when a rovering drunk chooses to go back down that same tired road after a bit of abstinence, you can hear it in his voice, that same conversation, every time.

He's whistling in the dark muttering, "It's the white man's burden Lloyd, the white man's burden," as Lloyd pours him bourbon, on the rocks.

Or whatever his poison happens to be.

"As long as I live, she will never let me forget what happened." Head in his hands.

No shit Lloyd.

"What'll it be Mr. Torance, it's on the house."

"Anything you say Lloyd, anything you say."

Living will...

Why not. I can add to it as I go, so whatever is on here when I die, there ya go. Instructions for my final send off. And to think I am of sound mind...

First and foremost request, Headstone is to read "Hey, I can see up your dress from here." Only.

Also request Lonely Teardrops by Jackie Wilson and Good Golly Miss Molly by Little Richard, be played at the end of the ceremonies so everyone leaves on a high note.

Plus, if you drink, please do so at my memory. If not, have fun with what's left. And if anyone plays Tears in Heaven I will haunt you. Or say, "He was a good man..." I have evidence to the contrary. Much rather someone say "He meant well."

Now, if any one chooses sureptitious sex or Mitch Albom, or any other request, please request, though not in a keening wale.

Any other musical requests, please leave a comment.

Seriously. This is just in case. I am not, I repeat not depressed nor am I planning on hurting myself in anyway. It may seem morbid but it just makes sense if I want these things to happen, someone should know about them.

Satire is tragedy plus time-Lenny Bruce.

Sure, given enough time anything is possible...except more time.

This blog has turned a page. Before, the memories of my screwed up life seemed suited enough for many of you to want to read, but after yesterday's post I don't know any more. If conflict is interesting, then life just became more so.

Is my life written out and shared in real time, enough to hold your interest? My struggles, my selfish attempts at retribution, my minor triumphs?

I thought about leaving, of course I did, it's how I'm wired...but there was no where to go. The State Department or some such watchdog agency has my passport 'flagged' for just such an occasion. I cannot obtain a passport, let's say-to work overseas as a contractor and make enough money to have all this paid off in three months, no, let's keep me here, working for tips.

What-the-fuck-ever.

I mentioned I thought about a drink. I did not act on it, for those of you who might be concerned.

Not a great time to be having a crisis of faith...but what if this was the catalyst? Maybe this is what it takes to restore it...

Bollocks.

Could I do "The underside...from underground?"

Completely fall off the radar? Probably not. I'd much rather someone buy the film rights to this blog and the whole matter is taken care of.

Plus, Internet access in the jungle is spotty at best.

But I do enjoy a good hammock and I'm a sucker for an umbrella in my drink...

Paul Gauguin was my favorite syphilitic pederast. (Possibly the first time that's ever been written)

And from what I understand, rather unpleasant. Good for him.

She lives...

Today I am breaking from the narrative of the past into a very unsettled 'right now'. For those of you who might wonder if all this is true, I sincerely wish it were not.

I checked my bank account earlier this afternoon. I thought I had about twenty-eight dollars after the rent check cleared.

My balance was $-24,898.71.

25K in the hole since breakfast? WTF. Are you serious?

The amount is remarkably similar to the amount owed my first ex-wife, money for our 26 year-old, married and divorced (once that I know of), daughter.

Another item to add to my list-why Santa shot himself in the head. (For the record her efforts netted her a big 28 dollar 'score', and countless hours of me trying one more time to un-tangle my life...thanks, sweety.)

My other Holiday favorites included being left by my last ex-wife a week before Thanksgiving, culminating in waking up face down in a turkey t.v. dinner. (To include cranberry sauce in the hair. A legion of Newcastle Ale cans as testimony to my heartbreak. )

My Mom dying a week before Christmas is certainly a contender, as well as some very rather unpleasant holiday memories. But they all make it what it is- one big-bullshit gumbo, using money I don't have to buy things for people that they don't need.

And I better be smiling, cause it's the holidays mister, and we have a brother in the White House, and Wall Street is paralyzed but still strong...It's no Wal-Mart but don't forget to pay promptly please.

Pay the bills, and child support, Kid grown? no matter-pay up and try to eat, and keep up car insurance, and pay child support, and stay out of the rain, want heat? more child support, meet somebody forget it, more child support, economy bad, too bad...change? Not from down here...

The thought of a drink has brushed past my lapels but I know enough to ignore it. I think...

I lay my head down wiser but wary.

I try to look on the bright side; much like looking for the humor section in a feminist bookstore.

There was cost involved in this incident.

Sure; the $24 dollars, wallet, badge, ID, assorted wallet crap-I was out that. But there was something more.

Something had been taken from me, and I felt horribly flawed by the news.

I became hyper-vigilant to the point my wife was scared to leave the apartment. I just thought it prudent to warn her what could be out there. Don't be a victim. Situational awareness- I could have used some.

But the things I became involved in, soon became too personal. I couldn't separate myself from who I was/What I did being the same thing.

I was armed-everywhere.

I was offered a full time position with the DA's office. Paralegal, full time. Wow-window of opportunity-wide open. Wind up crashing through the closed one.

I told them no. No to the county benefits, the county job security, the would have been retired by now had I said yes...no.

I became a P.I.

Good money, travel, work by myself. Liked it.

Of course it sounded romantic, but there's nothing like peeing in a coffee cup while following someone in a fast moving, surreptitious vehicle, to dispel the rest of that rumor.

Surveillance; insurance work, pretty run of the mill. But all of it tinting my attitude. Pretty soon my outlook darkened. People. Not impressed.

For a while it looked good on me.

But there were spies everywhere...

I have no script for healthy...

I needed to call my wife. I just wanted news that my babies were OK, and that they still had a Daddy.

She was appropriately concerned, and I believe it to be genuine. She was always easy to emotionally persuade.

I had a script for that. She had issues. Mainly parental, but we had lived with them. I observed. I learned. I knew how to do that. I knew where the buttons were. I even helped install some of them.

All of my relationships have been unhealthy, in some regard. All of them. I do not know from 'healthy'. I do not have a script for that. If you are a woman and in my life even peripherally and you do not have wants or needs from me, I do not know how to react to that. I promise you, I am winging it.

The adrenaline dump took the better part of a day, and when it did, I slept for 12 hours. I woke up not wanting to talk about it... with her.

I needed people who had been there before me. I needed people who do it every day.

I told you the line was strong.

I tried talking about it in a meeting. No cops. No veterans. At least from that kind of war.

I knew where to go.

I knew someone at the DA's office. A good friend of hers had been shotgunned to death in an undercover operation gone very, very, wrong.

These are the ties that bind.

Adrenaline: Best served sucked directly from the skull.

It is our most physical link to our most animal past. Adrenaline. Fight or Flight.

I have done my share of substances that suddenly 'get your attention.'

This was stronger.

A spark of static electricity? God blinked? All I know is something happened.

They bolted.

Did shooting me mean more trouble than they were willing to get into, or were they not the hard men they thought they were?

Or was it something else. Sound returned into the vacuum with a rush. And the volume was up.

Jumped into the car, fumbled open the bag and pulled the .38.

Started it and flew into reverse, then the direction their baggy assed-jeans were seen, picking them up and laying them down.

There was blood in my throat and at that moment I certainly could have killed, pushed into it with very little effort.

I was racing down a wrong way street. They were gone. I went NUTS.

An older citizen in a pickup was trying to pass me in the opposite direction. He had just entered a very wrong situation for all the right reasons.

I raged at him to get out of my way. He was not impressed. I screamed at him that I was A POLICE OFFICER AND HAD JUST BEEN ROBBED AT GUNPOINT, YOU FREAK SHOW!

Now he was really not impressed.

He stopped his truck and the door flew open. Pretty spry for a guy with the posture of a jumbo shrimp. He read indignant and morally 'right'.

I might get the chance to kill somebody after all.

They did not cover this on 'Career Day.'

Time can standstill. And you can get focused.

My attention, at that moment, was burning with a white heat as I concentrated on this firearm screwed into my skull. I assure you I was so very focused it was as if this was the only mass produced, illegal 9mm in the entire world. It was certainly the only one pressed above my left eye, at the time.

I did not see my life pass before my eyes. Tunnel vision, a loud roaring in my head. Slow.

I kept my voice even and low and talked my way to the back of my car.

Two of them. Teenagers. With a grown up pistol.

I thought of the .38 where I could not reach it. I realized in an instant I had made a life changing mistake.

If I had reached my gun, would I have used it? Easy to say...harder to do.

I had given them my wallet, and it opened onto my I.D. and badge. The shield gleamed in the glow of a cheap gold tooth.

I realized that within the time it would take for a few more blinks, my children would not have a father, and my body would be on a slab in Parkland. This was not fucking fair.

The one with the wallet told the other one to "Shoot this motherfucker, he's a COP!"

The hammer was thumbed back. That bit of information did not matter all that much, depending on if the automatic was single or double action, although it will in the film, and the scene will appropriately kick ass.

What concerned me then were the last moments of my life and how horribly fucked you can become just for turning off James Brown in a redneck parking lot.

I looked at his trigger finger. I would love to report that I pulled some sweet hop-socky moves on the both of them, saying something pithy as I handcuffed them.

I didn't. Forever passed in an instant. His finger moved.

And I wondered if it would hurt.

I skip the masquerade and fly right by the 'agenda'.

Things get narrow. And as my denial system is similar to a force of nature, I start to believe my own shit. Bad idea, each and every time.

I start to think that maybe this new profession was a way of 'giving back' to a community I more or less turned my back on. For all the foul shit I had done, this was a way of measuring out the scales.

Water seeks it's own level, too. I made arrests and felt fraudulant. I knew I was playing 'cop', and I seriously did not want any one getting injured, especially me. So I made up for the fear with going the other way.

They needed a 'first in', going into a potentially hostile room? I'm you're boy. First to arrive on scene. Ditto.

Took a first responder hostage negotiations course. Language. All about the relationship of the language to the given situation. Want to de-escalate, not kick it into an accidental blood bath, with a poorly phrased request.

I slammed it into overdrive. Full time 9-5 at the DA's office, eighteen hours a week on armed patrol, another twenty at a security job and early morning college classes downtown.

My plate was full. (As my last publisher so eloquently put it; "Get a bigger plate.")

The sleep was managed with a very strict, (fast) sleep schedule, to fit the whole thing into someone else's workweek.

Average Wednesday morning: Parking my car a couple blocks away from my class downtown. It's early, no one's out yet. I was the only one on the lot. Book bag, with .38, on the seat next to me; one foot out the drivers door, turning off the radio.

I turn to my left and meet a 9mm pressed against my temple.

The morning just got real...

The end of Summer's promise...

I was a Father. Again.

Enormous responsibility.

I had yet to hear of the phrase, "If you are ungrateful for your gifts, they will be taken from you."

But I would.

It was the end of summer and I was the proud and scared shitless Father of twin girls. Little angels to be sure. My faith was stronger then.

As I write this, these two are in college, and I wade through a small crisis of faith while paying every spare penny to child support. It doesn't amount to much, but I keep plugging.
For three grown kids. Don't ask.

My bad.

Anyway, so here we are entering the 'holiday season.' Shite.

Thanksgiving, more so than Christmas-for some ironic reason tended to be more violent within my family.
Growing up someone would be punched and someones wife would cry and insults flew like hot giblets. I remember there was Scotch. (The pre-recovery as a family period...more 'issues' per room than waiting for the Dr.)
I had been elected Goal tender for my Dad's personal mental hockey onslaught, so it always had a warm place in my heart as a 'special' time of year.

And that was just on the way to dinner. Dad, driving with one hand and punching me in the teeth with the other, blood in my Peter Frampton hair.

The army seemed like the easier, softer way; so one Thanksgiving I asked him to sign the enlistment papers. I would leave for basic the first of January. A tour in Germany. I could graduate in the army. And don't forget College.

My Dad signed without hesitation. I had him at "I want to join..."

All those who believe in psychokenesis, please raise my hand.

We had a small class about psychics and law enforcement. I liked it, but for the most part, the class was met with derision and howls of disbelief. Law enforcement officials are very much concrete, black and white thinkers. The realm of the spirit is lost on them. You can't handcuff what you can't see.

The rest of our classes were what you would expect. Physical training, chemical weapons. (Yes, pepper spray hurts. Like you can't believe it hurts. Whatever you were doing or planning on doing before being sprayed goes right out the fucking window. You just want the pain to stop...somehow. It is truly terrible and quite effective.)

We learned the psychology of crime, in that some folks just don't have any 'do right' in them. They can't help it. They will lie, steal and cheat when the truth would actually benefit them. And the truly criminal minded are not stupid. It's the wanna-be gangsters that may in fact be retarded.
Jesus. News flash...not pulling up your pants, does not make you a hard man. The phrase 'you know what I'm saying' repeated after every other word does not make you a criminal mastermind.

Get a job, pull your pants up and shut the fuck up. There.

We had a couple of weeks to go, almost six months of learning the way the 'other half' live. I was, in a way, proud that I had accomplished this, my past being what it was. My parents didn't know what to make of it.

(The professional psycho babblers would dissect this and have a field day with it, but graduating the academy is one of the most single proud moments of my life. The other moments were the births of my children.)

My twins decided to be here for my graduation. I was in class when I got a 911 beep on my pager. The balloon had gone up and my wife's water had broken. OH my God...I ran from class and drove in excess of 100 miles an hour through late afternoon traffic, without incident, to the hospital, adrenaline leaking from my ears, screaming at cars to get out of the way. Then I remembered, I was armed. A dangerous mix, but I held it in check.

She was not dilated to the proper dimensions and the Doctors were waiting it out. She wanted me to rub her back. I did so grudgingly. I was too caught up in what I was feeling, what I was going through. Party of one? Yep, Mr. Sensitive, at it again.

My best friend joined me for the wait and we smoked cigars on the loading dock, listening to the wail and wup of incoming ambulances and the summer specific song of the locust waiting for the moment. We talked about my kids, and the life they would have and what I could expect.

We had no idea. I failed to realize that no matter how much I loved my children, I was just not cut out to be a long haul parent. No matter how deeply I was involved in that fairy tale and still wanted to be.

Couldn't make the grade with the spouse, couldn't find someone to truly believe in 'for better or worse'.

Vows? A car warranty carries more weight.

I couldn't believe in me. And my children have suffered for that. (I am also ridiculously proud of my girls, for getting out of a dead end situation without my help and without my guidance and attending college on their own merit.)
I know my children have suffered because of me and am remorseful ...up to a point.

The failure of my marriages was a dual proposition. It really does take two to destroy a marriage.

I own up to my part, and fear I am alone in that regard.

I'm also afraid if I let go of my grief, I will have nothing left.