Eulogy for the 3 Books that Are Going to Be Thrown Out Because I Threw Up On Them

The smell of throwup
of vomit
of stuff the body said no to

makes books unreadable
worthless crap that smells

the one sense dominating those of the eyes
of the heart

the nose knows nothing about the effects of
pretty words strung together
in melodies that we believe
mirror that of our souls

that we have them
6/9/02 - 3:45 pm

I am going to embrace poetry. I haven't written any since high school really, I sort of became to jaded to think any poetry is good. And okay, there is lots of bad poetry, and yes, I am just adding to the heap of it - but fuck it all, fuck any worries or fears I have about seeming like one of those people - I have recently decided that I am going to embrace sincerity - that I am going to stop making pretensious sneers about things I think (thought, now) are cheesy for whatever reasons - for whatever fears of intimacy or exposure lie veiled behind ironic laughter at "poets." Especially male poets. Brian Lee, I thought of you this morning while Bonnie was in the shower for half an hour probably masturbating. I thought of all the inside jokes I have made with friends about your poems. But honestly, even you are wonderful. Beyond wonderful. Anyone that wears their heart on their sleeve is. I remember countless hours spent with you when we were roommates, where you proudly wanted me to read your new poems. I sat and listened, and sometimes felt silly listening to all this poetry, but other times felt privleged - was aware and not scared of the fact that you were showing me how you dealt with life - how you made sense out of things nonsensical seeming - how you created beauty and other benign things in my bedroom, with your simple voice, reading the words you wrote. And so, I'm sorry to Brian Lee and everyone else that I ever thought was slightly fruity - yours was a noble cause. I don't even know what it is about poetry that somehow draws people to it with grand intentions to be heavenly creatures, to delineate life - since I really don't feel like line breaks are necessary anymore in poetry in this modern age of ours - that prose can be just as poetic as something broken up into little lines, if not more so. In line breaks, though, there seems to be something meaningful, and yes, this is definitly all in how the reader (me) has been conditioned to read a text - that we (you and I) have been told to linger over poems, to spend time with them - but, whatever, I am a mystified reader granting more power, more religious import to texts with line breaks because of antiquated theories on literature. But that's fine, because reading Jaroslav Seifert this morning felt great. We didn't wake up in time for Unitarian church services, which I really wanted to go to, but I had some poems that were probably just as good, and so yeah.

Anyways, that little poem was just placed at the top of this entry to serve as an epigram that I could reference in the beginning and then go on to tell the long story of last night, the long story of everynight, of me, and of how I ended up throwing up all over a pile of books. A pile of good books. It was most definitely not the books that made me vomit. They were David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Plainsong, and a copy of The Paris Review. What made me vomit was a deadly combination of alcohol and cheese curds last night, as Bonnie and I celebrated her 21st birthday.

The night started off at Chi-Chi's since we were unable to find an Applebee's where Bonnie had hoped to order two drinks for the prince of one during Applebee's 24 hour a day "happy hour." Friday's looked far too scary and carnivorish, so we settled on Chi-Chi's, which was definitly not the most festive of atmospheres. Chi Chi's sort of has the feeling these days of a K-Mart. Now that Wal-Mart's are everywhere, K-Marts just have a geriatric air to them. And for some reason, depsite the bright color schemes attempting to give off the feelings that America associates with Mexico or at least "Mexican" restaurants, which are close enough, right? The bright, even picante wall colors were still not enough to make the place seem as if it had a pulse. You can dress up a dead body but its still going to be a dead body, you know?

After we ate dinner, we went bowling, which both of us really love to do. It was cosmic bowling with darklights, little disco lights, glow in the dark bowling balls, and loud pop music, which was pretty fun, but also loud bad alt-rock (Korn, Puddle of Mudd type shit), that was just offensive and made me want to scratch myself violently. Anyways, bowling was a blast. My first game, I did something incredible, something that made me real proud of myself - the last three frames, I made five strikes in a row to come to a final score of 176. By far, my highest score ever. Second game was a 91. And third game was a 108. I think Bonnie got an 83 the first two games and I think she wanted some change, "because stasis is for losers and ag boys."

After bowling, it was back to Babcock house where I proceeded to get drizzityunk like a scizzityunk. This, the use of izzity in words, was our favorite thing to do all night, and conversation went on for way too long but not too long, because nothing is, and it was damn fizzityunny like a bizzityunny. So yeah, we downed a half bottle of vodka in probably like twenty minutes, and then we filled up a big litter bottle of coke with probably half a bottle of rum, half a bottle of fun - and took that with us as we headed towards State Street looking for excitement. Since we consumed an insane amount of liquids, we were soon having to pee, and last night, we pissed so goddmanfucking much, it was ridiculous. We were peeing in any bush that looked hidden and also a few that most definitly were not. We wandered around Madtown forever with our little bottle of alcohol, gettting even more drunk, being really out of control and yeah.

So then, there was this boy named Dorian. Or Daniel, originally. He had changed his name to Dorian because he thinks everyone should change their name. He had dreads. This was enough for Bonnie and I to go up and talk to him (the dreads). We asked him where all the musical hippies were that usually play drums and guitars where he was sitting because we were ready to dance. Yes, we did do this, and yes, it does get worse. We seriously sit with him and talk for what must have been at least an hour, talking about the most insane things, just so happy that someone is talking to us, that we get to practice our conversation skills, or lack thereof, on someone other than ourselves for a change. Madison, what to do for fun, Rasta, trance music, hippies, making eyes, his baby, the name Dorian, girls that wear shirts with little tie straps on the back, and who even knows what else. We just kept talking and talking. Probably because we both had to pee really bad, we finally broke away, but not before telling him that we'd see him at the protests next weekend and that he was our one friend in Madison so far, and that we were going to introduce him to Rebecca who he would really like (we were real embarrased about that part when we remembered that today). After finally saying good-bye, we ran into populated Peace Park and peed in some more bushes.

We made it home somehow and walked in the front door of Babcock house, where one of the cute, quiet ag boys was watching tv. I asked him what he was watching, and he said the World Cup. Since I sometimes love, soccer I asked him about it, and he said that he was rooting for England to win. I started screaming about Mark Beckahm, the hottest soccer player in the world, who plays for Manchester United. My sister went through a brief period of time where she wanted to be a soccer hooligan, and I was also always fascinated by European soccer culture, particullarly UK soccer, and so that is why I know a couple of random soccer players and facts, and can have conversations with people and make it actually sound like I know something about sports, or at least, soccer. After this little bit of me being so excited about David Beckham to this somewhat shy ag boy, we went up to our room, where things start to get blurry. I was babbling about how cute that boy was and how I wanted to go to talk to him more, and Bonnie encouraged me to go down and talk to him. Something about sitting on his lap too, Bonnie told me today, to many cringes from me. So, I actually went back down there, but thank god, by this point, he had already gone to bed, because otherwise this entry would be about how I got the shit kicked out of me last night by the ag boys. I go downstairs into the kitchen and get a huge bowl of cheese curds, which is basically just really good chunks of cheese. I ate a whole fucking bowl of solid cheese. The rest is a big blur. Appearantly, I threw up all over the floor by Bonnie's bed and then slept next to this throw-up with a towel as my pillow until I woke up this morning at tenish very confused to not see Bonnie in the room anywhere. I found her downstairs on the couch sleeping, and then she told me about the throw-up. And so, this morning was spent cleaning up my throw-up which was so gross and was basically just gooey cheese curds that smelled like rum. Our room still really stinks from it, or at least it did after we had both waken up for the second time, taken a shower, and got dressed. We decided that we needed to get out of the stinky room, to just go anywhere, and to do anything.

So, we went to the zoo, and saw so many cool animals, and I felt like I was part of Earth, part of something grand, and I felt really good.

udder stomping

It is Bonnie's birthday and I think she wanted something grand and exciting to happen since she "loves to party," and yet we are here in the library and our plans for the rest of the day don't look too exciting either way.

Possible Way Our Evening Could Go #1: The agriculture boys will remember that they said they were going to take Bonnie out for her birthday a week ago, and it will be an evening with scary, masuline agriculture students.

Possible Way Our Evening Could Go #2: As Bonnie said in her diary, she will end up getting drinks at some restaurant, since I am still underage and all the Madison clubs are no nonsense 21 and up. Or, there is always the trip to the liquor store and more drinking at the Babcock house.

Basically, our times in Madison are sort of losing the spark they had our first few days here. Unless I have alcohol, caffeine, or some combination of the two in my system, I tend to be pretty bored here in this town even though the town itself seems really exciting. Bonnie's wonderful as wonderful can be, but I think after spending two weeks with only one person, any one person, you start to run out of things that you can possibly talk about, since you cannot ask them about their day, since you were their day, as they were yours. We still have yet to obtain employment and have still yet to make any exciting friends, or even any unexciting friends. The ag boys make us uncomfortable and sort of don't talk to us or even make eye contact with us when we are in the kitchen at the same time.

It sounds like I hate this place, which I don't - I really do love it - Babcock House though, makes the experience sometimes unpleasurable. And so, Bonnie and I, have sort of half-jokingly looked at other places to live, with the intentions of just dipping out on the Ag House in the middle of the night without paying our rent. So last night, when Niki drunkenly called us from Florida and told us that we should move to NY with her in the middle of next week, we were all too excited by this idea of just picking up and leaving for not some other house in Madison, but some place in a totatlly different state, some place called New York. We told her that we would, being somewhat enlivened by caffeine and alcohol, and we were off to the Student Union to use the interent, discussing with more urgency and more excitement than probably the entire time we've been here so far, what we would do in NY. Niki, being Niki, does not have a place to live and is none too worried about this little caveat, insisting that it is not going to be a problem to find one. At the library, looking at classifieds, Bonnie and I realized otherwise. We had planned on all sharing some tiny, tiny studio or bedroom since both of us are b-r-o-k-e. broke, but when we actually tried looking for a place to live, we realized how incredibly difficult it would be to find a place in NY to move to in a couple of days. And our balloon sort of popped and we came crashing back down to Earth. Today, we came to the library to spend more time looking at the classifieds, but it seems just as difficult, and I really wish that Niki would just magically find some really cheap place and that we could go off and depart for NY, leaving Babcock House, and its scary residents far far behind. Or as Niki encouraged us to do last night:

"Take the udders of America's dairyland and stomp on them."

whoa!

Let's just say "whoa" desribes last night. Not "wooah," like Bonnie would like to argue is the correct way to transcribe my new favorite phrase, but "whoa." Okay, so the trouble all started with this bottle of wine - a bottle of Beringer Cabernet Sauvignon to be a little more precise. We were reading books on our couch, like good little people with literary aspirations tend to do. We had just come back from the coffee shop on State, another coffee shop that is staffed by super cute barista boys, this boy's name being Tyler. Tyler is one of "the cute boys" we had seen around town, our first "repeat" that we had multiple sightings of, and so it was even more exciting to see him working at Steep and Brew, when we stoped in there last night for some caffeine. At the coffee shop, we plotted our escape. We decided that since we had still yet to pay our rent for the summer, and since we had still yet to sign a lease, and since we sort of hate living with the very male residents of Babcock house, that we would skip out, and move into one of the numerous places being sublet. Well at home, we called some places, and none of the people were home that we called, so we read some books, and decided to open the bottle of Cab, as has been previously mentioned.

We moved the party downstairs after we realized that no one was in the living room and that the digital cable was ours for the audiovisual delight. We decided to watch people we recognized but have never met, people in exciting outfits and marching band jackets- we watched the MTV movie awards, and before we knew what was what, we had finished off the bottle of Cab. We then went upstairs to put on some shoes to go into the kitchen, which is downstairs. The kitchen floor is the nastietst thing your feet will probably ever have to touch and so we always like to wear shoes when we go into the kitchen. While putting on shoes upstairs, I kept the drinks flowing and poured some Captain Mo rum into a mug. This also was probably another contributing factor to the O.O.C.ness that would soon follow. We went downstairs and made some Amy's Burritos, put on some rockin music, and drank some more booze, by this point, pretty thoroughly trashed. Shannon, the hearthrob of the Babcock house came downstairs and we were so excited to talk to him. Way way too excited. Alcohol and caffeine can tend to make you too excited. Especially when combined. What was said is pretty much a blur of embarrassing lines that we can recall having said loudly and brashly. Bonnie said something akin to, "I love hippies!!!!! I just hate their music." She said this quite a few times. He asked us what we do. And we said, "Drink!" We told him about too many embarrassing things that we most definitly would not have done had we been sober, but that is why we were glad we were drunk, so we could talk to Shannon like we had always wanted to.

After that little encounter and after the plates had been rinsed, we headed back upstairs to our room where more alcohol was consumed, music was put on, and so were facial masks. It seemed like a fun idea to take pictures of ourselves in the facial masks with Bonnie's new digital camera. That probably was a good idea. What probably wasn't, or at the least, was slightly out of control, was what this soon descended into. We wanted crazy pictures. And hey, nudity's pretty crazy. So, fairly shortly after the camera had been taken out, we were taking naked pictures of ourselves. And we were drunk, and had lots of sexual energy, and so very soon we were taking dirty naked pictures. There was the call for props. And so soon we were masturbating with the empty wine bottle, me sticking it up my ass; Bonnie sticking it you know where. Some pictures of me stroking my cock. Some pictures of Bonnie using her vibrator. Then after we had taken far too many sets of incriminating pictures, we each went to our beds to go to sleep. Me on the top bunk, Bonnie on the bottom, sort of talking about how out of control it was. There was mention of how we should have used the paddles, and soon Bonnie was out of bed, going downstairs to get one of the Babcock paddles used for initiation of the new ag boys. And so, the camera was also brought out again, and boy oh boy, did I have far too much fun with that paddle. I started spaking myself with it, and yes, this is also somewhat embarrassing and definitly very out of control seeming now, but at the time, it was the best idea going. Bonnie took some turns with the paddle. There are some shots of me with the paddle hanging from my cock, some shots of me sticking the paddle end up my ass, some shots of "BABCOCK" with my cock right next to it, and I can still visualize the picture of me fellating the paddle. Bonnie was equally out of control with the paddle. And once her memorey card got full again, we called it a night, and went to bed. Or, at least got into our beds. Bonnie asked me if I would be upset if she used her vibrator, and I said that I didn't, that I was planning on masturbating in bed. And so, the two of us, masturbated in our beds until we fell asleep. Fun times in Madison. Some people call it Mad Town.

a tom hanks movie, an early one

Sometimes, I think I am getting dumber and dumber - like I sort of constantly feel drunk - where there is this haze that prevents me from expressing myself adequately when I sit down to write these little entries. I think part of the problem lies in the fact that I am never in the right mindset to write these things when I do, because I always have to write them in the library in the middle of the day when nothing really has happened yet. I really want Bonnie to figure out how to hook up her computer so that I don't have to try to write these anymore when I am not really in diary writing mode or mood.

I mean there is so much that I love and so much that has been processed by my brain in the past twenty-four hours that I feel I should document - that I should try to decipher what exactly it all means here. But why do I have this desire? Why can I not just read some Henry Miller and David Foster Wallace essays and let their messages seep into my being - just enjoy the thing called life - just love Henry for helping me to see this beautiful sunshiny day for just that? Well, I guess a reading of a work should also be an active dialogue with those ideas and an attempt at intergrating them into one's schema. And so i guess that is why I want to talk about Henry Miller's prescription for living and Wallace's advice to young writers and how he urges sincerity above irony - how some of the passages were giving voice to what I had always sort of half-thought, about how obnoxious I found heavy irony - how I long for sincerity in writing and living. I want to spit in the face of your wry pretensious chuckles. Good hearty chuckles are a whole nother matter - those are the thing - the good thing. The bullseye.

Oh - Bonnie and I went on another book stealing spree last night and neither of us understand what all the hype about JT Leroy is. Everyone really loves him, and it seems sort of out of control. He just writes about salicious things - that is the only thing he really has going for him - his writing is not that good and shock-value seems so tired these days. We've seen it all. Tell us something new, about your soul, about ours, about how we fly. I mean Sharon Olds is one of his biggest supporters and along with Dennis Cooper, the person that helped him get published. Sharon fucking Olds - one of the most talented writers who shows us those things we need to and yet never see; she likes this Leroy boy and I just wonder why, why, why? Perhaps some of my disdain for Leroy also has something to do with jealousy. That here is this really successful person my age who is a literary darling, and perhaps I wish I was. But, that would require putting pen to paper. And maybe since I don't have a job yet, and even if I did would still have lots of free time, maybe this will be one of my many goals for this summer: to write something big.

adventures in job hunting, part # who the hell is keeping count at this point

Sadly, many peoples predictions are proving true about how hard it would be to find a job in Madison for the summer. Not many places are hiring, and the few that are, are not hiring me for whatever reasons. This is starting to become a little depressing because our daily activity of job-hunting is no longer even possible because we have pretty much already applied at every place that is hiring. Tomorrow, I am going to call Whole Foods and the Campus bookstore and harrass them some more about my application. And, then if by tomorrow afternoon, we still are jobless, we are going to call the evil entity known as PIRG. There is no question that they will for sure hire us. But, there is also no question that neither of us really wants to work for PIRG - in fact we sort of would rather be bovine semen collectors.

Both of us have had our brief flings with PIRG that were not the best of experiences. Bonnie did it in Seattle last summer, and I did it in DC, the summer after high school. I really only did it for two days, but oh god, was it some horrible stuff, going door-to-door and trying to get people to give money to PIRG (Public Interest Research Group - a progressive public advocacy group that in seeming contrast to their stated progressive goals, exploits legions of young workers, making them serve as their foot soliders to beg for money, and paying them shitty wages all the while). I am utterly horrible at convincing people to give me money, and appearantly Bonnie is just as, if not worse at getting people to give money. So, that is our option right now until we get another job.

Another option for cash that I am going to call about when I get home is giving plasma. I just picked up the new Onion, and there is a huge ad in it saying:

Did you know you can save lives and

EARN CA$H

by donating plasma?
_______________________________

EARN UP TO $225

IN JUNE
_______________________________
ENTER TO WIN $500 CASH!
New hours beginning May 28 * It's fast, safe & easy!
_______________________________
Call or stop by for an appointment:
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People helping people, for life!

Thank god for capitalism.

a trashbag suit and all the hype williams effects you can stomach

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too bootylicious

Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.

And other times, you want to go where nobody knows your name. Where you can dance on the street to a little duo of guitar playing hippies and not care about who may see you - not care about who you may see - and certainly not care about what certain people might think. Certain people are always going to think those things, and so to be away from certain people, around uncertain people - faces undiscernible - identities unknown, is something wonderful. Not having to talk to people - to say hi - or at the very least to give a nod of recognition is something close to wonderful. To be able to sit on a busy street, drinking coffee, and just watching people go by, streams and streams of people, a never ending tide of humanity, the product of generations before them, the apex of our collective histories walking past me in a pagent without the pomp, strolling down the street, walking slowly or fast, but always walking - moving towards something - or maybe even just moving. Reinforcing our mobility - believing that that makes us alive, present tense - that as long as we keep moving, we'll never grow old. The rush - the hum of life on these streets of lives I know nothing about, other than that there is so much about them I want to know - about their first kisses, about how often they cuss, and what they think about when they masturbate, about if they like to say racist slurs in their head because it gets them hot under that proverbial collar, and whether they just run water after they use the bathroom to make it sound like they washed their hands even though they did not just because they don't like to. I can sit there, or even here at this computer terminal in the school's library, and look at people and be amazed by how little I am - how no one here knows me - and that I could dissappear and no one would have even know that I was absent because I was never here in the first place. Or maybe realize that I was looking at the situation the wrong way, and realize how big I am - how big we all are - a teeming mass of bodies not exactly sure what they are doing, but knowing that it is something great they are involved with - that the cause is a good one.

Sometimes I feel like it is too hard to type - that my fingers are too tense and that the keys are too stiff - too unresponsive to what I want to say. I think maybe if I had a set of markers I could show how I feel. Not even a big set. Three or four would do. I could scribble some lines - some circles - maybe even connect the circles and the lines into some unified form - that this would do better for telling how I feel than trying to type something about myself, about you, about us in the heat of this library, with Bonnie sitting probably less than three feet away from me, and with these damn stiff keys that don't want to fucking dance with me tonight. They (the keys) simply are not ready for this jelly.

sure

malibu: the reason i slept until eleven

the fan that makes our room cool: another reason why i slept until eleven

my bunked bed that i never feel like getting out of because it is so damn high: yet another reason

the farmer's market: the thing i wanted to wake up early for, but which we still managed to get to, and which we bought some food from, but did not see any cows

cheese curds: perhaps my favorite part about living in wisconsin

other things of note: i feel like wisconsin so far has consisted of lots of missed opportunities, of thing missed and botched attempts at living. For some reason, missing an event is so sad to me, especially one you had wanted to go to. It is so frustrating because there's nothing you can do and the event can never be repeated, and who knows how wonderful it could have been. How it might have altered your life for the better. But, it didn't because you were lazy or did not plan well. And it's the feeling of a limp dick.

And last night we did go see Y Tu Mama like we had planned, and that was good. Better than good. Wonderful. And she said, "Life is the surf, so give yourself away like the sea." And I really will try to. No. Strike that. I will.

california

Twelve minutes until we are supposed to leave to walk home to go see Y Tu Mama, which shows at 9:20. We tried to go see it last night, but didn't know where the theater was and did not get there on time. Other things we have missed due to tardiness: a book reading last night by a gigolo, and a poetry reading tonight which started at 6:30. We thought that we would be able to get there on time because we left our house at 6:00, and assumed that it was only a ten-fifteen minute walk to campus, but found out that it was a 34 minute walk to the library, which is at the bottom of State Street. The book store was still further up State Street. When we finally got to it twenty mintues late, we decided just to skip it, rather than to walk in so late. We picked up job applications from Sedona, talked to the people at the vegetarian restaurant about jobs, and went to the porn store to check on our applications. Then we decided to eat at Noodles and Company since everytime we pass it, we always see cute, hip people sitting in the windows. The food was yummy and we sat in the windows so we could people watch. People that we wished we were friends with. People that we wished we were more than friends with.

Five mintues now until I am supposed to leave with Bonnie. And now it is three minutes - between Bonnie and And exists two minutes. Two whole minutes where I sat, stared at the computer screen, and thought about what I wanted to write, about if I even did, and about who, my friend, who wrote the book of love. About doo-wop singers with breakbeats and how weird time juxtaposed against another is. And yeah, I'll take you as you are, Joni, even though you've been with another man, because I have to. Sometimes things are just like that when you can't get the pickle jar open and there's no one else in the house to ask to help you, and you really want the fucking pickle, and curse machinary that makes it so hard to open a fucking jar of food - food that you should be eating - that you're digestive system should already be digesting by now. And you consider breaking the bottle against the countertop, but you don't and you know you won't, but you still consider it, as something you would like to if you weren't so scared of broken glass.

god loves ugly

Twelve minutes until we are supposed to leave to walk home to go see Y Tu Mama, which shows at 9:20. We tried to go see it last night, but didn't know where the theater was and did not get there on time. Other things we have missed due to tardiness: a book reading last night by a gigolo, and a poetry reading tonight which started at 6:30. We thought that we would be able to get there on time because we left our house at 6:00, and assumed that it was only a ten-fifteen minute walk to campus, but found out that it was a 34 minute walk to the library, which is at the bottom of State Street. The book store was still further up State Street. When we finally got to it twenty mintues late, we decided just to skip it, rather than to walk in so late. We picked up job applications from Sedona, talked to the people at the vegetarian restaurant about jobs, and went to the porn store to check on our applications. Then we decided to eat at Noodles and Company since everytime we pass it, we always see cute, hip people sitting in the windows. The food was yummy and we sat in the windows so we could people watch. People that we wished we were friends with. People that we wished we were more than friends with.

Five mintues now until I am supposed to leave with Bonnie. And now it is three minutes - between Bonnie and And exists two minutes. Two whole minutes where I sat, stared at the computer screen, and thought about what I wanted to write, about if I even did, and about who, my friend, who wrote the book of love. About doo-wop singers with breakbeats and how weird time juxtaposed against another is. And yeah, I'll take you as you are, Joni, even though you've been with another man, because I have to. Sometimes things are just like that when you can't get the pickle jar open and there's no one else in the house to ask to help you, and you really want the fucking pickle, and curse machinary that makes it so hard to open a fucking jar of food - food that you should be eating - that you're digestive system should already be digesting by now. And you consider breaking the bottle against the countertop, but you don't and you know you won't, but you still consider it, as something you would like to if you weren't so scared of broken glass.