Veronica

It wasn’t love.  I sort of knew that from the start.

I met her first while bartending at Disco Vegas.  She was a fan of dirty martinis.  I had seen her before.  When I was bouncing at DangerBar!.  She came in with a group of girls.  And all of them were gorgeous.  I mean, they were the type that even a guy like me is a little afraid of approaching.  I guess there were probably a few looks, a few smiles between us.  But nothing special.  She would come in with her friends and sometimes she would leave with one guy or another.  And sometimes she wouldn’t.  That’s what we all did.  That’s why people came to DangerBar!.  

When Yoshikawa decided that his first little underground venture was doing well enough that he could afford to open a second he asked me to come along.  So I moved on up.  And I got my own three feet of felt covered absurdity that could only be called a bar in a nightclub in Roppongi.  Disco Vegas, baby.  Why the fuck not?

And so Veronica started coming to Disco Vegas with her friends.  It was better than DangerBar! because it was newer.  And kitschier.  And she was of the sort that followed those kinds of trends.  Mostly because she could.  She was just that type of girl.

So after a while of her coming in and ordering martinis, we got to talking, she got to staying later and later, and eventually we got to going home together.  Her place.  It was much nicer than mine.  Even as a bartender in a reasonably trendy nightspot, I was hard pressed to find decent and affordable accommodations in Tokyo.  Her place it seems was a gift from one of her wealthy benefactors.  It seems that old maxim still rings true: if you are hot, blonde, and willing to take your clothes off, you’ll probably do ok.

Veronica was Australian.  Like me she had studied Japanese in high school and like me, when she found that she didn’t really want to do anything after college, she had come to Tokyo.  Sure all the fast money of the late 80s was nothing but myth and legend now, but somehow it seemed like we were doing better because we were so far away from home.  She had come to Japan as a model.  She had done a few magazine spots or whatever.  Maybe a billboard or two.  I didn’t really listen.  But ultimately it hadn’t worked out.  And so she did what any reasonable girl in her position would do: danced naked for old leering men.  It’s not like she could go home.  There was even less for her there.  Sometimes you just can’t go home.  I knew I couldn’t.  Something was missing.  And I just wasn’t ready.

And so we sort of started dating.  Really what it was is that I got to see her during the day.  And that was great.  She was great.  And we were pretty fucking good together.  Things just worked out.  And we always had fun.  There were a few fights here and there.  Sometimes I had to go back to my place at the end of the night instead of staying at hers.  But mostly we didn’t take anything much too seriously.  We just had fun together.  And we left it at that.

Then it was August.  I had been in Japan for 2 years of my young life.  And I had been dating Veronica for the last 8 months of them.  She was starting to get restless.  Her eyes were wandering more and more often.  There were more nights than usual that she went “out with her friends.”  It’s not that I was being possessive.  She was just moving on.  And I suppose it was about time I did some moving of my own.

I finally cashed in my return flight.  Things had been stagnant for far too long.  Making the same damn stupid drinks for the same dumb fuck stoned bastards night after night just wasn’t doing it anymore.  And now with Veronica starting to get that old familiar itch, things were exactly stable on the home front.

I didn’t tell her anything for the next 2 weeks.  I just didn’t know how to bring it up.  And I was secretly sure that if I told her she would try to make me stay.  Not so much because she really wanted me to, but just because that’s what you do when your significant other tells you he’s flying back to America in a few days.  I knew that if she asked me to stay I would.  And then I would die here.  Slowly.  Long after she had moved on to some other guy on a faster track to wealth, fame, or power, I would still be slinging booze for Yoshikawa at one his “hip night spot for upscale youths.”   I couldn’t do that to myself.

The last time I saw her was at the train station.  She was going back to her place.  And in a rare move I was going back to mine.  I had packed up yesterday.  Still unable to tell her anything.  We had our last kiss.  Nearly as passionate as our first.  I was this close to going back to my place and unpacking, saying to hell with it all and staying.  Just for her.  Just for that.  Just for one more.  I watched her get onto her train.  She waved as it pulled away.  I waved back.  It was raining.  I just stood there on the empty platform staring at nothing for a long time.  When I finally came out of my trance and looked at my watch I realized that I had missed my own train.  I had to wait 40 minutes for the next connection.

And then I just left.  I would like to think of it in terms of the Lone Ranger riding off into the sunset.  But that wasn’t it.  Maybe it was closer to chasing Bob Lind’s elusive butterfly.  Or maybe I was just cutting and running.  Leaving her before she left me.   whatever it was, I didn’t want to go into it.  So I left.  I couldn’t say goodbye.  I didn’t know how.

While I was in the airport, right up until take off, I kept thinking about how many times she would try calling.  About what she would do when she finally went round that little shit box apartment I had called home for far too fucking long and found it emptier than usual.  About how long it would take her to find someone new.  And if she would miss me at all.  But once the cabin doors closed and the plane started to taxi, I realized that I didn’t care.  

As we were taking off I thought about Amy for the first time in a long time.  I wondered if she still felt the same was as she did when I left.  I guess it was about time I called her.

edits, ramblings, and asides. the time of ascension is nigh.

The cow says, “moo.”
The pig says, “oink.”
The cat says, “go fuck yourself.”

Bitter dark my soul.  The breaking point is coming.  And it isn’t just me.  but I will only speak for myself.  So even as I get better and better and hide it more and more, know this: the breaking point is coming.  And that right soon.

Man in the Dark Suit: You are in a locked room.  There are only two ways out.  Suicide… Or the door.  Which is locked.  What do you do?

I finally come to realize that there is so much missing from my life.  And that is the shit that makes it all so damn unsatisfying.  I mean fuck, I don’t do anything.  I don’t … whatever.  It doesn’t much matter.  The point is there needs to be a change.  And getting a different job isn’t going to be it.  Or enough of it.  I need a wingman.  I need drinking buddies.  I need a way to not only get away from it all.  I need a way to get away from myself as well.  And right now I am never really able to get away from myself.  And I am slowly driving myself insane.  And the only way I could get away from myself right now would be to put more time into my job, which I don’t really like.  So I either get away from my job by retreating into myself or away from myself by retreating into my job.  Neither is all too appetizing of an experience.  Shit needs to change.  The Prophet needs a following.

Some changes need to be made outside myself so that the changes made inside can become truly manifest.

***

a rhymey one

Stolen from so many places so many times
So many words and none of them mine
I do as I do, but when the doing is done
There is never anything new
Under the sun

***

Retreat into my familiar escapes.  The bottle, the drunken crowd, the page.  So long as it is familiar I have nothing to fear.  The same old lies tell the same old story.  Nothing is changed.  Nothing is lost.  Nothing is gained.  Perhaps I do not hate the status quo as much as I so loudly claim.  Perhaps it is just part of that old time bullshit going ever onward.  Perhaps.

Scotty doesn’t know.  Neither does anyone else.  So be it.  So it goes.

If it doesn’t change anything, and it doesn’t make a difference, why do I feel such a compulsion to do it?  why indeed.  No reason to stop.  I guess I’ll go on.

Sugarhigh.

Silently, silently he walks with the night.  There is something about him now.  Something that wasn’t there before.  Something older.  Something hidden.  Something dangerous.  He doesn’t know it yet.  He is too green to be able to smell the change on the wind.  But it is coming.  It is coming.

Billy Prophet: Who am I?
Turtle: You are becoming.  And for now, that is enough.  Sleep.

of course we were young once. but does that mean anything now?

A man needs time to drink.  To think.  To write.  So as to be himself.  Or who he was meant to be.  I haven’t had that.  So most of my thoughts have been scrambled.  Or pieced together in dreams.  And most of my writing has been piecemeal.  And still waiting for editing before it is presentable.  As to the rest, I haven’t really been myself for a long time.  I haven’t had enough booze and I haven’t had enough people and I haven’t had a fucking wingman.  Ah yes, the memories.  Back. in the. day.  There was a time once.  There was.  I remember it now, fondly.  But I will not speak of it now.

Regardless.  I am more of myself when I am drinking.  And fuck all the bastards who say drinking is bad for you.  I doubt many of them have amounted to shit.  They can all go fuck themselves on the goddamn Washington monument.  Bastards.  I mean, fuck damn, everyone knows that only the good die young.  So don’t moralize to me about how I am headed for an early grave what with the drinking and the rest of it.  I am too young to give a shit and too old to listen to bad advice.  Or whatever.  (Take another sip of the martini.  It will make the bad man go away.)

This is all I’ve got until I can get into my notebook and other pages and do some edits.  Smile.  Be pleased.  Touch yourself inappropriately.  Take another drink.  Go back to bed.  Sleep through something important.  Without a care in the world.

Ah yes.  That.  I remember it fondly.

Queensryche don't believe in love. the Prophet don't believe in actually editing this post. There's nothing as can be done.

Ah.  To begin again.  Part of the same old story and yet, something new.  All over and over and over again.  Lies I tell myself.  Or something yet and whatever.  Give up.  Fuck it.  Fucked.  Go on.

I am not drunk.  I wish I were.  It would be a release.  Though I am doing alright now.  I am more on top of things.  Other people make me realize that I am miserable.  When I am alone, my thoughts lost themselves.  I remain oblivious.  I can’t tell whether I like that or not.  I would suppose I would rather know that I am miserable that be ignorant of the fact.  Am I really miserable if I don’t realize it?  That would depend.  So, yes and no.  I am not miserable in that I feel fine.  I am miserable in that I am not achieving the things that would “truly” make me happy.  So there you go.  But where do I go from here?  A question for somebody else.

I just wanna see.

I am on the cusp of something.  Of something great grand glorious and magnificent.  And yet.  And yet I do not know (nor will I ever fully know until it has come to pass, or maybe later) what the fuck is going on.  Or if anything truly will happen.  Fuck.  Worse things have come along in my day.  Worse things indeed.

Mother Mary whispers words of wisdom: “let it be.”  I get drunk and stop caring.

I am more comfortable with the disconsolate, the irritable, the irrational, the depressed, the repressed, those looking for one or any mother fucking way out of this bullshit cage we all fucking happily call life or some shit.  I hate happy people.  Especially happy couples.  I hate people who are unhappy about bullshit things.  I hate people in general.  There is always something better.  And I cannot respect anyone that isn’t looking for it.  I don’t believe in contentment.  At least not in the fucking now.  it is a far and far away type thing.  Contentment only exists on white sandy beaches and secluded mansions.  Contentment isn’t something normal people have.  And if they do, what the fuck is wrong with them?  Don’t they have any hope, ambition, sense of timing?  Life is.  And it goes on.  But fuck it.  And whatever.  There was something more, much more, written into the story for me.  And I have yet to cash in.  So maybe, just maybe, I had better wait a bit … that is losing the train.  The point is that I hate most people.  Most people are pathetic sad sack bastards.  And I only like the outcasts, the outsiders, and those against the flow.  Their rebellion, like mine, despite how pointless it will eventually become, is there, and from time to time it is even heartfelt.  So there you go.  You can’t get much better than that without actually paying the hooker.

Well good god, y’all, I went and mother fucking did it again. 3 cheers for me.  3 cheers for Tanqueray.  

You already said, ‘Spite.’

The world needs to be cleansed.

There is me, that is, Isaac.  And there is the rest of them.  Yes, the rest of them.  But mostly there is just me, that is, Isaac.

It’s not that I don’t put much stock in love and friendship and family and all of that (the ties that bind, as it were).  It’s not that.  I put incredible stock behind the ties that bind.  I know them.  I know their power.  But they hold little sway over me.  It seems I either will accept no ties or the ties simply will not hold.  In the end, it is the same as the beginning, the same as it always was: me. on my own. against the world.

The world could use more innocence; it has lost so much; silence.  It won’t come from me.  I have lost mine.  I am nothing more than a corrupt and desiccated shell of a man.  With a spirit of madness brooding within my soul.  But at least I can mourn its passing.  At least I can do that.

Turtle hesitated as he opened the aged wooded case.  “They were your grandfather’s.  He too crossed over.  He too was a Prophet of the Blades.  I suppose they belong to you now.”  They were heavy bladed daggers, twins.  The hilts were modified to include what seemed to be a form of brass knuckles.  The most remarkable aspect of the blades, however, was their inky black hue.  It was as if they drank in the light.  And the contrast between them and the blood red velvet lining was stark and forbidding.  These were no hunting knives.  These blades thirsted for the blood of men.  Turtle looked upon them with a reverence that Billy had never seen in him.  He knew what the blades meant; he had seen them do their ghastly duty.  He knew what bringing them back into service would mean.  “They are Dai Shari dueling blades.  The most prized weapon of the Pits.  Only the best fighters would be granted the honor of using them.  And then only after their 100th kill.”  Billy gingerly picked one up.  He held it for a moment, then reconsidered.  Somehow he knew, felt, that they were meant to be held blade down.  “As you might have already guessed by the design of the hilt and guard, they were used as much for punching as anything else.”  Billy picked up the second blade.  He hefted the two of them together adopting a modified pugilist stance.  Haymakers would bring the blade around.  Straight punches would break a man’s face on the guard.  This was indeed a fearsome weapon for close combat.  “I will kill with these.”  It was not a question.

“anyone lived in a pretty how town.”
- Edward Estlin

“Riddle me this.  Riddle me that.  Who’s afraid of a big black bat?”
- Edward Nigma

Death to all Pigeons.  Them and theirs will never be welcome in the House of the Gods.  They shall never walk the perfumed paths of the Nameless Ones.  They shall be cursed to the Thousand Deaths of Hadran’s Fires.  Cry sweet relief.  But I shall give you none.  The Prophet has Spoken.  Thus it is written.  Thus shall it be so.

Death comes to us all.  So it is not how well we avoid Him that matters.  But rather, how well we may accept His passing.  And to live in accordance.

Sometimes we all have to deal at the Crossroads.  The time simply comes and we do as we must.

It’s the small things.  Small things, true, but they leave their mark.  They steal your soul.  A little piece at a time.  And slowly, slowly, they kill you.  And I just can’t take it any longer.  To quote the Queen, “I want to break free.  Oh how I’ve got to break free.”

To face the dawn with blades drawn and teeth bared.  It is the way of my ancestors; and all those of my calling.  Back to the beginning.

I cannot understand how a man can develop such obvious adoration for such a faceless, soulless corporation.  Ah yes, the mission statement to “do good things” and “make the world a better place” uttered in true pageant queen sincerity.  But fuck, seriously?

It is a deep aching need in the soul, in the indefinable place in the middle of your chest.  It cannot be censored.  It cannot be held back.  And it is all I can not to let it loose on all of those fuckwit bastards who assail me each and every day at work.  fuck them and all of their petty bullshit; all those lies and fantasies they use to string their numb soulless lives together.  Fuck them and fuck the powers that be.  Fuck the powers that prevent me from giving those bastards each and every thing they deserve.  

The world needs to be cleansed.

Take the physical challenge!

Give me what I need.  I need it to hurt so good.

There is no worse insult than ‘boring.’  Except maybe ‘uninteresting.’  Which is similar, but slightly different in connotation.

If I tell 2 friends about the Prophet, and they each tell 2 friends, and they each tell 2 friends then in no time the world will be clamoring for more Billy Mother Fucking Prophet.  So tell your goddamn 2 friends already.

UnEnlightenment.  A path for the drunkard, genius, and fool.  The rest of you can fuck off.

I need directions down to Desolation Row.  Do you happen to have them?  Do you have any fucking idea of what I am talking about?

I am trying to do so much.  I am trying to write a fucking masterpiece.  An epic.  I don’t want this to be just another shit book.  I don’t want this to be a book that a few fuckers read and after they finish, look back and say, “yeah, it was alright.”  Fuck alright.  Fuck that shit.  I want my shit to be mother fucking amazing.  I want this to be the fucking book to fucking read.  The book to read.  And you would be a square or a dipshit or just a colossal waste of fucking space not to.  To be honest, in case you don’t know, that isn’t exactly an easy feat to accomplish.  Just to clarify.

The night.  The glory and comfort of it.  There is peace in the night.  Nothing is happening.  You can feel free to do whatever you want because no one is fucking looking.  Not that I am being watched all day long.  But it’s a feeling.  Night has it.  The day does not.  There is a release that the darkness allows.  A freedom of the shadow.  And it lets my mind/my soul/my what-the-fuck-ever out of its cage.  It lets me be who I am, who I was meant to be, who I need to be.  I am never more myself that when I am sitting at my computer writing all night long.  That is the essence of my character.  That is me.  Everything else is a series of masks and lies and layers and shit and fuck who knows what else.  But when I am alone, with booze, in the night, at my computer listening to music and just fucking writing, I am free.  I am me.  This is me.  This is who I fucking am.  Huh.?.  I guess I finally figured it out.  Took me long enough.

Sonnet 91 (it’s by Shakespeare and shit).

The Prophet is as the Prophet does.  Just you mother fucking wait and see.

Please give you opinion on how your life relates to the lives of your peers.  For every question answer from 1 to 5 depending on the degree to which you agree with each statement. 1. Fuck no!  2. Not really.  3. Eh.  4. Word.  5. Hell yeah, mother fucker.

Turtle: From your look, seems as yous gots it the sames as us: yous gots Poor whos can’ts affords to think and yous gots Rich whos cans affords not to.  Life’s funny that way.  That’s why, from times to times, the gods will brings out a champions to come on downs this a ways and takes a look around and marvel at the absurdities (and the stupidities) of it alls.  Now hows about we go gets ourselves good and fucking drunk?

Workers of the world unite.  You have nothing to lose but your chains.  And your jobs.  

***

I suppose

I suppose there are
certain things that you realize
while drunk
     and alone
that you wouldn’t understand
               otherwise.
But I am pretty sure
     that I still
          get drunk
to get away from it all
     and forget how shitty
          my life really is.
Fucked, huh?
Or perhaps it is just more of the goddamn same.

***

the Prophet has decided to come up with a 10 year plan to end world hunger, all disease, and boredom.  Step 1: get drunk.  Step 2: give up.

Drink up, bitch.  Shit don’t change but nothing.

1. Why should I care?


2. How should I pretend that I really do care?


3. Does it really fucking matter?


4. When’s lunch?


5. Let’s go get drunk.


6. I quit.

“Accusing gentle Bender of a misdeed?  Impossible.”
- The Professor