Slouching into Oblivion

Warning: I write this from a male vantage point, but hasten to add that it applies to women also. Indeed, their dating hurdles are even higher which I explain at the conclusion of this missive. If adult language and situations offend you, close this page now while you are still pure. The dating carousel these days usually begins on Tinder, Plenty of Fish, Bumble, or another of the myriad of apps famous for facilitating casual hookups, places to turn when you are horny but don’t feel overly selective. The owner, Match.com, has worked hard to transform its image from a place to find someone to fuck into a sleaze-free meeting place of good and decent girls and boys just looking to go to coffee together. My guess is the change came about when women stopped signing up after getting tired of dick photos and their “dates” trying to feel them up at Starbucks in broad daylight. Too harsh? Perhaps. You can meet all kinds of women on Tinder, and you will know which kind before you eve

(WARNING: ADULT LANGUAGE AND SITUATIONS) I never dated much. My first wife was my junior high school sweetheart. We were married 20 years. My second wife was an affair. We held it together with glue and rubber bands for 25. Not much time to squeeze in many dates. But after my second divorce, I made up for lost time. And it is from painful experiences that I discovered women to avoid no matter how good they look and smell, to include the crazies, druggies, drunks, dangerous, and gold diggers. Who, specifically, am I warning you away from? Here we go. Strippers. Hookers (who want to change their lives, of course.) Women who have stage names, self-conferred doctorate degrees, tattoos above their vaginas that say “Boner Garage” or “5 Cent Rides,” and those who use vibrators that plug into the dryer socket. Women who carry fake passports, or say matter-of-factly, “I sleep with this pistol under my pillow because I have a couple of ex-boyfriends who think I owe them money,” or duri

In the first row of the bus Always the first row My girl likes to see Something No idea what Or why All I see is truck after truck Schlepping shit up a dirty highway North to the land of unending want Spewing fumes into an already polluted landscape Empty pallets going somewhere Factories making who the fuck knows or cares Half finished houses No windows Just openings with childrens’ faces Staring into space Not knowing but sensing Something is very wrong with this picture Men standing next to their cars, Old and new Dicks out of their pants Peeing on the side of the road Because peeing into a toilet is six pesos these days Just victims of inflation I don’t know what the women do I never see them squatting next to a truck Blank billboards stand lonely on dry grass hills With just telephone numbers For someone, anyone, who wants to sell anything To anybody At anytime Cheap advertising Ineffective but cheap Cheap but ineffective You get what you

I am in the hospital waiting room. My girlfriend is here for a routine mammogram. There is a couple who just came in. Late 30’s, I guess. They are familiar with this place. I notice they embrace after they sit down. Holding each other too long for casual affection. They are speaking softly. Whispering. And both are weeping silently. Each stares into the others’ eyes. I can’t tell which of them is sick. Helpless.  I feel helpless.  Because I am. Whatever is wrong I can’t fix it. Neither can they. And I wipe away my own tears as I watch the beginning of an end. Helpless. I will never forget the looks in their eyes. Sadness, but not just about the illness, whatever it is. It is more a regret that they had not held each other, really seen each other, more often before now. Before this. When they arrived I was planning the rest of my week and pondering the future of a life turned upside down. Now I am here. Present. There is no future. There is only now. The mammog

I drink when I write not because I believe it makes the writing better. It just makes it happen. And it makes it true. Shooting reality through the whiskey-prism releases inhibitions, self-consciousness, and the reluctance to call a spade a spade. After a couple of gin and tonics, I stop giving a fuck what other people think and focus on what I think, unfiltered. When I wrote a weekly newspaper column in the late-90’s, I met other writers and found most of them were quiet and reserved, so much so they needed a release, something that allowed who they were down inside, somewhere, to have a voice. I would see them in hotel bars, almost always alone and staring straight ahead. Sometimes sitting next to another suffering soul but saying nothing. But when they did say something, it was usually to share their disappointment, sometimes contempt, for the human race, not in an animated or mean-spirited way, but just as a matter of fact. Writers and others who rely on their imaginati

2021. Another end. 2022. Another beginning. More resolutions and promises. Another pack of lies we tell ourselves and others that amount to this: this year will be better IF I change myself. Richer. Thinner. Prettier. Smarter. More productive, desirable, lovable. Better job, house, location. The list goes on. And it is all 100% low grade bullshit. Science has gotten a bad name since the moron-a-thon labeled life-saving vaccines a plot to steal the freedom they never had, but that same science tells us this about happiness: most of it is determined at birth. It is genetic. No different than how tall you are. It is how tall you were destined to be. And all the self-help and smiley-face books and YouTube and Tik Tok babbling doesn’t change a thing. You are congenitally happy or you are not. If you are, wonderful. Keep sleeping. And if you are not, it may be because you have been given the intelligence to see life for what it is: a mostly meaningless experience to which w