Beauty in Hell

Tonight, something happened that I could have never expected. Imagined, sure. I can fucking imagine any goddamn thing. Expectation, however, is a far cry from imagination. I did not expect to go down to Hooper’s Bar where my wife works to pick her up and see not just her tipsy as hell—a rarity—but also the guy I call “Robert One” sitting at the other end of the bar. Before I go too far let me tell you something about “Robert One”. First, he’s about three years older than me and believe it or not I do respect my elders, which is why I am “Robert Two”. Second, he’s a Chicano, meaning a Mexican-American, and people of the Latino persuasion and I get along as well as cats and dogs. This guy though, he’s different. Much different. I like him. So when I went up to him and put my arm around him and said “Orale, carrum” (That’s O-RAH-LEY, CAR-RUM—roll the r) meaning “What’s up, my good friend?” he did not punch me in the face.

Don’t walk around saying that to just any Mexican. You will get your ass handed to you.

After talking and a few drinks, he asked me where I got my SECURITY shirt. “Bouncing,” I said. I used to do a bit of that and so I got a shirt. No biggie. He also asked me what size I was. “I don’t know,” I said. “One-XL.” He nodded. After awhile, he went back to his buddy, another Mexican of equal awesome personality, and I went back to my wife. We looked up shit on Facebook, a place I hate more than any goddamn sewer I’ve ever crawled through because I’m fairly certain more shit slides through Facebook than any sewer could possibly hold.

Okay. So there’s that. Skip to a few hours later. I get home, blown away by a gift I received tonight, and set myself to chill mode, trying to calm down from my happiness. I see this picture of my Grandfather Paul Ladwig holding me as a child, and as much as I try not to, I get back to thinking on that most warped, ruthless, horrible, fucking twisted period of my life that I’d give anything to stop goddamn dreaming about while everyone else goes on about their goddamn business not knowing what it’s like to have your own father try to kill you numerous times. I’m sure the day will come that I work up the courage to write about the vile things Robert Alfred Tannahill II did to me, but I balk mostly due to the fact that he did serve in the Marines and I respect Marines, not to mention that to speak ill of a veteran of any foreign war is absolutely verboten, even in the writing world.

Well, fuck that. So what if he was a Marine. I know he fought hard for our country but he was also a ruthless cocksucker that made many, many peoples’ lives—not just mine—hell. That aside, like I said, I look at this picture of me at about age six, this cute little blond haired, blue eyed boy full of magic and promise in the arms of his Grandfather, also a veteran of WWII and since deceased, and I wonder how I could have been so goddamn weak as to allow my pile of shit father and—oh yes, and—my misguided sister to murder that little boy. I do not know what my sister went through because her stories change. I never saw my father do anything to her but that means little. All I know is her stories change, mine don’t, my father murdered the sweet Straight-A student I used to be and my sister was more than happy to help. So blame, blame, blame, right? Oh shit, here goes this asshole, this writer, this fucking scumbag talking shit about his Marine father and his pedestal-deserving sister because they flicked him a few times.

Yeah. It was just that simple. A few flicks. No, April and I didn’t throw knives at each other for fun…wait a minute—yes we did! One time I shoved her gums into some kind of aluminum can, tuna fish maybe. One time she tried to put a cigarette out in my eye. One time she stabbed me in the back of the neck with a salad fork. And one time I kicked her in the guts so hard her intestines went from one side of her belly to the other and she almost died. I almost died too, if that makes you feel better. I bled a lot from that goddamn fork. A LOT. This being as it is I imagine my father may have very well done many of the things April accused him of, like child molestation. Fuck me. That’s hideous, isn’t it? He may very well have molested her and I know for a fact he beat and tortured me every single chance he had, he had a lot of cop buddies, and was a total psychopath…or sociopath. One just does shit and the other plots. So there you have your difference.

Is there anything linear about this? No. I don’t think so. But then, that’s why it is placed here instead of in the main blog, “Where Brains and Balls Go Fuck Each Other (I mean Collide! Dammit!)”

Ye fucking gods, April and I hurt each other just as much as that pile of goddamn human waste hurt us. That dirty, hateful, lunatic, punching, twisting, kicking, eye-gouging, nail-driving, torturing, sensory depriving fucking FUCKER! Yeah. He must have hurt my sister. He had to have.

Well, back to earlier—“Robert One” gave me his GWAR shirt. GWAR, as some of you may know if you care, is one of my favorite bands. I think he was more shocked by my reaction than I was by his gift. I almost fucking wept and I don’t goddamn do that. I’m not afraid to cry, but it takes a great deal. Instead, I ripped my shirt over my head being that he had complimented me on it earlier and gave it to him.

“Dude, why are you so surprised?” he asked.

“Because, brother, I ain’t used to this shit,” I said. “Folks don’t just give me stuff, ever.”

Does that happen to you folks? Do you come up on various unsuspected gifts? Maybe or maybe not. I know I’ve never had much money and my longest friend, John Bruni (once again, more shit a lot of you know) received a gift very similar from me once. The first year we knew each other I gave him my SCUMDOGS OF THE UNIVERSE (GWAR’s second record) CD for Christmas because I had nothing else to give and he bought me a few gifts.

Whatever. I was fucking blown away. People usually think of me as a complete bastard fuck because much of my father’s bullshit has rubbed off on my own attitude—I know my own family isn’t very thrilled with my existence, and so be it—but this guy who barely knows me gave me his GWAR shirt.

If there’s a point here it is never give in. Keep going, no matter what any cocksucker has done to you in the past or whatever cocksuckers think of you. Fuck haters—don’t bother to hate them back, shit, they may be doing you a favor. For all I know most of my readers are either haters or thieves though I hope I am wrong. No matter the case, never give in. A person you barely know just might give you one of the best gifts you’ve ever been gifted in your entire life.

Tonight, I’m not thinking about Rockford.

Tonight, I’m not thinking about April.

Tonight, I’m not thinking about my father.

Tonight I am only thankful for people like “Robert One”.

What the Hell Have I?

"It's hard to start things over...you can feel the fire around us all the time."
                                                                                              ---Layne Staley

Sick memories. No one to protect me. Locked in this box. There are nails driven through the wood, pricking my soft, nine-year old skin. I cannot get out because my father is sitting on it. He's reading something by James A. Michener. That's too bad. Michener is an acclaimed writer that in the future I may have been able to learn things from but at nine I hate the bastard, I hate every word because I have to listen to it while 240 pounds of sociopath sits on the lid. Trapping me. Dad. I have no idea what he is doing this for, what trespass I am guilty of...did I smart off? What did I do? I don't get it and I can't move. Moving, I am cut. Pricked. Like mosquito bites, the welts rise up. There is some blood. It takes him a very long time to finish. My concept of time is nothing. Fifteen minutes or an hour, all the same. There is only the pitch and the words read loudly in a high-whine southern accent.

Grown, I find it funny that my father had, or has, such a high-whine for a voice. I myself developed a pretty deep one, tenor-bass/baritone, depending on my mood. I do not find it funny that the above paragraph is true. All true. No lies there. No lies to follow. All true.

Another sick memory. He chases off my mother. I want so bad to be with Mom, she's so pretty and kind, not ugly and muscle-fat like Dad. I'm only a little boy but I'm still calling him a fucking fucker in my head, a goddamn piece of shit, a cunt, all words I learned from him but do not dare say out loud. Instead I watch from behind the picture window, from my prison, this glorified trailer, raised ranch, green-puke-painted house I hate with every aspect of my small, pudgy being. When he comes in and sees me watching and crying as my mother's Toyota pulls out of the driveway, he laughs, a "WELL-UH-HYEH-HYEH-HYEH!" that I hate then and hate to this day, that fucking laugh, and goddammit I wonder if he's dead and I want to reach into his throat and rip his vocal chords out while mocking him with "WELL-UH-HYEH-HYEH-HYEH!" He disappears into the basement to fuck Kim, our pretty 20-something babysitter.

Our. Mine and April's. What does April say?

"You don't love Mom anyway. Stop crying, wimp."

So I punch her in her disgusting little Miss Piggy fucking face. She wails even though with my pudgy Q-Tip fist the pain is not that bad and she will laugh about it later, and Dad comes running upstairs and drags me to my room and yanks my jeans down and whips me with his belt buckle until blood runs down my legs like warm milk. Finished, he tells me it is wrong to hit girls even though I've seen him do it, and I understand the word hypocrite, so I call him one, and he punches me in the face. I lie on the bed, too stunned to cry. Miss Piggy saunters past my room and giggles. "Stupid," she says. She sticks her tongue out at me.

One day, I think, I'll cut it off. I'll cut that goddamn tongue right out of her head and slap her in the face with it, but I know I won't. My heart tells me that I love her too much, that she, as ugly and horrible and responsible for many of my beatings at Dad's hands she is, I emulate her because she's the one with all the friends, fat or not, and all I do is get picked on and bullied and beat up by the stupid kids at school, like Scott Buttikoffer. One day maybe I'll slit his throat.

But I won't because then I'd go to jail forever and ever and ever. The horror movies I love are fake. In real life all the killers get caught and go to jail. I wish I was Freddy. Or Jason. I could chop all these pieces of shit into little, tiny pieces and laugh without consequence. Instead of doing it I write it down. I am just a little boy. Barely ten. And I realize that I've got something. I can put words together and my grades are all A's. A pluses, even. That's why I get beat up a lot, because I raise my hand in class too much. Maybe I should stop. But here, alone in my green bedroom with the poster, velvet, decorated with a poorly drawn red goat-looking animal and reading "NO GNUS IS GOOD GNUS", and my dinosaur books and my Jack London books I realize I'm smarter than all these morons and I have something. I have already read Shakespeare and most of my fifth grade class doesn't even know who he was, but I do, or at least I think I do because when I'm older I'll know Shakespeare was nothing but an amalgum at best and a plaigarist at worst and he more than likely did not write "The pen is mightier than the sword." Just like he didn't write the truth about women--a Roman poet did.

Of course at nine, this doesn't matter. All that matters is writing about how I want to kill my father and my sister. When I run out of words I stab the notebook until the pen breaks and bleeds ink all over the page. Carefully, I toss it into the small wastebasket in my room because I can't get ink on the desk or Dad will beat me some more and Miss Piggy will laugh. I am smart, I toss the pen out without making any noticeable mess. I read the pages. Dad and Miss Piggy are dead.

And it kicks ass. I've got something here. And 26 years later I cannot bring myself to read Michener; I never will. Who cares. I have this. It is mine.

Europium

It's a rare metal extracted from the depths of the earth. Also, it is a play on words. Can you figure it out? Doesn't matter. I've hit the wall as the exercise buffs say, following the words of Colin Wilson: "The Outsider's salvation lie within extremes." Or something like that. I know I posted that elsewhere but so what. What's the difference?

I think I indulged myself enough in the introduction. I think it is pretentious of me to think that because this whole thing is self-indulgent. But in the end I think it's going to save me a lot of time. Writers, upon finding even mid-level success, are constantly attacked by slobbering fans--necessary as they are, beloved as they are--asking questions about where they get their ideas, maybe how they grew up, stuff like that. These people are curious. They read our works under the auspices that we either somehow know more than they do, have seen more than they have, and can snap our fingers and automatically be adorned with wealth. None of this is true. A lot of writers have their own answers to the two main questions: "Why do you write?" and "Where do your ideas come from?" I know some of those answers because I read a great deal. My answers are often not different from theirs. They are "Because I have to," and "I don't know." That last answer needs a re-write.

"I don't care." Without ideas I have nothing. If there's a pile in space I cannot find it. My ideas hit me like punches to the face. I'm used to being punched in the face. I've been taking them all my life and really do not expect the blows to stop any time soon. Each one makes me feel more like one of the Fallen than one of the Saved. Writing itself is a glorious, exciting thing but doing it and trying to make a living from it is a fucking punch line waiting to happen. And I accept that.

Those around me do not. Everywhere I go in the Obamanomy I am asked "where do you work? What do you do for a living?"

"I'm a writer."

"No, but where do you work?" It's almost as if they know. Well, of course they know. They know I am broke because they can see me. They can see my old clothes and ruined face. They follow up with "You got a job?"

I know what they mean. Do I have a square job, the kind with a steady paycheck and insurance and all that shit that society deems important. No. I don't. Not these days. And I have absolutely zero ambition to get one. Why? Well, first, let me tell you how I answer.

"I just told you. I'm a writer. I write. I submit. If accepted, I get paid (holding back the word "sometimes") and then I write some more." Usually the conversation ends there. I might get a "Lucky You" or a scoff, and more often it is the scoff. Hoi-polloi don't understand why I have to write. They don't understand how a person can be willing to sacrifice respect and social standing and the green folding God in order to persue a dream that ends up in failure and suicide more often than not. I refuse to bother trying to make them get it. I tried to when I was young and stupid, before I realized how pointless it is to ask another human being with a fixed thought process to empathize with a "loser" like me.

It's like gambling. A writer can publish a story and make more dough from that than a factory worker makes in two weeks. Or the writer makes nothing and is fucked. A writer can publish a best-seller and make enough money to never have to lift another fucking finger. And let's not even get started on movie rights. Or a writer drinks themselves to death or overdoses on drugs of choice. Also, the answer can be all of the above.

Should I blame my father and my sister for driving me from studious young boy into occasional maniac? I could. I don't. All they did, really, was pat me on my ass and send me on down the road. I chose to walk it. I own my Hell. I rule it. Those phony smiley glad-handers and jackass-y self-help scribblers are dingbats that make me puke and they rule the workplace. Being egregious by nature, I will never fit in. I never have. I fit in nowhere. I have been told before that I cannot be placed on the right or the left. I agree. Why?

Because I think for myself. Genuinely. Not just by farcical claims, but in action and deed. Authority bothers me. I know when to shut up but being bossed around grates my soul. My soul, not just my nerves. My very essence bristles at being told "Rob do this, Rob do that, Rob...don't do that." I've had plenty of "jobs". All junk. Cleaning gutters, fixing sewers, lifting crates, answering phones, flipping burgers, escorting wannabe toughs out of bars, collecting money for certain people who gather green via means of ill-repute and other unmentionable things. The sad thing is anything that does not require me to punch a fucking clock, I can do with a grin. If I have to clock-in, wash my hands, paste on a smile, repeat the spiel, say thank-you-sir-ma'am-have-a-nice-day or wear some fucking frock that reads "How May I Help YOU?" I want to kill myself and everyone around me, I want to make a fucking molotov cocktail or twenty and just start blowing shit up but I don't because I know that would be wrong. These days it would be terrorism. Well, I'm not a terrorist, I'm just a writer.

Everything else is a waste of time. One day I will die. I will die with memories of having a nail driven through my hand by a dickhead father for getting an F in math. Of sleeping on stone. Of being taunted by a sister who was-and is-jealous of the things I can do, who did not mind siccing her boyfriends on me or even stabbing me in the back of the neck with a salad fork. But don't worry--I rearranged her intestinal track for that offense. She's not a woman to me, and never will be. She's just a fucking cunt. She the female version of my father. They act and talk alike and still talk to one another and they are both pathological liars and megalomaniacs as evidenced by the fact that they think everyone is a liar and I will die knowing these things and I do not care as long as I can one day give my wife a nice life. It doesn't have to be ostentatious, just nice. When I die I'll be taking nothing with me and neither will anyone else. Tell me how important your Escolade is now.

I will never, regardless of my thinking patterns, therapy, drugs, booze, and other shit that doesn't work like OOH-SAH and Yoga, be able to stand punching a clock and listening to some task-oriented cocksucker breathe down my neck because they're afraid I might fuck something up. This is even worse when sid cocksucker is ten years younger than me and thinks he's some sort of Don Mega because he makes four dollars more an hour and has a credit card. Those pieces of plastic are nothing but knives in disguise waiting to slit your wallet wide, and, failing that, making sure that J.P. Fatback with his platoon of monster-cocked whargouls bend you over and sodomize you until your spine pops out of your throat. The kissing-ass-climb-the-ladder-materialism game has proven itself, to me, to be nothing but a glamour. A mirage. A way to keep the trees blocking the forest. Well, fuck that. I'd rather wear a sandwich board and shout "THE END IS NIGH!"

Shit, if you read the news these days, maybe that isn't such a bad idea.

See? See this horrifying wrong-thinking? Parents, love your children. Nurture them. Praise them and direct them towards sports. Otherwise they might grow up to be artists and go mad from failure. Maybe killing animals and starting fires. Hammering bones into dust and twirling about the backyard to cover up the evidence. Yeah, don't kick the shit out of them.

But if you do at least explain yourself. Don't say something stupid like my father did the day he knocked me out at the fully-grown-ready-to-handle-a-marine's fist age of 12.

"Because it's Tuesday!"

Well. I certainly couldn't expect better from the man who gave me my first memory, that of my mother screaming while he held a knife to her throat and cursed while April and I hid under the table. I was 3.   

Introduction From Hell

Fuck me. I'm really going to do this. I have to, but not because it will help anything. I don't expect the hatred and rage and anger inside of me to magically go away just because I admit to the world that I've been beaten, stabbed, locked away, starved, raped, homeless, among other things. Or that these things have made me one mean motherfucker. And I am exactly that. I am a mean motherfucker and I will attack. I'm a fucking pit-bull. You think I got jokes? Let's have a sit down and a smile one day. Insult me. Take my three warnings. Go beyond and see if you don't end up spitting foamy blood. You wouldn't be the first. Am I scaring you off? Maybe I ought to. Maybe you shouldn't read this. I'd hate to destroy your cozy world view. Once again, fuck me. I'm really doing this. And for free, no less. How fucked up is that? What idiot would spill his viscera without getting paid to do it?

This idiot. This crude moron. This complete and total bastard, born in Rockford, IL, at Swedish American Hospital on August 8th, 1977. This violent, drug-addled lunatic, somehow married and mostly sober now, 36 years old and terrified that nothing will ever change. Twenty-two years of playing guitar for people didn't change things, and not because I sucked, unless everyone was lying because they were frightened (which I doubt very highly). Trying to break into the movie business with that traitorous cunt Chuck Breuckmann did not do it, although to listen to him Sid Haig liked my movie--and it was mine because Chuck was more interested in Susan Borowitz's tits and eating her out than he was in turning my script into celluloid reality before running off to who knows where--and thus far writing has not done it. My few credits have amounted to small change.

Marriage hasn't done it, although my wife is the most beautiful person on earth, to me. She is the antithesis of me. I don't know how I found her. God? I don't know. As far as I'm concerned God is nothing but a comic in the sky with such a love of war I cannot deny His make in the image of man.

Shit. I know I've fucked my karma regardless of the people who drove me from being a cute straight A student into a whirling dervish of fists and boots and absolute fury--I'm not sure there's a word for the amount of hatred living inside this body. I struggle against not becoming a serial killer, and I have thought hard about it and studied much on the subject. I would not be one of those Ted Bundy pricks because I refuse to lay hands on women, or an Ed Gein because I have no impulse to wear skin, or a Dahmer since I am not interested in the taste of human flesh or homosexual and I really do not give a half a tin-pin shit whether people leave me or not. People, as far as I'm concerned, can either piss off and leave me alone or stick around and enjoy the ride.

This account is not going to be fun, pretty, or even linear. I'm writing it for free not just due to idiotic hubris or something like that, I'm doing it for free because I fucking feel like it and that's it.

However convoluted my logic or behavior is, I am fully capable of thanks. Therefore, I will get those out of the way. John Bruni, for being my teacher, betrayor, mentor, and most cherished friend. Jessica Tannahill-Walker, for marrying me and putting up with my evident psychosis and stopping me from actually killing someone. Dianne McGlothlin, for birthing me even though I did not want to be born; I spent an extra month in the womb because it was cozy and safe, and for her faith in me despite my many trips to jail and court for drugs and violence and unsavory behavior. To my father who tortured me and helped me down my path to fearlessness, and to my sister for thinking everything I have ever done has been nothing but a complete joke. To my lovely niece and nephew, both of whom I cannot believe came from my sister's womb because Cheyenne is brilliant and fastiduous where April is lazy and pitiful and basically a complete waste of human flesh and Shane who is bright eyed and rambunctious and just a whole lot of fun, especially when I can get him to say things like "Pee!" Finally, to my inspirations--Poe, Layne Staley, Lovecraft, Nick Cave, Stephen King, Faulkner, Jack Ketchum, and last but not least, Brian Keene. If not for the first few pages of "Girl on the Glider" I don't think I'd be sitting here at damn near four in the morning cutting my innards out via type. And also, to April Telek who reminded me of my wickedness.

Bitch, I needed that. I wish you well and hope you become the most famous plastic sexless whore this country has ever seen.

Finally, to God, who I cannot wait to wrestle. I intend to make Jacob look like a punk. And now I hear laughter, far off yet so close. Or maybe it is only my heartbeat.

Well. Enough introduction. Let's get on with our little peek into Hell, shall we? I assure you--this is one demon who will deliver. Trust me or piss off. I have nothing to lose and hence, everything to gain.