Tuesday, February 27, 2007

You just haven't earned it yet. pt. 2

"Beep. Beep. Beeeeep. Beeeeeeeeeeep! BEEEEEEEEEEEEEPPPPPP!"
Desperately rolling around in search of that awful noise my hand eventually finds my small cell phone. The morning, and by morning I mean 2 o'clock in the afternoon, alarm has been going off. Its demanding noise is meant to raise me from my slumber to start another toilsome day at work. My shift starts at 4:30 and goes until close again tonight. Two closing shifts in a row means long hours, for potentially no money. Tonight is sunday which means that the restaraunt will be much slower, they'll cut most of the staff by 9 and there will be two waiters, the bartender, the manager, a runner, the two kitchen guys, and a dishwasher until 11 pm. At 11 the kitchen closes, then an hour later, the bar. Once the bar is closed the other waitress and I will put up the chairs, fold more silverware, do our cash outs and at 1 in the morning be heading out to the nearby bar for a drink or two before last call.

Maybe the runner will stick it out and go to the bar with us, usually if they do I buy them a drink due to the wage discrepancy. My days of foodrunning and bussing are long over but most of the front of the house staff had to engage in the menial and low paying tasks at some time. That we get paid at least twice as much due to the tip structure and my long memory often guilts me into buying a drink for some sap whose burning their arms on hot plates, picking up smooshed kids' crackers, and plunging stuck toilets.


The bartender will hurry along with closing the bar, often catching up with us at the bar, or even getting their before us. Often the bartender, who ever it is, will be drunk or buzzed already. Being behind the bar gives the bartender free reign to guzzle, sip, taste, or abstain from any of the liquors available with minimal scrutiny from management. Bartenders are expected to have different interactions with the customers, and a bartender can have show a direct malice to their customers that would get a waiter fired.

The first restaurants began to appear in Paris in the 1760's, and even as late as the 1850's the majority of all the restaurants in the world were located in Paris. At first they sold only small meat stews, called "restaurants" that were meant to restore health to sick people.

Before that, people didn't go out to eat as they do today. Aristocrats had servants, who cooked for them. And the rest of the population, who were mainly peasant farmers, ate meals at home. There were inns for travelers, where meals were included in the price of the room, and the innkeeper and his lodgers would sit and eat together at the same table. There were caterers who would prepare or host meals for weddings, funerals and other special occasions. There were taverns, wineries, cafŽs and bakeries where specific kinds of food and drink could be consumed on the premises. But there were no restaurants.

Partially this was because restaurants would have been illegal. Food was made by craftsmen organized into a number of highly specialized guilds. There were the "charcutiers" (who made sausages and pork), the "rôtisseurs" (who prepared roasted meats and poultry), the paté-makers, the gingerbread-makers, the vinegar-makers, the pastrycooks. By law only a master gingerbread-maker could make gingerbread, and everyone else was legally forbidden to make gingerbread. At best, a particular family or group of craftsmen could get the king's permission to produce and sell a few different categories of food.

But these laws reflected an older way of life. Cities were growing. Markets and trade were growing, and with them the power and importance of merchants and businessmen. The first restaurants were aimed at this middle-class clientele. With the French revolution in 1789, the monarchy was overthrown and the king was beheaded. The guilds were destroyed and business was given a free hand. The aristocrats' former cooks went to work for businessmen or went into business for themselves. Fine food was democratized, and anyone (with enough money) could eat like a king. The number of restaurants grew rapidly.

In a restaurant a meal could be gotten at any time the business was open, and anyone with money could get a meal. The customers would sit at individual tables, and would eat individual plates or bowls of prepared food, chosen from a number of options. Restaurants quickly grew in size and complexity, adding a fixed menu with many kinds of foods and drinks. As the number of restaurants grew, taverns, wineries, cafés, and inns adapted and became more restaurant-like.

The growth of the restaurant was the growth of the market. Needs that were once fulfilled either through a direct relationship of domination (between a lord and his servants) or a private relationship (within the family), were now fulfilled on the open market. What was once a direct oppressive relationship now became the relationship between buyer and seller. A similar expansion of the market took place over a century later with the rise of fast food. As the 1950's housewife was undermined and women moved into the open labor market, many of the tasks that had been done by women in the house were transferred onto the market. Fast food restaurants grew rapidly, and paid wages for what used to be housework.

The 19th century brought the industrial revolution. Machinery was revolutionizing the way everything was made. As agricultural production methods got more efficient, peasants were driven off the land and joined the former craftsmen in the cities as the modern working class. They had no way to make money but to work for someone else.

Some time in the 19th century, the modern restaurant crystallized in the form we know it today, and spread all over the globe. This required several things: businessmen with capital to invest in restaurants, customers who expected to satisfy their need for food on the open market, by buying it, and workers, with no way to live but by working for someone else. As these conditions developed, so did restaurants.

Saturday, February 24, 2007

You just haven't earned it yet.



My car idles and I listen to the tape deck play Magnetic Fields "I don't want to get over you." Sitting between my legs is a bottle of wine, its warm against my lap, the warmth equal to the heat in my head. In front of me is a dead end street, not the kind you see in movies where there's a brick wall but just an ordinary dead end. There is a fence, and some grass behind it, the road ends, and the last house on the block is in sight. The night air is chilly but still the windows are slightly cracked letting in the cold wind. The slight draft causes my breath to be seen before me. Breathing out, my warmed air dissipates into the interior of my junk of a vehicle.

It'd been a hard day at work. Working at a restaurant for the past four years has given me some callousness to the drudgeries involved, yet today the incadessant stress of work came to a fore.

"No sauerkraut, actually I want saurekraut but can I get it without mayonaise?"
"Can I get a glass of wine, uh what type of wine do you have? Make it chilled. What sort of wine is chilled?"
"Why did the food take so long, this is outrageous! You said it'd take half an hour and its been almost an hour (inevitably this always comes from people whose sense of time is askew)."

Even the good service, the tables I turned with genteel grace stiffed me it seemed, barely giving me enough to cover taxes and tip outs. At the end of each shift 2% of the food sales go to the kitchen, 3% of the beverage sales go to the bar, 4% of the total sales go to the runners, and bussers alike. Additionally taxes cover 8% of my sales. In order to make any money I need to make at least 18% off of the tab that each customer has. Today while my sales were over 700 dollars I walked with only $70. With sales like those the average waitress will make over a hundred dollars.

What was worse though was my thoughts. Waiting tables is a constant multi tasking enterprise. Check on table one, get extra plates for table two, take an order from table four, drop off check at table three. With all the hurry about, and the pressure to increase sales, a pressure that comes not only from an incentive to make more tips, but also a pressure from management to sell more for their profit, my thoughts come in bursts.

"Check table five. What am I going to do about Katie? Why did she leave those pictures out of her trip? Get more water for table six. Cash in check from table three. Why would she leave them out? For me to see? Run credit card, shit, they're trying to split up the amount, some in cash, some in credit. Okay let's see fifty on the card. Done, twenty in cash, that's seventy. A five dollar tip on sixty-five, those motherfuckers. That's not even ten percent. Where the fuck is the manager? This extra beer has to be comped off of table seven."

The rest of the wine drips down my throat and I throw the bottle into the back seat. Turning on the headlights, my car begins to rumble as my foot presses the accellerator and my hand shifts the car into reverse. My car makes a slow three point turn, my concentration is muddled by the drink but my care for my driving is abysmally low. Moving the car about is like moving a tank, but with less precision, and less warlike utility. At the end of the block, my directional goes on, without thinking my legs, my hands, and so my car is in motion. The world is a blur but somehow I get to my apartment twenty blocks away. Turning off the car and taking the keys from the ignition gives me a feeling of sedate satisfaction. At least my making it home means that there will be more alcohol drunk. Stumbling up the two flights of stairs to my second floor apartment takes me a little while but I'm in no hurry. Once the apartment door is safely locked behind me I tear off my work clothes. They stink like the restaurant, they smell of sweat, grease, spoiled food, and old beer. Standing only in my underwear I open the refridgerator door, checking for beer. Scratching my belly I laugh at myself for the irony of my situation. Twenty-three and already an old alcoholic drinking over some piece of tale, just like all the other saps around town. While there is no beer, there is a twelve pack of booze that my roommate must have gotten. Opening one, and grabbing another I move into my bedroom where I sit on my bed. As quickly as possible I down the first beer and crack open the second. I sway over to my small writing desk with the grace that only a drunk can acheive. Grabbing a pen and a piece of paper I start to write a letter to Katie.

"You came into my life with such a terrific force, you gripped my soul, my nerves, my thought, my flesh, until all was blotted out, all else was silenced. Theories, considerations, principles, consistency, friends, nay even pride and self­respect. Only one thing remained, a terrible hunger for your love, an insatiable thirst for it. That explains my clinging, my holding on to you, I who never clung to anyone. That explains my agony when anyone would possess you at the exclusion of myself. Oh, please, don't give me your assurances, I do not believe in them.Your escapades, your promiscuity, tears my very vital, fills me with gall and horror and twists my whole being into something foreign to myself. . . . I have fought oh so hard against this ever­growing despair, but I know now I shall never never be able to overcome my repulsion every time my faith in you takes root again. Every time I see it sprout and blossom, you shatter it into a thousand fragments and leave me chilled to the core."

Thursday, February 22, 2007

All banged up



Most the the time my legs are splotched, leopard printed bruises cover my legs, my toes (when I've been kicking improperly and my mid section (ribs) from sparring. While I appear to have a shit ton of lesions the bruises don't actually hurt anymore. It hurt for the first few months, then the pain seemed to disappear. My body still feels stiff at times sore from the strenous excercise but its something that can be massaged out, not that it is that often.

Mike Regnier had myself and D'arte a young 22 black man of the same weight class as me get into the ring. Mike pulled down the ropes and I practiced my parkour turnstile, my crotch got a little caught up in the ropes and I stumbled in.
"All the thai guys come in from the top," he said pulling on the top rope and ignoring my fumbling. "You come in from the bottom, you leave from the bottom."

An image flashed across my mind of some young thai man, who after months of hard training, fearing of losing the fight because if he doesn't win the purse he won't be able to support his family, enters the ring from the bottom rope. A flash forward and he's nocked out, two thai medics toss him on a stretcher and pull him out so that the next fight is ready.

"And in the blue corner with a record of O wins and 0 losses, what's your name again son?" Mike says jokingly. He throws down his hand and says "Fight."

I was a little nervous entering the ring, can't really say why, D'Arte is my size, a little quicker, but not as hard working, nor as powerful. Nevertheless a small tide of fear came into me as I'd been putting on my shin pads, but now the fight was on. We moved forward to each other tapping gloves.

We'd been watching my fight the other day and John suggested that I start feinting more. So that's what I did, well after I threw some jabs that D'Arte blocked and a right kick into his upper bicep. Twitching back and forth I could see some confusion in D'Arte's eyes. I moved forward with an attack, he quickly counterattacked.

Its hard for me to describe the fight itself, each movment, what each of us did, it happens so fast. A million things pass through my mind, range, how to be unpredictable, what my best weapons are, keeping my hands up, trying to ferret out weakness, all the while bursting into action.

D'Arte was getting gassed in the second round, if it had been a real fight I would have easily won. If from nothing else from my fortitude, a fortitude that has been developed by constant training, 5 days a week, two hours a day (at least).

"D'arte, you need to get in here, I'm not going to let you fight if you aren't training. You want to be serious about this don't you? You want to go pro right? If you want that you have to train. Training for a fight is always gonna be hard, whether its at the smoker level, the amateur level, or the pro. You win all your fights in the first round, but then you gas out. If you think the smoker level is hard, well amateur is a step up. You should be looking at fighting amateur now, but instead you're still gassing out. You've fought five times you should be ready. I'm not gonna pay for a plane ticket, talk to a promotor and set you up with a fight for you to gas out at the amateur level. That's my reputation on the line. Look at Matt, he's a good example. Get his number, start going running with him. Train with him, working with someone else is good for you. Get on the phone and bug the shit out of each other when you're not at the gym when you're supposed to be." said Mike as he leaned against the corner post.

It was a long monologue from Mike, much more than I'd heard from him before. It was surprising to me that he recommended me as an example. I know I train a lot, and sometimes I try to train hard but... I don't know it was weird. I guess I don't think much of my capabilities as a fighter. Mainly I think about how the only way I'll ever win a fight, or anything is by working really hard, by having more drive, more motivation, more will. Walking into the gym I wasn't a very fit guy, not super talented, not naturally athletic, not much of anything but someone who wanted to try.

The other thing that struck me in the monologue was that at 5 fights Mike was recommending going amateur. Five fights? That's not too far from what I've got, and paying for a plane ticket? Shit. Maybe I'll be back in vegas fighting and playing cards. Images of me earning the plane ticket fare from a night of playing cards at the mgm run through my mind. Tight aggressive playing.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Incipit Trageodia by James

INCIPIT TRAGOEDIA
by James Lucas

Matt strode around the ring clockwise, tapping the four turnbuckles three times: top, middle, bottom. He didn't seal the ring; Matt marked it as his. His blackened shoulder, the rings around his elbow, as well as the dark lines on his forearms contrasted with his slender frame. Across his shoulder blades was a newer tattoo, a phrase he had scrawled into his flesh in dark black letters when he began fighting. The tattoos snaked across his muscles as Matt slunk around the ring towards his corner. His opponent, a stocky bearded man, hung his jaw as his trainer poured water into it. He bounced, spilling the water onto his bare chest. His eyes locked onto Matt as my brother.

The judge motioned the two fighters forward, and spoke lowly to the men. "Clean," is all that could be heard. Matt pounded the shorter man's fist and backed away as the bell rang. His opponent rushed towards him with fists of fury. Matt's arms shot to his face as a deluge of jabs pummeled him. Dancing around the ring, Matt tried vainly to check the aggressiveness and block the punches. He shot a jab at his opponent and missed. A right hook was returned in kind. Another jab blasted towards his opponent. This one landed. Matt stepped forward and became a Muay Thai fighter.

Versatile, brutal, and straight forward, Muay Thai is the science of the eight limbs. Fighter's employ their shins, knees, elbows, and hands to destroy each other. The traditional aspects of Muay Thai were followed for the fight at the Fairfax Gym in San Francisco albeit gloves, headgear, kicks and punches were included- normal procedure for a modern fight.

Matt had trained extensively and this was his third smoker (non-professional fight). "He looks like a cancer patient," a friend quipped. In two months Matt had lost all of his body fat. Though we are identical twins, he was twenty-two pounds lighter--a shrink wrapped Bruce Lee. He stopped eating a day before his fight, to weigh in as light as possible. Matt tipped the scales at 140 lbs/63.5 kilos and fought as a junior welterweight. The daily regiment of heavy bag work outs and calisthenics not only trimmed him down but made him fit to become a Nak Muay, a traditional Muay Thai fighter.

The plasma screen TV's that hung beneath the ring showed my brother's fists. They were jets; as soon as one took off another landed. His opponents head snapped back. Matt kicked him in the ribs. His opponent stepped forward and they clinched, grabbing each other's shoulders. This form of stand-up grappling is conducive to kneeing one's opponent in the stomach. Matt's patella jack-hammered into the fighter's belly button. Trying to protect himself, the other fighter moved his elbow in front of his abdomen. Matt's knees bruised the man's forearm. After two three minute rounds, several well placed kicks, and a dozen knees to the stomach, Matt's opponent was worked. The victory was clear.

Stepping out of the ring, I stared at my twin brother. His latest obsession was sticking. He talked of going to Thailand for 3 months to train. The conditioning was religious. He stopped drinking. I congratulated him, as he stood next to me. A veneer of sweat covered his body; he looked strong. The swelling from the hits hadn't set in yet and he smiled. He turned slightly showing the block letters between his shoulder blades INCIPIT TRAGOEDIA. I suspected the Latin translation but asked anyway.

"It's Nietzsche," Matt smiled. "It means the tragedy begins."

Monday, February 19, 2007

If I can wait my whole life I can wait two months




So the meathook series is done, and rather anti climatic. A rather simple story of a young man attending class and breaking up with his sort of girlfriend. I didn't have a set plan for the story and ended it when I felt like it rather than going to a certain narrative point. I wanted to establish a ambigious tension between the narrator and Chelsea which I felt was successful. Part of my desirre to create an confusion between the two characters was to mirror my own feelings about how relationships, especially romantic relationships don't make much sense to me. Some people are rather successful with their love lives, while others who are more interesting, dynamic, or just better people are complete losers. I imagine dating to be more like the drifting and crashing of iceburgs than anything else.
One of the points of doing the series was to be regularly writing, even if only just a page or so. My ability to write non-fiction is limited, or perhaps my ability to speak using a fictional medium is greater.
The point of each installment was usually less about the story than about a particular image. For example my fascination for the gloved picture in Andre Breton's Nadja. Well its hard to describe it as a fascination, that seems like it involves some extended period. No its more of a process of becoming lost in an item, or an action that has no real value to oneself. The gloves mean nothing to me, the picture means little, but something is catching about it for a little while.
This thought was a little more established in my mind as when I was at work a week or two ago. When of the food runners, a rather lazy worker, was drinking from a glass of water. As the water moved into her mouth I was drawn by the act, the transferrence of the water from cup to mouth. Something indescribable about this ordinary act caught me, drew me in. Its not the act itself, there is still nothing special about the food runner drinking water, but there was something in that moment that made things surreal.
In one of the first posts I talked about the narrator drawing porn comics next to marxist quotes. I added that part as it was both funny and as a way of showing that the narrator engaged in "juvenile" male behaviour. Those pictures are great though.
My main problem with the writing by the way is that I'm pretty sure I fucked up the present and past tense a bunch, mixing the two. Some proofreading would probably take care of that.
At some point soon, within the week I'll start a new series. It seems like a good set up.

On a completely other note I fought my third smoker on saturday in san francisco. It was a crushing defeat for my opponent as I seem to have found my style of fighting. It mainly involves kicking until I'm in range to knee, then I clinch up and knee the shit out of the opponent until they are done. My opponent felt like a rag doll on me towards the end of the second round. I will be fighting again on march 3rd. \

The Ram Muay or Wai Khru




One of my problems right now is dealing with the issue of wether or not to do the ram muay. The ram muay is a ceremonial dance that is done by the fighters before the beginning fo the fight to pay respects to their teachers. Part of me wants to do it, part of me worries that I'm just some white kid appropriating thai culture. The real question is how much of a muay thai fighter am I? What does that mean to me? How do others view a foreigner thai fighter? Maybe I'll be the next Raymond Dekker, probably not....

Friday, February 16, 2007

Meat Hook

The ceiling of my dorm room is covered in white chipped paint. Laying on my single bed developing a neurotic fear of an asbestos cave in seems cliche to me now. Our bedroom is split evenly, not tape down the middle of the room, but still evenly. My roommate Michael Strauss is a jew from long island, he likes magic the gathering, and dragon ball z. In his spare time (when he's not looking up magic the gathering card values, downloading anime, or trying to cop a feel from one of the girls down the hall) he's in our room listening to Dave Matthews. Beginning to associate Dave Matthews with death was an easy transition, like shifting from second to third on my old man's riding lawnmower. The more I listened to "Crash into me," the more my thoughts roved to taking a step off of an obviously fixed playing field, a finely mowed playing field.

Tonight was a bit different. Mike (that's short for Michael as his mother said when we were first introduced that awkward day six months ago) was off chasing tail at a local frat party. He had made friends with a few guys in the hall, some of who were pledging, which involved all sorts of dumb ass activities, none of which included licking my scrotum... so what did I care. Mike seemed to enjoy their company and the equally mentally retarded girls that lounged about in the handicap section of off campus housing (read frat house). Mike doesn't tend to drink that much, but once in a while when he can't find anyone to play Magic with he'll go out "with the boys."

So tonight I'm staring at the asbestos ceiling wondering how long it will be until it caves in. If it doesn't cave in, how long will it take me to get lung cancer? Maybe if I scrap the ceiling a little and let some droppings fall onto my mouth... the cancer will form quicker.

Its not often that my attention is caught on anything artistic, or anything to do with that mastubatory world called art but the other day while browsing through the stacks at the library, where work study has me shelving books, a book by Antonin Artaud caught my eye. Talk about fucking wretches, now there's a man whose entire life could be entitled "I pissed razor blades." What particularly caught my attention was this passage about how he believed himself to be already dead, already suicided. He was just a weird waking corpse, in some sort of nebulous area. Artaud died of cancer, cancer of the innards, his digestional tubes rotted on him, or they rejected him longing instead for their own growth. In January 1948 Artaud was diagnosed with intestinal cancer. He died shortly afterwards on March 4, 1948. Artaud died alone in his pavilion, seated at the foot of his bed, holding his shoe.

What makes me think of this is that Artaud saw pain and decay for what it was, a medium, a way in which life expresses himself. His theatre of cruelty, was nothing more than an attempt to shatter the perceptions of the everyday. With everyday almost if not the same I grow used to the pain, the nauseau of everyday is so deep that it becomes inperceptible, sometimes its only through a violent shattering that I recognize that maybe I am really alive.

Not that I can really feel any of this long self monologue, despite my abstract ideas my body just recognizes the heady feeling of drinking most of a bottle of wine. My older sister visited me about two weeks ago and was nice enough to buy me, or rather buy for me (I gave her the cash) a variety of liquors. Tonight staring at the ceiling of death an open bottle of red pinot noir was open. It was a shitty table wine but cheap, so my sister got two for me.

Tomorrow I'll forget.
To-morrow, and To-morrow and To-morrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllabe of recorded time
And All our yesterdays have lighted fools

My shitty alarm clark, a holdover from the domestic bliss of living with my parents blares in my ears. It screams out like a banshee, a long opera of one note. Rolling over, smacking the alarm off I roll off my bed, literally. Falling to the ground forces me to get up and also slightly sobers me up. The night's boozing comes back to me like the tide, slowly then quickly invading my brain. Wine hang overs are the worst.

Mike isn't here, he must have stayed at his girlfriend's. Noticing that I was able bodied enough last night (I suppose) to have taken off my clothes I proceed to get dressed for class. I have fifteen minutes to get to my social theory class in which the professor will grind out Marxism into a paltry form of socialism that is palatable for the liberal lap dogs who quietly take notes to regurgitate on their next exam. That's the price to be paid for being a sociology major though, boredom. Not that my art major friends, if they can be called that, are particularly engaging in exciting material. Mainly they end up talking about how to best represent people of color in their mixed media presentations.

"I think we need more black people in this video Robert."
"No, I think that we should just incorporate some rap music, or maybe some Billy Holiday, then it will be a more authentic cultural experience."

The only reason for hanging out with them is that they have booze at their places which a young alcoholic such as myself can snatch. Paid for by their parents, much like their college educations.

Throwing on some jeans and a black t-shirt, my converse and grabbing my notebook I head out my door room. Locking the door behind me and heading outside I smell the leaves of autumn. That wonderful sharp smell of decaying matter, of cold wind, of fall is in the air. Its a bit cold and upon leaving the dormitory building I wish I'd grabbed a hooded sweater or a long sleave shirt. Its just a short walk to the lecture halls though. Hurrying along are other students, many wearing long shirts, or light jackets, the garment that is so coveted by my cold body. Thoughts of mugging them for their clothes fills my mind like a clogged toilet, all my thoughts seem like shit.

The lecture hall is a brick building, one fo the older one's on the campus. On the corner of the building is a plaque talking about some bastard who helped found the college and how he's such a great bastard. Two small flights of stairs lead to the glass doors which swing outward and bring me into warmth. Another flight of stairs brings me to the second level. Down the corridor of classrooms to room 213. The third on the left. Opening the classroom door I take in the scene.

The professor, Mr. Lankton is seated behind a small desk which has a wooden podium on it. His lectures notes are on them. About half of the students are in their seats. Chelsea, a marxist friend of mine and drinking buddy is doodling in her notebook in the second row. Taking a seat next to her she raises her head and glares at me.

"What?" I say.
"Nothing." She replies, and then continues to doodle.

Opening up my notebook, and looking over my notes is like looking at a corner store porn magazine, except that the pictures are more like cave paintings, and the text instead of talking about slutty wives who fuck random guys is filled up with Marxisms.

"Money is a commodity which has value like any other commodity. In becoming the universal equivalent, that commodity serves to express the universal, social, character of the relations between commodity owners: It marks the transition from exchanges as a discrete relation between private individuals to exchange as an expression of social relations between interdependent individuals. Thus the fetishism of money corresponds closely to that of commodities."

I sketch a picture of two women fondling each other and poke Chelsea.
"Look lesbians." I say to her.

Chelsea doesn't even bother to look in my direction. She's not amused. Its too bad as my pictures of women fondling each other are getting a little better. R. Crumb would like them though, and that's what matters.

Professor Lankon is doing a diagram on the board of how money has become a universal equivalent. In chalk is C1-M-C2. After scrawling a little more obscurities on the board he opens his fat ass mouth.

"Simply as a means of circulation money is merely the servant of the movement of commodities. In fact, expressed as a result, the simple circulation of commodities becomes merely..."
At this point he breaks off and writes on the board again. He turns around and works his jaw, his jowls and double chin shake a little as he wags his head in the excitement only an academic socialist can get. Pointing a fat sausage finger at the C-C on the board he goes on.
"The formula for the simple exchange of commodities as if in barter. Money consequently vanishes from view, other than as a fleeting symbol of the value of exchanging commodities. As Marx goes on to explain..."

At this point I start doodling again in my notebook. Mainly just circles and spirals as I picture Chelsea naked.

When the class ended Chelsea looked over at me.
"Sure let's go to lunch." I said.
We walked out of the classroom and outside into the lobby where other students were beginning to crowd.
"Let's go out to eat. I'm sick of the cafeteria sludge." Chelsea said.
"Where do you want to go?" I replied.
"Let's go to that chinese place downtown," she answered.

Downtown was about 6 city blocks away, although in this small city town it was called a mile. It was a brisk walk, Chelsea who was from new york made the jaunt more of a double time march. Her feet would slightly tap the sidewalk and shuffle forward, it was odd to watch, almost like she was floating along the concrete. My feet, however, ambled along. Falling behind her I would have to occassionally speed up to a light jog.

It'd been two weeks since I'd last seen Chelsea, quite a bit of time since we'd see each other at class normally, but she'd been sick, or avoiding me.

One time when we were drunk we'd hooked up. I suppose that was the night when we entered our relationship, and departed (?) from our friendship. She had passed out in my bed, not an entirely uncommon event and I discarded a modest amount of clothes and put the covers over both of us. In the middle of the night she reached out for me. We hadn't been drinking that much and while I'd always been attracted to Chelsea I hadn't made any moves that I didn't consider relatively platonic. When she put her arm around me I laid there for a moment or two and then internally shrugged. Wanting her, and worrying about future consequences I decided on an optimistic future. Its funny how little moments like that one can set a whole series of events in order, or maybe it wasn't that moment but one of the ones that followed, when I kissed her, when we fucked, when I hugged her in the morning.

We had a tumultuous relationship, not that the relationship itself was ever very bothersome, actually it was quite good in many ways, but rather our youth and inexperience hampered us. We were in the constant process of breaking up and getting back together. This process was tremendously emotionally tiring. The hopes, the dreams, and the constant disappointment all added up. I began to drink more during these stints, when she was gone, something I've always tended to do during periods of emotional turmoil. I sincerely hoped that she didn't smell the reeking stench of alcohol that oozed out of my pores during lunch.

During the periods of disappointment and heartbreak I would usually sit in my room and write, or read Kurt Vonnegut novels. A few times I'd ventured out to find another young lass who might make me happier, even if only temporarily but my body and mind acted more like those of the porter's in Macbeth.

ACT IV Scene III
Porter

'Faith sir, we were carousing till the
second cock: and drink, sir, is a great
provoker of three things.

MACDUFF

What three things does drink especially provoke?

Porter

Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and
urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes;
it provokes the desire, but it takes
away the performance: therefore, much drink
may be said to be an equivocator with lechery:
it makes him, and it mars him; it sets
him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him,
and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and
not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him
in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.

Maybe it was the left over alcohol that induced me to show those juvenile pictures to her. Maybe it was because I felt to incapable of showing her what I'd been working on, a crappy love poem. The poem was about a young man who would spend days upon days in a row boat in a lake practicing singing with his guitar. The young mad went out to the middle of the lake as he was so embarrassed by the very idea of ever being heard or seen attempting to practice a song that would make his “true love's” heart swoon. The woman he loved lived next door to him, and he'd see her hang up the laundry every few days (this was the days before laundry dryers but after clotheslines). She wasn't terribly attractive, but she wasn't quite plain either. The same could be said for him, the young guitarist. What drove the guitarist on was the idea that she might just be a woman with whom he could spend his life with, what he feared though was the rejection of being tossed aside like a mechanic's oily rag. One day, however, when he knew she would be out hanging the laundry he ported his boat on the grass near the clothesline, which was no small effort as the small lake he practiced in was half a mile away. His hope was that by having the boat there he would imagine the rhythm of the waves, and would play beautifully. When she came out with a wicker basket full of sheets he began to play. He didn't look at her but rather looked into the sky and played the songs he'd always played while in the boat. His hands shook, his body trembled...

I hadn't gotten much beyond that point in the poem. Having the bad habit of always wanting to rhyme my poems made things terribly difficult. It took me a good week to think of an adequate ryhme for oily mechanic's rag, that didn't imply the woman was a hag. Maybe it was my inability to come up with clever rhymes that prevented me from showing her the poem.

What exactly would happen at lunch was beyond me. It was hard enough seeing her.

The interior of the chinese restaurant was in a state of disarray. Immediately upon opening the glass door that had a peeling piece of paper that displayed Great Wall's hours was a tank of water. Once housing a menagerie of fish now was the abode of green algae, a single goldfish, and a scum sucker. The little deep sea diver was covered in the green goo that covered most of the tank.

"Two for lunch?" The asian woman dressed in a penguin suit of black pants and a white button up shirt said. No answer was needed as she led us to a little red vinyl booth. I took the seat facing the wall, Chelsea sat across from me so that she was facing the street. Behind me was a large window peered out into the street. One could see most of the pedestrians and street traffic if one ignored the fog of dust on the window, and the broken neon light that advertised an asian beer. Our waitress brought over two glasses of water and left two menus that had seen quite a bit of wear. Knowing already what to order I pushed my menu to the edge of the table between Chelsea and myself. Chelsea opened the menu and looked at it, fingering the rim of the glass while her eyes scanned a menu that she had gone over a dozen times before. We'd come here periodically after class for dinner. If we'd been up late at night well into the bottle we'd dine on cheap chinese the next day to rid ourselves of our hang overs. While she's looking at the menu I fidget nervously with the pair of chopsticks by the fork and knife. My dexterity with these tools is limited, I'm laughably white. I try to think of something to say but my mind comes up blank. Chelsea seems to be ignoring my immediate physical presence yet at the same time glaring at me through the menu. Our waitress came over and stood in front of us for a moment, relieving some of the tension, if only momentarily.

"Sesame tofu with broccoli, and uh, white rice please." I ordered.
"Sweet and sour tofu, brown rice." Chelsea said.

The waitress scribbled to hieroglyphics on her pad and walked into the kitchen. One of the reasons we frequented this place was that its service, particularly the food service was expedient. In less than 5 minutes we would have our deep fried blocks of flavored soy with steamed vegetables.

Chelsea brought her glass up to her lips, tilting the glass so that a trickle of water began to move into her mouth. My eyes were fastened onto the edge of the water glass. There was nothing particularly riveting about the glass itself, nor the fact that she was drinking water. How many times had I sat across her as she drank water, or booze, or any other liquid for that matter. What fascinated me was something else. In many ways I felt it was comparable to my fascination of the picture of the woman's glove in Andre Breton's Nadja. The glove is folded over in the novel, limp, unsatisfied without a living movement inside of it. It is at once dead, and waiting to be. Perhaps the glove is like the cup at this moment, Chelsea's hand slowly slips finger by finger into Nadja's glove like the water trickling into Chelsea's mouth. It is a moment of being.

Unsettled by this idea my eyes shift behind Chelsea. Its an old trick, to look at someone, when actually looking behind them. To them it appears that I am focusing on them when actually I'm looking beyond them. Its similar to the constant compliment that I get, that I'm a good listener. Really I'm not listening at all, I just am rather good at nodding at certain points in reassurance. Its the tone of the speaker's voice that prods me, like Pavlov's dog, to nod when the speaker seems to want reassurance of some sort. Most people want nothing to do with conversation, they would prefer the self created succor of a monologue in which they can air their griefs with the balm of a visibly content audience. I provide the spectator's body, and they provide their own self congratulations, their own tongue to lick their wounds, while the gentle indifference of the world washes over me.

She starts the conversation, like she's winding up a handwatch, she's moving on with the time. My personal dislike for having these conversations during eating is evidenced by my constant food play. My tofu moves from one end of the plate to the other, back and forth, and she expresses her feelings to me. My face shows nothing, that old stoic trick of masculinity, while my innards feel like they are being slowly swept away. The tide comes in, her voice peaks up in tempo, my sesame tofu moves away from her. The tide goes out, she breaks for a moment to gather her throats and my rice begins to cover the small chunks of tofu. She looks at me, the wave comes in breaking against the shore, my appetite is spoiled, my fork is placed on my plate.

"Truthfully, I don't know what to say." I tell her.

"Well, tell me how you feel." She says.

"I feel, I feel, like, uh, what I once was a fine oil painting was really just a drawing in the sandy beach, now being swept away by the coming tide. You are that tide, and you are in the picture. You are both, I am the drawing, a figure in the drawing, and the indentation in the sand, I'm the sand. Is there any possible way I can have a feeling right now? Its like asking the sand to hold itself together, to be composed, to show itself. But really its just sand, loose, pliable. It has no motion of its own, it is moved." My head turns as I finish the last bit of my metaphor, my facing blushing in embarassment from my art school imagery. Fuck I should have just recited some Rainer Maria Rilke to her and be done with it.

"Can't you see though, that I have different desires? You seem to want nothing. You are drenched in passivity, not me. You contemplate the world but then," at this point she begins to wave her hand, a gesture that annoys me for its attempts to make my philosophical meditations visceral. "Its all so smokey, fog like, you never seem solid. You never stir from your solitude. I can't be with that, I can't, I don't want that work, of always trying to draw you out. I'm your lover not a piece of twine that if you follow it will show you the way out of your convuluted maze of a mind."

"Well then I guess this is it..." I stammer.

She nods sullenly. I take out my wallet and put down enough money to cover our bill and the tip then walk out onto the street. I pass by the window and see her still seated, which makes me happy. She didn't get up and leave right away, spoiling the moment of emotion we just had. The funny thing is that I'm not quite sure what the conversation was about. In an immediate way I know that we just broke up, again, and perhaps for the final time but over what, and why? The whole affair has a fog like character to it, was I not listening to the conversation, was I ignoring what she was saying?

Walking north towards the entrance to the campus I pass by a convience store. I walk in and use my fake id to buy a twelve pack of pabst blue ribbon. In a little while I will sit in my room, and drink until I pass out.

The end.

Meat Hook pt. 6

She starts the conversation, like she's winding up a handwatch, she's moving on with the time. My personal dislike for having these conversations during eating is evidenced by my constant food play. My tofu moves from one end of the plate to the other, back and forth, and she expresses her feelings to me. My face shows nothing, that old stoic trick of masculinity, while my innards feel like they are being slowly swept away. The tide comes in, her voice peaks up in tempo, my sesame tofu moves away from her. The tide goes out, she breaks for a moment to gather her throats and my rice begins to cover the small chunks of tofu. She looks at me, the wave comes in breaking against the shore, my appetite is spoiled, my fork is placed on my plate.

"Truthfully, I don't know what to say." I tell her.

"Well, tell me how you feel." She says.

"I feel, I feel, like, uh, what I once was a fine oil painting was really just a drawing in the sandy beach, now being swept away by the coming tide. You are that tide, and you are in the picture. You are both, I am the drawing, a figure in the drawing, and the indentation in the sand, I'm the sand. Is there any possible way I can have a feeling right now? Its like asking the sand to hold itself together, to be composed, to show itself. But really its just sand, loose, pliable. It has no motion of its own, it is moved." My head turns as I finish the last bit of my metaphor, my facing blushing in embarassment from my art school imagery. Fuck I should have just recited some Rainer Maria Rilke to her and be done with it.

"Can't you see though, that I have different desires? You seem to want nothing. You are drenched in passivity, not me. You contemplate the world but then," at this point she begins to wave her hand, a gesture that annoys me for its attempts to make my philosophical meditations visceral. "Its all so smokey, fog like, you never seem solid. You never stir from your solitude. I can't be with that, I can't, I don't want that work, of always trying to draw you out. I'm your lover not a piece of twine that if you follow it will show you the way out of your convuluted maze of a mind."

"Well then I guess this is it..." I stammer.

She nods sullenly. I take out my wallet and put down enough money to cover our bill and the tip then walk out onto the street. I pass by the window and see her still seated, which makes me happy. She didn't get up and leave right away, spoiling the moment of emotion we just had. The funny thing is that I'm not quite sure what the conversation was about. In an immediate way I know that we just broke up, again, and perhaps for the final time but over what, and why? The whole affair has a fog like character to it, was I not listening to the conversation, was I ignoring what she was saying?

Walking north towards the entrance to the campus I pass by a convience store. I walk in and use my fake id to buy a twelve pack of pabst blue ribbon. In a little while I will sit in my room, and drink until I pass out.

The end.

Monday, February 12, 2007

Shaving Pictures





Meat Hook pt. 5

The interior of the chinese restaurant was in a state of disarray. Immediately upon opening the glass door that had a peeling piece of paper that displayed Great Wall's hours was a tank of water. Once housing a menagerie of fish now was the abode of green algae, a single goldfish, and a scum sucker. The little deep sea diver was covered in the green goo that covered most of the tank.


"Two for lunch?" The asian woman dressed in a penguin suit of black pants and a white button up shirt said. No answer was needed as she led us to a little red vinyl booth. I took the seat facing the wall, Chelsea sat across from me so that she was facing the street. Behind me was a large window peered out into the street. One could see most of the pedestrians and street traffic if one ignored the fog of dust on the window, and the broken neon light that advertised an asian beer. Our waitress brought over two glasses of water and left two menus that had seen quite a bit of wear. Knowing already what to order I pushed my menu to the edge of the table between Chelsea and myself. Chelsea opened the menu and looked at it, fingering the rim of the glass while her eyes scanned a menu that she had gone over a dozen times before. We'd come here periodically after class for dinner. If we'd been up late at night well into the bottle we'd dine on cheap chinese the next day to rid ourselves of our hang overs. While she's looking at the menu I fidget nervously with the pair of chopsticks by the fork and knife. My dexterity with these tools is limited, I'm laughably white. I try to think of something to say but my mind comes up blank. Chelsea seems to be ignoring my immediate physical presence yet at the same time glaring at me through the menu. Our waitress came over and stood in front of us for a moment, relieving some of the tension, if only momentarily.

"Sesame tofu with broccoli, and uh, white rice please." I ordered.
"Sweet and sour tofu, brown rice." Chelsea said.

The waitress scribbled to hieroglyphics on her pad and walked into the kitchen. One of the reasons we frequented this place was that its service, particularly the food service was expedient. In less than 5 minutes we would have our deep fried blocks of flavored soy with steamed vegetables.

Chelsea brought her glass up to her lips, tilting the glass so that a trickle of water began to move into her mouth. My eyes were fastened onto the edge of the water glass. There was nothing particularly riveting about the glass itself, nor the fact that she was drinking water. How many times had I sat across her as she drank water, or booze, or any other liquid for that matter. What fascinated me was something else. In many ways I felt it was comparable to my fascination of the picture of the woman's glove in Andre Breton's Nadja. The glove is folded over in the novel, limp, unsatisfied without a living movement inside of it. It is at once dead, and waiting to be. Perhaps the glove is like the cup at this moment, Chelsea's hand slowly slips finger by finger into Nadja's glove like the water trickling into Chelsea's mouth. It is a moment of being.


Unsettled by this idea my eyes shift behind Chelsea. Its an old trick, to look at someone, when actually looking behind them. To them it appears that I am focusing on them when actually I'm looking beyond them. Its similar to the constant compliment that I get, that I'm a good listener. Really I'm not listening at all, I just am rather good at nodding at certain points in reassurance. Its the tone of the speaker's voice that prods me, like Pavlov's dog, to nod when the speaker seems to want reassurance of some sort. Most people want nothing to do with conversation, they would prefer the self created succor of a monologue in which they can air their griefs with the balm of a visibly content audience. I provide the spectator's body, and they provide their own self congratulations, their own tongue to lick their wounds, while the gentle indifference of the world washes over me.

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Don't put me on the backburner


Running, for whatever reason, really seems to clear my mind. Today as my path took me down to the berkeley waterfront, to the caesar chavez park, and back, my mind went over the upcoming fight. My runs usually last at least an hour. As my feet fell in front of me my mind went over and over how I wanted to be a monster. I kept thinking about this zine that A! and Artnoose made some time ago. One of the pictures is of a bunch of creatures with tentacles, fangs, and other grotesque features. Below is the caption "What kind of monster would you like to be." The point the zine was trying to make, or one of them, is that we are born into a society so fucked up that its hard, nay impossible, not to be scarred, maimed, convulted, and to not have developed some sort of survival mechanicisms. Schizophrenia, hostility, passivity, depression, alcoholism, I feel like there are a multitude of ways in which people react to the shit world in which we live. There's been moments in my life (more than I used to like to admit) in which I've done some pretty shitty things, I'd think of myself as a monster. Clawed, fanged, and uncontrollable. Slashing at the people around me for whatever reason. My life now doesn't neccessarily include that much damage to others (less... ir maybe in different ways) but I as I run I think about how I want to be a monster now. A tyrant in the ring, a cruel batterer, ruthless and unforgiving. Accepting that I'm just not a nice person, that I can't always be very good to people, and that frankly I don't want to has been a bit of a process. Its just weird to think that what I once thought was such a negative aspect of myself I'm now harnessing.

We've started to look for new housemates which is a mundane process.

Ted and I were sparring today and after a tep he dropped his heel on my upper thigh. I have to work it out with liniment. I was at the gym for 3 hours today.

Sunday, February 4, 2007

A Chelsea Smile

Unfolding the plastic razor and looking at the razor edge draws my attention away from the water that's too cold. After seeing Pan's Labryinth in which the main villian, General Vidal, shaves using a straight blade razor I decided to start using one myself. Taking the shaving gel from its place by the tub and squeezing some out into my left hand I rub the cream over my face. Looking in the mirror I begin my first slow stroke downwards. Ten to fifteen minutes later my face still has splotches of hair, my blade handling abilities aren't that great, but this was a big improvement over my first attempt. After a while I get fustrated and grab my regular razor to finish the job.

This week has been okay. I took a private lesson with Mike, and will have another tomorrow. I worry a little bit about maxing out of pacific ring. There are not enough fighters who are consistent and at my level of training/experience (or more) to work with. Pacific is still a new gym so there isn't a stable of fighters quite yet, which makes me the bleeding edge. All of these concerns are based on my desire to keep fighting, to fight harder, smarter, stronger, and longer.

The Meathook series is fictional.