THE TOWER OF BRAHMA: Chapter 11 - Mental Traffic Delays (edit)

03/22/04

The world blurs in my peripheral as I guide my Scarab in and out of traffic. I'm heading home as a beautiful sadness overcomes me. Thoughts race through my greymatter and I find myself coming to no solid conclusions.

The names of automobiles pass me and I feel sick. Escape, Adventure, Liberty. Empty promises bought and sold and never experienced. How many of these truck owners have had the picturesque off-road experience that was staged, filmed, aired, and consumed? How many drivers of slim, sleek, and stylish sports cars are starring in the superspy scenes that run through their minds as they shift between gears stuck in traffic behind the thousand other like-minded consumers trapped in the same mental snare?

Nature itself seems to be doing battle today. Snow, sun, rain. Something has disturbed the essence of weather, and it now seeks to punish or cleanse as the changing of seasons sneaks up on us. The cycle continues its march forward as the cold death slips away and life shakes free from its icy grip. A new season is about to be born and we fuss about it as if it were the most humdrum event of the year. Nature tearing itself free from one stage and pushing us all towards a renewal of ourselves, while plunging another part of the world into a seasonal slumber.

I feel a sickness coming on, self-generated or not, that makes me shake with fever. I'm heading home and I can't think straight. My mind wanders and dips and bends. I can't come to a conclusion on how I feel about anything. A malleable mind, eager to destroy or accept all the pain and love of the years of yesterday.

Ahead lies friends and family. Loved ones that have not seen me for some time now. My brain runs through simulated meetings and tries to come up with the most likely course of events while planning and preparing for the most dire.

Now has come the time for confrontation and a final reckoning. A balancing of scales, and a excavating of the heart.

THE TOWER OF BRAHMA: Chapter 10 - "Rest Stop Bloodbath" (edit)

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THE TOWER OF BRAHMA: Chapter 9 - The Ride Home (edit)

03/15/04

I don't recall actually leaving the rest stop, but after spending so much of my time there in a delirious daydream, that's not really a surprise. I found myself in my car blasting a new CD, windows dropped, and gliding down a stretch of Americana.

I didn't realize until I stopped for gas off the parkway. I was headed south, I was heading home.

My dreams have been plenty lately and the intensity of them has been draining to say the least. It's almost like my body would much prefer the simplicity of dormant identity. In hazy dreamscapes I find myself talking to old friends and revisiting boyhood haunts. But I'm seeing them as they are now, not as I recall them. They're changed, hacked up, and shown as something completely new. Something clean.

A beautiful blue sky lies open above me, welcoming me to this world of possible unity. It's hard to say but hope is stronger in me than ever. Something happened to me back there at that rest stop. I feel stripped of my pain and confusion.

I look at the cracked concrete between my feet as if seeing such a sight for the first time. I see it as if it were the most important thing in the world. It might be, but then this cold metal gas pump in my hand is no less important, nor the many ordinary things that dance the daily routine around me.

With the change from the last of my money I get a bottle of water and a bagel. Once out on the road again I've found that the bagel is the best I have ever had. My final meal before facing whatever is coming before me now. I wash it down with the water and I swear I can feel my body breaking it down and converting it, sucking from it the nutrients it provides.

I take a break from singing at the top of my lungs to laugh heartily as I cross over the bridge and approach the tollbooth. I've always been afraid of bridges. Well, I used to be anyway. I hadn't thought about it in so long but now I can see this bridge just as I did when I traveled over it twenty years ago in the back seat of the family car.

Frantically worrying about paying the upcoming toll, my mind releases itself. I'm suddenly a kid again, sick from the smell of exhaust and the bouncing of the road, my mind slipping into a daydream not unlike the experience at the rest stop. A blurring of the edges, riding through the physical pain, and winding up somewhere in a place where all the rules you've made up for yourself no longer apply.

THE TOWER OF BRAHMA: Chapter 8 - Sitting Alone (edit)

03/04/04

Sitting alone, quiet in my small defecation booth, I realize that I've put up some sort of barrier, impervious to entry. Secure in the knowledge that no ordinary citizen would attempt to slither underneath nor parachute in from above. I was protected in this four by three excretion chamber. Although there were men in the stalls on either side of me, most likely engaged in the same shameful acts of natural behavior as I was, I felt distanced from them, and from the threat they would normally present themselves as outside of this rest stop bathroom.

Recognizing the power within my mind, assisted by the two metal walls and the haphazardly locked stall door, I knew that I had it in me to protect my aura from these masculine intruders to personal safety. Here I was, just a child living in an adult male body, sitting alone in the great wide world, ruling my universe from a porcelain throne. Having reached this moment of safety and security opened doors in my mind, and I immediately wanted to extend my borders.

I exited the stall, having waited long enough for the guy next to me to remove himself from his lavatory cosmos, and went to wash my hands. I found myself looking into the mirror itself, as I wrung my hands free from the dreaded bacteria, the silvery shimmer is the oddest material I could imagine, one that so accurately casts back an imaginary self, projecting an external persona that is a lie constructed by the inner workings of our minds. A clever cover slid over insecurities and doubts. A construct comprised of imaginings about the person we wish to be. On the other side of this wall is the man I long for, deep in my heart.

Maybe mirrors show us more than we can imagine, if we look closely enough. A mirror is an inviting snare for the self-absorbed, allowing us to shallowly look upon ourselves not as we know ourselves to be, but instead as we appear to those around us. An impartial view of our shell, our scarred surface self that takes the brunt of our bumps and bruises. Swimming into sorrow filled eyes, I enter into the sacred center and truly evaluate. Distanced from the person being examined, I am able to penetrate into cellular psyche.

The water is scalding hot as I slide back into this reality. My eyes adjust to the surface of the mirror and I take in the room behind me. Men coming and going, leaving behind the waste that had built up in their bodies. Over my shoulder a man with an abnormally large penis is staring absently at the wall while urinating.

THE TOWER OF BRAHMA: Chapter 7 - Along Came A Spider (edit)

02/28/04

I woke up with a hot needle of sunlight being jabbed into not only the furthest reaches of my eyeball, but into my brain itself. I had drooled across the table that is firmly bolted to the floor of this establishment. I'm fairly certain that I awoke, although I'm not sure. I can't remember my dreams, not one damn bit.

Outside, a dark skinned man in a rumpled, yet flashy, dark blue suit briskly walked towards the front doors. He firmly pushed his way inside, shoving along a slow-moving herd of American cattle. They stared at him with the most scornful of looks, absolutely condemning the man and telling him sternly his place in their polite society. All with one look.

The man made his way towards the line for the fast food joint. He waited impatiently while he radiated pulses of hostility towards all those around him. His hands shook, and his knuckles popped of their own accord.

Once he had received his meal and dispensed of the requisite funds, we immediately made eye contact. He stalked his way towards me, slicing through the harmonious vibes of weary vacationers, dazed and drowsy travelers. His aura slammed down the chair across from me as he slid into the seat.

He dropped the tray on the table. A chemically charged meat sandwich, slivers of potatomeat popsicles, and an acidic 64oz. soda pop.

"A meal fit for a meat machine", was all that he said while staring directly into my right eye.

"Nervous?" followed shortly after.

My silence was not a voluntary act but more of a direct instinct to this man's presence. He sat across from me but somehow surrounded me entirely. I had no escape from his influence. I was jealous and hated him instantly. He reminded me of everything I wasn't. Confident, secure, with purpose and will. He had enough raw determination stirring within him that I felt shamed and small. I curled up in his presence and feared his wrath.

"I probably shouldn't have come yet. Probably broke some rules or something." I hadn't acknowledged the stinking fried food that lay between us. "You're not mad, you know."

I had slipped within myself and was now watching the scene take place as if watching my life from inside a television. Tears flowed freely.

"You're alone. For now. But they're the ones that are mad." He had a reassuring tone all of a sudden. I twinged at this sudden shift in inflection and body language. What did he want?

"Anyway, I just wanted to say...hang around here as long as you like, but I swear if you're eating this shit...", his previously friendly tone was to give this shift to fierce aggression all the more dramatic impact, "I will shoot you dead."

His eyes lingered with me longer than I had thought. It took me two minutes to realize that he wasn't still sitting across from me, but that his intense presence had actually carved itself across my mind's eye.

THE TOWER OF BRAHMA: Chapter 6 - A Million Burning Stars (edit)

02/28/04

I find myself drifting off to sleep randomly through the day. Recently I awoke from a mid-day twenty minute nap that was the result of a concentrated hunger fast. I fine tuned the controls of my perception inputs and found that a female was standing before me.

She was adorned in the garb of the corporate slave state's official drug supplier uniform. Cash green and vacant white wrapped itself firmly around her person, seemingly strangling the life from her before my very eyes.

She questioned me on my odd behavior and napping tendencies. I played it cool and flashed her some wit and style, which transmitted as little more than incoherent babbling and pure lunacy. I'm going to have to learn how to properly cross channels of communication if I am to continue on this path.

A wash of information floods off of her as we surfacetalk for the better part of her fifteen free minutes away from the JavaGod, deliverer of the Instant Awareness. Rooting through the mess of her Self, I find a few tidbits of relatability and sameness. There is a common spirit bellowing from deep within her. A spirit seeking ultimate liberation and dedication to a way.

My next clear memory is standing outside, tip-toed on the strip of pus-yellow grass that serves as the front lawn of the rest stop. I'm holding my arms out in a mock crucifixation as my soulport burns and aches with the sustained connection to pure Cosmos-spawn tendrils upgrading the software inside.

I'm teetering on the edge of the curb as I realize that my sense of date/time measurement has been properly dismantled. Twenty-nine hours since I last thought of the date, I now seek to destroy that countdown and into total deviation from cognitive timeframes.

The blaring horn of a truck causes the collapsing of my extended self, pushed simultaneously forwards and backwards in time. I run to the window to look in on my female friend and her chemically-charged, narcotic bean-drink administering only to find that this rest stop doesn't have a coffee stall.

Where am I? What is real? I'm jumping stations and can't find one that fits like a good reality should.

THE TOWER OF BRAHMA: Chapter 5 - Lost Among the Lambs (edit)

02/22/04

I feel dementia setting in. It's come around knocking, like an old friend stopping by innocently enough to catch up on times past. Under cover of a long, lost friend this parasitical leech has sucked you dry of the positive lifeforce flow you've built up.

I find myself attempting to engage people in conversations to find them always ring false, to find myself too concerned with the particulars to actually have a moment where my mind bridges the gap between us. I long for connection between my solitary world and the world of people. To find that my perception of reality is relatable to another.

This has led to a number of awkward stammers and random looks. A whole parade of falsities and surface skimming. I have been unable so far to pierce the veil of fractured, broken Self-ness and find a true connection with another Mind here. I find myself alone among the loneliest, and sad among the saddest. Where is my contact? Where am I going?

I doubt myself and the mission.

Tower of Brahma. Chapter 64. One Last Thing.

I fell to my knees, my body slack and drained, arms folded before me, sweat dripping from the tips of the long hair that draped across my face. I had done it, had gripped the World Serpent by the tail and ripped it free from my chest, its fangs sliding free from the apple in my chest. The venom spouted forth from the bite marks and gushed out before me. I was free.

I walked hand in hand with her as we took in the late Fall evening. I knew something was wrong inside, but I could not force my body to expel the bitterness and anxiety, couldn't imagine a life that didn't make me feel alone and outcast from any other human beings. For so long I wanted connection, communion with something other than myself. Glancing at her in my peripheral I couldn't acknowledge the power between us.

Years later, I'm carrying our child down the stairs as she toils away at her art desk. We exchange quick smiles as I pass her by, our daughter smiling and bouncing in my arms as we pass her on our way to the kitchen. I whip together a small lunch and bring it in to her, which, she reluctantly turns from her work to enjoy with us. We're a family, and bound together beyond what words can explain.

Every now and then I pause before our library and run my fingers along the spines of the novels and textbooks until I come upon a title: Tower of Brahma. Of all the books we own, this is the one that matters, for it is mine. I spent seven years of my life in a hell of my own making, constantly exposing myself emotionally, then encrypting it in poetic verse and obscure allegory. It's a completely self-indulgent text, filled with short stories, poems, essays, all scratching away at the black charred surface of my heart.

I laugh to myself there, letting my head drop a moment, eyes closed and taking in what had happened so long ago. A conspiracy of self consumed me, a labyrinthine plot through the inner workings of my mind, all in a desperate attempt to be happy, to gain enlightenment and become fulfilled. But when everything becomes an escape, you lose track of where you're going, frantic to flee whatever it is that's trying to kill you.

In my case it was me. Or the poisoned me that I created based on people's perceptions and their selfish demeanors. I tried so hard to change who I was, all while desperately clinging to the past as I had no idea who I was without all that anger and sadness. I was unwanted and unloved, mainly because I wanted to be. I teased myself with the idea of suicide endlessly, hoping that that at least was one way to be truly free.

I hoped that plotting out this book, this collection of a couple hundred pages and printed text, chock full of my ideas, my pain, my desires, I had hoped that this was what it took to reprogram me so that I could live here in the world and be one of you. But it didn't work like that. I wrote it. I read it. I even tried to sell copies it for awhile. Some people had read it, I even got a handful of positive comments, with no one taking the time to throw a negative one my way.

Who'd I write this for anyways? When I re-read it, I didn't even know who that person was anymore. The vague details seemed familiar, and there was something about the core of the narrative that I connected to, but I couldn't relate at this point, less and less so as the years went on. I was a father and husband, I taught at the Community College, helping young writers find their voices and molding them into words. I walked through my life with a smile and a kind word for those around me.

I wasn't alone. I never was except for when I truly wanted to be. I just felt I deserved to be. Years of struggle forced me up out of myself, made me wake up and take stock of this life I was living. Thankfully some subconscious program forced me along, building up the staircase I would need to ascend in order to take charge of my life. So, when I wrote that last chapter, when I let go of all the misery I thought was so essential to my being, only then was I able to see things around me clearly.

I was working for the Daily News, breaking the latest disasters, a Blackberry on my hip and a blazer on my back. I had a girlfriend that would never give up on me, who wanted more than anything to be my wife, to be a parent with me. There were a small collection of friends who saw in me a magnetic and charming person whose company they enjoyed. There was no shortage of personal and financial wounds that needed to be repaired, but the stage was set, and I was in charge.

I heard Millie shriek with joy from the other room as Jazmine tickled her making googling noises. My child and wife, my family. I didn't bother taking the book off the shelf, I never do anymore, hardly even think about it really. The second book is nearly complete and I really don't know if I'll do anything except print up a copy to slide right next to this one here. Jazz would want me to, she thinks it's important. I think she just wants me to feel good about it, which is why I love her.

No one else needs to read this. I don't even need to read this. Yet, it had to be written, if for no other reason to save this writer's soul. I imagine a young punk picking up a used copy at the bookstore on St. Mark's in the East Village. He'll love it, hate it, slip it into a back jean pocket, leave it at a friend's house after they smoke and run out to a show taking swigs from their flask. Some idea or sense of the words will have made some impact on him, altering how he experiences that night.

Maybe he writes his own novel, or starts a band, swiping a chapter title for a song that will never be played beyond dive bars and dingy basements. I like to imagine that in years to come he'll have read my adventures in New York City during the first decade in a new century and wish that he had lived back then, when things were more visceral and real, never really knowing that fiction is all based on the same mundane reality we all experience, only altered and ignited by our innate desire to be more than we are.

And the day will come when that young man realizes that there's nothing more rewarding than to have your moment, record it, process it, and then to let it go. From there you are truly free to do whatever it is that you wish. And right now, all I want is to go look on my family's smiling faces as I enter the room. That is what's real. That's the happy ending that no book will ever give you.

Stop typing. Stop reading.

This is the end.

THE TOWER OF BRAHMA: Chapter 4 - The End (edit)

02/16/04

I wake from a dream, although I'm not entirely sure that's what it was. Maybe it's my perspective that's being altered, but it seems these dreams are just moments of un-existence. A few hours a night and in the morn you're feeling as fictional as you were the day before.

I feel like I may be damaging my host but according to the reports I'm receiving, it seems as if I have his full support. I finally begin to feel the tiniest hope of purpose or guidance.

The car has been psychoactively cut off from this plane of existence and is merging with another where someone so very familiar lies on a bed typing words and listening to music. We have reached an understanding it seems and the mission, although just as obscure as ever, now seems somehow refined.

I think god has spoken to me, or rather reached out to me, and given me knowledge of the end.

THE TOWER OF BRAHMA: Chapter 3 - Fictional, Untruths, Lies (edit)

02/16/04

I've been sleeping in my car at rest stops, cocooned in fetal position for the entire night. I began driving north and now I'm no longer sure of my location or direction. I've been eating at different spots along the road, spending my days reading and people watching.

Rest stops are amazing places, these snippets of an elevated reality. A between place no more firmly rooted in the limitations of objective reality than the amusement parks of the world. Of course, rest stops are a more mundane and pure form of unreality. From day to day I see all manner of people engaged in all kinds of acts, their stop here just a bump along the road to their destination that lies just beyond the moment. A tomorrow return to the lives they knew or boundless future potential, a promise of a new life in a new temporal location.

These places are simmering mirages, basking in the wavy bends of light and heat, a place that is but a footnote in your life story, a fraction of the mind spent on remembering its details which seem to slip from your grasp the more you try to hold on to them. Rest stops are out of phase with objective reasoning, as are all places of power and mystery. The land still has the upper hand, defining itself beyond our limited grasp of its identity and role in the cosmic theatre.

It's in the parking lots of these un-places, where I find myself recalling the moments where my mind would link with the greater mind of One. Where I would shake off my shell, flowing on the bonds of electromagnetic wavelengths, and otherwise deviating from norm perspective. My face surfacing into the white light of everything where I was fed pure energy and peace.

A malevolent tumor of cancerous imagination cells built up a power of personality that was so strong because of its disuse that once a connection with higher powers was established, and the culture conformity viewer program was befuddled with the mantra of obscure madness (pure psycholaxative chaos haikus born of the moment), it had dashed for the nearest exit never looking back or wondering why. The program was running in the background, searching for a hook, which would allow systemic processing of the poetic-meme-deconstruction of my personae.

My life is a lie.

THE TOWER OF BRAHMA: Chapter 2 - Control (edit)

02/09/04

I found myself in the bathroom of a truck stop, lingering in front of the mirror as I washed my hands. I glanced up to meet my own eyes as they looked me over. Who was this character that had been substituted in place of my reflection? It was almost as if I was supposed to recall the details of this alternately reflected creature, but upon deeper inspection I found that I was unable to place a name, place, or purpose to it. The harder I tried to figure out who this was that had seized control of what I thought was my body, the less that seemed familiar to me.

I dismissed the fact that I could no longer tell what was reality with a shrug of my shoulders, and I watched my looking-glass doppelganger ape the movement in sync. Did I always look like this? In a way I want to say I did, but in a way this body felt new, somehow removed from my old one. Could my entire existence prior to these moments be nothing but fiction? The detailed schematic of the lie that I called my Life had seemingly been pulled over my eyes as I continued to wage war against the reality that I was currently experiencing.

The past was full of doubt. That left me with only the moment and the moment to come. It is those subtle transitions I must be aware of, for the more cognitive I am during them, the stronger my sense of what's real shall become. And if I am to make it out of this, I will need to have my wits about me, and to have some sort of roadmap of where I've been.

Lost in a thought I slipped from frame of reference and began floundering along my Auric-wavelength. Phasing between time and space I found myself drifting along as the meat cleansed itself of tactile bacterial growth with scalding hot water and pink jism that served as soap. I bounced and rattled within my body as I fought my way back to the controls.

Things have been a bit touch and go since I was baptized in the Ether of Eternity. Reborn again into shape and form, I was corkscrewed back into flesh and mind, spiraling and rotating back towards full control. Flexing my tether to the Eternal Unconscious to glean tidbits of Truth, I scribble the info down in my journal as soon as possible hoping to identify the pattern upon thorough examination.

THE TOWER OF BRAHMA: Chapter 1 - Escape (edit)

02/04/04

The clichés were all present. Lined up in a row so as to make me believe this farce, this fiction that has been substituted for my life. I awoke in my room, yet it wasn't my room. I inherently knew that my position had been altered while I slept. I looked around at my "stuff" in my "bedroom" and instantly felt like I was on a movie set. Everything was there, in perfect disorder, except now it all felt hollow, empty, devoid of the sentimentality and nostalgic power I'd imbued them with.

I immediately began writing down my thoughts in my journal. Hopefully I could find my laptop and post these thoughts online and make my abduction known to all. Cautiously, I left my bedroom to find my faux living room. Replacement couch, 36" TV, stocked bookshelf, endless DVDs, and my computer, all sitting in the same place I had had the originals for years. Through the small window above my desk I could see the day was a slate gray. Looking down at my router I could see that they had cleverly left me access to the Internet. Truly nothing was out of place.

I made my way to the front door and stepped outside. Staring up at the massive dull dome miles above me, I knew then the trouble that my abductors had gone through to make this mock world. It was perfect and complete in its illusion of comfort and familiarity, and epic in scale and scope. I needed to escape as soon as possible.

I threw on some clothes, grabbed a backpack full of supplies I might need and ran out the door. I had hesitated a minute or two in front of the fridge but decided that the food within there may be tainted with any sort of hallucinogenic drug. I needed to maintain this clarity of thought if I am going to make it out of the confines of this pseudo-reality. I started up my car and slipped in some good driving music. I tore off down a simulation of the road I drove every day for my entire life.

So far everything was as it should have been. If it wasn't for the ache in the pit of my stomach, the panic buried deep within myself that I trusted more than my five senses, I could've easily believed that this truly was my life. That this was my car that I was driving, down the street I lived on, wearing the clothes that I got for Christmas. So seductive was the lie that something deep in me, possibly on a genetic level, was telling me to run. Somehow I knew that this deception was more than my willpower could possibly overcome.

THE TOWER OF BRAHMA - Prelude (edit)

10/16/03

Agent Spider looked down at the bullet-riddled corpse at his feet. He counted thirty eight separate entry points. A quick scan of the surrounding area told him that these were accurately fired shots from a fully automatic machine gun with no more than seven bullet holes in the far wall. Someone shot his partner point blank to make a statement. Not that he needed this forensic evidence to know who did this.

It was a message. A friendly little sticky note passed between former co-workers. The bullet holes themselves might as well have spelled out the message if you connected the dots. "We know." But even this seemed a tad extreme for the Agency. This was personal. This was an old friend trying to get under his skin. An attempt to trigger an emotional response. To bypass the logic center of his brain. Send him running off half-cocked looking for revenge.

Agent Spider wasn't the same man he once was, back when they knew him. He had escaped from the Society. It was unheard of for someone to escape, but escape he did. And none of the graduates would ever fall for so obvious a challenge. Never fight on their terms. What was needed now was to retreat, cause them to get impatient. Let Gallows make the mistakes while he got a new partner.

In a way it was a relief. This one didn't have the balls to destroy the world.

The Tower of Brahma - Chapter 63 Pt.2 - My Life Til Now

It was the true dawn of the internet. My first screenname was RDMASQUE, my teenage superhero/vigilante alter ego, with a slight nod to the Poe short story 'Masque of the Red Death', where upper society is killed by a plague at a fancy dinner.

I would hang out with my friends, then come home and log into the TOWN SQUARE - LONG ISLAND room on AOL 2.5 and then make fun of the losers that hung out in there. We'd play WAV files that we each had surprising one another with well timed gags.

And after losing my virginity I found the anonymous aspect of IM flirting to be a godsend. Finally, I didn't need to feel awkward in person and I could just say whatever I felt, be as snarky as I wanted, type bold statements that would be so unlike me in person. I was able to come into my own and redefine myself.

Eventually we met up with those losers online, and we were the cool under 21 kids hanging out with late 20's social rejects. There was some common bond of outcast status that made it so a group of all walks of life could congregate and create our own scene.

At this point in my life, my grandmother dead and buried, my ex long forgotten, and a guy obsessed with me now just a suicide statistic, I was numb to everything. A headbutt from a bullying friend to my sternum shut down my heart chakra and I didn't care or think about anyone else.

I slept with a few girls, some who broke up with their boyfriends for a week just to sleep with me, some who asked if we were going out as I entered her. I was relentless in my online firting and it led me to have sex with the hottest girl I could imagine who left immediately after crying. She drunk drove home to her boyfriend.

Then I began dating a 27 year old just before I turned 21. A weird mix of friends all gathered at the surprise party my parents threw for me. My friends all bought me Playstation and the Die Hard game. I drunkenly bought everything at a 7-11 at 2am. I had everything I could have wanted.

But she became obsessed, checked my emails after we broke up. Somehow she guilted me into dating her for another 6 months. I would sit and watch Tom & Jerry with this girl who had finished Grad school for Psychology, and imagine hitting her in the head with a brick. I didn't want to be there with her but couldn't get out of it.

I hung out with my friends as often as possible, finally discovering weed and smoked, watched Traces of Death while eating hot wing potato chips. We'd play multiplayer Goldeneye and Starfox on the Nintendo 64, killing each other vitually over and over again. One on one they were my best friends, in a group I was the butt of the jokes.

Somehow with my group of friends I entered their world of comic books and roleplaying as the patsy, the jester, the one you could tear down just to watch me twist under sarcastic insults. Initially I embraced it, eager to fill a role after leaving the non-existant family dynamic I had. I went from unwanted oldest child left alone with a TV to doofy victim of insecure teenage dorks.

College passed in the blink of an eye without so much of a memorable experience. I had gone to Nassau Community College instead of SUNY New Paltz in upstate New York. I would've found a hippy scene up there and become a different person but entered the 13th grade with my friends, staying at home in suburbia.

I wrote everything I could, screenplays, poetry, short stories, even filmed two short movies. I had technical ability but no real life experience to write about. With words I could convey emotions, put you in a scene, but what was it that I had to say? Nothing that wasn't derived from some comic book or action movie. So I gave it up after I graduated.

I had worked since I was 11, from a newspaper route, to helping deliver candy & sodas to train stations in Jamaica. Then I ran the kiddy rides at Adventureland when I was 16, was a cashier at Waldbaums when I graduated, and wound up at K-Mart in the electronics department in college. I bounced to a brief stint at Sears as a TV/laserdisk salesman, and finally wound up at Jiffy Lube, despite knowing nothing about cars (and my dad was/is a mechanic).

So this all led up to some point. I began avoiding the 27 year old, showing up hours late to work after nearly getting arrested at a hotel party off the LIE, and I was about ready to make a stand to the friends. The ringleader, Ed, had made out with other girls behind his current girlfriend's back, and she knew I was the weak link so she came to me to find out the truth.

And with that passive aggressive revealing of the truth, breaking the bros before hos code, I no longer had friends. Everyone sided with him over me, having too much fun with his smartass comments and magnetic personality. In one summer I had isolated myself utterly and completely.

I had just begun dating Rebecca. She was the girl I jumped to in order to escape the older chick. Rebecca also had gotten me a job doing customer service with her. In a few months I became the trainer, and was making more money than ever. It was an easy job and with my infinite patience I never was rude to these idiotic people that bought "rare" coins or VHS tapes about trains, super car lube or breast enhancement cream.

It was a new life and with it a new direction. After drawing in MS Paint at the job I thought I wanted to do artwork on the computer. After all, my dad was obsessed with computers, making music, short animations, DOOM levels, and so my affinity for computer programs could make up for my lack of art skill.

So with a friend Dan from the High School gang, also ostrasized, we went to graphic design school. We learned Adobe desktop publishing, Flash animation, HTML and 3D animation. I really took to it but never excelled at it, much like everything else I did in my life. But I had new friends and went to see their bands perform around Long Island.

I had quit the customer service job and was selling whatever I had to eat and used credit cards to buy comic books. My girlfriend Rebecca was hiding out in my bedroom on a nightly basis as my parents fought about my irresponsibility.

My father saw me as wasting my potential, not being the sacrificial martyr he was, slaving away to support a family he seemingly didn't want. My mother defended me as I always took care of my accounts, paid my bills, and other than never doing anything around the house (set by my father's example) I was a good kid, if not a bit lazy.

It was the end of the 90's and Y2K was nearly upon us. For all the anticipation, it was a non-event, years of build-up and no payoff. Except it was apocalyptic for me. Everything was on the verge of breaking, and sure enough there was one final death blow to my life.

Rebecca and I went to her friend's house party. Her ex that endlessly cheated on her, making her a paranoid, jealous mess (with her sketchy dad's help), was at the party, flirting with girls despite having a girlfriend who wasn't there. She watched him as a joint was passed around.

I was nervous as she was not okay with smoking. I asked if it was cool, and she nodded, but when it came around to me she had left to go do shots. I barely took a hit, mostly to be social with these strangers, and then went to sober up a bit before driving home. When I found her and brought her to the car to head home, she was drunk.

I wanted to be honest so I told her that I had smoked a tiny bit. She unleashed an insane rage upon me, punching the glasses off my face, kicking me, as I tried to keep the car from sliding on the black ice of Sunrise Highway. I got her to my parent's house and locked her in my room. I crouched into a ball keeping the door shut as she wailed on me.

I had a moment, I knew if I could smack her hard enough, I could knock her unconcious and finally relax. I slapped her as hard as I could, then felt guilty on how justified I felt at lashing back at her. When I couldn't take it anymore I let her leave to go crash drunkenly. My mom and sister woke up and talked her down.

It was over. I wouldn't stay with her. That was a line that was crossed. I had been thoroughly emasculated. But she feigned some sickness and I took care of her. The ultimate fucking chump. She played me and I fell for it. By the end of the mysterious two week sickness spent in my bed, the drunken attack was a distant memory. I tried to blank it out.

But it was there. When my friend Dan went out to lunch with her one day, he went Basic Instinct crazy on her, telling her that me and him had hooked up and that I was his first. To this day I'll wonder exactly how this conversation went down, but that was it for my friends. I didn't even question her and cut him off instantly.

Then we moved out together. Her nesting instinct took over and I became some lazy asshole she lived with. By this time I had gotten an office job designing medical and financial forms, placing the Wong-Baker scale into charts and typing 4pt legalese on the back of loan applications. I needed a creative output.

So on January 1, 2001 I decided to start writing comic books. In a month I had my first script about a fallen hero, now a junkie vigilante, an unwitting pawn of the devil. It was good enough for me to look for paid work and I got a gig scripting a few 28 page one-shots based on this guy's characters. I got paid $50 a script, but then the company folded.

It was enough of a tease that I decided to work on my own. I had an idea about a modern day Chow Yun Fat style master of kung fu who would avenge his father against superpowered illuminati members. At a networking panel at WizardWorld Philly I met an insanely talented kid named Chris (my father and grandfather's name) and my personal guru/idol Grant Morrison at the DC Comics booth.

It was a sign. Chris and I began working on a new comic, a sci-fi/fantasy kung fu revenge story, and it was my only outlet. I had no friends to go out with, no family I wanted to keep in touch with, and a girlfriend that was more of a roommate. The comic came together and we began showing it around comic conventions, talking to any and every professional.

But I felt stupid. The quiet shy kid that let this genius artist get all the attention and glory. It was enough at first to have him believe in me and my writing. But after countless hours standing silently beside him, listening to endless praise of his work, I just felt empty. Not worth anything. No life. Basically invisible.

I had one friend at this time, the old rebel without a clue Dennis. We had reconnected and rode mountain bikes through trails. It was nice seeing someone from when I was a kid, even if he was the troublemaker who took my first girlfriend from me. Now he was engaged and growing up.

But once again, when it was just us we'd be close, tight, talking about anything and everything, in front of others, he'd berate and hit me. I couldn't take it anymore, my anxiety levels were peaking, I wanted to freak out, but somehow I was just holding on to my sanity.

Rebecca got two little pugs, having always been an animal person, and now well adjusted enough to be stable and be close with her family once again thanks to my patience and therapeutic advice, so she didn't need me anymore. And then my parents split up. My mom comes over to tell me, but instead breaks down into tears to Rebecca when I leave the room.

My father says he'll come by and talk to me about it but never does. He blames Rebecca for the breakup because of a supportive message she wrote to my mom (he checked my mom's email of course), not because of any of his flaws or faults. I don't talk to him for two years after that happily. He changes my AOL password on Father's Day months later.

I feel unfazed by the whole thing, half wanting/expecting it since I was old enough to know that parents could split up. They were together since they were teenagers and were now not much older than I am right now as I write this. They needed a life. Instead they repeated patterns.

My mom found an asshole boyfriend who was about the same age and disposition as my dad. My dad found an older woman who was simple and sweet, not unlike his own father did when his parents split up at just about the same age. Repeating cycles.

My grandmother's death was the real end of the family, but here it was, the final death rattle. There was no family anymore. No friends around either. Just a girlfriend who wanted nothing to do with me and her sister, who both ignored or talked right over me. I was often told to shut up or be quiet.

So I broke down. That was it. If my parents splitting up wasn't enough of a reason to be listened to, nothing would. I laid on the floor rocking back forth mumbling "I can't...I can't..." over and over for hours. I was totally lost. What was the point of anything? Movies and comics were empty distractions from life, my office job was all I had, what was the point of anything if you couldn't share it with anyone?

I became depressed, smoked weed excessively, watched as many fucked up movies as I could, hoping that I would feel something. But I didn't. The social anxiety amped up so that I couldn't even go to a store in the mall, which was my one distraction outside of work and home.

Rebecca began seeing a therapist, and eventually I went along for couples therapy. I found myself thinking of how mentally superior I was to the therapist, but she did validate all my frustration which I found to be liberating. I went to my own therapist but gave up on her when she couldn't remember my name or what I talked about week to week.

Traumatized by the PETA videos Rebecca had shown me forced me to become vegetarian, preying upon my squeamishness at eating dead animals. I would eat frozen veggie burgers and chicken noodle soup with the chicken picked out. I watched artsy and disturbing movies on my lunch break. I had a routine and began going to the gym.

I was feeling better day by day but I was still afraid of life. I'd constantly push myself, going out to bars to see local bands, went for a day trip up to New Paltz to see the college I could've gone to. The comic was coming along but I really needed to write for myself again. I needed to purge my soul with words.

I thought back to the screenplay I never finished in college. Two secret agents sent to a remote Hindu temple to complete the Tower of Brahma, thus ending all of existence. It was a cliched action movie, with tidbits of existentialism. Shootouts, car chases, and badass black suits.

So I started writing. Somehow a guy past his prime, late in his 20's, changed everything about himself through those words. I went to San Diego to promote my graphic novel, and when I got back, I found myself going out to Long Island City to see the Scissor Sisters at PS1. A week later I was in the East Village seeing a friend of a friend's band. And then I met a girl.

Diana drew me in somehow, made me feel bolder than I ever felt, and she wanted to listen, to get to know me. So I told her everything, and a month later I was living with her down on the LES outside the Williamsburg Bridge. I ended things with Rebecca, quit my office job, and threw everything into storage. I lived out of my car with a few bags at her place.

I got a job as a paparazzi photo editor working the late shift, coming home to Delancey at 4am. With Diana I hit dive bars, gallery openings, fashion events, and saw almost all of Manhattan. From the Financial District to Upper West Side, Governor's Island to the Highline (before it was renovated). She loved playing tour guide and I got the crash course in the city that I needed.

But she was cold, and something must have reminded me about my past ex-girlfriend's with her, so I cried and acted out and purged my soul all over her. We both quit the photo agency and went to Columbia where we got taken around by her family. After that we went to LA where we got tattoos. But when we got back it all fell apart.

On July 4th she left for Vegas for a girls weekend and I went to an open bar Gen Art event with Jared, the guy's band I saw that I first met her at. We got ridiculous drunk and by this time I had experience being blackout drunk, having gone into a walking coma at the MoMA, vomiting on the F train, collapsed on Eldridge.

So when we blacked out that night it wasn't that much of a surprise but the British female voice that was on my voicemail was a shock. It seems I somehow picked up a girl while totally unconscious. Or I guess she picked me up. I meet her a few weeks later (she went back to Australia for a few weeks, and yes, Australian with a British accent), and I have no idea what she looks like.

I pass her on the street without knowing, observing her hotness. We eventually recognize each other and hit up a sake bar, where I proceed to tell her everything you've just read, give or take a few tidbits. We hang out a few more times but when it gets a bit serious she ends things, just before my birthday.

I'd been living with my ex in her friend's apartment on 15th and 5th Ave, but after a trip up to the top of the Empire State Building, I leave for Boston. I hit up a comic book convention with my fellow creators, newly formed as a studio collective dubbed TenTon Studios, and we get drunk and ridiculous, and it'd be one of the best times any of us had.

I tell them I don't know where I'm going to live, I was getting unemployment for a few months, no idea at all what job I'd be able to get. Jay and Jong invite me to come back to their place to crash in North Alrington, New Jersey. In three days I'm eating meat and smoking cigarettes again, and suddenly hooked on Starbucks Americanos.

After a few months of living in the Garden State and hooking up with some Jersery girls, I move back to New York City with my last paycheck from Cingular customer service training. I had gotten a job at the last possible moment at an Alphagraphics and spent what money I had coming into the city on the weekends so I could drink with Jared, sleeping on his floor for two days at a stretch.

Eventually I just blew my last check on rent to move in with him and to save money I brought all my crap from storage on Long Island and lugged it up four flights. I was basically just living in a storage unit with 30 long boxes of comics and a mattress on top as my bed. All my other junk was still tucked away in boxes but I made it my own.

It was a one bedroom, where he had the living room as his room, and my bedroom held the bathroom. The shower was in the closet and we were living on top of each other, or would be if I didn't work nights and he worked days. It somehow worked out for a few years and we had gotten close enough where it was fairly comfortable.

We would go out every free night, run the gamut of East Village and Lower East Side bars, hit the girls with our routine where we pronounce that despite our closeness we were not gay, not even a little...but yeah, we were gay. And it made them all laugh every time. And maybe there was some weird physical side to us, not an attraction, but an understanding of our dynamic.

He was the sadistic one, so dreadfully insecure that he'd have to constantly bring me down (and everyone else for that matter) to be "funny", and I would once again play the part of slapstick sidekick, taking the abuse in order to feel like I was playing my role, a comfort in the schtick. But, like before, I grew resentful, realizing that he only did care about himself, and was only capable of caring for himself.

We switched off for months at a time in relationships so we started to not see each other. But all my friends, my social life, everything was his. I barely had a small handful of friends and so found myself in relationship after relationship. Once I was the one who felt the pain of disinterest and became an obsessive lunatic, but mostly I got involved with girls then plotted my escape route.

And I'd do this by being my best self, a facade of awesome that would be whatever they wanted. And when I began to see their flaws, things I couldn't live with, exaggerrated pains I felt, a disrespect I wouldn't accept. Each time I said too much, made things as messy as possible, and this even ended with my having to call 911 to have an ambulance stop my young ex, just a sophmore at NYU, from slicing her wrists open.

Right before that I ventured to Amsterdam and Paris with my friend Ben from New School. I had taken a few semesters before that and met him in my first writing class. He was much like the lost (and cooler/more badass) younger brother I never had. Of course I fucked up my financial aid and never got to go back after the trip.

With two new credit cards we headed out to Europe and smoked as much as we could stand, exhausting ourselves as we wandered around the canals, dodging bikes. We smuggled some on the train to Paris and smoked out the window of our hotel in the middle of La Siene overlooking the Palais du Justice.

We found Paris to be dead, but to its credit, so were we. Beaten from the travel, the smoking, the drinking, the shrooms, the cold Amsterdam air pouring into our room as we chained smoked and zoned out to MTV Europe. I fell in love with Amsterdam, and on the last night I was so high that I uncovered a power to project a fictional reality around me.

Or was it there the whole time?

I came back and within two months I was engaged to who I thought was my female counterpart. She was an ex-model with a sarcastic sense of humor, tall and thin, goofy in her choice of style. Unique gets tossed around a lot, but dare anyone to find me someone more so. Of course, she was also bi-polar and a borderline alcoholic who was addicted to karaoke.

I moved in with her after four months. Things ended badly with Jared and his latest girlfriend who I absolutely loathed. Oh, and I had also gotten laid off (aka quit because of a significant pay cut) and couldn't find another job. I was broke and she was helping me as best she could. By the time we lived together, the honeymoon was long over.

All my insecurities bubbled to the surface. I couldn't do karaoke. I couldn't take everyone wanting her. Girls would never want me like guys want her. That imbalance consumed me. My self-worth plummeted as she went off dressed to the nines to be hit on by men with jobs, power, confidence. I was just an unemployed, neurotic asshole.

Our clashes were epic. We'd scream, i'd storm out, walk the streets, sometimes blackout drunk and bleeding from smashing something. I often contemplated and nearly commited suicide. I began therapy and it helped, but I never felt such despair in my life. I had no way out, my debt was growing, and she couldn't fulfill me.

My addictions were exposed. I needed to smoke to alleviate boredom. I wanted to fuck to lose myself, to dominate her, to control her. I needed it more than air or food. And I never got it. I obsessed about it. I became delirious, paranoid beyond even my imaginings. I had to face myself and all that I wasn't, all that I expected myself to be.

I kept writing though. Working on comics. Started a podcast. Truly it was my most productive year in that regard. I suddenly had an internet radio show with an audience, a new comic in the works, and I was nearing the end of a novel I had begun six years before, when I was a totally different person. Some finish line was coming.

I got a job at the Daily News, a major metropolitan newspaper. I was excited. This wasn't just paparazzi bullshit (though that was still present), it was news, world events. I was working a five day work week, night shift, and lost all contact with humanity. I didn't go out, the money I made wasn't enough, the relationship was really failing despite desperate attempts to salvage it.

The holidays came, and she went to her parents. I went to work. I can't imagine a worse time in my life. After the New Year, 2010, I was working on pictures of the devastation of the Haiti earthquake, color correcting a photo of a man crying, screaming in anguish, as he holds his daughter's dead body, and I wished I was him. I wanted true pain. I wanted to have my entire life crumble around me.

I held a knife against my wrist for hours before I checked myself into the ER. My therapist had recommended it multiple times and it had finally gotten that bad. They recommended I sign myself in, and I did. I surr2endered myself to their care. They told me when to wake up, when to sleep, fed me, and medicated me.

I saw the hope in the eyes of the much further gone cases around me. They held on to dreams that they would most likely fuck up once they got out. They had lives they wanted to return to that their disorders would destroy. Or they were too withdrawn and a mess to do much of anything but ride out the rest of their days.

After a week they released me. I was free. Lauren and I were suddenly back together and doing well after she came and visited me all week on the inside. But that wouldn't last. We had to move, barely staving off court because we couldn't afford the rent at her place. We fought as we sought out places in Brooklyn. On the last day possible we found a two bedroom in Clinton Hill.

After we moved in, we split apart. We lived seperate lives, had smaller and smaller breakdowns and screaming matches. Finally, we just ended it. It was over, but neither of us could go anywhere. We couldn't afford it. I secretly (secret even to me) held onto hope that this was like all the other times, and we'd go back to how things were. Then she slept with Lady Gaga's DJ.

I went through the stages of grief, said horrible things to her, hurt her as best as I could, not that she would ever show it. So instead I just died inside until I needed to go on, there was nothing else to do. I pushed her out of my head a bit more each day. I embraced what was around me that made me feel good, happy. It was such a foreign feeling at this point.

I've just moved out, tossed all I own into storage, found a sublet in Harlem, and said my goodbyes to her. My father just went to rehab for alcohol in Florida, down by his family. My sister is about to get married. My friend Boston has survived being a cop and is now a park ranger in Massachusetts. We have a ton of projects we want to work on together. I have one more chapter to write in this book.

A whole new life, not even a new chapter, but an entirely new book lies ahead of me. This is everything that is now behind me. I finally release it all. It's made me this person so I could do what I'm about to do.

The Tower of Brahma. Chapter 63. Fire Over Water.

My parents had sex in the back of my dad's Mustang, parked after hours at the park around the corner from where they lived. My pops was 17, worked at the Dairy Barn, and tuned up his car after class. My mom was 15, had knee surgery that put her field hockey days behind her.

I was conceived.

For reasons unknown to me I was not aborted, but rather, I was born on September 21, 1976, a Tuesday at 2am. My parents wed five days before at City Hall. My mom started taking night classes to graduate a year early. My father enters the workforce as an auto-mechanic.

I say I don't know the reason these teenagers decided to keep this child, but I do have my suspicions. I think my father to have assumed the role out of a sense of martyrdom, quite possibly like his father. But thinking on it now, my widow grandmother on my mom's side, an Irish Catholic, was perhaps the deciding factor.

My dad showed me how to change the breaks on our car, got to really enjoy all the cool Star Wars toys, and have a small victim for his boyish pranks. It was all a joke, he was teasing, he didn't mean to scare me like that. I begin to see my father as an object of fear, of aggression, humiliation.

I cling to my mother, who reads to me at night, and smiles everytime she looks at me. She loves me more than she realized was possible, quite literally shellshocked from her nearly virgin birth. A child with a child, a girl who never knew her own father, an electrical engineer in World War II, dead of lung cancer before her third birthday.

The rift, the crack, begins to widen every day. My dad gets shitfaced and off-roads with his friends, who eventually have their own kids, and it becomes a ritual to go camping, drink, and laugh their asses off at their children's expense. Or at least for my dad that is.

My sister is born. I hear stories saying that I was sweet and tender towards her as a baby. I recall nothing but disdain and half-hearted bitterness, never fully realized jeaslousy. Something happens before I can really be aware of how I feel about having a younger sibling.

I die.

I choke to death on a piece of hotdog. The thick-skinned kosher kind. I turned blue, passed out, and was rushed to the Emergency Room where they removed the chunk of weiner with tongs. How long I went without breath, I don't know. Did I subconciously yearn for death, or perhaps attention, at so early an age?

Most of my memories from this time are vague, just as they were years before. I recall a scary Dracula in a house window, Vienna Fingers in my lunchbox, a Matchbox Car in my hand, as I walked besides my mom to pre-school. We raced cars along the floor, I came home with a bootleg, cheap ass orange truck.

They tell me there was a dog at that apartment, the landlord's dog, named Max. He was big and scary with a loud ass bark, but we were friends. As the story goes, I was sleeping in his pen area besides him. He awoke, startled from a dream, and clutched my face in his jaws. I still have the scars.

We move to a poor white/middle class black neighborhood. We have an apartment under a rockabilly couple that have a snake, rats, and a tarantual. In the driveway is an old 30's Ford (complete with running boards) and an El Camino.

We live next to a wooded park, complete with amazing hills, a playground, and tons of inchworms & catepillars. My best friend was the white trash kid across the street who lives with his old aunt. I piss through his window from outside, we ride bike trails we build in his backyard, and get stung by a hive of bees in the massive tree that sat in front of his house, hiding away the rundown house and overgrown yard.

I recall thinking, I'm afraid of heights, as I look up to a tree far back on his property that had been struck by lightning. It was charred and split at the top, a good thirty feet above us. Beyond the fence is the farmland where we would pick strawberries each year.

I get new sneakers, and two older boys force us into the back of their property down the street. They tell me to close my eyes, my friend yells to me not to. I am frightened by their demeanors so I comply. They tilt a wheelbarrow over, spilling gray mud all over my feet, covering every inch of my new sneakers. I walk home into the sunset with my friend and the sun dries the mud, it cracks off, and my shoes are still perfectly fine.

I watch TV with my parents, Darth Vader's helmet being lifted up, his pale, sick frame underneath. I say, "I guess Luke didn't get his looks from his dad." My parents erupt into laughter. We're a family, watching Star Search, a man singing 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow', the Muppet Show, and ALF.

My dad teaches me to ride my bike, I can't make left turns for some reason, and wasn't too good at stopping. I put my arm out reaching for this rusted car, as my wrist drags along the metal. I still have a scar running just below my thumb and down onto my wrist.

The power is out and the windows are shaking. We're huddled around candles as Hurricane Gloria rages outside. It nearly tosses a tree from the park into the house. During the eye of the storm, we step outside, basking in the eeiry calm of the moment. Everything is ripped apart and smahed, tree branches scattered everywhere, entire bushes uprooted.

My friends get together to survey the damage. My black friends all have big houses, circular driveways, and built-in pools. I watch as one friend's sister falls into the pool, getting tangled in the sticker bushes that were deposited in there. She thrashes about and almost slips under the thorns and branches.

Awhile later, we camp out in that friend's backyard, which seems to go on for miles. We goof around, jump from tree to tree, armed only with our flashlights. We get in trouble and are made to come inside. From the bathroom window we spy the next door neighbor building something as his girlfriend comes out in only a nightshirt. I see her vagina as she bends over to kiss him.

When winter comes, we hit the park's hills with out sleds and fly down the slopes. My little sister jumps on the back of mine and we slip down the big drop. A kid comes soaring down on top of us in his wood and metal sled. My leg is crushed, and my sister's head is smashed. We need to keep her awake once we get home.

As a family we sit down to play Cabbage Patch Kids: the boardgame, and when they remove the top I spy it instantly. A piece of construction paper with a crayon stick figure drawing. Crude cave etching of a naked man and woman, with word balloons proclaiming some sort of unknown sexuality. I am instantly mortified at this unexpected intrustion into this, my dawn of sexual discovery.

Everyone laughs as they can just barely make out what it says, what it means. They laugh again when I fill out the ID card in my G.I. Joe wallet as SEX: No. My sister comes out with a random statement, "Dad has too much sex." My sister runs around naked often. My dad spanks me once, but it is so terrifying that I see it as a freeze framed moment of panic.

I remember a story where I sat in the backseat of the car after a fair, a smile on my face as I held firmly to the string on my HULK mylar balloon. Suddenly, without any warning, my dad whips around, rips the balloon from me and tosses it out the window. It seems it was reverberating in the wind and it just had to go.

Did my dad pick on me, not knowing how to relate to boys (having two older and two younger sisters) and acting out his immature jealous rage against me, the male who was perhaps taking his wife from him? I can't imagine he loved her with any depth or passion, and most likely just wanted her physically, unable to show emotion beyond that.

Either way my father was done with me once we moved to Massapequa. I was almost done with elementary school, where I was the quiet kid who identified himself as a clutz, and began a new life among kids who'd known each other for years. When I was 11 my dad told me he wasn't going to be there for me going forward.

I made some friends here and there, lots of people really friendly towards the new kid in the Yankees hat. My first friend slept in his tighty-whities when I stayed over and had Barbies in his room; he came out over a decade later. My next friends lived far away, and were bad kids, a weird mix. Then I met the four who would make me leave my comfort zone.

There was the charismatic leader (momma's boy), the hard luck kid (trouble magnet), the rebel (with daddy issues), and me, the mascot, the punchline, the scaredy cat. We stayed out past curfew, rode our bikes around, talked to girls selling friendship bracelets. I just wanted to return Blades of Steel, the NES game I rented from T&S Video (our acct.# was 1012).

But they wanted to talk to girls, so we hung out with them, stood on their corners under amber streetlights, innocently flirted with childish flair. I stood back, embarrassed, scared, uncertain. I had a paper route, and video games to be played, maybe shoot another short film on my PXL2000 with action figures. I didn't want to talk to girls.

They threatened to throw a bike at my head if I didn't ask this girl out. After our first night we were paired off. I spent the last part of the summer before High School hanging out in basements, watching Road House, doing tricks on our BMXs to impress girls in oversized Champion sweatshirts and neon skids, while they are Combos and drank Diet/Caffeine Free Coke.

They were scrunches in their hair, keds on their feet, two pairs of socks, one overflowing and colorful, and danced to BelBivDevoe. I wore net belly shirts, Bugle Boy jean shorts, and had a good sized pony tail with my overly grown out spiky hair. Eventually I put my arm around my "girlfriend" and kissed her. That was it. (A few years later she had a baby before finishing High School.)

Then I met her. My first real girlfriend. She was the object of everyone's desire. A girl two years younger than her friends, but two years of physical development ahead of her friends. She had boobies. And she was really hot. And she thought I was cute. Once again, they made me ask her out.

We all went to Adventureland right around our birthdays (her just three days before mine), and rode the rides, played games, and enjoyed ourselves. We were kids, still innocent and playing at the adult concept of dating. But we never kissed. And due to an incident where I got taken off my friend's roof by the cops, I would be grounded for two months and our young romance was cut short.

I breathed a sigh of relief, thanking my parents almost, for this opportunity to get out of this crazy, complex world I had stumbled into. There were all sorts of games and twists, to everything that was said back and forth. It was overwhelming and I was glad to get back to my simple life in my bedroom. I was raised by television and embraced it once more.

But it wouldn't last. I would be free to roam once more after New Years Eve. On January 10th I had my first kiss outside the girl's house. From there it was a slippery slope. We began making out a lot, then heavy petting. Eventually her hand took ahold of my penis and she jerked me off. It was amazing.

I wanted her to do that all the time. We went for a record 13 times in one day. I was consumed by the feeling, addicted to her firm grip releasing this fluid from me daily. You see, I had never done this to myself, never explored my own sexuality, alone in my bedroom, before she showed me the power of another person doing it.

It lead to my abandoning my friends in the living room while we were in the bedroom. If we were at her house, when her parents made me leave, I'd take the ragin hard-on I had and beat off in the bushes across the street. Our song was 'After the Rain' by Nelson, although should have been 'Don't Treat Me Bad' by Firehouse.

She couldn't stop thinking about my friend. The rebel who I had gotten very close to. It was his house the cops took me off the roof of. We shoplifted, wine coolers, Doritos and cookie dough. We stole recycling from one supermarket and returned to the other to make money. We paid a guy to buy us survival knifes at the magic shoppe in the mall.

I set things on fire. Leaves, paper, cars, the siding of a house. I would carry a lighter, as I took to smoking now and then by this point, and light things as I went. No one had ever gotten hurt. I was lucky. I even got beat up by a cop for not smoking weed, him insisting I was the lookout. He took me to a back alley and roughed me up.

And it was this friend that I went through it all with, all part of his troublemaking schemes, that she now wanted. I slammed the door in her face as she tells me, then I convince him to date her. I abandon them both. I see them together at one of our friend's brother's funeral. He had killed himself, hung himself, out in the backyard. He was feeling up her skirt at the wake.

If I left my metaphorasis to chance in Junior High, I would actively reinvent myself for High School. I ignored the jocks as they asked me to play basketball as I finished my paper route. Instead I found the kids reading comic books and playing Dungeons & Dragons, and found my way in. I would play the thief, or assasin. The moral dubious rogue, often the punching bag for the others.

This group were introverted, self-conscious, and sadistic. They would mock, taunt, insult, all to get a rise out of you, and no one would react more than me. The fat kid beat on me, the lying kid would play with my emotions, the trickster would build me up and tear me down. But I loved it. It was a dynamic I could belong to. A band of brothers, all fighting evil in our basements with dice.

I was never anyone's best friend. We'd all take turns hanging out, the dynamic always in flux as one person was around and someone else was pissed at someone else. Eventually, the abuse became too much and I fought the fat kid. I wailed on him, I held him down and kneed him in the spine, I smacked him with fake fireplace logs. But then, I finished him off a few weeks later.

He had called up one of us, and while someone was trying to candy coat why we weren't hanging out with him, I let loose. "Nobody wants to hang out with you because no one likes you." I gave him the reasons. The weakest of us all stood up and said enough; I finally stood up to someone. He was docile ever after that (despite once headbutting my sternum during art class,shutting down my heart chakra for years), and years later credited me with helping him change.

I daydreamed all throughout highschool, whether it was a short story and a hard boiled private dick and his motley crew of mystic misfits, or while looking at the girl next to me in Social Studies bra as it stuck out the side of her tank top. I would slip my hand into my jeans and invisibly masturbate during class. I became notorious among my friends for it.

I stayed away from girls, but became a chronic masturbator. I would wait til my parents were asleep and spend hours watching softcore porn and stroking myself. I think I may've permanently screwed up my neck and back from the way I would lie as I came into the top of a shoe box. I would wait for the hottest scene with a short haired brunette and then come.

By Senior year, a shift had happened. We were suddenly cool. The jocks became metalheads and did drugs. They thought we knew martial arts. My dorky musician friends were suddenly hot as hair metal expanded into grunge. We wore flannels and black leather jackets, ripped jeans and construction boots untied. We hung out with head cheerleaders and prom queens on our first day of class.

As the year went by, we got invovled. Went to dances, wrote for the literary journal, played battle of the bands. We did whatever we wanted, from staging broken neck fights (cracked Tic-Tac boxes), and shooting up the hallways with discguns. I began getting attention from girls again, and my friends could see this. Suddenly, my friends who hated me, loved me.

And I had my first crush. She was tall, dorky, on track and the basketball team, and a smart kid. She was also beautiful. Freckles with a sweet smile. She never had a boyfriend, and so after a setup worthy of a High School coming-of-age rom-com at the Homecoming dance, we dated. We made out for most of The Bodyguard. She once whispers "You're driving me crazy..." in my ear as I kiss her neck.

A week or two later we're done as she becomes even more aloof than she had been before, flirting with my other friends. And considering my track record with friends and girlfriends, I reacted poorly. I tried to control her, she let me go. Wound up dating a friend of a friend of mine for awhile after High School who I no doubt took her virginity.

I was definitely into girls again, but aiming that high was scary, dangerous, devastating. It brought out a madness in me. Then I saw her. She was tiny, thin, with curly hair and an acoustic guitar in her hands. She seemed to sit outside her group of friends. A general dislike towards her. I was smitten.

A month before my prom (as she was two years younger) I lost my virginity to her. We were fooling around on my bed, down to underwear as I grinded on her. She whispers in my ear "Don't tease me." I spend a moment in shock, before grabbing the condom I had stashed in my CD rack that my friends had stolen from this girl's older brother's room years before.

A month later we're having sex in the back of the limo after prom, my friend having sex with his girlfriend on the other side, our jackets hanging between to section it off. The odd thing is I sort of 'dated' his girlfriend for a few weeks the semester before. Nothing happened, but when that friend years later turned psycho on a girl I was dating, saying that me and him hooked up, well, that's just odd.

What distorted memory could he have? Did we do something and I don't remember? I did wake up in just my boxers on the senior trip, where he and two other friends were all sleeping in the same room. He wore dresses and makeup, liking gothy new wave, and the Crow. I don't even know what to think other than a memory I have of me crying hysterical while Candlebox's 'Far Behind' played in the car.

Then there was Freddie. All through my senior year, Freddie would ask me things like "If in the future you met a girl and it turned out she used to be a guy, what would you do?", to which I would respond earnestly, that it depended on how I felt about the relationship. I failed to see the connection between that connection and his insistence that he was a woman in a man's body. I was incredibly naive, dumb, or in obvious denial.

All year he would ask em things during Government class. I was eventually told that my picture graced the locket around his neck, that the poem he wrote in the journal was about me and my "flowing locks", and his position as editor is why it featured so many of my stories and poems. Then, one day, while at rehearsal for the Disney Revue (I did it for a girl) he told me he loved me.

I told one person, who told one person, who eventually got it back to him. He was pissed, and I got the diva cold shoulder for the rest of the year. My tiny girlfriend would be threatened as things got catty. Soon enough, we graduated, and I wouldn't hear about him again until the following Fall, on the day of my birthday as I'm about head into work as a cashier at Waldbaums.

He was dead. The morning of my birthday, he had written a few notes to friends, swallowed sleeping pills, and pulled a plastic bag over his head. My friend's brother, a firefighter, found him and the word quickly spread. I don't think I went to the memorial, or the wake. I was numb to it. Indifferent. I thought I should feel something, but I didn't.

Three months later, and it's Christmas. Just finished my first semester of Nassau Community College and had driven away my girlfriend by sleeping with the girl who was with my friend in the limo during prom. I was working at K-Mart with my now ex and had to tell her that in order for her to leave me alone. I couldn't get rid of her and she would be back months later to have random sex with me in the stock room.

She had surrendered her identity to me, left all decisions to me, wanted to do whatever I did. I couldn't stand the power and control, and I lashed out her angrily time and time again. I had to be meaner and meaner, trying to make her hate me so I wouldn't have to be responsible for her.

She eventually went on medication after a breakdown, then went back to school and is a thriving academic of medieval history. She was adopted and found her real parents to be a genius physics professor and a schizophrenic drug addict.

But I was untouchable. Having fun with friends, driving places, hanging out at diners, smoking and drinking coffee. I couldn't think of anyone but myself. Certainly not a troubled youth with gender issues, or a fractured young girl with identity problems. And definitely not my grandmother who was wasting away from chemo as cancer destroyed her.

Three days after Christmas, she died. I vaguely remember her wake, hardly recall her funeral. She was the center of our family's universe, the lynchpin that held us all together. A tiny spitfire of a woman who showed me NYC, took me to work with her on Queens Blvd, and made me pancakes whenever I wanted. Her huge house was always an adventure waiting to be explored.

And during Christmas dinner, I couldn't even look over at the couch and acknowledge that the bag of bones was my grandmother, the greatest, coolest, hippest, most selfless woman I had ever had the good fortune to meet on my life. She was everything to me while growing up, and somehow during my teen years, I forgot that. And then she was gone.

My family dissolved over the years after that. No more holiday dinners, just makeshift Thanksgivings, empty Christmas Days, joyless Easters. I couldn't feel anything and began just having sex with any girls who showed me attention. Cute, nice ones I hurt, hot, sexy ones left my house crying afterward, back to their boyfriends.

Tower of Brahma 62.i Solo Inferno

To say it was dark, to say I was alone, would be to acknowledge the existence of those words. There was only my flesh, the energy that coursed through it, and the concepts in my grey matter. My skin was drifting apart atom by atom, cell by cell.

I lit up from the inside, glowing crimson withing my groin, shifting to orange among my abs, canary yellow from the diaphram, a burst of green from my sternum, throat tightening around bluish illumination, and purple popped from my forehead. Stoplight magnificence in eternal void.

Pulling a coin from my pocket, a beautiful woman carved into its side. Flipping it over, it mirrored my own third eye, a reflecktion of my insides shining within. It pulled free from my hand and slipped flawlessly onto the horn of light protruding from my skull.

Fifth Avenue decadence, dollars turning into fabric, less with each season, the money become abstract plastic. A new look, a pretty thing to wear, to pretend to be. Each cycle delivering the anti-dote or evolution to last year's debacle. Appearance is all.

Every shred of clothing shows how you feel about yourself. Emtpy in crisp starched shirts, not caring in cotton, draping yourself in sheer shimmer. You try and capture eyes, daring them to hold you higher, momentary fix for the vacant chest. You never learned to love. You are a void. You don't exist.

A pulse of golden energy rippled down the horn and swept through my body. The ring was gone. Absorbed. Passed through my body. I felt as if a rotten piece of my lungs were torn from my body. A sensitive band-aid ripped off absence. A tumor of black smoke evaporated before my eyes.

In my left palm I held another coin. I had it pressed against my crotch, the red beam from my erect cock embraced the metal's cold touch, slipping over it like a second skin, a receptacle to withdraw into. On the side upwards on the coin I saw an image of a demonic goat face stretching thin as it pulled down over my shaft.

She walks by, the bar freezes, and you're alone, the patrons all incidental nobodies as you take her in. The smell sifting from her hair as it brushes up against the exposed skin of her back, skin that dips down the curve of her spine, dropping into a dip above the crack of her dress.

You spin the room around, diving among the onlookers, wiping your eyes over her bust, riding the dividing line of the plunging neck, sharp chest bones highlighting the subtle sternum ribs rifts in her cleavage. You want to throw her down and love her.

Your eyes drift higher as you lower your brow. Nose twitch, smirk, inhaled breath, prowling on top of her, pinned in your grasp, smiles stifled on her lips, hair tussled as your grip slides up and across her flesh. Gripping, biting, rubbing you chin over stomach.

She leaves her body, electric jolt of pleasure pumping from her womb, a trigger clicked as shivers shot to her toes, tensed in an orgasmic clutch. She comes. You leave. Your use is fulfilled. Activated another to a higher calling. You're not allowed to connect with her. Any of her.

My cock feels like dead weight, a thing of wet clay, falling apart in my grip. I panic for a moment before realizing that it doesn't matter. Let it melt away. It only caused false ego, obsessive territorial marking instrument of my destruction. There is no salvation in the phallic. Only a load of empty enlightenment.

The semen seeped into my stomach, dripping into the cracks, gooping its way through intestines. Liquid life, plasma seed paste, a short lived spaceship out of the body universe into the egg, where one would strived to become a living entity in a larger reality. Only...there is no egg.

I am a shell, meat, a gear that grinds itself free of white grease. Mechanical masturbation drawing its strength from my guts, which are all becoming slippery and sliding free from me. There's no food inside, never been much of an eater, the sickly lining always misaligning my meals.

Never was I taught balance. I do it to excess, then diminish in guilt and depression from the overconsumption. If I feed my problem, it dies, but if I starve it, it will suffer. I will suffer. I should suffer. If I deny my needs I control my body, therefore myself. I exist because I can damage myself. Spite is my sustenance, bitterness my bread.

The snout that was my belly button, my rolls crumbling away, breasts drooping into pig ears, I was disolving. Whole slabs broke free and plopped into non-existence. A torso of a man, my arms flailing about, unsteady in my undoing. I grip my sternum, slipping digits inbetween ribs, dug my nub-like fingertips deep inside, pressing deep into my lungs.

And I tore myself wide open. An emerald elegance erupted from my chest cavity. A shaggy chorophil presence puffed out and blossomed. The air, or lack thereof, dried its leaves into cripsy brown chips, twinkling into the breeze of damnation in a billion flakes.

Soil that once fed a great tree, the form of its roots still inverted in its dirt mold. There is no purpose now, nothing to feed, to have bloom inside you. All that remains is dug up earth, a gaping wound, nature's broken heart. Packed down tight, perhaps growing the means to dissolve a corpse. A host to worms, maggots, bacteria. It dies in you.

So why bother? Give up the struggle. Life is dead. There remains nothing to fight for. Your purpose has been fulfilled. Propagation mechinization. Now go listen to sad tunes, have a drink of scotch, sit in your simple self-pity...and die. There is no point. That is all.

There's so much potential though. There's hope. I can make a change for the better, I have before, I can do it again. I can serve a new purpose, a higher goal, something to transcend the ego. I will fight for the Id of all known realities. And that truth will make all I do beyond condemnation. It is for the best.

Just so tired today. Work was brutal. The way the boss talked to me. Fuck that. I'm gonna quit. And that dumb ass in the other room, my supposed mate, is just so fucking obnoxious, I just need a drink. Or a nap. Maybe I'll get high and putz around. Can't deal with it today. Tomorrow, maybe.

The day never comes and nothing is done. A cry goes out, "Where has my youth gone?", and the silence of the future echoes back a hopeless answer. No sense is trying, look at how bad it all turned out for them, they didn't make it too far, and they're better than I am. Fuck it, I'm useless. How can I best stave off boredom until I die?

I'm sent into a coughing fit as my lung shrivel, forcing the ash of my person up my trachea, hacking out a ball of navy blue phlegm. All that I had left to say to everyone, barfed out before me. It was all a jumbled mess. An apology, a confession, a multitude of lies. Dissolving beneath my chin was all the love that I had not spoken. The truths that died with me.

That's all I had. Any connection to humanity is now expelled. We only are able to make some gutteral sounds, air whooshed up a rippled tubing mechanism with a valve atop it. A mass of flesh with muscle memory, triggered by abstract thought, categorized into feelings (or collectively, emotions), blown out as words.

Symbolic stencils over impossible constructs. I love you. I fear death. Life eternal. These things are nothing. They mean only what we loosely collectively what we imagine them to mean. No litmus test can calculate whether any brains are in sync, if communication is accurately taking place.

It is not. Memories smash against experience, behavior instinctually guides us through relatively unharmed, as robotic gestures of emotional interaction are jerkily enacted. What is holding it together? A hobbled together language, invented from dead cultures hodgepodged grunts and growls.

The remainder of flesh slips free and I glance down into a golden triangle, a lions roaring face trapped in its triangular prison. The three point begin to curve, and the whole thing dips a bit. Rounded edges reach outwards and then it pops! The roar is releashed and like a flashbulb crack, it is gone.

I may as well sit back and wait for the end. That's all I ever did upon reflection. Hardly did I ever try and succeed. Often, I did what was necessary, I got by and then I didn't need to do anything again til next time. Just fine by me. Life was too complicated to handle anyways. So let me burn.

Sure, I could string together words, draft you a sentence. Then what? Your eyes would scan it, your brain would process each shape into a word, the word would be referenced, an idea of the information would be drawn up, and you'd be presented with a concept to either accept or deny.

Does it matter? Did any of the above words move you? At all? Do you even understand what is being discussed? Am I so far into my own head that this is utter gibberish, that I have spent countless hours clicking out letters for nothing? I will destroy this book and all it contains. See? It is not worth it.

Printed out in paperback, or shoved electronically into inboxes, this work does not matter. It would be a waste of time, if you didn't get the enlightenment that it is all for naught! By doing something you have learned there is no point in accomplishing anything at all. It is all as dust. And soon, not even that.

My head thunked back onto the last patch of solid ground. Or the concept of ground anyways. I was now just a head, my throat long since dripped away. Down to serious business. How do we end this? The tip of the beam emanating out of my frontal lobe seemed to poke into the fabric of dark matter all around me.

When I looked closer, for that was all I was capable of doing, I could see a small drain circling, the energy whipping past the event horizon as my essence was sucked up the straw that protruded from my third eye. All that remained of me was sucked into the eternity of an alternate dimension.

But this would be the last one. The final reality to deconstruct and dissect, then shove down the drain out to coat the container that once held galaxies, solar systems, stars, planets, humanity, life. This was the absolute end. No matter would exist after this was done.

At least it better be. Because if I'm born again, forced to endure every meaningless meeting, concoct asinine conversations with a mindwiped mass of morons, face the pain and anguish that living with the idiotic animal that we call man, if I have to do that all over again? I will kill every single person, with my bear hands if need be. I will not spare a single child. Every aspect of life will be eradicated.

It sounds so good, the bitterness survivng my decapitated state, suggesting that it resides in my brain. The oodles of noodles in my skull that shoots lightning along currents, enabling me to hate with all my might. It's such an empowering rush as I wade into the muck of rage.

I feel the breath escape from blue lips as it whisps past my cheek. I see the blood pouring from where I stuck the blade. I hear the crack of bone as shards sever circulation. Repugnant soul sits on my tongue as a savor the aroma of death. I have ended the path for someone. Altered their destiny, fulfilled my own.

A destroyer. Detached from mankind and its weaknesses, its petty longing to feel and live. It is not aware of the absurd delight that it is in knowing that everything dies and nothing is worth doing. Whatever temporary achievement may come, a decay and destruction of self will inevitably follow.

I wear a crown because I dare to. None save me can shoulder this burden, you people can not understand what it means to have to judge all of your souls time and time again. It is not improving over time. The evolution of cellular self-awareness is minimal at best, and I suggest the entire project be shut down.

When I look at you, I don't see what others see. I don't buy the persona, and I don't even believe the false facade beneath that. You are a lie because you don't know the word truth, because that would be an idea from above that is felt. It can not be spoken.

You all pretend so well don't you? Playing games and not giving a second thought to all that is around you. Don't question, be kept doubting yourself, seeking approval, you'll never see me coming. It's all one big party, yay, let's have fun. Fun, until you all die. Horribly. Screaming.

I don't know how you smile. I wonder at your bravado. How can you "feel" anything, let alone happiness? It does not exist! Stop pretending it does! You HEAR ME GODDAMMIT, STOP BEING HAPPY! I scream as my jaw dislodges and drops away. A wet hiss pours out of my throat, my tongue wiggling in open air, disconcertingly long and exposed.

At least I am here. At the end. I survived longer than everyone and saw it through. None of you could have done it. Who would have had the fortitude to look at yourself and rip it to shreds? I speak in the abstract only to relate. But I can get specific. I can remove my crown, step down from my throne.

This is who I am. I am a writer. I am lazy. I feel superior, I know I'm inferior. I can not connect with people, I have an impulse to hate them, yet also to serve them. I am an anglo-saxon mutt. An American. A New Yorker, from Long Island. A boy, a guy, a man...male. A bastard poet with lying eyes and fierce prose. I live as a con man, fooling firstly myself, into believing I am a con man.

A program with too many layers. An interacting mindframe that's gone on the blink. I've hit a woman, after being hit. I've cheated on lovers who listened to my heart. I've acted the part of sad soul to escape an awkward confrontation. Ill prepared for emotional survival, I crafted a skill to manipulate and control. My quick wit, disguised behind a simpleton, was the dagger I drove into your backs.

I left my grandmother to rot on a couch, cancer carving the life out of her meat, a wet cloth canvass of skin draped upon a rack of hangers. I felt nothing as a lost soul, a woman trapped in a man's body, a hermaphraditic rebus succubus, killed himself on my birthday. I enjoyed driving my girlfriend away with the brutal honesty of teenage infidelity. I wanted her to feel pain and get the fucking point.

Suffer. Feel guilt. Suffer. This is who I am. Punish myself, burn my spirit in hellfire, the crown long ago melted and drawn into the spiral sucking it all away. My nose caved in on itself, my cheeks sunk and fell away, my eyes carried themselves out the back of my eye sockets and drifted along the river of brainmatter.

All up into the third eye, right into the sky, a pinprick sticking me to the wall. I'm done. My final sentence was a nod to ego and self, a wink and a nod to the id, and a fuck you to the superego.

"I am the greatest writer alive."