The book - Chapter 1 and 2

Chapter I
It smelled like rosemary and tangerines in my motel room. I looked at the bed and wondered how many people have had their bodily fluids run all over the covers. Or how many times someone peed in the bathtub while they were taking a shower. The kind of filth you think about when you’re horny and full of wine.
I started thinking about Desiree. I thanked my lucky stars that I met her when I did. She had crazy wavy hair and big beautiful blue eyes. She stood out amongst all the other trash in the bar, and I had to talk to her. We hit it off but I was disappointed when I found out she was leaving for Los Angeles in the morning. It seemed too good to be true. Spending that last night with her made me feel like something this special just can’t be thrown away into my memory. The next morning we exchanged phone numbers and chatted almost every night online. When I told her I was thinking about coming out to visit she said I could stay with her. This was big time. Shit was real.
The wine was tasting good and the cigarettes helped fight off my hunger. This motel room wasn’t so bad anymore; it was begging to grow on me. Like the mold in the bathtub, and the dust on top of the broken television. At first glance it all seemed ugly and grimy, but now it just gave the room character. I almost didn’t want to leave, but it was too late to cancel my ticket.
I awoke naked, on the floor. I rolled over and the sun beamed right into my face. Just what a man needs when a hangover is creeping up on him: Bright lights and a bulging headache. 23 minutes until take off, just enough time to straighten myself out and walk across the street to the airport.
I barley made it.
I hate planes.
I hate the confinement and the stale, sterilized air, the pressure I can feel on my skull. It feels like I’m being crushed by some kind of evil force into my seat. It’s not so much my stomach, but the disgusting feeling of being contained in this small cylinder with about 100 other people and the cold, pressed, unnatural air that I breath in, it's enough to drive a man mad. Even when I was asleep I kept having dreams of huge glass hammers crashing down on my skull and pummeling my brains into pumpkin pie. Fucking A.
Desiree was supposed to meet me at the gate. She wasn’t around when I got off the plane so I ducked into the airport bar for a drink while I waited for her to show up. The girl sitting across from me had blue eyes and wavy hair. “What beauty,” I said to myself. She heard me, but pretended like she didn’t, it’s easier that way.
I was tired of waiting so I pulled out my cell phone and sent a text to Desiree. “In airport bar waiting for baggage. Traffic?” As soon as I hit “send” the curly haired beauties phone went off. She looked down with her big blue eyes and started looking around the bar. Maybe I didn’t recognize my fair Desiree? Maybe lighting worked wonders? Maybe she was sitting across from me and didn’t know it. I got the fear and rose up to make my way to her. As I started getting up, a guy in a nice shiny suit walked over and she jumped for joy. That’s when the light caught her ring and shined it into my eye. It wasn’t her; it was just coincidence taking a piss on me. I had been here for about an hour and I was already starting to feel like an outcast. All these people were good looking and had on expensive clothing. I looked down at my cheap button up shirt and khakis. My gut hanging over my belt line and my dirty fingernails. Maybe if I had a shiny suit and nice shoes I’d fit in better here.
I sat at that bar for at least an hour. I called her three times and sent numerous text messages. No response. I began to worry. Perhaps she got the flight times mixed up? I said LAX at 3:30. It was almost 5pm now, what could keep a person this long?
I decided I’d grab a cab and head over to her place. Maybe her phone was off or maybe she ran out of battery? Maybe I didn’t get good reception? I had her address; I might as well head over right? She’ll be expecting me.
Negative.
The address was somewhere in Hollywood and the cabbie said he couldn’t find it.
“I’m sorry bro, but it doesn’t exist.”
“22334 Franklin Street. I checked it twice man.”
“Bro, Franklin doesn’t go that high, maybe you wrote it wrong.”
“I wrote it like I saw it and it’s right!!”
I was beginning to think he was just driving around to run the meter and charge me extra. Small town boy from Kansas straight from the airport, he looks like a schmuck, let’s take his cash is what he was thinking.
After much investigation and a lot of Thomas Guide mapping I realized he was right. I asked him to take me to a motel so I can get my facts straight. He dropped me at the “Motor Sun City Sunset Motel.” As I was paying him he handed me a card and said, “If you get lonely bro, I know some good people.”
He drove away and left me standing there on the curb. I turned the card over and read it.
Kareem
“Sultan of Twat”
That fucker. I could have been a cop.
So here I am, a new man in a strange place with a suitcase, a typewriter, and a fake address. Reality began to set in and I thought about how easy it would be for someone to lie on the Internet. How painless it could be to string people along and make hollow promises of happiness and love. I was beginning to think that maybe I should head right back to Kansas and forget the whole thing. What was waiting for me back there? Nothing. I’d end up like my high school friends. I’d find me the first woman that was drunk and take her home. Then next morning we’d start building a relationship over hash browns and stale coffee. Maybe we’d both stay drunk long enough that we could somehow stand each other and have kids. I’d rent a small studio apartment and stop writing. I could always get a job at U.P.S. like all my other sorry friends. I could never see myself wearing that starched brown uniform and stupid hat. I rather starve on the street. I rather be something I’m not, and eventually become something I want. Fuck Kansas. Lets do this thing.
I built an empire of empty gin bottles in my hotel room. Heartbreak cannot be drunk away, neither can it be mended or forgotten. It sits in your fucking stomach for the rest of your life and grows like mold. The alcohol just preserves it. I contemplated suicide and self-destruction. I was dramatic and self-conscious, I always felt like I was being watched, I walked with hunch shoulders and was critical of myself and everyone and everything. I was given a life not worth living to quote my favorite author and I wanted out. Growing up, I molded after myself after Bogart, Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson and Jack Kerouac. But I was beginning to realize that I cannot be those people, they are them, and I am me. But who was I really?
This heartbreak shit can drive a man to his end. In a city with no real friends and no phone calls to make. Living off his savings account and forever feeling sorry for himself. Drink to live and live to drink, sitting in your head and turning it around over and over. The thoughts running like semen down a young face. When you don’t have a reasonable voice around you, you’ll end up down. Unless you’re strong enough for yourself.
A moment of clarity hit me while I was taking a bath. I sat up and looked out into my hotel room. I was doing this to myself, and nobody was going to save me.


Chapter II
“Hijo la gran puta vos, te mirars como mierda”
Chico the Salvadorian dishwasher was an okay kid, even when he was throwing half eaten food at me from the dish pit.
“Mira guey, I spent the night with your mom, so I’m a little haggard, your sister is next on my list.” I grabbed my crotch and mimicked some humping movements for emphasis.
“Don’t fuck with me, I’ll cut you!”
I put on my whites and started prepping out for dinner. Vino y Papas was a Spanish themed restaurant in Echo Park, catering to the hipsters who wore the American Apparel uniform and wanted “ethnic” food dirt-cheap.
I always had a problem with people. I could not effectively communicate or form my own opinions, I was numb in a world full of rat bastards who were out to harm. I was weak, but this was a world that meant so much to me.
In here, with the stale air and a knife in my hands, I could shine. Cooking with a passion, with a purpose. Shaping and molding, pouring and sweating, this was the place. I could fit in here. I never had to speak unless spoken to, and I could just as easily be mute and nobody would mind. Just as long as I was fast, precise, and cared about every dish I put out. I was almost untouchable in my mind. It was perfect.
Just then Sara walked in. Long flowing blonde hair and hazel eyes, a body like a 50’s pinup girl, she stole every cooks heart. She was beauty walking, an art piece that I wanted to immerse myself in. I could never say more than a complete sentence to her, I was forever stuttering, stuck in my own contemplation.
One time, I had gone out for a smoke, and I was sitting there, feeling slightly sick from the night before, and out she walks, and would you believe it? She sat down right next to me. We smoked in silence, and occasionally she would tilt her head and look at me, as if trying to figure out who I was. It was the same look I gave myself in the mirror after a shower, the same look I gave when I saw my own reflection, who was I?
Back in the kitchen, as I was chopping some sage to make my herb mix, I stepped out of my head for a minute, back to reality, and in that moment, I chopped the tip of my index finger off. The blood ran hot over the cutting board, mixing in with the herbs on the backdrop of white.
“Fuck” I whispered, everyone knows, in a kitchen like this, it’s a sense of pride not to let people on when you cut yourself. I wrapped my finger in a towel and walked over to the chef.
He was looking down at his clipboard taking inventory, and I stood there for a while, admiring his strength, his kitchen scarred hands and tired look. Here was a man I admired. A bundle of energy who could hold the whole room in his hands and be witty, funny, and socialize like no other. I wanted to be him.

a man has been pickled

this chair
if only you knew what it was like
to put your feet up on this coffee table
rest your arms on this chair
to lay your head back
and let everything come into your head
to feel the sounds pouring into me
its nice
take a second
swirl your drink
smell the Evan Williams
and smile
i don't need to text for entertainment
or zone out and watch CSI
content with my thoughts
and the smell of my feet