and I'll Never Be Your Cranberry Man

      The cold Los Angeles night had a sharpness to it, the air rushing in through the windows as i crossed the 1st Street bridge over into East LA from downtown chilled me right down to the bone. A shiver ran through and i pressed down into the driver seat looking for warmth, right hand firm on the wheel, left hand dangling out the window, cigarette dancing between my lips with each bump from the road. The ash was trickling down onto my jeans, but i didn't care much at this point, i had, after all, had been wearing the same pair of jeans for more than a week now, they were specked with car grease, fryer grease, chili sauce, crusted pieces of food that i casually brushed off and the thigh part of my pants looked like a kid wiped his crayon residue off on me, i stopped caring at this point. The woman was out of town, she wasn't around, my appearance didn't seem to matter to me at this point, unshaven, running out of clean laundry (i wasn't wearing any underwear and my socks were mismatched) i could feel the grime on the clothes seeping into my skin. I kept checking the rear view mirror for a copper, "You'll never take me alive copper..."... that's what a man halfway into his rum bottle taste like. I pumped the music up into the small speakers until they crackled to give some life to the situation, to give some action, it was too quiet out, we needed a little madness sprinkled into our lives.
      I kept driving over that bridge and then eventually made a turn onto State Street, gracefully gliding onto the 5 North towards home. i lit up another cigarette and went over those things that you go over when you're one beer away from being a good buzz, and 2 scotchs away from being damn near drunk. At this point, you're in the halo part of town, the in between of drinking and being sober, you start to question life and it's possibilities, and you also start to question yourself. I thought of the woman, and the fight we had a few nights before, the resolution to our fight seemed like a cop out, like we were coming to a compromise, which fully, i can appreciate. That's the best word you can find to use in a relationship, compromise. It's like wanting chocolate ice cream, and she wants vanilla, but in order to settle you both choose the Neapolitan in order to not fight and share a box. Although, there is strawberry in the middle, and at first glance, you both hate it, you both loath the strawberry, but little by little, as the ends close in, you start picking at the strawberry, and so does she, and eventually you hear the spoons clank together as you reach for that last bite, and out of a sign of kindness and love, you split the last piece in half, and the tub is gone. Fucking beautiful.
      The fight was in regards to our past. Correction, in regards to her past. Up front and blunt, the woman doesn't like to use condoms, so we go freebird every once in awhile, and i'm cool with it, i can keep track of what's coming when and am highly aware at making the judgement call. But as we're doing this, i start to think about previous encounters she may of had, and i trust her fully, but on the other hand, she's so naive, she very may well have done a lot of things with a lot of people and not strapped anything on. She was on the other side of the world for a vacation once, and i'm pretty sure it ran the same way we ran, because she was in love with the guy then, and i'm sure rawness was not a rarity. Paranoia got the best of me then, and when she left town i took my ass straight to the doctor. The results were clean. Un-tainted love. I brought up my concerns to her and she made me feel like i was being a dick for wanting to know how many people she banged without using a condom. This can make a man feel like his girlfriend is a whore, but i would never call a girl a whore.. that just seems... so... so... so wrong (i called a girl a whore once because she stole my poem and claimed it as her own. writing is the only sacred thing i have in my life, i have no religion, i have no hopes, this is what i got, and if you take my words from me, well, than you are a WHORE). anyway, she deflected my questions and claimed that i was a "man whore". Now people, please, listen for a second, i've only ever had a single encounter that you can call a one night stand. And it was fucking horrible. it felt so fake, so pretentious, so fucking full of bullshit that i can't even put it in words. The girl was a girl i brought home from the bar, and it felt so rehearsed. "oh yeah fuck me. Fuck that pussy" that's not what i want to hear right now, lets just enjoy ourselves, i barely fucking know you!. But the girl persisted so much, she was overly sexual to the point that i knew she was putting on an act thinking that's what i liked. My cock got soft, and i couldn't go on anymore, i apologized and went down on her as a sign of good sportsmanship. The whole time i hated myself profusely, and vowed to never again take someone home who i didn't genuinely find interesting (to this day i haven't).
      It made me angry that she called me a "man whore". I had fucking principals, i was the good guy, the right guy, and maybe not the best guy, but i didn't want to be like all those assholes out there fucking everyone and not making good on their promises. i was not a liar, but wanted to be the most honest that i could. i persisted on asking her how many people she had been with, but she had no number, she claimed to have forgotten, because, here's the kicker, she had a lot of "black out sex", which means she had been drinking, and could of possibly done things that i don't want to even think about. It doesn't matter to me, i love the girl (love is like a dog from hell- to quote a greater man) i didn't care who she had sex with, i just want to know what the hell was going on and what kind of mind frame she was in. If she cheated on her boyfriend (several times) then what makes me so special? After all, the way we met was when she cheated on her boyfriend with me, and then she flew out to another state and cheated on him again, and then she went to visit some family overseas and cheated on him a third time. i watched as she was madly in love with him, they moved in together, i wondered if he knew that i was banging his girlfriend? She passed me over and went on with her life, still cheating. I watched all this from the outside and when she got back from overseas we got together for a few drinks. she confessed her love for the overseas boy and wanted to move back to marry him. i was sad inside.
      years passed, and i met other woman, some were good, some were bad, and some i didn't really hit it off with. i dated every woman under the sun. Chinese, latina, white from the west coast, white from the east coast, religious, political, a girl who was into Scientology, a girl who was a stripper.. i dabbled all over the place to find it was exactly what i liked. none of them worked out, and then, like a miracle, the woman popped back into my life, and we started up again.
      Now we're six months in, and beyond the three month mark. I don't really care how much "black out" or "love" or whatever sex she had, but just don't call me a man whore, that goes against every moral i have in my bones. I wanted to point the finger back at her and call her a whore, but that would be bad class, and i would never be that low. I breathed in and out and let it go. The fight was based on the grounds that i had seen her be madly in love with someone, and then cheat on them. Now i was the guy she was madly in love with, and i feared for my heart so. Would she cheat on me? Would she meet some guy somewhere and fall for him and lose the comfort she had with me? i dunno.. the possibilities are endless in that scenario, and i'm only going to give myself an aneurysm thinking about it. I trust nothing in my life. I know that it can very well be taken away from me at any minute. i could sit here and have a jet engine fall through the roof of my shitty apartment housing complex and kill me. So i appreciate everything i have, and the things i don't, i let them sit on the back burner until i get to them. So i don't hate the woman, i don't think she's a whore, and i've got all these facts in front of me about her. But you know what? I've never had faith in anything in my life, and i feel that if i don't have faith in this, it very well may end. So i'm going to sit here, with my heart on my sleeve and let her get it all out of this crusty outer shell. You can't live your life based on principals, it gets you nowhere except angry with humanity and life. I do hate people, i hate all of you, i hate myself, i hate this planet and i hate the system, i hate the galaxy and the universe. But i will not kill myself, out of a guilty sense of self preservation. So i have no choice but to be here and try to make things work out for me. I love, and hate you all. And as for this current relationship, i'm going to believe a little, that not all people are shit, until i'm proven wrong.

amen.