Michael Kindt's Blog, page 154

11 AM. Checkout time. I phoned the office and told them I'd be staying another day.

At $40 a night, the Time Inn wasn’t as cheap as I had hoped. The breakdown went like this: $20 per hour, $40 per day, $100 per week, $250 per month—and I was now two days in. Yesterday, I had $696 and now I had $585. The bar had cost $31 for four pitchers of beer and a microwave burrito, plus tips.

I wished I had to work. I hated being hungover on a day off. It ruined it. I know standard operating procedure for most people is to get all ripped when they have the next day off, but not me. I’d rather drag my ass in to work, looking and feeling like shit. My job sucks. I might as well, too.

I showered, shat, and shaved, wishing I had my own washcloths and towels. The motel ones were thinner, rougher. Alien. I went across the parking lot to the office and became broker. I got a paper while I was there so I could peruse all the nifty apartments I wouldn’t be able to afford. Back in my room, a new day bought, I paced around on the weird green carpet with my phone in my hand.

Should I call her? Ask her if I can have some towels? Should I tell her I’m sorry, say that I love her, beg her to let me come home? In my phone, her name was Sweetie. In hers, I was Hubby. That was just in our phones, though.

She answered after six rings. One more and it would have gone to voice mail. “Hello?” She sounded tired. I froze when I heard her voice and didn’t say anything. I could actually feel her becoming impatient through the phone. “Hello,” she said again. A statement.

"Hi. Listen, I’m going to need more than just my clothes."

"Why? Like what?"

"Like towels. And I want my pillows. Maybe some books."

"I don’t think so. Those things are ours. They belong in our house."

"Ours? There is no more ours. You packed my bags yourself. This is over."

"So what makes you think you get the towels then? Or the books? This is a trial separation, remember? We talked about this in January. God."

She was talking down to me. “This is over.,” I said. “It’s been over for a year, ever since it happened, and you know it.”

"Time apart will be good for us."

"Time apart? You packed my fucking bags!" I was yelling into the phone now, thinking, Why? Why did I call her? How can I miss something I hate so much?

"We talked about it in January with Dr. Gannon, remember? Back when you would still go? Remember? We just need some space."

"Space? What, are we fucking astronauts?"

She hung up and I was glad, even though I fucking hated the word ‘glad’. What a flaccid feckless fucking word. I couldn’t believe I had actually called her. What in God’s name was I thinking? I imagined her in my head, putting her vast collection of lotions into alphabetical order, and hated her. I imagined her with a stack of face creams that went clear to the ceiling, and hated her some more. I saw ten thousand little bottles of nail polish, in every color imaginable, being smashed to bits by an aluminum baseball bat.

Later, after my life is over and I can’t go on and I might as well slash my fucking wrists, I laid on the bed and noticed that my hangover wasn’t that bad. It was still there, below the surface, snorkeling in the turmoil, but it really wasn’t that bad at all.

Can you imagine a kid in the middle of this? I thought, and allowed myself the lie of thinking the miscarriage had been a good thing, a blessing even. It was just reverse thinking, though, like saying the waves on the water cause the wind or abnormal brain chemistry causes mental illness. Reverse thinking is an easy out, and there’s comfort in that. Human beings cannot tolerate meaninglessness. They will find meaning anywhere, absolutely anywhere, just to escape it.

I looked at my phone and saw that it was March 21st, the first day of Spring, and even though I didn’t want to, I still couldn’t smile.

"The Love Contract" from Dave Chappelle.

"The Love Contract" from Dave Chappelle.

Men must prove a woman said 'Yes' under tough new rape rules - Telegraph

Men must prove a woman said 'Yes' under tough new rape rules - Telegraph:

rtrixie:

New guidance will be issued to all police forces and prosecutors as part of a ‘toolkit’ to move rape investigations into the 21st century

Looks like Britain just got rid of the principle of innocent until proven guilty. 

"Moving rape investigations into the 21st century", more like bringing back witch trials in the name of "progress".

They’re trying to do this on college campuses here in the U.S. Why anyone would want to have casual sex with a woman these days is beyond me. I’m quite sure that eventually we will have to have her sign a release form, haha. But it’s just not that good to be worth all the trouble and risk. Easier and safer to just go home and rub one out.

I couldn't believe how old everything was. There was a tube tv bolted to the wall and that wall was covered in brown paneling, along with all the other walls, even the bathroom ones.

Thick shag carpeting, colored weird green. A wobbly desk with a white plastic lawn chair (the only thing in the room from this century). Two lamps, one of which worked. An overhead light that flickered every time you took a step. The place smelled like cabbage, too, for some reason. I didn’t spot any cockroaches, so that was good, and the sheets appeared to be jizz-free, which was even better.

In the nightstand drawer I found the Gideon Bible and opened it. It was stiff as a board and crackled minutely. It had never been opened before and I, a newly homeless man, had popped its cherry. In the front there’s a special verse, something about whosoever believeth and only begotten. It’s in the front of every Gideon Bible, printed out dozens of times in every language you can think of, even Spanish. My favorite, though, has always been Sinhalese. It’s curly and loopy and pretty, more like decoration than text. Sitting there on the bed with tears in my eyes, I smiled at it.

Fuck this, I thought, and took the Gideon Bible over to the little trashcan by the wobbly desk and dropped it in. Then I went across the parking lot to the bar.

I sat drinking a pitcher of Budweiser, looking at my phone. I wished she would text me, wished anyone would, wished I had someone to talk to, about anything. I was tired of the whiny noises my brain was making. There were eight or ten people, all men, but they all appeared to be buddied up.

Another pitcher later, I noticed a single guy sitting a few stools down from me. I don’t know if he was there before or had come in during a piss. He had blond hair and looked a little younger than me. Lonely and sufficiently lubed, I went over and hit on him for companionship and conversation.

"How you doing?"

"Good," he said.

"I’m Ned."

"Rafe."

"Rafe?"

"Yeah."

"That’s a far cry from Ned."

"What isn’t?"

The man had a point.

"My marriage just ended."

"Sorry to hear that, man."

"Like, today."

"Damn." He shook his head.

"Either I left her or she kicked me out. I’m still not clear on it."

"Would it matter?"

The man was full of points.

"What do you do?"

"I’m a masseur."

"Seriously?"

"Yep," Rafe the masseur said.

I peered at him, never having seen a masseur before. “And how does one become a masseur?”

"It’s an 18 week program, normally. Not that difficult. It took me almost a year to complete it, though."

"Why?"

"I failed the Arousal Test."

"The Arousal Test?"

"Yeah, toward the end when you’re about to graduate and get your certificate, you have to pass an Arousal Test. If you don’t pass it, no graduation, no certificate."

"What’s the Arousal Test?"

"Well, they bring in a hot guy or girl, whatever you’re normally attracted to, and you have to oil them up and massage the hell out of them. To make things tough on you, they get virtually naked, too."

"That’s odd."

"Yeah, and to tell if you’re getting aroused they put this little cuff on your penis. You know, like those cuffs that test your blood pressure? Only it’s small. They wrap it around your penis and you put your sweats back on and have to massage this oily, nearly naked goddess. The cuff is hooked up to a wire that goes out your pant leg to a buzzer and if you get wood BZZZ you fail the Arousal Test."

"That’s fucking insane."

"Anyway, I failed twice. I even appealed, claiming the cuff was too snug and was the thing making me horny, not the oily, nearly naked goddess I was caressing. They didn’t buy it and I had to pay for all this counseling."

"How’d you finally beat it, no pun intended?"

"Saltpeter."

"Saltpeter?"

"Yeah, it’s potassium nitrate, technically. I ate a bunch of it before going in. It gives you a seriously flat dick. It’s, like, the reverse of E.D. medication."

"This has gotta be some of the weirdest shit I’ve ever heard."

"I know, right?"

"How do they test female masseurs?"

"You mean masseuses?"

"Yeah."

"A vaginal pellet hooked to a little wire. It’s about the size and shape of a vitamin and measures moisture."

"What the fuck?"

Repo Man, 1984

Repo Man, 1984

I drove around in my car, homeless and going nowhere.

In my pocket was an old fashioned paper paycheck for $696. It represented two weeks of work at my job as a convenience store clerk. My wife was always trying to get me to switch over to direct deposit so my pay would appear instantly in our account with nary a fingerprint from me, but I always refused. On and on she would rattle about how convenient it would be, how easy. “Why must everything be convenient and easy?” I’d ask her and she’d just look at me, blinking and stumped.

So every other Tuesday I would physically get my check from work and take it to the bank. I’d fill out a form made out of paper, hand the form and my check to a bank teller made out of a person, and watch as that person physically deposited my pay into our account. Once there, it would POOF, vanish into digitality anyway.

I had no real options and ran them down in my head. There was Don, but Don was married and had a new baby. I couldn’t see him or his wife Shelby being all that receptive to me just showing up at their door in the late afternoon and going, “Hi, can I live here now?” There was my sister, but she had recently turned into a Jehovah’s Witness. No need to elaborate. There was Larry from work, but Larry from work was young and had room mates. Where would I sleep, the floor? Plus, I’d probably have to listen to them talk about video games and tv shows and movies. I’d probably have to sit there in the corner, watching them eat their psych meds as they explained how nothing ever at all was their own damn fault—whatever it was people in their early 20s did.

I went to the bank and cashed my check, which I deposited in my pocket instead of our account, then drove to the north side of town. The north side was where they kept all the poor people. It was where you went for meth or prostitutes or, like me, a cheap room to rent.

Amid the pawn shops and casinos and cop cars I found the Time Inn. It was sketchy, like every motel on the north side, but maybe not as much. I didn’t spy any old wads of yellow police tape caught in the surrounding fences and dead weeds anyway, and its garbage was actually in the dumpster rather than piled in front of the doors. I also liked how it had an associated bar. Across the cracked and dying asphalt of its parking lot, and in the same peeling colors, was the Time Out.

The Time Inn and the Time Out: someone was witty.

Rooms could be rented by the hour, day, week, or month, with month being the best deal at $250. With my $696, I could live there for two months and still have money left over for meth and prostitutes. But there was no way I was going to do that. Despite the Time Inn’s charming lack of police tape and garbage inside a dumpster, it was still a sad, lonely, end-of-the-road, nowhere-else-to-turn place. Just pulling into the parking lot made me want to pull out of it, go back home, and beg the wife I’d been about to leave to take me back.

My son, the actor.

If anyone would like to see my son starring in a four minute long student film, go here to Vimeo. Apparently, they had the cops called on them while shooting it, haha.

And what the hell is he doing smoking a cigarette?

When I decided to divorce my wife, I was standing in the kitchen looking at the fridge door.

On it, held in place by a magnet, was a note. I didn’t know what the note said because it was folded over, but scrawled across it big, black, and boldly was READ THIS.

On the magnet, which I had never seen before, was a cartoon shopping cart. The cartoon shopping cart was simply bursting with cartoon groceries, even the bottom rack. Next to the cartoon shopping cart, much smaller than the cartoon shopping cart, was a little cartoon family: a cartoon mom, a cartoon dad, and a cartoon kid. The cartoon shopping cart and its oversized load towered over them ominously. Despite this, the cartoon mom, cartoon dad, and cartoon kid all wore great big cartoon smiles on their cartoon faces.

It was horrifying.

The note was from my wife, but instead of reading it, I tossed it in the trash. Then I went and stood in front of the bedroom door and listened to her moving around on the other side of it. Probably arranging or organizing her clothes, I figured, or counting her shoes or trying to cram my shit into an even smaller corner of the sliding door closet. That was what she usually did in the bedroom. For a moment, standing there, I missed her. I missed us and the way we used to be, but I knew we were dead and gone. I missed a lot of things in life, things especially that had never happened, as you will see, but it was no use in crying. Inevitable, perhaps, but no use.

I opened the door to tell her goodbye, that I really meant it this time, that it wasn’t just an empty threat anymore, and she said, “You’re all packed.”

Two large gym bags sat on the bed where we once slept together. My soon-to-be ex-wife was standing in the middle of our bedroom, in sweats, with her hair pulled back and her hands on her hips. She looked like someone who had just completed a mildly difficult household chore, like vacuuming under and behind a couch, say, or removing soap scum from around a tub drain.

One time in school I talked to a blind man and it totally blew my mind.

It was a long time ago when I was still in high school or maybe even middle school. So, a long, long, LONG time ago. James Knox Polk was president and the world was a much simpler place.

He was visiting our school for some reason. I don’t really remember the context. I think it had to do with tolerance or awareness or something. He seemed really old then, but I was a kid and thought most people were old, even college students. Looking back on it, he was probably in his 40s, so not old at all.

He gave a talk to our class and then took questions. He was very funny. I remember he had a cane which he tap-tap-tapped out in front of him like a bug antenna. One of the girls in my class asked him if he had a seeing-eye dog and he said no. Other questions revolved around his daily life, questions like: How do you make phone calls? How do you cook supper? How do you go to the bathroom? and so forth. I remember he made a joke about having a really, really low electric bill. “I only turn on the lights if I have company.” It was one of the benefits of being blind, he said.

I remember liking him and thinking how cool it was that he found humor in his blindness. He was blind since birth, he said, and had never seen anything ever.

"Had never seen anything ever"….Those words affected me deeply for some reason. Wow, I thought, he doesn’t even have memories of sight. He dreams only in sound. I raised my hand and the teacher, who was sitting in the corner, called on me.

"Is it dark?" I asked him.

"No," he said. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a black cloth sack. He held it out and told me to come get it. I did.

"Mike," he said. "I want you to put the sack over your head." I did so, as the rest of the class giggled.

"What do you see?"

"Nothing."

"Is it dark?"

"Yes."

"Now I want you to take the sack off your head and put your hand in it." I did so.

"What does your hand see?"

"Huh?"

"Is it dark? Is your hand afraid of the dark?"

"No, I guess."

"Your hand has never seen anything ever either."

I just remember being blown away by that, all these years later. Actually, I still am. It was, like, one of those quintessential moments where you can actually feel your mind expanding.

I'm with you man. This whole anti-successful white man, anti-American garbage has gone too far. I say we go old school on them, remind them how we civilized this planet, and how much worse we used to be. Let's get medieval crusade on their shit, give th

What I’m sick of is this whole fucking sense of self-righteousness they have. There is only ONE VIEW when it comes to…whatever. They’ll tell you what it is. Haha.  I am losing my support specifically for feminism simply because radical feminists are some of the creepiest, most totalitarian people I have ever encountered. Granted, these are Tumblr feminists. Not exactly the real world, haha……I have been on Tumblr nearly 6 years and I actually think I am starting to rebel against all it’s stupid assumed orthodoxy. Back in the day, Tumblr actually was kind of an open place, but it’s really striking me as extremely close-minded these days.