Ezekiel Tyrus's Blog: A Story a Week with Zeke, page 10

Ezekiel Tyrus. This Is Who I Am.

Ezekiel Tyrus. This Is Who I Am.

By Ezekiel Tyrus


When I was a freshman in college, a teacher told us to write an in-class essay entitled, Who Am I?. Other theater majors attacked the assignment with enthusiasm, filling pages and pages with their various virtues and contradictions while I just sat there staring at my blank paper.


I simply didn’t want to do the assignment. Thought it was stupid.


Got up, went to the library and made Xerox copies of my driver’s license and my Social Security Card. Then I returned to class, stapled them to the blank sheet and wrote on top in big bold black cursive, This is who I am.



I’d never tell anybody not to go to college.


However, for me, college was a waste of valuable time.


First I attended a Podunk performing arts school in North Florida called Florida School of the Arts, run by and populated with assholes,mostly. The 2 ½ years spent at Flo-Arts are still the unhappiest years of my life, bar none.


In my early 30s, I drank myself into a fistfight outside a Seattle bar. Waking up in a jail cell holding area amongst parole violators,probate-fuck-ups, petty criminals, junkies and drunks, I began to feel sorry for myself till I remembered I wasn’t 19 years old and attending Florida School of the Arts. Then I smiled and relaxed, knowing I was amongst a better class of citizen.


Next, I earned a useless Bachelor’s degree at an easy A liberal arts college called New College of California, so laughable and poorly-run that it simply doesn’t exist anymore. In the end, much of the school’s funding got taken by a con-artist. The dumbfuck school president handing it over with nothing left to pay the staff, including the teachers. True story. Do a Google search.


It’s not that I didn’t want to go to a major university or state school, it’s just that I didn’t think I was good enough, too cowardly to even take my SATs.


Now that I’m older with a valid sense of self-worth, I don’t want to go.


Besides, all I want to do is write and to become a writer you simply read everything, observe the world, evaluate your experiences, write everyday and revise, revise, revise.


Never had a mentor, nobody ever took me under their wing,and great inspirational teachers only existed in the movies. When I was young and desirous of a role model, all the adults treated me like competition, often brow-beating me with their own baggage, seemingly afraid I might excel at something.


As a result, I’ve learned all my lessons the hard way,there’s a chip on my shoulder wider than The Spruce Goose and I rarely go an hour without being funny.


My sense of humor is irreverent. I’m opinionated to a fault.I don’t mince words nor sugar-coat.


David Markson – Is there any movie I love as much as my 500th favorite book?


I’m not quite that bad but I’d rather stay home and read 100 Wikipedia pages than watch one movie with a superhero in it.


I tend to write autobiographical fiction though none of it is as autobiographical as you think it is. To me, all art needs to be simultaneously funny, sad and a little disturbing or else it’s not art. I am a master storyteller, written or spoken, and nothing, absolutely nothing gives me greater pleasure than telling stories.


My greatest influences are Jack Kerouac, David Markson,Erskine Caldwell, Joseph Mitchell and W. Somerset Maugham.


I’ve written 3 novels, dozens of short stories, and I’ve performed monologues on stages throughout San Francisco, including 3 one-man shows; The Experience Junkies, Booty Call Etiquette(about a booty call I actually turned-down,) and I Never Fucked Mrs. G. (about a high school English and Drama teacher I had in the 1980s who slept with several of my classmates but not me.)


Eli,Ely is my first novel to be published and words like ecstatic and excited just don’t convey how I genuinely feel. Take your happiest moment and magnify it till it’s bigger than the universe, then magnify it some more, and you may have an inkling.


Thank you, hardheadpress


May 1, 2013

San Francisco

Last night, a homeless guy walked into Walgreens ...

Last night, a homeless guy walked into Walgreens towards the end of my shift with some battered luggage. He put the old luggage aside. He had long white hair and a long white beard. As I'm looking the guy over, I see he's got solid gold rings on several fingers on both hands. Gold rings!! Then looking over his clothes; they're old, disheveled, slept-in but they're good quality clothes, especially the scuffed-up boots he's wearing. They're not Salvation Army clothes. His luggage is old but good quality.

Then I look at his face.

It's Nick Nolte.

I whisper, "Hey, you're Nick Nolte, aren't you?"

He says, in his famous gruff, "Oh, be cool. I just off Greyhound and nobody recognized me."

True story.

I swear on my life.

He let me take his picture. It's on my cell phone.

Nolte wasn't drunk. He was very nice but seemed that he wanted to be incognito for some reason.

Best celebrity story I got.

I told him that 'North Dallas 40' is an underrated movie.

Acquired a migraine late last night ...

Acquired a migraine late last night and woke with it this morning. The kind with pierced eyes, throbbing temples and blood rushing audibly inside your ears.

By Ezekiel Tyrus

The pain was intense enough that I seriously considered calling in sick today but I'm taking time off next week and decided it wouldn't be a good idea.

Lethargic and wasting my morning, I was running late for my 1:30 shift so I hailed a taxi driven by a crazy Russian who cruelly tailgated every car in front of him, puckering my asshole and genuinely stressing me out making my headache even worse.

Like many an artistic type who supports himself through uncreative means, my job can be a real drag, and truthfully, I often feel like my co-workers simply don't like me. They appreciate it when I'm busting a violent shoplifter or throwing some guy out who is threatening them but for the most part, I've always felt my co-workers don't care for me. It's no big deal. It's called 'work' for a reason and it's only a job but still, it's a feeling I've always had.

Today as I came into work, I walked into the break room where all our lockers are and I saw my co-worker Shelissa Aku Pueyrredon alone at the break table with 5 large pizza boxes stacked up.

"Hey, what are the pizzas for?" I asked thinking it probably had something to do with sales.

"The pizza party is for you?" Said Lissa as cheerful as could be.

"C'm on, Lissa."

Then she pointed to an envelope that had my name on it. I opened it up and inside was a Hallmark greeting card that read "Please Stop Hogging All the Awesome" and there was pig on it. Inside was the word "Congrats" and everybody's signatures.

I couldn't believe it.

Without warning, I began to cry. Immediately, the tension in my body melted and my headache disappeared.

I had to sit down.

Nelson, another co-worker came in to congratulate me, telling me they wanted to says congratulations and recognized how difficult it is to get published nowadays. They also told me I owed a big round of gratitude to pharmacist Kim Michael as it was all his idea.

Of course, Kim, a big thank you.

It's always a pleasure to hear 'Congratulations' but this gesture was extraordinary and the timing perfect.

For whatever reason, I really needed it today.

Work this Friday flew by.

Thanks a million times, everybody. Your gesture today meant the world to me.

Eli,Eli: In Brief

“

Eli,Ely: In Brief.

By Ezekiel Tyrus

Unstable, struggling writer, Eli Trocchi is in a relationship with serious grad student, Jennifer Ely.

Friends speculate they hooked-up to say their own names during sex.

Ergo, ‘Eli, Ely’ becomes the pair’s euphemism for fucking.

Eventually, Miss Ely breaks up with Eli the same week he’s fired from a sales job.

Humiliated, the writer proceeds to have a meltdown that’s hilarious and sad, reflecting upon a lifetime of bad decisions and abject failure.

Through Eli, we discover another San Francisco, one as eccentric and deeply flawed as the character himself.

Read Eli,Ely by Ezekiel Tyrus. Hardheadpress.com
”

Ezekiel 28: What my name means biblically?

Ezekiel 28:

1 -16 The Word of the Lord came again unto me saying: Son of man, say unto the prince of Tyrus: Thus saith the Lord; Because thine heart is lifted up, and thou has said, I AM GOD, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas; yet thou art a man, and not God...

Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord God; thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom; filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned; therefore. The King of Tyrus is Lucifer, who became satan after his fall from grace.

So Lucifer (satan) will give his power to the prince of Tyrus, who will be the one the Bible calls the willful king, the man of sin, the anti-Christ, the false messiah.

In Biblical terms, the name EZEKIEL TYRUS translates to The Prophet of the False Messiah or The Prophet of Satan or The Prophet of The Anti-Christ.

Tyrus was an ancient decadent wicked city in ancient Phoenicia that was eventually destroyed by Christians because the city's leader was Lucifer, i.e. The King of Tyrus.

All in accordance to Ezekiel 28.

Ain't that trippy?

A Boxer Named Poet

A Boxer Named Poet
by Ezekiel Tyrus

Last night I had a dream where I met a Boxer dog named Poet in Washington Square Park. I commented that his eyes were deep, thoughtful, and sensitive like a poet's, is that why was given such a name, and his owner said, "No, he looks like a Poet because he IS a poet. I'm serious. Poet is such a great poet that if you stare at him long enough, he'll make-up a poem about whatever it is you're currently going through."

For several seconds, I stared at the dog's face, my eyes touching his when suddenly he said:

All Art is Divisive!

Find your aesthetic and surround yourself with it.

Your interests are yours.
Your obsessions are yours.
Your passions are yours.

Your thoughts, desires, and stories;
-are yours.

All art is divisive!

You,
as a man,
have always been divisive.

Why would your art not be?

Whenever you see art
generally loved by most,
it's usually no damn good.

Whenever you meet a man
adored by all,
he's usually not that interesting.

No art is loved by everybody,
neither is any one man.

The word tradition means nothing to you,
-never has.

If
"It's tradition,"
be the single
explanation for anything,
an event, a ritual, or style,
your immediate thought is to say,
"Fuck it. I'll do whatever I want to do."

You've been that way your entire life,
because all art is divisive
and so are you.

-A Boxer named Poet.

------------------------------
The boxer looked around, a trace of a smile on his face.

The people at the park applauded, each seemingly aware of Poet and his abilities.

His owner, a young athletic-looking Asian-American man, gave Poet a bone-shaped doggy treat which he lapped up affectionately, not a dog hungry but one enjoying a tiny beloved dessert, like me sucking a root beer barrel.

"See? Poet's a real poet. He nailed you, man."

I walked away with my head down and sat on a park bench to be alone with my thoughts all the while muttering to myself, "Fucking Beat poet dog thinks he knows everything."

Scumbag Eric

Scumbag Eric

By Ezekiel Tyrus

Late 1980s, Melbourne, Florida, I'm 16 years old spending the summer working as a laborer &/or "carpenter's assistant" for $4.50 an hour at a construction company that changed its name every 6 months.

By mid-August, I had put on a solid 20 pounds of muscle and captured a suntan that lasted the rest of my teenage years.

Muscles and a suntan may be the only positive things that came out of that summer.

Truthfully, I was the most incompetent construction worker that ever lived.

Though I was ox-strong, even before that summer, I barely knew the correct way to hold a hammer or read a level and worst, this native Floridian hated the heat and hated the humidity and made the mistake of bitching about it, and for some dumb reason, I mentioned my stepfather was the accountant who did the books for said-construction company, and that my main hobby was not sports but rather ‘acting,’ telling them I had already spent a good deal of my childhood doing community theater, was active in my high school thespian club, and my ambition was to move to L.A. or New York and become a professional actor.

Everybody on the crew was older than me; 20s, 30s, 40s, and if anybody was told to cut me some slack due to my youth, I never felt a minute of it.

Those fuckers were mean. Exceptionally mean.

They treated me with amused contempt and all day long, there was somebody calling me FAGGOT, HEY, FAGGOT, FAGGOT-BOY, CHICKENSHIT, PUSSY, PUSS-CAKE—all the usual names manly men use for those who aren’t manly enough.

I never proved them wrong, by the way. Never defended myself once. Not once.

I had no girlfriend and I was still a virgin. Two questions these guys asked every day, like it was any of their business.

Outside of lifting heavy-shit off a truck and putting heavy shit back onto a truck, you couldn’t rely on me to do anything right.

“As useless as tits on a bull,” is what they use to say about me.

Of everybody, none was meaner (or uglier) than Eric.

He was tall, 6'3" or more, and his skin was darker than tanned, meaning he looked like he could've been Native American but his last name was common and sounded German. I never inquired if he were part American Indian on his mother's side because in my heart, I refused to believe he had a mother at all but rather came to life-form when some human waste and fungus out-grew the rock it was living under.

Construction work requires muscles. Construction work will develop muscles. Eric had none. Though he was already a seasoned carpenter in his early 30s when I met him, Eric was skinny as fuck, a muscle-free beanpole whose shoulder blades jutted out of his back like fleshy bat wings.

While the rest of us wore comfortable baggy shorts that went to our knees, Eric wore tight gym short shorts with no pockets, the kind teenage girls wear when they play volleyball. Eric must've been hung like a thimble because I remember thinking even at 16, I couldn't wear those shorts without looking like a porn star.

Oddly enough, Eric almost never wore a carpenter's belt. Instead, he'd leave his tool belt on the ground to the side and put bundles of nails in his mouth and walk around carrying a hammer, simply pulling nails from his mouth whenever he needed to hammer something.

As incompetent as I was even I invested in a great pair of work-boots with thick soles that cradled my ankles and provided military-like balance. Everybody wore boots like that or something better. Everybody that is but Eric, who wore a pair of cheap threadbare Payless sneakers with thin soles nearly worn-thru and falling apart, with dingy off-white socks that came to the mid-shins of his skinny legs.

Eric's nose was long and noticeably strait and his nostrils were always inflamed with a reddish-tint, which I thought meant he was angry all-the-time, ready to ponce on anybody at any given moment, but now I know, he was just a tweaker, high on speed, as most of those fuckers were.

The man had high cheekbones, dark-eyes and check-marks that sat on his eyebrow ridge in twitchy anger.

His teeth were rotten, only a handful left, like sharp rat teeth stained black from the chewing tobacco Eric sucked between his cheek and gums, spitting the nasty black tobacco juice every few seconds through the nails he put in his mouth, muttering things like, “I'm a mean son-of-a-bitch. I know it. I mean son-of-a-bitch.”

Interestingly enough, the one thing he had going for himself was his hair. Besides speed, this is where all his money went.

Believe it or not, Eric was in a local Heavy Metal band and in Florida in the 1980s, all a guy needed to do to get laid was grow his hair long and pick-up a microphone.

Eric's hair was thick and full, dark-brown and went all the way past his shoulders. At work, he typically wore it in a ponytail or even in a hairnet, and yet, nobody made fun of him. His hair wasn't coarse. It wasn't dry. It was obviously professionally done and styled, using the best products available.

By all accounts, Eric was a ladies' man. I remember people talking about the ‘really hot blonde’ Eric brought to the Christmas party the year before. Every other day, Eric would bring handwritten notes his girlfriend would leave him on his dresser or on his welcome mat under a stone.

Though he insisted she was in her 20s, the notes were the intricately-folded notes of an immature adolescent complete with hearts for dotted i's, smiley faces by her signature and petty hopes, fairy-tale dreams and the occasional promise of a blow-job.

Eric would pass the notes around during lunch laughing his ass off, assuring us she wasn't ‘the only bitch’ he was fucking and describing himself as a 4-F-er; 1. Find them. 2. Feel them, (both physically and emotionally.) 3. Fuck them. 4. Forget them.

I wish I could remember the name of his band but what I do remember is when he wasn't muttering about what a mean son-of-a-bitch he was or calling me by one-of-my nicknames, the motherfucker was always singing Heavy Metal songs at the top of his lungs, all high-pitch nasals and no-talent.

Eric had no redeemable qualities sans his hair.

Why did he intimidate me so much? Even at 16 I had a better body.

In my early 20s working as a bouncer at Tampa punk clubs, I use to fantasize about confronting Eric and beating the shit out of him but it never happened.

Of course, when lifting weights in my late teens and early 20s, I use to fantasize about fighting all those fuckers.

Even at this writitng, I'd eagerly step into an alley on a rainy night to brawl with every single one of those assholes but this, too, will probably never happen.

When Eric was a younger man, he went to prison for armed robbery, or so he said, and as far as I knew, he was the first real criminal I ever met, or the very first ex-con, and that scared me, the fact that he had been to prison before.

My stepfather continued to do the books for that company for decades and when I was in my mid-30s, I asked him whatever became of that scumbag Eric?

He told me that Eric worked for the same company for years on relatively good terms but he was often in trouble with the law; possession, domestic violence, DUI, misdemeanor assault, etc, though nothing too serious but one day, he and a buddy decided to hold up a liquor store while they were on a camping trip in Georgia and it didn't go well.

Partner was shot and killed and Eric sentenced to a lengthy prison term due to his frequent offender status.

As far as my stepfather knew, that bastard was still in prison and was going to be for the rest of his life.

I wonder if he still takes good care of his hair.

San Francisco. August 9, 2013.
Ezekiel Tyrus

Saturday, August 24, 2013.

Saturday, August 24, 2013.

An older man I've known very casually from working at Walgreens came in and presented me with a sealed envelope with red block lettering, 'Mr. Ezekiel Tyrus."

He nodded and smiled. The man is tall, thin, about 60 with large goofy features, that appear ever-happy, and he almost resembles a balding Donald Sutherland with a big handlebar mustache but not an ironic hipster mustache.

He seemed like he was in a hurry to go but said, "When I told you I bought a copy of 'Eli,Ely' you said to give you some feedback when I was done. Well, in that envelope is 3 pages with feedback."

Then he bowed out, smiling but walking away shyly, hands in his pockets, head down.

My immediate thought was, even if the guy didn't like it, the fact he took the time to write 3 pages is still thoughtful and caring.

I opened up the envelope and there was a card with a simple but lovely drawing of a bird, black and red against a pastel-green background. The card was blank but inside the man wrote,

'Mr. Tyrus,

"I hope all your dreams come true."
-'Eli,Ely'
-Bob.

That's a line from a revealing and sad part of my novel.

(He got it. He understood what the book was about in that simple gesture.)

Inside the card was 3 sheets of yellow legal pad folded together and written in red ink, another symbolic detail straight from my novel.

(Boy, this guy got it.)

Dear Mr. Tyrus:

After purchasing your new novel 'Eli,Ely,' I stopped by Walgreens to show you my copy (from Books, Inc.) Your appreciation was overwhelming. You asked me to let you know what I thought of it, so rather than a quick "Love it"/"Nice try"/"A complete waste of time," I thought I'd give you something a bit more in-depth.

Here goes ...
I burst out laughing several times, due either to a turn of a phrase, or something completely unexpected. Some examples are as follows:
Your protagonist's retro vs. out-of-date clothes;
The first two encounters with a homeless person;
The Security Guard/Bouncer Aptitude test;
"The Bondage Tree."
I read 'The Giving Tree' 17 years ago and felt sorry for the tree.
Your riff on Steisand is priceless!!
I love Titty Titty Gangbang! One of the funniest and most interesting characters ever. Loved her.

I found your later encounter with a homeless character to be quite apt. Ballsy, even -actually having the courage to write about the reality of walking down the street, whereas most people would go the P.C. route, or speak of the situation to select friends.

Your book certainly starts with a bang. Although the sex scenes appear throughout the narrative (background, character development,) I could not wait to get back to the main storyline (but that's me. A straight reader may feel differently.) I did enjoy the scenes surrounding The Power Exchange. (Funny, in a twisted sort of way, but that's me.)

I have read several novels set in San Francisco, and wondered if the authors had actually visited here, or if they even used a map when writing. Happily, all your locations were on the mark, and I could tell you had actually been in the areas of which you write.

A suggestion regarding the printing/publishing itself:
Give credit to the cover designer and to the photographer and model. She's beautiful. Makes an intriguing cover.

All and all, I thoroughly enjoyed your novel, -so much so I read it in 2 and a half days, staying up till 1AM two nights in a row, just to read one more page, releasing a sigh of contentment when I reached the end of the final page.

Good job!

All the best,
Robert K.
San Francisco, CA 94109
------------------------------
I've gotten some emails with praise from strangers and old friends but this is the first hand-written letter and card from anybody and it's from a San Francisco Tenderloin resident who clearly, in a few symbolic gestures, (red ink, yellow paper, the quote from the book,) got exactly what I was trying to convey in the novel. HE GOT IT!!

I think I'm going to keep the card and the three hand-written sheets for the rest of my life.

Thanks, Bob.