delicioustacos

What do you want to do for your birthday, she asks. I want to lay on the couch with her and the dog. Watch a high mid Hollywood movie. Like Adrian Lyne or Paul Verhoeven. An entertaining movie, not art. I want to go to bed at 10 with the dog. Then I want to die so I don’t have to go to work anymore.

But the bag I’m chasing is stay at home dad money. Not working five years, so she can have her dreams too. Write while the baby sleeps. Get him in kindergarten. Then I’ll go back to work. But not yet, not yet.

**

Good morning.

I’m still 49 years old.

I made the most of 49. It was a good year when I wasn’t working.

I hate special occasions. I hate taking stock. It feels like cope. Well here we go, I started my 40’s broke, having emergency ass surgery, obsessed with a Korean woman who was using me for sex. Using me for my physique. Dating other guys. I worked for the same guy I do now. I drove the same car. That hasn’t changed. I had put out one ebook at 39. I remember that $115 royalty check, that was a great moment. But we’re talking about my 40’s. I released The Pussy which flopped completely as I expected. It sold 221 copies in 2016. Still that’s a thousand bucks which was nothing to sneeze at back then. I had a healthier attitude. I expected no one to buy it, 221 people bought it. 220 and one copy for myself. Continue reading →

I went for a run last night. Out in the park. Up the sand trail where people take their horses. To where the dog ate the toad one time and back. It was full dark of night by the time I got motivated, and it got cool enough.

On the way back I saw animals in the grass. I stopped and looked. A skunk was snuffling about with three coyotes lounging. It had been hot, it was a hundred degrees that day. The grass in the park is cool. Sprinklers come on at night. The coyotes lay placidly while the skunk snuffled for grubs, all a few feet from each other. A skunk hanging out with three coyotes.

I love sleeping with the dog. Waking up with the dog. Every night I take a bath. She knows it’s close to bedtime. She waits on the bed. Susannah’s in New York this week. I gotta move to our new house. Moving is like a death. Your own death by a bad disease. The memories and feelings in the house welling up while you fight transactions bills work money logistics man up etc.etc. Lifting heavy boxes in the heat and crude workmen barking while you want to sit and cry sifting through letters from the dead.

I’m on vacation from thinking about the future. All I have to do is lay in bed with her watching a stupid movie. When she goes to piss her dog gets on the bed. Her pug, Cinnamon. Cinnamon is not allowed here but I don’t know that, so I call Cinnamon, because the bed’s lonely without Susannah. And Cinnamon jumps up and instead of reclining serenely by my side like a faithful hunting hound in a painting, like I imagined, Cinnamon runs up my leg on to my stomach, plants her back foot into my nuts, and then circles and circles on my belly like she’s trying to become one with me. Like she’s tunneling into my body to be close to me. Then she climbs up my chest and sits on my face, then stands on my forehead trying to lick my eyes while I squirm laughing. I hear the toilet flush and the faucet run for a second and Susannah comes back in and yells at Cinnamon to get off the bed. She knows she’s not supposed to be there, she says. But oh God she thinks she doesn’t have to listen to me now because you’re a man.

I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.

I think the pots and pans have spirits. I think they’re sentient beings, and they’re sad about being thrown out.

She came over to set up her workshop. She bought a silver polishing machine from China. No room in her place.

I have this mud room where I kept my air conditioners in winter. And two huge boxes of old papers and gifts. And a bookshelf I found in the trash in 2004 with dusty shoes I never wear in it, covered in spider webs. The cat’s litter box was there. The cat’s been dead eight months. He never shit inside to begin with. The litter box was for when he’d have to have surgery and stay in the house. I have never cleaned the mud room. I’d have gone to my grave never cleaning the mud room. I never clean anything. I feel bad disturbing the spiders. Continue reading →

Some thought I forgot. Some thought I had while stretching. It wasn’t big enough to write. It was something I might have said on a podcast. And I thought: this thought is not a big enough deal to write down. Now it’s gone. Continue reading →

Overheard in the Chinese Restaurant

I don’t know if you speak English. I don’t speak Chinese, OK. A week ago I came in here and I ordered the medium shrimp. It comes with ten shrimps. I looked in the box and counted seven shrimps. But there was a man working here, I don’t know if he’s here now- OK do you speak English. I’m sorry but I don’t speak Chinese. He told me the other three shrimps were at the bottom. I got home and I looked through the entire thing. The other three shrimps were not there. You owe me three shrimps. No, it was not that size. It was the medium. The medium comes with ten shrimps. I’m here to get the three shrimps that you owe me please. Do you understand me? I apologize but I have to speak to you in English. I don’t know if you speak English. I don’t speak Chinese. Continue reading →

Trying to do a conference call while my meth neighbor screams and throws a couch down the stairs. I gotta post something. Just write something that sucks. Break the seal and post more freely. And here’s the squirrel out back going after my squash. Not eating the ripe ones he ripped apart already. It’s the young green new squash. Fucking prick. Fucking dick ass squirrel. Continue reading →

Just about every day I go to the park and watch acorn woodpeckers. There are four types of woodpecker in the area. The Northern flicker, acorn woodpecker, the hairy woodpecker, and the Nuttall’s. This winter there was a Nuttall’s in the neighbor’s walnut tree. Continue reading →

I went out and looked at the squash and I could hear the bees. I thought it was a swarm somewhere. Moving hives. But the squash has so many flowers there are a hundred bees. Humming and pollinating in the big deep orange blossoms. The flowers are male or female. The male ones had buds for a long time, but just opened. At the end of the cycle. New little squashes now are born yellow and die. Leaves going yellow. The plants are dying. I give them more fertilizer. But they feel gassed out. Like they’ve used their time on Earth. Continue reading →