The Ahole Monologue

**The following is a short story i wrote in my last year of university. I wanted to write something that scared the crap out of me to write. I was reading a lot of Freud and a lot of Chuck Palahniuk at the time. Back then i only had the courage to show one person, mostly because i thought it made me sound like a psycho and because frankly it reads like a bad Palahniuk rip off. Now i see it as more of a tribute (remix?). I basically wanted to write a piece about a complete miserable assholes frame of mind. Annnnnnnnnnnd here we go**

Just look around.

All bets are your life is nothing but evasion. Nothing but avoidance.

Television, the internet, cellular phones, computers, pornography, your iPod. All these inventions so you wouldn’t be alone, your friends of technology existing so you can avoid the silence of your own thoughts, the truth of who you really are. Cartoons, instant messengers, reality television shows, video games.

You distract yourself to save yourself from yourself. Virtual realities created to avoid reality. Filling your life with meaninglessness to avoid your emptiness. This is your life, this is what you made, and this is what you bought into.

All bets are this is exactly who you are.

Bets are you wake up to caffeinated beverages and Regis. Toasted bagels and the Today show. The drive to work with the sports news. Fucking Christ the Astro’s lost again.

Work, this great service to the world, this so-called necessary activity of civilization. What is your role? What service do you fulfill? Filling out order slips from fuck knows where to who-cares-ville, that’s what.

Luckily your boss doesn’t know about Tetris on your computer or you wouldn’t get through the AM. You wouldn’t survive this cubicle existence. Three bathroom breaks. One to jack off in the handicap bathroom, so at least you can feel something. Check your email twice an hour.

Lunchtime with the boys; a beer and a burger, stat. The afternoon slips by easier with a buzz. Shoot the shit about who fucked who last weekend. About the bitch at the club who wouldn’t give you the time of day. Fucking dyke. Ramble on about all the moments that you can’t remember. About your conquest of the weekend through obliteration. Damn it, it’s almost one o’clock.

If the morning is numbing, the afternoon is a painful coma. Four bathroom breaks. Check your email again. Bets are those penis enlarging pills would do you good. I mean who couldn’t use more girth? After all, 80% of women surveyed said in secrecy they were dissatisfied with their partner’s unit. Slip into the inventory room, check and make sure you have enough pens and paperclips. Who-cares-ville is depending on you.

The last hour is the worst. Scanning your watch every couple minutes, if it was only daylight savings. Check your email. And your ex-girlfriends. Who the fuck is Randy? Another bathroom break; pretend to shit for twenty minutes. Finally it comes. Your freedom from slavery, five o’clock.

You grab your briefcase and sprint to your maroon 98’ Camry. Peel out of the underground graveyard. Blare the Beatles. Paul, John, Ringo and the other guy…take it away. All bets are you do believe in yesterday. When you played high school football and got to third base in the girls locker-room with Cindy Templeton. Starting quarterback for the varsity team. Nathan Diggs year end party at his parents place. Drunk chicks looking to score with the popular athlete. Shit, what was that girl’s name who gave you her virginity? Like it matters anyway, it’s not like she didn’t know what she was doing. I mean it was high school right? Saying “I love you” to a chick on the fence doesn’t really mean anything, just means you have a dick and you aren’t a pussy. It means you know how to close. Some call it manipulation; you call it strategic word placement. All bets are yesterday is all you have.

Fast-forward to today and look at you. Here in this twenty-thousand dollar moving coffin catching every red light. Prolonging your living wake. The Beatles singing your eulogy. Rush hour traffic, assholes cutting you off. The soccer mom and her fucking mini-van. The college kid with the Jeep Daddy bought him. The old man and in his drivable yacht. All your sworn enemies, your nemesis’, your Lex Luthers, your Darth Vader’s.

Your driveway never looked so good. Your garage, the pussy of perfection. Home. ESPN and a cold one, stat. Bets are your recliner is your best friend. Always there for you, always warm and inviting. Never asking for shit, just company. Just to be used. Micro-wave dinner, Salisbury steak, instant potatoes and the corn you never eat. Pull out the TV tray; the games on. Thank god you decided to get satellite, 400 channels of self-imposed distraction. Another Budweiser, stat. It’s easier to unwind with a buzz on.

Fuck the Astro’s suck. Bagwell couldn’t hit a curve if my life depended on it. Alright another two brewskies, stat. It’s easier to mourn a loss when you can’t feel anymore. How the shit is it midnight already? Remember to set the alarm and turn off the lights. Curl up in your queen-sized therapeutic comfort controlled bed. Flip through the pages of Maxim and wonder what it feels like to be inside Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Lopez. You bet they all love a big cock, love some extra girth. You bet they all love it rough. Not like Patricia your ex, she always wanted to “make love” and then cuddle. Like cuddling ever did anything for the world. Flip the page to the model from Scandinavia on page twenty-six, for sure she loves to be face-fucked, just look at her, I mean come on. They all would if they’d only try it.

Flip the page.

Come to think of it you could use the complete Gillette skincare product line. Bets are your face could be clearer.

Flip the page.

Pull your dick to Hillary Duff. Somehow it’s always easier to come when you can pretend to teach a young chick how to suck dick. Clean up your unborn children. Bets are having a self-administered orgasm just isn’t enough to put you to sleep anymore. Pop your daily sleeping pill Lunesta, formerly known as Estorra. Turn on your 42” television to the nightly news. Pass out wondering what the hell Ted Coppell is bitching about now.

All bets are this is your life.

Passing by a day at a time in a walking coma, a distraction of a distraction of a distraction. Ad infinitum.

Lather, rinse and repeat. Five days a week.

Strung Out Babysitters

Strung Out - Exhumation Of Virginia Madison

Okay so one band that I used to be OBSESSED with was California’s Strung Out. They basically make fast paced pop punk with some metal influences thrown in for good measure. I remember going to see them and the Mad Caddies at the Multicultural Centre when I was 18, not having a ticket but figuring a friend and I could either buy a ticket once we got down there or scam our way through the doors. Turned out about 40 other kids had the same idea. Like any self-respecting 18yr old I was absolutely lit before we got there so there was definitely some confidence in my game, if not subtly.

Anthony and I found the band’s tour bus behind the building and we figured we would just ask them to let us in. Makes sense right? It’s only how they make money…ha. A handful of other kids already had the same idea and were yelling for the band to let them into the bus and the show. As we walked up to the crowd someone opened the bus door yelling “Look, NO ONE is getting in here unless they have coke!” My friend and I looked at each other and started to laugh. This rock star move was something pretty foreign to us and to the punk scene we knew. As the door started to close I yelled “But I’ll suck your dick!” intending for it to be ironic and deprecating of the bands rock star attitude. A really awkward silence from the crowd followed. Meh, still funny to me.

I remember as we walked away my friend mentioning how he could call his girlfriend because “her brother does a lot of drugs and might know a coke dealer”. Somehow in our state we were able to see the error of that thinking. We pushed on, determined.

As the show time neared we pounded on the one of the abandoned back doors. A huge tattooed bald guy opened the door with an angry scowl. Turns out it was the fiancé of a girl I used to drink with quite a bit, he let us in to the show for a small fee. Mission complete.

*No rock stars dicks were sucked in the making of this story*

Bad Babysitter – Princess Superstar

Alright so I was never trusted to be a babysitter (which is pretty ironic now) but I think every kid had some bizarre things happen to them when they were put under the trust of someone else. I remember babysitter’s boyfriends coming over, eating an entire bottle of Flintstone vitamins while watching a movie and finding out the graphic details of Jack the Ripper case as a ‘go to bed’ scare tactic.

Princess Superstar is all kinds of awesome. Originally signed to the Beastie Boys ‘Grand Royal’ label she went on to form her own label and does most of her work from her apartment. At the same time she’s a white female rapper and definitely plays up the stereotype to the nth degree. She travels the world as a DJ. Could probably beat me up mentally and physically. And to top it all off she’s pretty as sin.

The Lesbian Freedom Fight

Liza and Louise – NOFX

Ok so when a guy is 16 lesbians seem totally kick ass but as you get older the whole concept starts to run pretty thin (at least to me). What is to explain the shift in thinking?

Well there are two main reasons. One, actual lesbians don’t like guys, it takes two hundred or three hundred attempts but sooner or later you start to realize that you are maybe barking up the wrong tree.

Two, girls totally ruin it. A few attention hungry ladies quickly realize that guys love the concept and start to play it up like some sort of circus act at bars. Like a “Girls Gone Wild” stepsister, you typically find these girls in middle of the dance floor grinding into each other while they subtlety check out who’s checking them out.

Maybe it’s just me but that somehow seems so unpure, forced and lame. More importantly this side show makes life hard on actual lesbians, the precious pillow fighting things. Making out in bars is retarded period, guy on girl or girl on girl. Maybe more so girl on girl.

“Ok Destiny when we there, let’s grind each other, make out and then guys named Tony will buy us drinks and eye fuck us all night. Deal?”

“That sounds perfect Porsche. Let me just grab my glitter lip gloss”

It’s kind of the equivalent of riding a unicycle into a bar “Look at me! Look at me! Look what i can do!”

BTW what the shit is with guys on unicycles at Universities? JESUS. I don’t care how ‘challenging they are to ride’ it’s a geek circus act and you’re not helping yourself in any way riding around campus on that thing. Why don’t you just juggle on the first date?

Lil' Freudian Wayne

Something that always interests me is what music means to people. What purpose it serves. I came across an article the other day in which the author described how the musical artists we love can be a subconscious reflection of who we wish we were. The prime example in the article was the Lisa Loeb phenomenon, the author noting her aggressive male friends’ love of LL (and her love of early Iggy Pop). They wanted to be sweet, the wished they could hold a relationship, and they fantasized about being able to let their emotions be expressed in ways other than violence. She wanted to be a heroin fuelled madman.

This all sounds very Freudian to me, our secret desires leaking through in socially acceptable ways. A prime example of this is Ice-T’s 1992 track “Cop Killer”. As a 14 year old kid I had absolutely no way of relating to this song. I was a white kid living in the suburbs, hadn’t had my first drink, was afraid of vaginas, hadn’t tried a drug and still went to church. But the song connected to me, like it connected to millions of white kids all over North America because we were drawn to the violence that our lives lacked.

It got me to thinking. If this theory is true, and as a lover of all things Freudian I tend to give credit to this sort of thinking, then who am I? and who do I do I really want to be?

What's the best way to do this? Why, define myself from my IPods most listened to songs of course.

1. Pour Some Sugar on Me - Def Leppard

I'm not sure what this means about me. Apparently I miss the simple days where getting the clap was your biggest concern, I desire pure hedonism, I want someone to cover me with sugar (in the name of love of course) and I wanna rock twice as hard as the normal man but with only one arm. Most of all I want a meaningless moment once in a while, I want to escape into a sing along that is both user friendly and has been the soundtrack to accidental teenage pregnancies for 22 years and counting.

2. Maneater - Hall And Oates

I'm angry, hurt and scared from past relationships and girls in general. I want to warn men about "them". Watch out boys they'll chew you up.

3. Momma's Boy - Chromeo

"She says I remind of her father and I know she likes it”

Why do I connect so strongly to this song? Because I desperately pine to be 13 again. The simple days of having heartbreaking crushes and the underlying necessary confusion between parental love and sexual love (stick with me here kids).

In Freudian theory our first love is necessarily for our parents, which makes sense as they are the image of woman/man that we are exposed to. To be honest you see it every day, people dating people with the exact characteristics of their opposite sex parent, or purposefully dating someone with the opposite characteristics (the all too common “bad boy” girl infatuation).

“Oh Cindy he’s just so dreamy. He has a motorbike, carries a switchblade, has been to prison and doesn’t pay his child support. He’s so different than my book reading, responsible, caring father. SWOON”

SIGH.

It makes sense in a certain awkwardly logical way. The first woman I was around for a substantial amount of time was the one who raised me. I built up my image of what a woman is around her. Now does my definition of love at 13 differ from my definition of love at 30? Completely. Does my definition of an ideal partner change between those same ages? Absolutely.

That’s the wonder and confusing part of being 13. You’re leaving that safety net and parentally defined image of love as you experience new things. Your jaw drops when you see Tanya P. rocking a black skin-tight body suit to Home Economics class in Grade 9. When Erin P. asks you if you want to learn how to French kiss at Derrick’s party you’re so scared you whimper “Nawwwwww it’s ok”. When you see Michelle D. in jean shorts (if you could call those things shorts) in the summer of 1992 you are seeing something that is out of your experience. And you like it. The mother image fades and these new experiences mold a new image of what a woman is supposed to be. Mind you that image is fueled by raging hormones but that ship corrects itself in ten or twenty years.Good luck with that ladies.

Oh and I love the song because I’m totally a Momma’s boy underneath this rock solid façade of hardcoreness. Love ya mom.

4. Wasted - Lil' Wayne

Ok so this track came out this week so it couldn’t possibly make the top 25. But I think it’s an interesting window into this situation. Why did I LOVE Wu-Tang so much at a certain point? How did punk rock change my life? Why was Alkaline Trio literally the soundtrack to my everyday existence for two years? Why does Lil’ Wayne make so much sense to me today?

Perhaps music serves as a window into a certain need at a certain point in time for all of us. It helps define who we are, who we want to be, and who we need to be at that moment (even if it’s just for those two mins). I loved Wu-Tang (and still do) because it was so outside my comfort zone at the time, I was a lost high school kid and wanted to be someone different, I wanted to explore that which I was not. And what’s the easiest way for a khaki rocking awkward white boy to do that? Why emerge himself into the world of hardcore, meth-smoking, violent thug life, obviously.

Punk rock changed my life because I needed something that spoke to me. I needed to hear anti-establishment songs; I needed to know that I wasn’t crazy and that someone else thought the world made no sense. Oh and punk rock chicks are crazy hot. You drink beer and will punch a guy out? Hellllllooo I think my heart just got a boner.

Alkaline Trio’s first three albums are about three things: drinking, heartbreak, and death. All things that I was dealing with while I was listening to them so much, they gave me insight and comfort. I couldn’t express those emotions as well as Matt Skiba so I allowed his words to become mine.

And Lil’ Wayne? Well first off he spits hot fire (mad love D.C.) and secondly I get the joke. He defines where I am right now in my life in a completely contradictory way. He is the gangsta Ying to my yuppie Yang. I need an escape into the world of “f-ing bitches”, “getting money” and violence from time to time because that is the opposite of what my world is. If I was to listen to Gordon Lightfoot and Huey Lewis sing songs about how my life actually is day in and day out I would have to experience those sort of escapes in real life (according to the Freudian and Lacanian theory) in some form sooner or later.

Lil Wayne has basically saved me from committing crimes, doing drugs and getting herpes.

Thank you Lil' Wayne, and I’m sorry you’re going to priison, but I know you dd it for all of US.

The Punk Rock Story

Some of you may well be aware that I was not always this intimidating pillar of togetherness and confidence, there was definitely some moments where I was a dramatic and lost kid. The following is a short story about one of those moments where I found a piece of myself.

I’m what they call a ‘late bloomer’, that’s pretty much a nice way of saying ‘slow to learn‘ but I like the way the first one sounds so lets run with that one. I was attending the University of Calgary but not going to my classes and probably (absolutely) drinking too much. My musical tastes around this age (17-18) included a whole LOT of Wu-Tang Clan (killa bees…we gonna swarm!), the Tragically Hip (ya Road Apples) and some lingering of my fathers music. In other words I hadn’t really found myself musically (one could argue I still have not). There is something to be said about being ‘well rounded’ but there is also something to be said about having the RZA and Huey Lewis giving you life and relationship advice. I’m “perpendicular to the square” but I also know its “hip to be square” so I somehow come out perpendicular to the hip, and it goes quickly downhill after this.

It was end of semester/final exam time and on this particular day I had dropped out of one class an hour before the final exam and attempted to write a marketing exam for a class I went to a staggering 3 times. This did not bode well for my mental stability at the time so I quickly decided I should go to the campus pub and begin my new career as a poet and cigarette smoker (it may have been eleven in the morning on a Thursday). I think in some bizarre way I figured I would just dive head first into being a sad bastard and get it over with. I knew that I wasn’t going to pull myself together enough to be a successful student, so I may as well seem dark and jaded and wronged by the world.

I was one of the many misled souls under the impression that girls liked fixer-uppers, or maybe girls were still at that stage where they actually wanted fixer-uppers, either way it is ridiculous. “He’s so sad and dark and lost. It’s attractive”? I ran with this theory towards the opposite sex for WAY too long and missed out on good people and good times because of it. The kinds of girls who desire a jaded and dark introvert are the kind of girls you REALLY don’t want to be hanging out with. Trust me.

“Hey Jane do you want to go out drinking? Maybe hit up a club and have a laugh”

“I’m an emotional river flowing through myself into a sea of tranquility and loneliness right now. My dark soul yearns for the peace of darkness.”

“Ummm…so no?”

Clearly I didn’t want to face the fact that I was a total piece of shit so being upset at life in lyrical form just made more sense. I think I wrote about rain and how I hated the word potential. I had downed a pitcher of beer, smoked 7 cigarettes and written three songs about how the world was a cold, cruel and bitter place.

At this point in time the campus pub or as it was lovingly known “the den” was a wreck of a place. Pipes hung down from the unfinished ceiling. The carpet reeked of old beer, puke and piss. Horrific lighting purposefully hid the worst parts; in essence as the den got darker the den became more attractive, kinda like most of the patrons. The architecture looked as if it was done by someone who was figuring it out as they went; jaded edge here, pointless ledge there. In other words, I ADORED it.

Decorated with every shade of dark brown, maroon and beige Satan created you could literally smell the den before you saw it. The bar consisted of a hallway leading to an open section when you walked through the front doors. This open section was awkwardly cluttered with old wooden circular tables, thick wooden pillars and chairs. The bar looked like a mash up between the sort of place your alcoholic uncle would go on a Tuesday afternoon and something out of a shitty western movie. Behind the bar there was another open section with a dance floor surrounded on its outer edges by picnic tables and 3 booths on the right side of the floor (the PRIME seats).

I was seated at the back side of the bar, on a picnic table, the darkest one I could find. Barely able to make out the junior high poetry I was composing. With only a handful of patrons there I tried my hardest to look like a lost puppy to conjure up some sympathy. I remember a girl coming over to me, me looking up at her all doe eyed, a glint of hope deep in my eyes hoping that she would take this mortal coil. She asked for a smoke and quickly left. I gave her one and tried to hold back the hurt. Sigh.

For some reason I think I wore khakis that day. Fucking KHAKIS. (Side note: no one deserves to get laid in khakis, ever. I don’t care if you have just saved her from certain death, drive a glow in the dark Porsche and look like that sketch pad Josh Hartnett, if you’re rocking the big K’s….you get no love (it may have taken me 2 years to figure this out. Oh and I think I started rocking them due to early Snoop Dogg and the Boyz in tha Hood movie).

As I mentioned previously there were all these architectural anomalies in the Den, it was like a build by numbers project gone wrong. At this point I’m half cut looking around the smoke filled dark bar and for some reason I noticed a particular ledge jutting out of the wall some eight feet in the air. I don’t even think up until this point I had noticed any of the awkward ledges in the Den actually. I’ll never know what caught my eye or why I reached up but I did. Standing up from my picnic table, my arm stretching out, fingers spidering along the ledge, searching for something I had no idea was there. Then I felt something, a dusty plastic object. A tape. Yes, I’m that old, shut up.

It was like I found some secret treasure or opened a time capsule. I sat down and wiped the dust off. Written on one side were the words “Face to Face” and on the other “NOFX”. This was my introduction to punk rock. This was my initiation. A gift from one drunken student to another. Kind of like those people that lose their virginity to a friend who feels bad for them and wants to help them out. The person who left/lost that tape was gentle, they talked me through it, made sure I was ok, they cuddled me after. They made sure I’d come back for more and wouldn’t run away scared only to come back years later with some sort of neurotic urine fetish.

It’s all too common to hear people say “punk rock saved my life”, in truth I think punk rock has been improperly represented in order to be used as a vessel to destroy peoples lives more often than anything. Drinking rye till you puke is not punk rock. Dying your hair red and piercing your nose is not punk rock. Decking the huge guy you don’t know who just smacked his girlfriend at the bar is. Realizing your self worth and your inner voice is. Saying shit you know people will hate you for but you feel it is true and needed to be said is. I guess in the end I will say that “Punk Rock changed my life”, and it all started on that day, because of one tape, one failed exam and quite possibly khaki pants.

Corpse Dry Humping

T.S.O.L - Code Blue

Ok so writing a song about fucking the dead is kinda creepy but this song is rad in that 'true crime' sort of way. The protagonist has a problem (he doesn't get along with the girls in his school) and finds a way to rectify that issue (sneaking into the mortuary for some corpse loving). This guy is a problem solver plain and simple.

In a weird Freudian 'ego vs Id' way things like this have always messed with my mind. Who know what lays inside the human mind? Are ethics/morals just artificial social rules created to help our race survive? Maybe we all just want to get some corpse nookie but can’t see past the morals Momma and Poppa taught us? One thing I do know is I’ll never try it, the way I figure it’s like heroin….i try it once and I’m in big trouble.

Regina Spektor - Samson

So first thing first, Regina Spector is crazy as balls (are balls even crazy?). She's this little Russian tinkerbell that writes songs from different characters perspectives, finding that her life isn't as interesting as her multiple personalities lives. It leads to an interesting lyrical landscape where she can basically sing whatever she wants without retribution because it’s from 'an artistic perspective'. It’s kinda like Eminem for people over the age of 16 (and not afraid of ‘the gays’).

It kind of makes me wish I was smart enough to come up with that idea in real life. "Um no when I punched you in the eye then screamed for you to 'fuck off and die a horrifically bloody death and rot in hell with the rest of the monsters of this world. That was just a character of mine. Duh. Don't you understand art?” Annnnnnnnd cue Mike talking with a Russian accent for the rest of the day in 3, 2, 1.

Prince - Purple Rain (no available youtube clip, sigh)

Remember when you watched Purple Rain for the first time and you realized that Prince wasn’t a fruity puffy shirt wearing egomaniac but rather an underappreciated artist and quite possibly the most prolific song writer of our time? Just me? Fine. Well either way Prince has changed music in a way that you can probably only compare to Michael Jackson. Did you know Prince wrote ‘Manic Monday’ by the Bangles? Seriously. Here is a man so epic that he penned a song as popular as Manic fucking Monday and it’s not even common knowledge.

When Michael Jackson died everyone looked back at this musical legacy that pretty much ended in 1992 and was surrounded by the sort of controversy that makes someone second guess the integrity of the artist and thus the integrity of the work itself. When Prince dies I think people will look back in amazement and realize who the more important and influential artist was. I was reading last years ‘Albums of the Year’ review in Rolling Stone and a Prince album was in the top 25. The man has created nothing but great albums for 20 years. No one does that.

Oh and I always wanted to do a lip-sync performance to “Let’s Go Crazy” in Junior High. A solitary spotlight illuminating my face in a blacked out gym. Me passionately mouthing the words “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to celebrate this thing called...life”.

After that I would get to dry hump my pick of the junior high litter.