The Declaration of Us

I’m so fucking angry, but I’m old enough to prove it.

I can be all the emotions simultaneously, especially on the morning commute if I’m listening to Steve Earle and the derelicts are particularly pushy.

We got a problem here today and it’s called US. We don’t believe enough anymore and when we do, it’s about wall fixtures. Forget all that. Let’s fucking run away and hide – you and me. Let’s even hide from each other while we jump our batteries. Not really hide so much as float around like itinerant, whimsical philosophers, and only meet up for daily dinners and occasional sex. As for this place? Don’t worry. Those no-good, lowdown police officer pricks and shitty high school principals will still be here when we get back. If we get back.

See, a great and true red-headed innocent once said, “Neil Young knows what I’m talking about,” and I think that’s right on. Helpless, helpless, hellllpless. If we’re lucky. Might as well get whipped into a different frenzy. This one is all chaosed-out. Look at me, I’m off my medication on purpose ‘cause it makes me give a shit. Everybody screams. As they should.

I’m going to take a break right here to read you a list of people I secretly admire. Sorry I never told you. I’m telling you now:

Charles Dickens.

Tom Hayes.

Grandma Sadie.

Natalie Maines.

Michael Rupert.

Tupac Shakur.

What can I say? I like people who look like their feelings.

OK. Back to the story.

Today I did an experiment. I imagined leaving my life. It wasn’t so terrible. Sure, I cried a lot. But what’s that got to do with anything? I envisioned hightailing it to the Pennsylvania mountains to teach college-level English and falling in love once a week with one of the darlings, collecting beautiful, fresh young writer-goddess lovers for my vault, growing old with all of ‘em and none of ‘em at the same time.

I got ideas (ideas, I say!). I got big, beefy, thunderclap, shucksy, masculine, heartfelt, scurrilous, sludgy, howling-at-the-moon ideas! And if I can’t lasso at least one of them soon, I’ll have to start giving them away. C’mon. Whaddya say? Can we lash out together? Can we bring back that Keroauckian, talkin’-smackian vernacular? Saddle up on this roof and ride out into destinations unknown? Maybe we’ll get famous for all this horsing around. End up like one of those TMZ cheese doodles, noodling in the park with our tits flopping out of Sunday dresses. Jesus, what the hell did I just say? LOL.

Oh God, I just wanna watch it rain from a stranger’s living room, only to find out that the furniture is mine. Or see a disaster up close and personal so I can fix it with a box of tools. Or tell my girlfriend I’ve loved her as much as I could possibly ever love a woman and leave her anyway. Or have a chance to explain myself to Eddie Vedder. Or walk around at night in a town I haven’t heard of yet. Or be the only old guy in a happy house of boom-boom bass lines and scandalous creativity. Or just to know what it’s like to be alone, disgraced and suffer the consequences.

I want to write.

Here it is, today (insert date), and I know the streets are teeming. There’s enough suffering in one subway car to blind you if you look directly into it. Today I saw this guy rubbing a lottery ticket at an outdoor café in New York City. He was wearing a suit and tie, scratching feverishly. Nobody should need that kind of dream.

The streets are teeming, yes they are, with the busted-up ruins of everybody’s goddamn loneliness, James Baldwin said it a long time ago and he knew (he knew!), and all that decay now gets overlooked because we all have blood and most of us have seen at least one episode of American Idol. That’s the problem, these days. Too much common ground. Isn’t anybody unpublished anymore?

Health is hogwash.

Smart is good.

Murder is a deep feeling.

Damage is irreparable.

Good.

Stay damaged.

Yes, goddamnit, I love the way the liquor feels. Consider me lucky. Some people don’t even have that much.

And when the demands of modern life – Facebook and organic peanut butter and bridal registries and mindless savings accounts and the economy (Jesus Christ! Fuck the goddamn fucking economy already!) – when all that gets to be too much, and some jackoff with a dubious agenda and a concerned face asks you how you feel, make sure you say something with conviction:

“I feel OK.

Thank you kindly.

I appreciate your concern.

But don’t worry about me very much.

‘Cause I’m not really here.”

He’ll never know what hit him.