Going to Hell in a Glass-Bottomed Boat

It's a just-so drunk, carefully crafted with the sure hand of experience.

No better feeling in the world than to be getting that guilt for being up too late with too many empty cans or glasses next to you; work is only six hours away and you'll probably not sober up in time, probably not sober up for lunchtime, in fact.

But then you go into the kitchen for another drink and see that the clock on the microwave claims it's an hour earlier than your bedside clock. So you grab the phone, call 4-1-1 for the Time Line, but the operator is kind and gives you the correct time so you don't have to pay for another call, not to mention that the dialing itself is murderous under a night's drinks. And you find it really is an hour earlier than you thought it was and now you have seven hours until work. Or one more hour to waste and break even, depending on how you look at it.

So you grab two drinks and get back in bed, turn the TV back on and laugh at your mixed fortune.

I want the words to carry at least the force they had when I typed them. I'm on my third keyboard in two years--I must pound the keys too hard. It's either the shakes causing me to focus more intently, or a subconscious desire to lend these words a little extra energy which might survive the printing process.

Nothing retains its energy of course. Energy is lost to inefficiency and friction, to the environment. Everything loses its motion, its direction. Words--and thoughts, intents--are even more susceptible, I'd say. And these words are no exception--everything obeys this law. Every single thing.

I think that's why I hit the keys so hard. I'm trying to give the words that extra leg up. An extra advantage, no matter how subtle or indistinct. It doesn't work, naturally. You can't bend these rules.

So I'm stuck relying on the readers' intelligence and discerning taste. Talk about your fucking pipe dreams.

I was an engineering student for a short time. Two years short. I'm good with math and figured that technical work would be good for me, would be quantifiable, understandable, predictable. Well, things didn't work out that way. When, way back in 1989, I finally admitted that a shirt-and-tie, logical life wasn't my proper place, that's when I dropped the engineering curriculum, changed my mindset, and re-emerged as an adult, more aggressive in taking charge, finally understanding that my own life is my own responsibility and just fuck everyone else who tries to impede that.

I kept taking Physics classes, though. (In fact, I graduated with a concentration in Astrophysics--I once knew how to calculate planetary paths and the masses of stars based on their spectrum. Not any more.) And I'm still pretty good with numbers. Pretty good; not great. However, I do maintain that quantification is still a good paradigm for existing in this world.

I often need a calculator for simple math.

But for the grace of god, there's nothing quite like liquor. Keep your drugs to yourself; all that crap is just window dressing for a would-be crazy lifestyle. Always have a few bottles of beer, a bottle of cheap wine, and a pot of coffee on hand--even if it's yesterday morning's sitting in the fridge--and every mood can be yours.

It's shameful, innit.

Amy's in the bedroom, exercising. It relieves her frustration, keeps her in great shape. Better shape that me, that's for sure. She's got a tight belly, shapely legs, thin face. Me? I sit at the desk, pull a last bit off the last bottle of beer in the apartment. Some porter, left over from a friend's visit last night. Get up, swing around to the in-house bar and grab the Bombay. To save trips, I go into the kitchen and mix a triple in my favorite pint glass.

I'm keeping my weight, I guess, but getting soft around the middle. I watch what I eat, generally, but the liquor throws a wrench. I'm convinced that if I could, I should stop drinking for a month, start running each morning, and I'd lose ten pounds right off the bat. Slim down a bit, feel good, and then ease back into that drinking life. Keep the good habits and re-introduce the bad ones, slowly. If I could.

I mean, Christ, I ain't giving it up whole hog. That, at least, should be crystal clear to all concerned.

Lately, I've grown wary of the long-term damage I've inflicted on myself. This past year, perhaps more than any other, has been more physiologically damning than any other. One would assume that my time in Philadelphia, living with a like-minded bottom-feeder, would've marked my peak in self-destruction. Not so. This past year, with its late, drunken weeknights, frustration-filled weekdays and take-out diet, has aged me twicefold, I think. And, occasionally, I worry.

An example: two days of drink. Nothing ridiculous like 10 a.m. liquor; I'm talking about six hours each evening working toward a pleasant stupor. A mere two days; two nights, really; it's a mild example. That next morning, sitting at the desk, working, I spill my coffee all over. I usually knock it right over when reaching for the mug. Sometimes I drop it, mid-sip. But every day, every fucking day, I spill something. I think I've spilled more coffee on my desk, and on myself, in the last four months than most people spill in four years.

I'm not really talking about those infamous "shakes." My hands do shake, but my weak grip is the culprit. My depth perception isn't right, either. All these things. And I spill my coffee. Or a glass of water. Laughable as it may sound, I've taken to drinking from a non-spill commuter mug at my desk. And I keep knocking that over as well.

It might be time to make drinking a part-time job. As I've said before, if I make it to 30, I'll make it to 80. And it's looking--much to my own genuine surprise--that 30 might win.

And I don't want to be a wreck at 40. If I'm signing on for 50 more years, this pre-corpse had best be relatively pain free. This goddamn soul is burden enough; I don't need my fucking motor functions giving me grief as well.

From Deadlines to Breadlines

I will not be beaten down. And that's why I quit my job.

The day I quit, it should've been raining. As some would note, the sky was pregnant with rain; my very soul would have been soaked by the downpour not two minutes out of the building. But it wasn't raining. Just threatening.

And conversely, I was done threatening. I was quitting.

It was, really, a good job. An opportunity for some ambitious type to take over a mid-sized ad agency. And it paid well--I was making more money than I've ever thought possible (not six figures, or anything ridiculous like that--think more realistically). The downsides: the company specializes in Direct Mail (read: big money junk mail); the owner is a manic-depressive megalomaniac; and the feudalist gulf between management and staff made cooperation a function of constant antagonism.

I'd waltzed in as the Studio Manager, hired to manage a few designers, offer tech support and lend prepress expertise. To each side, a dozen account executives attacked all day long, each acting in their clients' best interests. Deadlines were short, customers were revered, and everyone thought the art department played all day on their computers.

Did I want respect? Oh, you've got to be kidding--at a day job? Never. Don't expect it. Compensation? Ditto. But, free time? Energy at the end of the day? Drive? Potential? Surplus capability? A little potential left in these bones at the end of a nine-to-five? That, friends, is more important than the money, than the respectable entry on a resume. And that's why, on my one-year anniversary, I decided that Agency Life was not for me.

I am, really, polite and accommodating to a fault. But I am prone to explosive outbursts. One of my designers, Lisa, once said that I wear my heart on my sleeve. I knew what she meant, of course, but her choice of words implied that I am the type to pine and moan when, contrarily, I am actually the type to let my disappointment, anger and frustration pour out of my eyes. That's just not a trait valued by many Human Resource departments.

Nonetheless, I did have a promising career, despite the head-to-head clashes with the owner, a Napoleonic demon, himself prone to explosive (and demeaning) outbursts. Our relationship rode a sine curve, cresting with mutual respect and bottoming out with absolute hatred. Intolerance. Spit-on-the-floor and scream in your face disgust.

Privately, I think the bossman was relieved when I resigned. Though I don't think he ever would've had the balls to fire me--after all, I had the utility if not humility--I do think my days were quietly numbered. He and I were racing, each trying to break the other; and I won by acting first. (To think of it, though, we both won, really. I walked out proud; he got rid of me without a fistfight, which had, honestly, almost occurred twice in the past.)

At the time, the agency occupied four floors of a mostly residential building a few blocks south of Central Park. The apartment-like setting lent the company a casual attitude, which suited me perfectly (though I was sent home one day for wearing shorts, boots and a t-shirt; a client was coming in for a quick tour, and my dress was inappropriate for the Studio Manager.) We had windows that opened and even a couch, but no separate offices to speak of. No closed doors, no sound buffers. So, my occasional explosive outbursts were witnessed--aurally if not visually--by much of the company. And, in case you never guessed, my language tends to be quite vulgar, especially when I'm being explosive.

Everything was fine. Fine enough: tension with the boss, dislike for the work, the usual day job fodder. Then, late in 1995, we were acquired by a Chicago agency. Larger, more formal, bigger accounts. We were acquired as their New York office, specializing in direct mail. And while the arrival of the new overlords was fairly smooth, I knew, without a doubt, that my duties would slowly shift away from hands-on support work to administrative, trafficking work. I would, inevitably, see my beautiful Mac, packed with all the requisite power for preflighting and print production, passed over to some designer who wouldn't appreciate it. In exchange, I'd be given a hand-me-down SI, perfect for word processing and media planning.

Fuck that. Give me production. Give me dim lights. Decent equipment in bad quarters. Smoke-stained managers in K-Mart suits and a delivery van painted with fresh primer each Spring. Fuck agency life and all its urbane illusions--take me back to the warehouse where I can be alone and be judged by the volume and quality of my output.

I don't want to be in the advertising industry. So I left it. Now, I provide services to that industry. Mostly production-oriented design.

My home/office system is assembled from scavenged parts: a SyQuest from here, a scanner from there. Add that chunk of RAM, a couple gig drives, and I've got a better setup than most glossies. See, at heart, I'm a production hack, a Mac monkey for hire. I'm not a designer. Just because I know Quark like it's an extra limb, and I've got a scanner and printer, that doesn't make me a designer.

Professionally, I was raised by typographers and printers. And all you goddamn designers should do the same: work in a type shop, work in a quick-print shop. You'll learn more in two months about the practical constraints on your precious imaginations than you ever will in a four-year art school, where the instructors haven't ever seen--and felt, fucking felt in their gut--a five thousand dollar print job get tossed into the recycling bin because of a bad trap.

Agency life is for chumps. Apologies to my former co-workers, of course.

So I waited for my bonus. I choked back the frustration, played the role of company man, worked until nine, ten, midnight; once until three in the morning. All for a goddamn business I hate. A business I despise. I took that bonus. Paid off my credit cards. Settled every outstanding bill on my desk. Then I saved enough to print this issue plus two months' rent. Then, I quit.

As of May 13, 1996, I've been paying the rent by whoring out my production skills. You'd be surprised how many people don't know shit about printing, though they claim to be competent designers and Macintosh experts. Shit. I do anything. Some of my weekly billing comes from typesetting catalogs and directories. I sit in my apartment and format medical directories two days a week. Then, I have the other five days free. Or, take this past summer, for example: I was flooded with work from one client. I worked for six weeks straight--weekends, weeknights, everything--and ended up with a ten grand profit. So I took three weeks off in September, which is when I finally got to work on this issue of Crank.

Let's hope it continues to work out.

Here is a man... Who would not be beaten down.

The Town Pump

There are models; there are Supermodels. There are zines, and there are Superzines.

I'm a tenant in this body, and I've already forgotten the previous leaseholders. I sometimes see their faces in the few photos I've kept; there's bound to be hundreds more--each would be more alien to me than the next--stuck in ex-friends' and ex-lovers' photo albums that supplement their memories like cheatsheets.

Without help from the few photos I've kept, I don't remember much; all the memories went out with the previous occupants. And whatever was behind went out with the trash; not one of them left a forwarding address. Most likely, they're all dead; they are to me, that's for sure. But if not, then they live only in the recollections of former friends on their drunken nights of reminisce.

They live rarely, I'd wager.

Cold beer in a hot shower on a Saturday night. Few things are more satisfying.

I've repeatedly emerged, locust-like, from the corpses of previous lives. Out of the shell, I'll settle the bill, answer for any outstanding sins, okay, but then I move on, washing my claws of the blood of everyone who stood in my way. Or, as the case may be, I wash my hands of my own blood, seeing as I've often left myself gutted open and emptied of flawed emotions, in the interest of growth. See, at heart, I really am a mean, ruthless motherfucker; it just doesn't show much. I confine my hostility to dreams of vindication on the page.

My mistake, it seems, has been in targeting myself before everyone else. Someday, I keep saying. Someday... I just haven't hit my stride yet.

My aging is tempered with the expectation of having more ahead than what's already been left behind. When the scale tips, expect me to turn in my key and check out.

There's plenty of things worth forgetting. And I've shuffled them all off; off to a graveyard of regret and embarrassment. Of times with friends' girlfriends and mistaken words and misfired emotions. Remorse is something I live with too often; oddly, it's usually unfounded.

Not many things manage to travel with me life-to-life. A few friends and a few notable objects, but not much more. If it happens one more time, you'll never see me nor hear from me again. No one will. Promise.

The television flickers in a tidal pitch of color-coded imagery while a special kind of rot eats through my heart, fed by liquor, coffee and time.

I spent a little time as a parasite in other people's lives; minimal ambition always leads to the easy slide. Not a unique experience in the business, but it sure beats the demands of originality. I spent some time in that world; drinking their liquor, saving cash on their Guest Lists, eating free meals. I paid my rent, worked a crappy job, wrote some crappy words and figured I'd either die, or be discovered, or find a job I liked, or just wander away, someday.

It was time to go, once again, so I went. Didn't go very far; just around the corner to a main thoroughfare where my lackluster ambitions might take root.

With the exception of the voices in my head, everyone around me seems to have forgotten how to talk about anything other than the weather and last night's game; they've forgotten how to curse the world around them. That's a shame. For them.

Eek! Masher!!

The willingness to hurt myself is my only thing I fear at this point. Don't get me wrong--I'm quite happy; happier than I've ever been before. My life is satisfying; my love is real. My struggle for achievement is progressing slowly, as it should.

But there's an element of self-defeat alongside my ambitious soul. Not self-doubt, no. It's more akin to self-destruction, but doesn't carry quite the same drama, not quite the same self-glorification. It's more a slow, passive self-infliction of minor damages, not a grandiose, public immolation by way of tightrope risk. Short-lived, painful would-be glory is right for some, attention-seeking martyrdom is right for others.

Somehow, I languish in between.