Unloved to Death

Quiet inside me, constraining passion, & containment of self-destruct ideation in a strange calm of cold black lonely night. A passionless place in a center punctuated by somebody not Dylan singing “Leopard-Skin Pill Box Hat.” Watching the nails rust. Smoking. Coffee, almonds, three electric heaters, and final drum roll Monday morning coming down; 1:18 past midnight. Cold out and still like the eye of a hurricane, late winter storms blitzing the South and New York.

Dead space in fevered brain over here across the shallow muddy cold ugly lake. Staring at the corner not wanting to move. Numb left foot as always. Did I take that pill? Who cares. I see the ugly bastard waiting in the corner. He doesn’t give a damn for pills. He laughs at numb feet.



I couldn’t have made it this far without music; I swear I would have died. I was meant to play it and nearly died because I didn’t. Too late now no matter what they say. Truth. I couldn’t have lived without it, and now I can barely live with it. “Ain’t no use turning on your light babe/I’m on the dark side of the road…”

Why can not anybody see me up here? HEY! Can you see me up here Goddammit? Then say something Goddammit! Quit being a goddamned slug with your emotions all stuck in a goddamned drawer behind a goddamned Kevlar vest of formality and protocol! Goddam you make me sick sometimes! You’re afraid of every goddamned thing because you have no faith. Afraid most of all to suffer, you suffer constantly. Afraid to live, you’re the walking dead.





All my life you been making me want to be somewhere else. All my life I been going someplace else to get away from you. Everywhere I go there you are. God, you are so ugly and twisted I can hardly bear to look at you.

I cracked my own mirror a long time ago.

Don’t ever hit me. It just makes me mad. I don’t care who you are or what sex you are, don’t ever hit me. I won’t hit you. I get pissed if I hit my thumb with a hammer. Any kind of physical pain makes me angry. I lived like a hermit to avoid your insults and fists. Every time I ventured to the convenience store, there you were again ready with either, or both. Thank your God I never undertook that revolution. I would’ve stood you at a wall you damned bully bastards.

This kind of feeling gave me an undercurrent of anger and focus and a sharp edge that protected me but armored my heart. Women sensed it first. I looked dangerous and unpredictable. Me. One of the biggest pussies on the planet. Raised by women! It amuses me that women don’t see my feminine side, and I’m not a “swishy” gay (no disrespect.) Some of them never met a guy who cries when it hurts. It freaks them out. Where is their strong, silent hero? This one, he just don’t fit.




I can’t compete with dudes for a woman. I won’t. Take her if she likes that kind of thing. I don’t want to arm-wrestle or match wits. I don’t just want to fuck her. I want to tell her about Pushkin. I want her to tell me things. I want intimacy. I want the trust that makes intimacy possible. I want the emotional connection. You take her. I’ll go beat on my refrigerator.

I can compete with lesbians though. I know a lot of them. They like me. They take me into their confidence when they see I like and don’t judge them, and to their bars, sometimes to make someone jealous. It’s a hoot, and I love them anyway. I can compete because I love the same thing they do. Ha, ha! Yes, I do!

No lesbian ever treated me with the disrespect many “hetero” middle class white women have. If I could pull it off, I’d live with lesbians. (Maybe run a hotel for them.) They give me almost everything I need: Honesty, intimacy, and occasional hugs and hand-holding to show their affection. They alone seem to understand and feel some compassion. It isn’t enough, of course, but they don’t need me for that at all. Some know I love them and don’t know what to do about it.

Ten years no sex. Okay? Get it now? That occasion a 25-minute interlude in a van in Seattle with a pleasant young woman who never let on until the last moment she expected money. That time the first in three years. That one a two-day fuck in a hotel in Los Angeles with a woman I knew from New York, who said, “You know you’re a good fuck,” and then that she hated men. Maybe they made her come too much.

Made me feel like a million bucks. I never did.





No thanks. I’m not taking anybody to bed that I don’t love anymore. I’d rather torture myself to death. What I need—intimacy—they don’t have to give.

Sex is necessary for mental health in my experienced opinion. You see all these happy women out here hugging and laughing it up? You see all these twisted lonely boys and men, undisciplined, violent, suicidal, failing, and lost? You figure it out.

I’m starving here! Going insane, all right? I need the medicine applied to the wound “Sexual healing” (Marvin Gaye)is what I need and have little likelihood of getting. The wound is an ugly gash only I can see from my loins to my heart and venomous as a snake. I hate to die without it.

It’s excruciating to love the beauty of women and be invisible to them. Looked all my life for love & beauty and every time I glimpsed her she was hanging with somebody else. Never saw me at all. Then, finally, she noticed me and gave up a hug. I cannot resist that magic. Love at first-sight happens only with divinity. Suddenly you are in the arms of someone blessed with divine gifts from Aphrodite Pandemos Herself. A gift of God. She exudes love and eros from every pore, in every act. She’s Beauty and Gracefulness walking on earth. Finally, He sends her. Exactly the one you were seeking. She is exactly as you dreamed her. She dances through life dazzling Olympus and blessing mortals with her love, her stunning beauty, and every man wants to be her Guardian Angel, her worshipper, her lover.




Here she is, Mike. What you’ve been missing, what you’ve been looking for. Ha, ha!
Bad joke. Forty three years late. Thanks a bunch. Thy will be done. Can I go now?

You see it your way I’ll see it mine. I’m the one bleeding.

I began two months ago writing about love and women. This is about all I have to say.

It is what it is.