Audio File // Listen
Just write, just write, put the computer down and write, it’s not fucking hard.
Hands stained with nicotine juice, all fruit and froot and madcow menthol nipple top push cap chaggy jaja bottle rinsing baby twins and... are you getting married? Don’t sleep, don’t watch tv. Write, draw. Don’t draw. Make, don’t collect. Your photography is mundane. Do better. Write.
Bruised finger tips and cracked fingernails.
Purple palms.
Dread the draining battery …
Power through your crippling self doubt. That speaks to the other useless souls who are so broke that they have to sit in a safe place in order not to die. Who do not trust the plane you sit on because, you know, you know, you hear it too.
How draining.
Stay awake. Don’t drink. Don’t smoke cigarettes. Suck on plastic metal electronic water vapor.
Don’t talk about sex.
Work.
Put plastic caps on bottle tops, so the nicotine seeps through your pores and the flavour permeates your skin. Feel the burn on your lip when you taste a little, the tingle.
Peel and stick labels with illegable safety warnings. If on clothes, wash clothes.
Eat grease and cheap chocolate bars.
Try to convince them to buy a machine that will replace your labour. Balk at their excuses not to. Modify the business practices to suit the machine that will replace your labour. Watch them make money. Watch them feed their children grease. Marvel at their survival skills.
You seem like the only person with a real job.
Not a human machine.
You say, Yes, thats the illusion.
And I am tickled in the words you are using but the meaning you intend is one of
crippling self doubt.
Power through.
Pity or privileges.
Your crippling self doubt that keeps you on the system until a slip up at the bank leads to an investigation by Canada Revenue.
Meanwhile, we drink beer with the money we made as human machines, nursing our wounds. We discuss food bank strategies. We discuss food bank strategies, and what keeps us from eating whats available when we can. How to survive on your last dollar when you do not have three.
We repeat to one another, rice and beans, rice and beans. Protein powder and vitamin B shots. What helps you wake up in the morning? What drugs do you find or buy or acquire with well intentioned purposes, until you find you have slept for three days and have peed in all the bottles and buckets beside your bed, how did they make you feel? Days later you are wracked with guilt for having flushed them down the toilet in a well intentioned, self preserving act.
What have I done to the environment?
And you say words to me, and I am so drunk I do not believe the words I am hearing are the words you are saying. And I hope the look I am maintaining is one of interest, not one of shock or horror or pure disbelief. When I reflect on those words I am not convinced they were more than a dream.
And here I am,
trying to write about
work and the sex industry
the impact of the sex industry
and work.
And I feel I am dancing around the subjects, saying but not saying. Looking but not looking. Seeing the stars out of the corner of my eye, but not in direct view. The words I am putting on the page are so personal and obscure and esoteric that not even my closest friends nor the people involved will be able to understand.
It is this moment,
because of these moments,
that I throw up my arms
and I draw my vagina
as a hole on my face.
And these moments,
that I write and describe
in vulgar detail
the very same.
What kind of meaning is in that,
other than crippling self doubt?
Just write, just write, put the computer down and write, it’s not fucking hard.
Hands stained with nicotine juice, all fruit and froot and madcow menthol nipple top push cap chaggy jaja bottle rinsing baby twins and... are you getting married? Don’t sleep, don’t watch tv. Write, draw. Don’t draw. Make, don’t collect. Your photography is mundane. Do better. Write.
Bruised finger tips and cracked fingernails.
Purple palms.
Dread the draining battery …
Power through your crippling self doubt. That speaks to the other useless souls who are so broke that they have to sit in a safe place in order not to die. Who do not trust the plane you sit on because, you know, you know, you hear it too.
How draining.
Stay awake. Don’t drink. Don’t smoke cigarettes. Suck on plastic metal electronic water vapor.
Don’t talk about sex.
Work.
Put plastic caps on bottle tops, so the nicotine seeps through your pores and the flavour permeates your skin. Feel the burn on your lip when you taste a little, the tingle.
Peel and stick labels with illegable safety warnings. If on clothes, wash clothes.
Eat grease and cheap chocolate bars.
Try to convince them to buy a machine that will replace your labour. Balk at their excuses not to. Modify the business practices to suit the machine that will replace your labour. Watch them make money. Watch them feed their children grease. Marvel at their survival skills.
You seem like the only person with a real job.
Not a human machine.
You say, Yes, thats the illusion.
And I am tickled in the words you are using but the meaning you intend is one of
crippling self doubt.
Power through.
Pity or privileges.
Your crippling self doubt that keeps you on the system until a slip up at the bank leads to an investigation by Canada Revenue.
Meanwhile, we drink beer with the money we made as human machines, nursing our wounds. We discuss food bank strategies. We discuss food bank strategies, and what keeps us from eating whats available when we can. How to survive on your last dollar when you do not have three.
We repeat to one another, rice and beans, rice and beans. Protein powder and vitamin B shots. What helps you wake up in the morning? What drugs do you find or buy or acquire with well intentioned purposes, until you find you have slept for three days and have peed in all the bottles and buckets beside your bed, how did they make you feel? Days later you are wracked with guilt for having flushed them down the toilet in a well intentioned, self preserving act.
What have I done to the environment?
And you say words to me, and I am so drunk I do not believe the words I am hearing are the words you are saying. And I hope the look I am maintaining is one of interest, not one of shock or horror or pure disbelief. When I reflect on those words I am not convinced they were more than a dream.
And here I am,
trying to write about
work and the sex industry
the impact of the sex industry
and work.
And I feel I am dancing around the subjects, saying but not saying. Looking but not looking. Seeing the stars out of the corner of my eye, but not in direct view. The words I am putting on the page are so personal and obscure and esoteric that not even my closest friends nor the people involved will be able to understand.
It is this moment,
because of these moments,
that I throw up my arms
and I draw my vagina
as a hole on my face.
And these moments,
that I write and describe
in vulgar detail
the very same.
What kind of meaning is in that,
other than crippling self doubt?
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