It’s a dangerous feeling getting noticed, being wanted. Getting seen deep and proper, it’s shit hot but terrible too. It’s like being took over. And your whole skin hurts like you suddenly grew two sizes in a minute.
Well, it takes some courage to be a murderer too, you know.
Our stories. We store them where moth and rust destroy.
See, a dog knows how to wait. Dogs are good at that. Only because half the time a mutt doesn’t even know it’s waiting.
But I suspect that God is what you do, not what or who you believe in.
Sometimes it’s a mighty struggle to know what’s real and what’s just . . . a mirage.
Doesn’t matter how smart you are, or even how careful or lucky, there’s some mistakes you just keep making over and over. And they’re the ones that fuck you up and get people hurt.
And does the truth mean something to you? That is to say, is it important? Have you been lied to, have you had lies told about you?
That night in bed I thought I heard that bee hum still going but it was just how angry I was. Some nights there was so much feeling in me head I was glad it couldn’t get out. Christ, you could burn a skyscraper down with what’s in me.
Honestly, sometimes you’d rather be a dog. A mutt doesn’t torture itself with thinking. Just licks its knob and goes to sleep. And that makes sense to me. Keeps a dog’s life bearable, doesn’t it?
Every death is a horror, is it not? Every end a cataclysm, an outrage.
You see, even a man with no future gets himself into conniptions of . . . of anticipation. What next? When will it be? Will they come? Is that all? What will happen?
Tiny, he said. That’s how I felt. Just a speck. And so terribly alone, as if I were a man in a space fillum.
And it could be that none of it rates now. All is forgotten, if not forgiven – it could have come to that. But I don’t trust the thought. I don’t know if it’s because it would be too easy or too terrible to imagine no one cares anymore.
I didn’t dare look at me phone to check the time or see if there was messages, the light’s a dead giveaway, you don’t make that mistake twice.
Neither one of us said nothing. We both knew there was never gunna be anything good again.
When I was lonely, confused and angry, the ocean was always there, a vast salty poultice sucking the poison from my system.
When somebody does me a kindness, it enlarges me, adds to my life, you see? And not only mine – it adds to all life.
But I’m still a civilized man, you know, and a man needs more than scents and shadows to make sense of the world. A fella needs a story.
Anything with blood in it can probably go bad. Like meat. And it’s the blood that makes me worry. It carries things you don’t even know you got. Sometimes I wonder if that nasty mean shit is in me too, like he’s passed it on.
It’s a hard thing to know about your own mum. That she’d side against you.
If wishing and wanting and hoping so hard you sweat bullets and your balls climb up inside you to die is praying, well then I done plenty of it. And got fuck all for the trouble. All that whining and begging in the dark. It’s undignified.
And when me hand bumped her cheek she was cold and heavy and a kind of spark went through me, like a terrible familiar feeling. And I understood it then. She was meat. That’s what dead things are. She was gone but not gone. Meat is something gone and not gone.
There isn’t one thing in the world hot and hard as knowing there’s someone waiting, coming, pressing, wanting you.
Time doesn't click on and on at the stroke. It comes and goes in waves and folds like water; it flutters and sifts like dust, rises, billows, falls back on itself. When a wave breaks, the water is not moving. The swell has traveled great distances but only the energy is moving, not the waves. Perhaps time moves through us and not through it.
I prayed to be brave and I stayed scared.
I know dogs are fed scraps. And they’re flogged, true. So it’s not always the best life but sometimes, I tell you, being a dog wouldn’t be so bad.
Thing is, I’m not alone in the world. That’s the only thing keeps me going.
We did everything together, all the kids, all the grownups. But I spose the women and the children was the closest. There’s something about the men just stops them being able.
And you know someone’s special when you never get enough of them.
I’m loyal, me, and not many people understand what that means. Once I’m in I’m all in. For good.
But shit was always being done to me, every single day, and sooner or later you figure you should be the one doing unto others.
A man alone reverts to his animal nature, lad. Don’t you agree?
When you need something, even if it can’t be got, especially if it can’t be got, you ask anyway. So I figure even if you don’t believe any of that crap you’re always praying to something, or someone.
The kids are all we’ve got. They’re what we are.
For the first time in me life I know what I want and I have what it takes to get me there. If you never experienced that I feel sorry for you.
But it’s not the same with your mum. She’s there all the time but she’s mostly invisible. It’s only when she’s gone you get that wanting feeling and get curious.
Sometimes when you put your head down at the end of the day you know you’re so rooted you won’t dream a thing. Too tired to worry, too far gone to even work up a nightmare. That’s another five minutes of mercy there.
If you never been that thirsty you won’t know what I’m talking about. But I tell you, I drank till it felt like there was water in me balls and legs and feet, till me belly was hard and me back hurt.
But when you do right, Jaxie, when you make good – well, then you are an instrument of God. Then you are joined to the divine, to the life force, to life itself. That’s what I believe. That’s what I hope for. And it’s what I have missed.