DEAD OR ALIVE

I failed to gauge my breaking point. I thought they were dead to me.

Bear with me pls if you were born after 1985… but does anyone (grown) recall that Wu skit…the one right before M.E.T.H.0.D. Man…where Meth says he’ll fcukin, he’ll fcuking sew your azzhole closed and keep feeding you, and feeding you, and feeding you…(“Roll da dice man, roll da DICE...From the slums of Shoalin…”)

I feel kind of like that.

Tortured. And full. And nauseous.

Like maybe I tried to down a grown-man shot of tequila and couldn’t handle it, so there was nowhere else for it to go but back up my throat.

Or like that Mr. Wizard experiment (again, post-’85, I apologize, I don’t mean to exclude you), where he fills the beaker with water until the ping pong ball rises to the top and falls out.

I’m saying, I feel like the waste in my past that I have long since discarded…has finally resurfaced like a body bobbing in the East River.

Ok, lemme backtrack…

Ladies and gentlemen…

Welcome to the latest installment of Loser Week…where every waking moment seems a testament to the fact that your real life sucks and vacation was all but an unsustainable illusion to the contrary.

The last time we visited Loser Week was probably after my bday. The symptoms are always the same…

…Irritability upon arrival at baggage claim

…Irrational overeating of irrationally overpriced airport food items such as Pizz.Uno and N@thans

…Extended periods of sulking

…Fi0na.Apple, Meshell, or other depressing soundtracks on repeat

…A pile up of dirty laundry (usually in your still-zipped suitcase)

…Delayed response to phone ringing (may also include a delay in changing your Extended Absence voice mail msg, making people who call think you're still away even tho you've been home 2 days already)

…General malaise and self pity

...Ducking into a shady bodega to buy Blacks, when you don't even smoke



Right now I’m sitting in the Ft Lauderdale airport, only halfway home, as a symphony of thunder roars around me. Normally when it rains, the earth gratefully absorbs the water.

So do I. Normally.

When things happen, bad things…I absorb the shock and keep it movin. Swallow. Digest. Release. It’s the natural order of things. Circle of life, or some D!sney shit like that.

I know where the bodies are buried, and I allow them to rest in peace. After all, I’m the gravedigger.

Except some times, like this week in Mexico, the dead roams free, like the Thr!ller video (dammit, even if you were born after 2005 you seen Thrller. It’s required viewing for cultural citizenship).

So there I was, lounging aside the Carib Sea, going all Haley.J0el.Osment, seeing dead people and sitting and reminiscing with them. Driving me out of my mind.

All week my mind was a red carpet for lovers I lost or let go. I’m talking a nonstop procession of flawlessly coiffed corpses, tuxed up and tap dancing for paparazzi flashbulbs like there was never a eulogy spoken, or heart snapped in half.

And dance they did, these rigor mortised reminders. All day and night inch worming through my mind like the fcuking Tap Dance K!d (remember circa ’84 they said he died from spinning on his head in a MJ video…and but then he was on D0nahue and then Silver Sp0on (and later played Carlt0n Banks, duh) and everybody was like, hold up, that little boy ain't dead!…).

It was like I could no longer hold it. Like the memories were being jammed down my throat while Meth pulled needle and thread. Like those relationships had never really croaked.

Because when you let go of someone you’ve let in, you HAVE to kill that bit of the brain that they occupied. Autopsy that muhfcuka, examine the cause of death then make sure it doesn’t happen again. No breath. No pulse.

But in truth, you never fully close the casket. You subconsciously leave it cracked. Just in case.

And just in case you ever try to pretend that your mind is fully in tact, that you didn’t surrender a piece (and peace) of it to the undertaker, they come back like Laz@rus.

They claw through the dirt that you’ve thrown on top of them.

They swim back to the surface no matter how heavy the cement blocks.

They wind back up your digestive tract like bitter bile.

And reappear. Alive and well, just as you had hoped.

And for a series of split seconds you entertain the idea of rolling away the stone that has blocked any vestige of resurrection.

No, no time for miracles. It’s time to find a new ditch. A new shovel. A new distraction. A new breaking point.

A new cause of death, Loser.