Enlightening Nonsense

I came home at around 6:45 p.m. after training a client and when I opened the door I thought I was in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina had just hit. Only instead it was Hurricane Toad that wreaked her havoc, scattering all of my belongings in random heaps all over the floor. While FEMA killed black people by withholding food, water and support because they consider a black person to have only 2/3 the value of a white person, it seemed Toad had taken it upon herself to rearrange my apartment and in so doing, had killed any sense of autonomy that I had taken for granted, that my apartment was still, in fact, my apartment.

Instead of dead black folks floating in liquid flooding through a C-4 exploded dam, I saw my testicles floating on a stream of formaldehyde from the broken jar where they were apparently kept, unbeknownst to me, on a shelf out of sight. Out of their protective encasing and not receiving any lifeblood from remaining attached and protected by an overhanging penis, they had shriveled up to the size of two cocktail onions used for gimlets. All my stuff was all over my recently cleaned apartment, as if a burglar had turned my place over looking for condoms, only to find a couple of stale rubbers expired sometime before the turn of the century.

I stood there with my mouth agape. I looked over at my dog with a “What the fuck happened here?” look and she shot me back a look that said, “It wasn’t me, it was the other bitch!” Apparently Hurricane Toad had hit my apartment and there was no Superdome for me to escape from disaster into death.

I was going to write a piece giving you some history of how I met Toad but I think instead I may write her obituary and it’s going to contain: She was barely recognizable except for the “Louisville Slugger” imprint on her battered face. It was a good thing that among ten years of accumulated crap, which included a wooden reindeer made out of twigs and branches and a small bag filled with hundreds of copper BBs, that I wasn’t a sports fan who had a bat on the premises; otherwise I might have swung for the fences.

I once had a feng shui advisor come to my apartment to make suggestions and she clutched her heart and shouted, “Dios Mio!” which I think means, “If there’s a God anywhere within earshot, please kill this man immediately!” and ran out of the apartment with a headless chicken in her hand. Over the years, when people had asked me what color were my walls, I would answer, “Dirt White,” as if that was a color you could find in a paint can. Apparently not a fan of that shade of filth, a couple of weeks ago Toad had helped me clean my apartment, which basically meant she scrubbed and dubbed as I sat on the couch and drank a beer, occasionally shouting out the supportive advice of, “Put some muscle into it, chubby!”

She told me that she wanted to help me clean and reorganize my apartment so that I could be more “in flow,” which is the term I used to describe the connection to Creativity I feel most often when I am writing or teaching. While I do believe this to be the case, a big part of her voluntary indentured servitude had to do with the fact that she is more anally clean than the love child which would result from The Odd Couple’s “Felix Unger” and Jerry Seinfeld shooting their loads into a syringe and then injecting it into “Monica” from Friends immaculately clean and ordered vagina.

When she—I mean, “we”—finished at about 5:00 in the morning, the apartment looked cleaner than it had since the time I moved into it. It was so clean that I could eat off of the floor. Well, I was already eating off the floor but now I could do so and not swallow as many dog hairs in the process. With the apartment cleaner and less cluttered, the flow felt better and I found myself more motivated to uncook some raw food in the better organized kitchen and roll around on the now open floor while playing with my own feces than I had since my stay at Bellevue.

I was even excited to show my newly clean apartment to my parents, who comment on the state of my hair and apartment like Al Roker reporting the news each time they see me. “It seems the hair is mildly shaggy with a chance of knottiness developing in the early evening. Apparently a slime front has overtaken the apartment and won’t clear until the new tenant takes over the lease.” I had my opportunity to do so today, as we were going to see the musical “Shrek.”

I raced home after my client, planning to watch a video, maybe “The Matrix,” with Toad and on its completion telling her that there is change on the desk and to fix me a sandwich on her way out and, like a movie whore, she would leave immediately and I, who had been up since 7:00 a.m., would hit the hay and dream about how much better I would have been as Neo than the always-lame Keanu Reeves. Instead I found myself praying to wake up from this nightmare and be reinstalled into the Matrix of a moderately clean apartment where all my mess was shoved clandestinely out of the way instead of in the center of the room where I couldn’t help but face that I was not a free man but a slave to The Architect known as “Toad,” and that Zion was an imaginary utopia where people were free and dirty danced for long periods of time leaving the audience to wonder, “Does this scene have anything to do with the movie whatsoever?” and accept that I was just a battery in a tank for a world in which any sense of control I thought I had was purely fictional.

I hadn’t seen the text message that Toad had sent to my cel phone, which said, “Just breath before you come in the door.” Had I known what I was to see after that supposedly calming breath, I would have prayed to be a Jew in the gas chamber of Auschwitz, taking a deep breath of poison gas so I wouldn’t have to face the sight of an atrocity as horrible as what lay before me. At least I’d get to see some tits and ass before I kicked; or rather some ribbed chest plates with concave areolas and some boney ischial tuberosities and trochanters.

I lived with my parents for longer than most and when I heard the line in the matinee of “Shrek” where Lord Farquaad’s father’s responded to his son recollecting how he was kicked out of his father’s house with, “You were 26 and living in my basement!” I couldn’t help but think of myself at the time of my departure—with an additional five years added to my case.

My first apartment was in a nice building with a doorman and elevator but when you went into Apartment 906A, it became pretty clear that this was 906’s closet until some greedy slumlord figured out that he could charge some pathetic child, who was finally ready to take his parents’ pacifier out of his mouth and be a man, an ungodly rent. I had a kitchen unit and a small bathroom and when I opened my futon into a bed, there was barely any room to move. Measured from heal-to-toe, it was about an 11 x 12 foot cube.

And yet I would come home each day and feel like the king of a castle, granted a small castle, because it was my place, in the selfish words of Daffy Duck, “Mine, all mine!” [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcCXnXDiKoQ] That was, until my girlfriend Tisha was told by the woman she was living with that the woman was moving out of State at the end of the month and Tisha had about two weeks to get the fuck out. I told Tisha that she could stay with me for a month or two and after one month turned into two turned into three, we both felt like rats put in a small container at the moment they finally realize, “If I kill this other bastard then not only will I have the place all to myself, but it will also be rat-lined!” So Tisha and I, rather than resorting to murder and all the work required in skinning a tanning human flesh, decided to move into a bigger place, the same place I am living in today with the addition of an authentic Tisha-skin rug.

After five years together, when it finally became time for Tisha to move out, I realized that I never had the opportunity to experience my own personal space before she moved her kicked-out-with-no-place-to-go ass in. While I was heartbroken by losing my best friend and lover always there, I was also stoked to reclaim my throne and had to put on my game face to my royal subjects pretending that I was in mourning over the death of the queen—when all I felt like doing was gleefully throwing pies at the Court Jester.

I have always been somewhat private about my personal space, only in part because I have handcuffs and faux leather whips and masks and dildos adorning every wall, and more so because it is my sanctuary and I don’t want anyone coming in and fucking it up with their religion. I dated Celeste for two years. Celeste was certain that I was the one she would be with ‘til death do us part and I thought this may be the case with her. But after bouts of insecurity combined with my wandering eye led to the seventeenth break-up, when Celeste talked about how she was ready to give it a go again, I was like, “I’m afraid you’ll be ‘going’ on your own then,” and while I looked back often, it was only into a mirror to see how my ass was looking.

After we broke up, we played off and on with trying to be friends. It didn’t end up working because Celeste was still very emotionally attached to me. During one of our “friend” periods, I was going away and gave her a set of keys to look after my dog, Abandon. Soon after I came back, I received a phone call with a crying Celeste on the other end of the phone. She told me how she brought some guy over to my apartment—strictly against my rules—that she had started dating and how Abandon barked and barked at him. I thought, “That bitch, she knew to bark at that intruder.”

I quoted Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth and told Celeste, “What’s done, is done” and “What’s done cannot be undone.” It was less to show that I was a theater fag and more because I didn’t like to see her upset and, I suppose, it was true.

When I hung up the phone with her, I mulled over what she had done and started to get really pissed off. She knew I didn’t like anyone coming to my place and yet she had brought the head devil worshipper into the heart of my temple. It was such a betrayal. I felt like calling her back and saying, “You know, on second thought, you are a total bitch and I will never forgive you for what you did,” but I thought I could probably use my initial reaction as a way to get a future woman into my bed and so I just left it as is. But I did feel like it was a betrayal.

I bring up these past stories of girlfriends and apartments because, as we know, most people are slaves to their past conditioning. While I may not have been beaten by my parents or chained in the basement and having to eat my own foot in order to survive, my dealings with these two beeyotches may be partly responsible for me wanting to feel in control of my space and how any intrusion into this autonomy was akin to a major invasion and an act of war.

So when Toad took it upon herself to “rearrange” my apartment, I was like, “What the fu—?” and shifted from catatonic periods of sitting in a corner and rocking forward and backwards, to moments of clarity where I had to place all of my effort into not killing her where she stood. Even in the heart of my delusion that Maria was my One and only, if I came home and she had done what Toad had done I would have smacked her in the face. The only reason I didn’t backhand Toad is because she’s a strong mother fucker and would probably beat me and leave me lying in a pool of my own piss and blood and disarray.

After my false soulmate, Maria, had raised me up only to slam me down, my feelings and body sensations had been askew. At that point I had felt tremendous sadness with no body reaction such as tears. So while now I was totally angry, my body was unable to scream and yell and shout, “HERE’S WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO DO: YOU’RE GOING TO PUT EVERYTHING BACK WHERE IT WAS BEFORE YOU WENT COO-COO AND GET THE FUCK OUT!” Instead I was like every sit-com male pussy and said something emasculating like, “Where do you want me to put my prized Abbie Hoffman book collection that I had never wanted to be touched by another soul and now is scattered with bent covers on the floor?”

I know Toad really cares about me and wants me to be able to actualize my brilliance into something that will not only make me happy but will allow me to share it with more than just the three people who read my un-blog. But it became clear to me that her actions were coming more out of her need for cleanliness and order for herself, since she was planning to spend more time at my place, than it was for my self-actualization. I started fuming and when I asked her softly, “Uh, what the fuck happened here?” she responded with a smile that she had gotten “into” it and the only thing I wanted her “into” at that point was a six-foot grave.

It is as if we were both heavy smokers and I came home, ready to suck down a couple of cancer sticks from the 50-carton storage above the kitchen and she had declared that we were now a smoke-free home and took it upon herself to throw our whole stash in the trash bin. And while she seemed to have no problem with going cold turkey, I was shaking and spinning from nicotine withdrawal all the time wondering, “Why is she doing this to me?”

At one time in the bedroom I asked why she thought the bed should be moved in a totally different direction that would force me to have to zigzag through a narrow space every time I wanted to take a piss. She said how this would open up the space so we would have more of the sockets available to us. I was too exhausted from being up for about 15-hours at this point to say, “And since when were decisions in this apartment ever brought to the ‘Us Council’ for deliberation?”

When I asked, “So what exactly is the point of the dresser of drawers being placed where it will block the door from fully opening?” she told me how it would be useful to hold condoms or to put my water bottle on, as if this was somehow more convenient than me saying to my fuck partner, “I’m going to lie here. You grab a condom from the top drawer across the room, slide it over my cock and ride me like a pony.”

And bringing a water bottle to bed was her gig not mine. All of a sudden I have a whole table for a fuckin’ water bottle? Seeing that I wasn’t sold, she said that I could put the writing notebook that I usually bring to bed with me on top of the small table. I told her I was fine shoving it under my pillow like I had been doing for years and being a “direct route” type of guy, I would prefer being able to walk a beeline straight to the bathroom when I had to take a piss rather than mazing through a labyrinth like a fuckin’ rat looking for cheese.

She was totally inconsiderate to my needs and comfort level and after the split-second lesson from the Universe came and said, “You see, at times you can be insensitive to the comfort level of others,” I said, “Thank you, now kindly fuck off,” and continued to plot how to kill Toad and make it look like an accident.

I did my best to keep my sense of humor. I made a few jokes but couldn’t help feeling like a snake that had already been mortally clamped down upon by the crocodile and was making one final thrust of resistance solely to show the croc that he may be out but he’s still retaining his pride as an animal of the wild. When John Denver’s “The Eagle And The Hawk” song came on the stereo, I put my arms out and pretended to fly like we had done one night in the area that was open before she had decided to go slaphappy. But as much as my wings were outstretched, I didn’t have the nobility of an eagle or the regality of a hawk and the only John Denver song that came to mind was, “Fly Away” and a hope that I could fly away and leave this headache beneath me, as well as drop a pile of shit on Toad’s head.

At 12:15 a.m. I left to go to the Rite-Aide for dental floss, a mission only partly fueled by the arrival of my Sonicaire toothbrush the day before and my commitment to a new, thorough oral hygiene program and mostly because it was clear that she was not going to leave and if I didn’t have a half-hour before we went to bed, I was heading towards smothering her with a pillow like the final scene in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest where Chief Bromden snuffed out Jack Nicholson’s character Randle McMurphy, assuming that she, too, must have had a lobotomy in order to do the brainless thing she had done. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3IYZu0pF64]

When I leave my apartment, I always double-lock my door. One time when I found myself locked out of my apartment without a key, I was able to pull down the metal EXIT sign on the wall and pick open my only single-locked door. Another time, a dude in the building had locked himself out of his apartment and recruited me to help and with the help of a credit card and years of accumulated mischief as a youth, I was able to bust him into his apartment. As I leave not only dirty underwear but also wads of money anywhere I can find a space not covered by other crap, I don’t want anyone with a remedial skill in breaking and entering to take an unguided tour of my apartment. I also have a dog that might bark her ass off at an ex- bringing in some guy but would probably fall short of taking a chunk out of a burglar’s leg and I don’t want to risk my little girl getting harmed or stolen.

But this time when I left the apartment, I stayed outside the door for a minute and pondered whether to double-lock it or not. If a burglar had broken in and killed Toad, I would probably come home to an apartment empty except for a puddle of blood and brain and little pieces of skull. I would then roll around in this blood bathe, laughing like a little schoolgirl all the while, and end up finally falling asleep on the floor. When leaving the next day, I would probably not shower, as it wasn’t a Leap Year, and when on the street a cop asking me where I got the brain matter, might not be happy with my answer of, “Just by studying hard in school, officer,” and take me down to the station for questioning. Eventually a court date would lead to a trial where I would have to explain that while I had Toad’s blood and brains all over me and appeared to be unphased—even happy—by this, that I didn’t, in fact, kill her. I would be sent to life in prison where I would be taught a game called “Hide The Spoon” by my cellmate which would lead to me not only unable to sit without discomfort but also very distrustful about the state of cleanliness of the prison silverware. I double-locked the door.

When I got home, I did my oral hygiene program: floss with newly acquired dental floss, water-pik, brush with Sonicaire. I then went into the other room where she was not and crashed on the couch. I felt extremely distant and wanted nothing to do with her, attempting to match the proximity of my body to my feelings. As I hadn’t figured out how to teleport myself to the moon yet, I figured the next room was the best I could do

She woke me up at some ungodly hour by holding and squeezing my hand, which was almost as creepy as when my college roommate, Darrin, woke me up by tapping my forehead with his pecker. I prayed I had just had a nightmare but when I opened my eyes and saw the shit on my floor, I knew that while life may be an illusion according to some, my illusion contained a castrating bitch.

If Toad had been more overtly bitchy, like if she said something like, “You live like a pig and if you’re not going to be a grown-up then I will!” I could have justified yelling and screaming and maybe even slapping her silly. She obviously didn’t want me to be in discomfort but was like some psycho sliding bamboos under my fingernails and saying, “Does this hurt? I don’t want to hurt you.”

I told her that she went way out of my comfort zone and I was very angry with her. I didn’t tell her that while she might have thought it a grand idea to put my audiotapes in a box and up in storage and all my random crap in various plastic bags, this would make it so that not only wouldn’t I have access to certain items—as the probability of me climbing my dresser to the storage space to get my Eddie Grant audiotape to play “Electric Avenue” was about as likely as an excuse to the proctologist that you happened to be jumping rope naked and slipped and fell right on a cucumber which was balancing on it’s end and subsequently got stuck in your ass—but now my organization system was totally screwed as well. As cluttered as my place may appear, I have a rough idea where many items are located. Now I couldn’t tell you what bag contains batteries and which the number of the woman who might be pregnant with my child.

Toad showed me her warts last night and it left me unable to focus on all the beauty I had seen previously in her long tongue, her tasty legs and deep croak and now I only saw a witch. Any vision I had of a home workplace, creative space and sanctuary vanished and was replaced by a desire to get rid of everything I own and have a space that is as empty as the scene from “Angel Eyes” where Jennifer Lopez is a cop and walks into the apartment of the guy she was somewhat dating when he wasn’t around without his permission, like a typical cop who has no respect for the 4^th Amendment to the Constitution, and was baffled by an apartment that was pretty much completely empty except for a bed, a couple of dishes and a box of toys.

Many people say they don’t want to change you but that is not entirely true. Either they have a concept of what the “real” you begging to break free of the “encumbered” you is and take it upon themselves to chisel your real self free or they have created in their mind the type of man which they would like to accompany them to the grave and will constantly buff and sand your corners, while pretending they are not, trying desperately to make you fit into their coffin.

Well I’m getting pretty sick of all the chiseling and sandpapering and buffing by people who tell me what an asshole I am in need of major work or what a great enlightened being I am that is in need of being set free. I wish they would all just leave me alone and if they need to pull out the chisel to stick it in their fuckin’ eye instead.

I couldn’t help to be reminded of the Universe’s lesson from her usual method of teaching me through mirrors, that sometimes I can push people way beyond their comfort level until they have lost not only their will to play yoga, but to live, resulting in the backlash of thrusting themselves even more deeply into unconsciousness.

Like my false soulmate Maria, I could see the devastating effect a particular action resulting in a sudden change of feeling could have on a heart. Unlike Maria, I understand that the only thing for certain in an illusory world focused on the external is change and I won’t put all my eggs in one fixed-reality basket and skip around singing, “Here’s Easter Rabbit, hurray! Making my funny, hurray! I can get loony toony taxed in the head, this whole thing is goony, I should have stood in bed.” [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF-EMb1D9w4].

I am not going to throw out a deep soul friendship based on a few Easter basket mishaps, not just because of all the potential that Toad and I have for deeper sharings in the future but because I value love and know that it is my choice if I decide to let it flow through me or to close the valve and let it stagnate and take on that funky smell of old cheese. At the moment I have to take a deep breath, or else I may be serving for dinner tonight one of Shrek’s favorite delicacies, Swamp Toad Stew, and while tasty, it gives me and Shrek both tremendous gas.

Even if for the moment all I can see is warts and a manipulative toad with a boner [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS4mcAALUBY], I know there is a frog princess sitting on the lily pad out beyond the anger of my blood-infused eye capillaries that has me temporarily blinded to beauty and seeing only red…that when we change our own personal vision, the world may not change but how we see it certainly does. And that makes all the difference.

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

- Carl Jung

REFLECTION:

Think of a time when you tried to help someone “for their own good” and they were resistant. How did it work out? Did you really take into account the needs and feelings of the other person or did you try to cram your understanding of “truth” down their throat? Was it really for them or was it mostly for you? Did they need to change, or perhaps your own personal vision?

MEDITATION:

Imagine you suggesting something to someone you care about, perhaps an idea on how they can improve their work or business or environment or look or life. Imagine them giving you a little resistance to your suggestion. Rather than plowing full-speed ahead and flattening them in the process, imagine putting the steamroller into reverse and instead checking in with what they are feeling and what they need before proceeding any further with what you consider “helpful” and “loving” suggestions or actions. Ask, “How do you feel when I suggest ___________?” “What are your needs and what would you feel comfortable doing to regarding what I suggest and perhaps to help me in having my needs met as well? And, for a change, listen to the answer and be willing to abandon the idea you came in with if it doesn’t fit in with what the other is feeling and needing.