Because FLASHBACK! There was a time when I took brainnote of the time on the stove as I bounced out the door, unlocked. There was a time when I toed off the curb, timing jumps tween cars always too slow going through the light. Least for my tastes, the fucking dicks just fucking drive faster, fill up lanes unfilled, maximize your highway efficiency you motherfucks blarrgh. There was a time when I timed and jumped the walk signal, where I figured into the ol equation the factor of my dress shoes, rolling heel march to the train station, eyes square’d on the asshole LCD, Arriving, Arriving, Arriving, shimmy at the backward pinpricks of tick tock fuck the train is coming theee traaaain is commminnnggg and then bolt, fuck all the shoes and the chemical horse hockey in my hair, noted that? well note it now, sweat and worry and last ditch efforts to fly toward end chances and the pissoff countdown and beating lurching monster hurrrring the ground fore I blur it, for sake of last chances and keeping promises and arriving safely at Point J, I’ll do it cuz it’s all I’ll ever do/can do/wanna do in lieu of sitting at home with the whoda fucking know anyway lurking beyond, nah, I’ll make this train, I’ll burn out and sweat all over and slide in there, later noting that thank God the AC’s rolling nicely today.

Plebeian, with em, of em, worship at that atard until I #don’t, @mirror is a damn fine idea wrapped in a Serious thinker, but not that hardy har of Serious natch but the truesome Serious Constitutional Economic Scholar of High Liberaldom And Let’s Face It This Dong Won’t Rise Itself, noted highly all purpose of trackbacks and reREDACTEDs and Hey This Guy Has It Figured Out and, all together, no matta the weather, @obama, know what I think?, letem really up and have it hard and slapped round by that age ol’ conviction of being #right. #right natch ignoring in its wake, snots and snarks at the hatas who dare look crosswise with their Broder bullshit, cuz anything #against me is natch Broder bullshit, eh?

Project. Tasks into Project. (The whispering last lasts of a doomed branch of a forgotten department, staff eyed for moving left and right and take your box and shuffle out quietly, it’s been good. Good period dropping off a shard-addled cliff. But before, while pants pockets hrmmmm and hover over magnetic tracks and ergonautical seatpeople frugal fugue instrumentals, eyes and shoepoints toward the door, on the floor, before that last smolder’d shuffle bout out the door, one last Project. Tasks into Project.) Deadlines for minutia, noted looming shadows and specters of the Process that’s gotta get itself all donelike before all shoes, Is, tied, dotted. But first, and in middlepoint’a'all that, this here meeting:: fourth quarter : third string

- OK, we’re concerned about consistency.
- I’ll put this one on me, but it’s just that time was an issue.
- ?
- Rush job, you know. Looked for typos, nothing dropping off, that stuff.
- You need to tell us when you don’t have enough time.
- Sure, and that’s fine and all, but that results in what? No, not gonna do it? Screw you?
- Well no, just be careful.
- Yes. Noted. From now on, I will be careful.
- What are we doing with the m dashes here? And not there?
- I mean, I guess if I’ve got to write out a styleguide, I’ll be writing out a styleguide. Was wondering about serial commas anyway, seeing how client’s never fond of doing them all or not at all, you know.
- Think about headlines and periods, too.
- Sure, all that.

All that, encompassed and put to memory and damn sure put to paper, so we can find out how to better bob and weave and wade through the process, (so we can better figure and discover and target with laser scope just what poor bastard gets blamed), and sit, and sit, and ponder to paper and ceilingtile and shoe what just must be done to get beyond being noticed and bothered and just twerped to high heaven about the little things that probably won’t don’t even matter ever never. Moving on. Over it. Never to be noticed again, with all praise’s sake’s hope.

All that, while a quick shiftyeye toward the clock, praise and pray to five til five for a jump to the pisser and out the door, while tick and tick and tick in time for sake of death inna stone wall, hidden from sight, self-hidden from mind, never be happenin to me sho.

She was beautiful when she reached the pops kicks the bucket day, when she tried and tried to fake crying but imploded chuckling in the
bathroom, while I eared the door and looked to the side, mouth in one cheek and worried, nah convinced that we’d be found out among the dumb bastards trying to whisper a couple of Very Important Goodbyes before chugging a beer out of the cooler and out the door and Jeez, least it was over. Counted down the bazillion minutes until I could too Jeez, least it was over, enveloping my lungs to squashy nothingness while she faked being sad in the corner over there and there and never tackling these well-mourners. As secret for she and me was pops kicks the bucket day was pops only included her in the big bucks no whammies will extravaganza, his favorite and only favorite. Lord knows we didn’t tell anyone how cool our bar’d be.

Kinda glad I never got into the ins and outs and all of telling myself
how cool our bar’d be, cause I never smelled it, never up close and
all. She, nah. She always had it close and up her nose and in the back
of her head, figuring out the fucking appetizers before we’d dropped
shovel or paid someone to drop shovel to any forgotten red clay
nowheregentrifying, and what then if we ended up just being one of them anyway, what’d be the point of this little excursion and yet still
were all the various flavors of wing sauce she had bubbling in her
mind. What did I want? Room to breath, room to fly up and with my
elbows on the clouds look down and figure out points A and B before we got to her point Z times a thousand and all, but what really was
anything ever was of course that she was beautiful. Then at the time,
before when she’d been thinking bout bar and all, and I assumed yeah, I knew yeah, that she’d still be beautiful by the time we’d be willing to leave the doors behind and our bar in the care of a whole slew of staff members. Also wing sauce, yeah wing sauce, we’d have figured that out at that point I was sure. And also, also always, she’d been beautiful since I first saw her.

“Go fuck yourself, unless you want to tell me what you want,” said
beautiful she at the first.
“Just looking around. People watching, I figure,” like it’d certainly
be working for me that day.
“Like I said. Go fuck yourself. At least ogle somewhere else.”
“I’m sorry. Jeez.”
“Yeah, well, like I said. Go. Fuck. Yourself.”

Occurred later, and probably did at the time though I never remembered, how well and rehearsed she was with the call to arms.

I mean there’s no need to settle for second best and eight more when I’m just as interesting and interested in myself without this all, and yet, back to a Friday night’s grind’s grind and the TV’s sideways and I’m on my second of three diet sodas. Dammit, dammit so much over.

She was beautiful, the idea I fished out of toilets all molded mildewed and shitted over, the sticky crust of the stressy flaked skin stuck to the front door while I looked out at an empty parking lot, nah, nah, she was beautiful, she was meaningful, she was all semblances and sorts of important to my putting on pants after rolling out of bed, the idea I fished out more toilets, more windows to be cleaned, when someone great is gone, welcome to the jungle, whatever else the bartenders concocted on expected but maybe not so expected playlist, oh just to fuck all high heaven. That’s what I thought and all.

And then other times thinking of no no no, this bar of ours is worth all and all, worth us being us and falling sweatily asleep and shaking over figuring out deliveries of property tax of tax of tax of salaries and into the mirrors, cleaning mirrors, our eyes droopy from falling sweatily barely asleep the night before and on and all and if we could just drop the mop and rag and kick down the front door and run outside into oncoming traffic, where, bar be no more and we’d finally get sleep at last.

But she was beautiful. And I made no shaky stressy qualms over that NOW, certainly, but I meant more to turn more to the past, when she and I and two bottles made four but three came to the ultimate conclusion that it was most certainly absolutely to our advantage, all financially and drinkally and spiritually to open a bar, our bar, our bar for our people sort of bar. And so we did. After a few more nights of us and the bottle and bottle and bottles, and also after shaky stressy qualmy nights too and two and fourty thousand million it seemed. But let’s see back to when she was beautiful, said I upon seeing all back and all:

“Now, been thinking,” said beautiful she.
“Bout what and all?”
“Bout bar and all. We should make one.”
“Like how?”
“Smarty, we should build and own and make one from scratch. It’d be
ours. Our bar for our people sort of bar.”
This I found to be the hottest, magnified every which way by a couple
of things, from the wavy in and outs of her dirty blonde, to
dimplecheeks and if she’d been wearing a long necklace, that all in
her cleavage I was sure and all and
“Like, from our sorta scene comes…our scene. That sorta place and
all,” she said, eyeing the top of my forehead.
“Don’t have the money,” said I, eyes up again.
“Smarty, be smart and figure and then we’d figure out how to get it
all, I suppose. I dunno. But we should, you know.”
“We should open a bar.”
“From scratch.”
“By getting money and all and then wham, we got ourselves a bar.”
“That’s ours for people like us, and we’d have green and wood and low
globe lights and candlelights and shhh. Don’t tell anyone how cool our
bar’d be.”
“Um. I won’t.”
“Fuck off, you will cause you would.”
“Sure.”

“Fag.”

“Your mom.”

is what they said the last time flick and answer but this time, there was a necessary change in tude, prob dropped later but pulpy palpable enough at the onset.

“Hi.”

“Sup.”

And blank and stare and yeah what and can I come in and whatever and so across threshold between Troutmans and if only those blacks would pick up their lottery tickets off the ground and into a well-fucked-up-stained woody meltdown of a hallway and on. Two dudes, high school dudes, a Friday night, an easy night planned easily at the porcelain altar of beer beer beer, before taking that wrong turn. Through the Twilight Zoh…I kid.

(Also: I have met Chevy Troutman in the place of my mind between starts and definitive asskicking asskissing finale, wherein bit partmen from midway through yesterday’s struggles and tomorrow’s overrated championships are dicksucked on pedestals by the Boys of Bristol, CT, except that Chevy’s poor Pitt offspring stopped somewhere on the Road to the Final Four and stopped on that grassy shoulder, noted the road itself upped and left just like it always always did for those poor fuckers, and poor fucker I for the moving of P, I, T, and T down the lines until they were the only ones left in my bracket o’failitude. Worse off, sad D.N. be sad D.N., for loverly wife K.B. Nation slapped me around in my disforgotten bracketfail and left me for losing and so here, my dear, are some football tickets to settle that there bet so I can sit at the top of the Georgia Dome and think fundamentally these things two:

1) Beer is awful expensive here, and yet more and more because I should, right?

and

2) Dammit, I don’t know why the hash marks are this way here, sweetheart, and that way there, my babe, and gots to get me another beer before silly ignorance becomes too self-selfage gripping and this all leads us to fundamentally this thing one:

1) I ain’t achieving to be debt free, least as the parents say I go out too much and buy too much and spend too many hours with hands grasped on stained wooden bar and eyes up at rectangular screen and down to third, fourth, fifth round and. There’s also the other thing of looking up at rectangular computer screen grasping to the table to launch into 5 p.m. on, but that isn’t more than accounting for the first grasping and looking and wouldn’t mama be proud? Well is she, D.N.? No she is not.

So that’s where Chevy Troutman is. In the dreams of my shitty actualities, floating among the failure of a fuck, I lost to my wife dammit dammit fuck shit I hate brackets very much so. So.)

“What are you getting into tonight?” asks Chev. “Nuttin” is his response. Dance, puppets, dance. And again the unfortunate matter of stares and a couple of tongues shoved into the back of their own teeth and stares and putting second toe above big toe and feeling pulled cuticles and stares at the bobbing ceiling fan and at deep at the deep pile carpet and reconsidered last week and last weeks to the point of

“Know what sucked?”

that actually anyone would consider saying that in lieu of no, no, couldn’t and all and

“Wh”

reconsidered but finished no matter

“What?”

“This fucking week. Fuck this fucking week.”

(Hey, so there’s: Feeling the downtrodden self of, ah, I just flatten these fuckers like dough, don’t I? The notorious K.B. Nation is so rights to all this, watching tortured, chipped bones attached to weary muscles forming the old frames of frames of look at this modern life here and oh the soul-crushingness of unfortunate existence in the beloved here and now, beloved way much more than the old masters would see it, sho, for the unfortunateness of achieving to be debt free pains and wallops and is never actually realized by

by

haha, well, by anyone I’d share a round or four ty thous and with, sho.)

“So you wanna…” put potted forth the wilted olive branch from poor fucking Troutman.

“Have a beer? Well fuck yeah and all,” said Chev all comforted in the Chev of Chev.

“No, do you wanna talk…”

“About…?”

“It.”

Haha, well then, said Chev’s wrinkly braindoubt, considering the lawnmower he slogged by on the way to the damn POINT of the evening, right? right? I mean right?, wondering what Troutman was talking about and by wondering I mean meaning to not wonder and shhh for fuck’s sake hand this fucker another beer right.

“Haha, well then. You can start IT by giving this fucker another beer, right?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Talking about you giving me a beer. Totallyo pronto, dickstain.”

So Troutman squinted, then non-squinted,then slid left and right toward the kitchen, wondering where between attempt and scoff that he smelled all wronglike to Chev, halted from the start, pushed towards nonstart. Smelled like hamburger steaks of a couple nights ago, and by nights we mean nights’. Prob.

“Goddamn pain in the ass,” from Troutman.

“Bout what?” though Chev prob knew bout what.

“Life. This one, particularly.”

“Haha, hear that.”

“Sure, always hear that.”

“Nah, fucking pain in the ass day, sure. Here’s the reward.”

Out with the beers, out with the beers, last Friday was out with the beers when no, not the point anyway, Chev rubbed the top of his nose, crinklethought into out with the beers, last Friday out with the beers, when Troutman asked him, no, erased, nondesired, mistakes were made, full responsibility to build up later fair crumbly Blank Estates, lost drowndom amongst those rose well sure enough past simple Friday mistakes to kick the nuts out of an empty enough space to be This Is Where I Live amongst This Is Where I Live This Is Where I Live and this is where I live enough, and no more.

“Beer yeah.”

“Hells yup.”

“But really, fuck this fucking life.”

“Yep.”

“Yep. So let’s get fucked up. Like last Friday.”

“Exactly like last Friday,” Chev crinklethought noserub, a thousand atomic bombs mushrooming just behind the skin, but no, Fridays are Fridays are Beer Fridays, and that was that that that.

“My dad’s a racist dick,” from Troutman’s mouth a few minutes later, half hour hour whatever. Fuck the day, even. Seven beers later, that’ll be the time. Ding.

“Don’t forget a drunk.”

“Like father, right?” and a smirky toast with Chev’s “Like son.”

Troutman sunk his toes into his shoes. “Fuck this goddamn place, right?”

“Yeah dude. Fuck it.”

Troutman thumbed through the yellowed blinds.

“Fucking racist dick. Blacks leave their lottery tickets around, he says. You mean they play every day and lose, like you? Leave tickets around, don’t leave tickets around, who gives a fuck. He probably seethes that I don’t hate blacks as much as he does.”

“Sure, whatever.”

“The fuck you mean?”

“Nothing. Next beer. Shotgunned, right?”

“As long as it kills brain.”

“Good and dead, just like last Friday.”

“Just like last Friday.” Crinklethought into a solid forehead rub, eyes closed. Last Friday. Nah. There’s something built quickly and cheaply in the expected future, so shhh. It’s yours. As long as mistakes were made, passivized into the dusk outside.

(So there’s this: I’m a fucking good person, I care about people nuff that’s expected out of poor little old poor me, even dollar bills dished out at MARTA, even. Toss your lottery tickets on the ground, don’t care, kick me in the nuts, I mean it’s good for the laffs anyway, so don’t care. But alasshit, football tickets are football tickets, beer’s beer, and I can achieve to be debt free all I fucking want for all the good it’ll do me. Sorry mom. Disqualifiedself, technicality wins. Sure enough someday to fly through the ceiling, just burst face-first through splintermass, cause the rate I’m going groundwise, well, well stuck in some big enough space to spread out bitterness in, lost in the land of nonstraight lines breaking straight lines, and damn if I can’t just walk anywhere anyways.)

“Brackets yet?” goes Troutman like went a year ago, probably.

“Yep. P, I, T, T, motherfucker.”

“Yeah, until DeJuan’s fat ass rips his ACL to all of fucking nothing.”

“Nah. He’s in it for the long haul. They know what they’re doing. Plans, bitches, plans.”

“The road to hell.”

“Yeah, and you’ll be sitting there on the shoulder while I’m riding it. Like, backwards, because”

“Haha drunk fucker.”

“Nah, getting there, drunk enough to be smarter right now, at least.”

“Not smart enough to keep from picking Pitt. Smellin a beer bet.”

“Well how about this. If you’re a fag, I chug.”

So chugged. Then wet, gloppy silence. Chev coulda slapped it around with his hand. So he did.

“What’s up with you?”

“You fucker, really?”

“Yeah. You’re a fag. It happens, right?”

“Well.”

Wrinklenosed, Chev did, this time without even lifting a finger.

(Oh!: Oh, Pitt, Icarusing yourself but not even, just self-mediocritization at the shittiest damn clutchtime, flying through the ceiling but internally being all, hey, wait a second, I’m built to spill my ambitions disembowel-deli-style all wet gloppy all over the nonstraight lines breaking straight lines below before pressing the Fail button and taking the fucking plunge. That’s what’s in the makeup of your genetic plan, that’s who you are when the calligraphy in front goes P, I, T, and T, and there ain’t nothing more worth doing when you’re the Pitt amongst probably exactly a bajillion other Pitts, born and bred and saving nothing while drink drink drinking, drinking to the point of dranking, shitting out dolla bills on hipster brew bullshit while writing this even, watching the cents just spill out and oh, if I could only finish. God, I’ve slipped up. Fucked up. Wasted a bunch of a bunch. With the belowwords, with the sweet Pitt replica jersey donned by my dumbfuck brain.)

Hours, eons, time standing in place to jump to similar most of everything later, this time Chev thumbing the yellowed blinds, still both holding both beers amongst beersbeersbeers. Eyes outside, the point where grass went from being long to sprouting a new species on top, gnarled and twisted and weedy dominatory disemboweling of the point of the yard anyway.

“Your yard is fucking nasty,” Chev gave propas to obvious observation.

“Your face,” Troutman gave propas to obvious comeback.

“No, really, it’s gross. You’ve got fucking weeds everywhere. My dad would kill me if it came to this.”

“The fuck you cut your grass for, anyway?”

“The fuck?”

“Your grass, always mowed, always…nice. What’s the point?”

“Point is not to make the place a damn slophouse like this.”

“Don’t care.”

“You should. Look at this goddamn place. Peely, smells like shit, might as well quit.”

“Don’t care. Why lift a finger? Why do you bother, anyway?”

“Dad.”

“The point?”

“Dad. He works hard, I do what he says, he keeps his boot away from my ass.”

“Like he would, anyway.”

“Like I’d provoke him, anyway.”

“So you cut the grass.”

“Yep. And do dishes. He works, I do dishes, then I’ll work and whatever shit pops out of my future wife will do dishes.”

“Ha. Right. Problem with that is”

“Problem with that is, you don’t give a shit. It’s fucking ridiculous. Rebel up! Against goddamn nothing. Nothing worth a shit. The fuck system are you fighting, anyway? You could sit here picking your ass all day and the old fart wouldn’t care. Might as well melt into the walls.”

“Yeah? And your responsibility is to a failure.”

“Fuck you.”

“Like he’s going to be slapping you with a belt when his ass can’t even fall out of bed to roll into work in the morning.”

“I, dude, fuck off.”

“And you’re still to chickenshit to tell him.”

“Dude, no. Don’t even.”

“Haha, you fucker. What would he even do?”

“It was a mistake.”

“Don’t care. At least it was different. Worst he does is cry even more bout his back, the dumb bastard. More of an excuse to drink, bang his fist against the walls, waaah.”

“It was a mistake.”

“With you? Probably. Least it was fun, a why the fuck not sort of thing.”

and DOWN went Troutman’s beer amongst beersbeersbeers, foamed the carpet to permanence, “what the fuck were you even doing dummy” says cracked and chipped father at some point amongst pointspointspoints down the line, eyes to the floor, whyevencare, leastnotattractingbugs, and rewound and regretting unable to drink backwards through the hours just to start again, Troutman slipped Chev a kiss. Sloppy this time, even.

1) Beer is awful expensive here, and yet more and more because I should, right?

and

2) Dammit, I don’t know why the hash marks are this way here and that way there and gots to get me another beer before silly ignorance becomes to gripping and this all leads us to fundamentally this thing one:

1) I ain’t achieving to be debt free, least as the parents say I go out too much and buy too much and spend too many hours with hands grasped on stained wooden bar and eyes up at rectangular screen and down to third, fourth, fifth round and. There’s also the other thing of looking up at rectangular screen grasping to the table to launch into 5 p.m. on, but that isn’t more than accounting for the first grasping and looking and wouldn’t mama be proud? Well is she, D.N.? No she is not.

So that’s where Chevy Troutman is. In the dreams of my shitty actualities, floating among the failure of a fuck, I lost to my wife dammit dammit fuck shit I hate brackets very much so. So.

EVERY
BODY
WILL
GET
ONE
chance, she said.
Which he blew, she said.
Yep, she said. Again. Like the last time he got a second chance, he blew it, because everyone only gets once chance she’d found, which meant he was one over the limit and still blew that.
Round the table, chorus of haha and oh snaps, one couldn’t even believe that he’d still drink after that one night ended ass first hugging the porcelain altar, another chorus of haha and oh snaps, let alone still drink after he whined like a bitch to the po-po to let him drive the few more miles home, and she swore, she sa-wore, that she saw a trembling lower lip, the stupid fucker, haha oh snaps, and yet there he was, squinting at any slight light turned still into lights, trying to suck in his belly to eliminate in spirit ten beer’s worth of bad life choices and nature? or nurture? from the night before, because he wore the too tight pants, because he forgot to do the laundry, because that was on tap to do that night, as well as two beers and a celebratory black and mild because this job interview was done, book it, over, until it was really done, book it, over, in a feast of fail made patently obvious by the we’ll-be-in-touch before he even got a description of the fucking job, and then he was out in the brighter light turned still into lights, casting spells in his mind to form whatever excuse would come closest to passing, they kept his resume at least, that’d work, it was really competitive, not so likely, seeing how he was assured that all he needed to do was show up coherent, and as for that, the clever snitches around the table would holler for
Set sail for fail!, she said. Haha oh snaps.
Woulda invited the poor bastard tonight, she said, but nah, be back to the porcelain altar and prayers to gods of bad decisions to spare him for at least a night or two, at least enough time to get all the mold scrubbed out up there and formulate some semblance of a plan for mommy and daddy, that it was difficult the guy was a dick they needed paperwork he didn’t have immediately it was really competitive he wanted to do something else if you were there you’d get exactly what was up it was bullshit, man, bullshit
Bullshit, man, bullshit, they said, haha oh just pile it on ladies.