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November 23rd, 2009
08:31 pm - JayQuon: Cross-Section of a Young African-American Crack Slinger
(The new kid, JayQuon, blasts Lil Wayne mixtapes in the morning--complete with racetrack .wavs and echoing voice-effects announcing which anonymous DJ is remixing what good, professional, track into an abominable hodge-podge for fifth-rate MCs to butcher mercilessly--while he dances like an asshole in front of the mirror, grinning like an idiot, hooting and chittering and doing that thing that Will Smith does when he raps: "Ha-ha, Ha-ha!" It makes me feel like I'm on safari in the jungles of the Dark Continent, observing the voodoo rituals of the barbarous cannibals; my upper lip curls slightly in disgust and I think, "What a burden we, the white man, has taken on ourselves to civilize these brutes."
This kis makes black people look so bad he's turning me into a nineteenth century English Imperialist. He practically tap dances when speaking to an authority figure, all "Yes Mike Sir," and "Please, Dave, Sir," and when they leave the room, he turns around and goes, "Yo, fuck these niggas! Breakin' my back fo' these niggas, fam!"
I was quietly sitting at a table drawing and the TV was off and he asked me if I would mind him putting on a movie--I think I'm the only person he's not ingenuinely polite to or boisterously obnoxious with, just because he's mostly indifferent to me--and I said no, go ahead. He put a videotape in front of me and said, "How 'bout this?"
"What is it?" I asked.
"The Hamlet."
I looked at the cassette. It was just "Hamlet," part 1, some 140 minutes of the 242 running time. "Yeah, that's fine."
"Yo, you seen it?" he asked.
"Yea."
"What's it about?"
"Uh, well, it's about a Prince," I stammered. Depending on which version it was, it could be about a lot of things. "I think in this one, the Prince is Danish and his Father is killed so he kind of goes crazy for revenge. Sort of."
"But, like," Jay started, "is it, like, action...?"
"It's Shakespeare."
He dropped that cassette as if it were "hott".)
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November 21st, 2009
03:48 pm
(Catching up on Achewood makes me happy.
My case worker asked to see some of the pictures I draw, so I gave her my notebook to flip through. She came back to me and said they were really very good, but asked about a few indiviual drawings, particularly of a wickedly grinning man wielding a knife and wearing a coat much like mine--"Who is this?"--and one of a kid hanging to death from his neck wearing only his boxers--"Who is this?"
I laughed and told her not to analyze this stuff too much--it's just art.)
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November 20th, 2009
03:05 pm - L'Estranger Part 3
I stood in a narrow room with a couple of a desk with a large, complicated-looking machine in one corner, partially surrounded by a white curtain. The contraption would have been something used on a movie set, except its plain, boxy, aluminum chassis and drab brown paint job belied the manufacturer's concern for functionality over impression. A CO (Corrections Officer) took me to one side of the machine and took my fingerprints, muttering something about how inefficient it was that Albany didn't take computer images of prints at the station in the first place. Then he directed me to the other side of the machine and told me I would have my picture taken. I asked if my hair was okay, and he didn't say anything. Instead he went around the other side of the machine, out of sight. I could see a dark lens inside a plexiglass square in the boxy chassis of the machine. However, instead of hearing a click or seeing an aperture shutter, I heard a buzz somewhere within the giant brown metal box in front of me. The CO came around and said, alright, and told me to take off everything but my underwear. He handed me a pair of orange shoes that smelled like burned rubber and mustard yellow jumpsuit and when I put it on, I discovered it was probably a size too big, but I didn't say anything.
The CO then handed me a list; this was an inventory of the items I had in my possession when I was booked:
- 1 T-Shirt
- 1 Pair of jeans
- 1 belt
- 1 First Niagara Bank Card
In exchange for these items, I was given a medium-sized paper bag containing the following:
- 2 small bars of soap
- 1 small toothbrush
- 1 small tube of toothpaste
- 1 plastic spoon
As certain countries and states have bureaus that provide guides to tourists, foreigners and newcomers, I thought some kind of handbook might be useful for a situation like this. In fact, excluded from the paper bag the CO had handed me was an Albany Correctional Facility Handbook, which I might have noticed if the handbook had been included in the bag (as it details the inventory that I should receive upon entering the facility, including the handbook itself).
From this point on, I would have a small catalog of private items as well as a stash of "contraband," which is neither as daring or delinquent as it sounds, but carries real consequences nonetheless.
I was led to a cell on C wing. C wing was a two-floored tier, lined with maybe 50 cells. Those cells surrounded an area with eight square tables with attached seats bolted to the floor. I was brought onto the tier at around midnight. The cell was about 6 by 9 feet, but with an awkward slant to one of the walls so an inmate couldn't hide out of site. I was glad to find I didn't have a cellmate and the cell was complete with a stainless steel toilet / sink fixture.
Coming up next:
- My 36-hour, TB shot lock down (not counting weekends)
- The inmates on C wing
- My Public Defender, Thomas Gabriels
- Joanne, from TASC
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November 19th, 2009
03:44 pm
(There's this girl who approached this table that I'm at in the library and asked me if she could sit here, and she's absolutely gorgeous. I have no idea what to do. We've both been sitting here for what seems like it could be 2 hours and haven't said two words since, and it's not like I have a cell phone number or anything to give her. "Hey, yeah just call this number at the transitional housing complex I live at with thirteen other so-called recovering addicts and ask for 'Jon'." *Wink*
I'm gonna pack up and walk outta here and be depressed. Someone I don't even know has done something as completely benign as sitting across from me with her laptop and has managed to ruin the rest of my fucking day. And this is exactly what I have been fantasizing about--the chance to prove my meddle, that I have a pair of balls. I need to go buy cigarettes and smoke myself skinny.)
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02:23 pm - L'Estranger Part 2
I asked the nice officer sitting with me outside the Judge's office in the Knox County court house if the Judge would have a gavel, and he said no. I said I would have a gavel if I were a judge; I would have the biggest gavel anyone had ever seen. I might carry a croquette mallet. Do you think they'd let me?
"Sure," he said. "You'd be the judge. You could do whatever you wanted, more or less."
The judge was a middle-aged woman with straight, blonde highlights. Her skin was gaunt and loose and she was hunched over a small metal desk with a faux-maple fiberboard top layered with legal documents and ashy-looking carbon sheets. She looked tired and annoyed before I had sat down in her tiny office.
She looked up at me from above the frames of the wire-rimmed reading glasses pushed down the bridge of her nose, then shuffled some papers in front of her and handed me a sheet. She pointed out dolefully that the charge against me was assault, pressed by the state as a domestic dispute and not by Daniel Kenney, and the preliminary hearing would be held on that Wednesday. Until then I would be incarcerated at Albany County Correctional Facility.
"Wednesday!" I was very irritated that a Judge--a person whose title is a noun defined as someone appointed to arbitrate good decision (and this was not)--was perfectly blind to who was the real victim here.
"Yes. I'm setting bail at $2500, which makes the bond $250."
"Jail?" I scoffed. "Is that really necessary?"
The Judge leaned back to examine me, sweeping her dim eyes buoyed by heavy dark bags over me. Evidently finding nothing, she nodded. She scribbled something on a yellow sheet of carbon paper and slid the paper across the desk. "This is a protection order saying you won't attempt to bring harm to Daniel Kenney. The order expires in three days."
"I'm in jail for five," I snapped. "Not much chance of me harming him, is there?"
"You know you have the right to remain silent, right?"
"Will you be presiding over my case?"
"Yes."
I scribbled my signature on the bottom line marked with an X. "Then I'd better keep my mouth shut," I conceded. The officer in the room with me laughed.
They drove me about twenty minutes in the back of a squad car to the county jail, which is directly next to the airport; poor planning in many cases. I asked for a cell with a wet-bar, but the CO wasn't really in the mood. It was a bad day to do laundry, for I was wearing a transitional pair of grey boxer-briefs that I would not be able to change for nearly a month.
*UP NEXT:
- My Jail Inventories
- Why I Couldn't Change My Underwear
- Laundry In Jail
- How To Do Drugs In Jail
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November 18th, 2009
08:20 pm
(I saw a homeless man standing next to a pile of garbage jabbering to himself, and then he turned and I saw he had a bluetooth earpiece. The universe is tearing apart at the seams and it's not me, it's you!)
&
(I just picked up a copy of Alan Moore's "The Killing Joke" and realized that I have read this before. In fact, I read this comic probably a hundred times when I was ten or so. It's really no wonder I have such a good time drawing grotesque pictures, and am pretty good at it.)
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November 17th, 2009
12:28 pm - L'Estranger Part 1
There's something in the Declaration of Independence I truly believe in, and that is the unalienable right to pursue happiness. Happiness, to me, at least on the night of September 5th, was more beer, and in its pursuit, I raced off the mile and a half on my bike to the convenience store.
Later, I would explain to a counselor at St. Peter's Addiction Recovery Center that I had been drinking since Thursday night and, with nothing better to do, a chance to sober up had simply not become more convenient than staying drunk ahead of a hangover or a panic attack. I explained that if I wanted to sober up, I would have to do it while I was asleep. The chance had not presented itself.
"You just wanted to be comfortable," the counselor said, as if he understood. He crossed his stick-thin legs and nodded, presumably agreeing with himself.
That is what I wanted, but to say I was "comfortable" at the time insinuates that if I were severed from beer, I would simply be "uncomfortable," a statement lacking the peril implicit of, say, swiping the net out from under a high-wire act, which every binge is more akin to. It might be "comfortable" on a wire for the skilled performer, but plummeting to the concrete and a bloody pulping mess of hemorrhaging guts is a lopsided consequence for a misstep.
I forgot my wallet the first time so had to make the trip all over again, and was very thirsty when I got to the store. I bought twelve beers for a mere eight dollars, put them into my backpack, jumped on my bike, and took off again. I was walking my bike up the steep dirt hill towards the house when my mother pulled up beside me in the red truck. She instructed me to throw the bike into the back and get in so she could talk to me.
(I had pulled out a beer from my bag and was drinking it on the dirt road, and before getting into the truck I threw the empty can into the bushes. This marks the first time I can every consciously remember littering.)
She took a circuitous route home. This allotted her a prodigious temporal surfeit with which to express her peremptory opprobrium. I told her politely to shove it.
When we pulled into the driveway and I got out of the car to enter the house, Dan stood in the doorway. He told me to give him the backpack. I told him no, I just wanted to be left alone. He grabbed for the backpack and, when I withheld it, he grabbed me and tried to tear the bag from my loose grip. My mother asked him tiredly just to stop it, but he kept coming.
"He's drunk!" Dan shouted to my mother.
"Yes, I am!" I shouted back. "Leave me alone!"
"Just let him go, Dan," my Mom said torpidly. Dan had one arm around my neck and was trying to rip free the bag with the other.
"Yeah, Dan," I wheezed, his arm in my trachea. "You wouldn't want a black eye for work."
My temerity was perceived as disrespect (which it always is). "You try it, buster!" Dan growled. He at once wrapped his arms around me, but I threw a fist over my head and hit him in the temple, to which he scrambled to restrain me and kicked me to the ground.
"Let me go," I protested. "I'll just leave! You don't want me here, I don't want to be here."
"Just let him go, Dan," my mother said again.
"He's drunk!" Dan said again, as if it were a unifying theory to physics. The more he said it, the more pugnacious I became. "He doesn't know what he's doing!"
"Should I call the sheriff?" my mother asked.
"Yeah."
This is my parent's answer when they realize their children have become sentient, willful beings: call the police. They've called the police on Alec a few times when he was younger, when an argument got loud and threatened to turn violent and neither party was adult or responsible enough to extricate themselves from the situation. Alec usually isn't capable of that sort of cognizance; Alec has a switch and if you flip it, stuff get's punched. At least it's that simple.
For Dan, on the other hand, it comes down to the Confucian principal of respect for one's elders. Dan believes, ethically, respect is owed to him by his progeny, and--that with his inbred, hard-boiled, salt-of-the-earth, right-to-beat-your-kids Catholicism--thus he is ardent that it is fundamental weakness of character to be lithe in resolution, even if it means to prevent violence between you and family.
On the other hand, the last time the police were called on Alec, he wasn't violent at all--at least not yet. He may have been in combat mode, in a state of "hyper-vigilance," but his solution was an intelligent and considerate one; he chose to leave the premises, to remove himself from a negative environment much the same way I did: he just started walking. Dan's response to him virtually going "AWOL" however was to call the police and threaten to tazer him until he agreed to be put in psychiatric care at the V.A. hospital.
Granted, Alec might have looked a little nuts in full combat fatigue and within an hour he had found a nest of quail eggs that he intended to cook and eat. But I would have done the same if that were my idea of survival. (It isn't; my idea of survival is going across the country, eating out of garbages, getting drunk in people's filthy basements, and generally being very bohemian about it.) Dan was prepared to fight me tooth and nail the first time I left too, and the only thing that kept the first incident from coming to blows or from ending up in the hands of the authorities was that my mother calmly convinced Dan to step aside.
This time was not the case. Dan had me pinned down with his hands on both my wrists, straddling my waist. It was uncomfortable and embarrassing. He bent his head over to gloat close to my face, at which point I head butted him, and he learned not to do that again. Alec came over to laugh and observe, and when I tried to solicit him for help, hoping that he would understand that I just wanted to leave again, as he did, he grinned and said ominously that he saw me throw the first punch.
Dan intended to keep me pinned there until the police arrived, so I asked if I could have some water. Alec came over with a water bottle and poured some in my mouth. I swallowed a little and then spit the rest in Dan's face and screamed for him to get the fuck off of me, at which point Alec became enraged, threw the water bottle at my head and made to kick me, but Dan pushed him away and wrestled me back down.
"Thanks," Dan said, grinning like an idiot, dripping with spit. "That felt good."
To hear this enraged me like few can possibly imagine. But let me put it this way: Dan has made me uncomfortable all my life, and it's because, around small kids, he has the poise of a pedophile. It's something no one has ever mentioned, and I don't have any reason to suspect he's ever defiled a child, but there's something in the pit of my stomach that churns when I see him interact with a young kid; it's as if he doesn't recognize the boundaries of interaction mature adults display to children, and he pushes them just far enough for it to be noticeable: he speaks just a little too loosely, a little too silly-sounding for an adult; he's just a little too touchy, or playful. It isn't enough to say anything and bring up possibly an embarrassing situation--he certainly isn't touching them inappropriately--but there's just a certain mien about him, something you can almost smell. And to be under him like that, the water dripping off his face, with him holding me down, grinning stupidly and smugly down at me, looking triumphant; it made me want to puke. The urge to flee was profound.
So I bit him. Hard, in the shoulder, through his shirt. I lunged up and grabbed him with my teeth in the meat of the shoulder below the collar bone and clamped down, and when he didn't let go, I bit harder and twisted until he screamed. I let go to see what he would do.
"You made me bleed, you little shit!" But he didn't let go, and if he did not let go at that, I was not willing to go further. There was more I could do--I could have bit off his fingers, or lunged again and gone for the throat or his arm or bare skin--but there was a point of diminishing returns for me in each alternative: first of all I did not want his bare skin in my mouth because Dan, as I have said, is gross (He once offered to loan me a pair of shoes to mow the lawn in, and I refused, which baffled him. When he left the room, my mother looked at me quizzically and pondered aloud, "I wonder why he'd think you'd ever accept that. How long has he known you? Even I wouldn't wear a pair of his shoes."); second, I realized that when the police showed up, they would believe that I was the aggressor, and biting him further--leaving marks--would not help my case.
So I lay there and took it.
The police eventually arrived, Dan let me up, and the police handcuffed me and sat me against the tire of the truck while they talked to my parents. I asked them if they could please fix my belt because it had come undone in the scuffle, and they said they would in a minute. Maybe five minutes passed and it wasn't being attended, so when the two cops went to their car to chat with each other, I slipped a wrist out of the handcuffs and fixed my belt myself. One of the cops saw this and came running over yelling, "What are you doing!" but by the time I had my hand back in the cuff, he threw me on my face in the dirt and locked the cuff tighter. I lay cheek down in the dirt for a while and remember feeling particularly depressed, but particularly comfortable that my position was attune with my mood, and I looked the part well.
After a while, one of the officers came over and asked me what happened with little interest. I said my step-father tried to take my beer from me and then attacked me when I refused, and I was merely defending myself.
"He's pretty scratched up," the officer said. "And he said you bit him."
"I'm pretty scratched up too," I said. "And yeah, when he didn't let me up, I bit him." The officer nodded and I was put in the back of the squad car and taken to the police station in Guilderland.
My wrists were really hurting behind my back on the long drive down the hill to Guilderland, so I swung the chain of the cuffs under my legs around to my front. When they let me out of the car, the officer was mad again and told me that was felony escape. I told him I didn't escape anywhere, I was just uncomfortable, and he didn't respond.
The officer doing the fingerprinting was much nicer and said that most people who get arrested while drunk aren't so bad because they know it's just paperwork and "part of the system."
"So, I am actually arrested?" I asked. It seemed like a dumb question but it occurred to me just then that no one had read me my rights and the officer was very nice about it and just said, yeah. The sergeant at the station did a bit of typing and handed me a piece of paper that said what the complaint was: that on the night of September 5th, the Albany County Sheriff's Dept. received a call at 5:00PM of a domestic dispute between Jonathan Covert and Daniel Kenney. When the officers arrived, they took statements claiming that Jonathan Covert, the assailant, punched, scratched, kicked, and bit Daniel Kenney, the victim.
I was then taken to the see the Judge. It was 10:00PM.
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November 15th, 2009
03:38 pm
I got my laptop the other day, but that day was friday so after my iPod was charged, the staff locked the laptop in the closet. I'll get it tomorrow, Monday, and spend all day with it, finally able to relate my harrowing ordeal.
I had a dream last night that Hana gave me a tattoo on my leg of a flaming eagle with two human skulls for its head, clutching a machine gun. She also chastised me for having Elly's name written around the feathers in a really gay script. Later, in front of a Burger King, the tattoo began to peel off and two guys with real tattoos began to make fun of me. I realized that Hana had done the job with a latex or rubberized paint, like the kind used in concrete parking garages. One of the guys suggested I just go to a reputable shop and pick something out of a booklet.
When people at the TASC house see my drawings, they always ask if I design tattoos. These are people who have girl's names written on their necks or forearms in cursive script; everytime I see someone with a neck tattoo of someone else's name, it occurs to me I'm looking at someone with no fucking imagination. One of the guys at the house, upon seeing something I was drawing, asked if I could design him a tattoo of "a cross, like with my mom's name on it."
No. I absolutely cannot do that.
It would never occur to me to even draw a cross without someone nailed to it. For instance, a drawing I'm working on right now depicts Caligula with his face and mouth smeared in blood, and above him is his name spelled out in the charred bodies of impaled corpses. It's like their doing the "YMCA"...only instead of spelling "YMCA", it spells "CALIGULA" and instead of a colorful group of beefy blue-collar workers (and one native american), it's a bunch of charred corpses, contorted and defiled into various positions resembling letters of the alphabet.
I can write your mother's name in a charred-corpse script. You can tattoo that on your neck. Would that make her proud of her drug-trafficking convicted, felon son?
Outside of AA meetings on Central Ave, there's usually a guy selling bootleg DVD's out of a garbage bag for something like five bucks each. Someone picked up a pretty good cam of "Law Abiding Citizen," and most of the house watched it together. The praise was unanimous: though all of the residents of the TASC house are convicts and are battling through various stages of the justice system that they all claim are unfair, and on several occasions the protagonists of the movie clearly say, "Fuck...civil rights" (they just don't have time for search warrants while a prisoner seems to be killing judges and lawyers from inside prison!), it was agreed that the movie was "pretty good."
I exclude myself from the company of the opinions and company of the house. The counselor at SPARC says he thinks it's clear, from his experience with other residents from TASC, that I do not belong there. I think that's pretty obvious.
I also finally saw "The English Patient," which was bullshit after reading the book. Total bullshit.
The library has openings for clerks. To apply, I have to take a civil service exam, which will test me on alphabetizing, ordering numerically, comparing things in groups and classes, and other things covered in the course studies of DUH NO SHIT 101.
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November 12th, 2009
01:34 pm - DP37 (Dom Perignon, 1937)
The APL (Albany Public Library--every institute and treatment facility I go to has an acronym, so I thought our library should join the fold) is a treasure trove of great movies on DVD. In my hand now I have "Ed Wood", "The Squid and the Whale", and "A Boy and His Dog". Also, I've seen more movies new to me than I can recall here, including "Adventureland", "Rockinrolla", "My Left Foot", "Choke", "Transformers 2", and a whole lot more. These, along with the books I'm reading and the words whose definitions I'm finally motivated to look up (like, in an actual paper dictionary, though it's kind of a shitty one), makes this stint a pretty productive one.
I went off on a rant in an individual session with my counselor at SPARC to explain just why I don't get anything out of group therapy. I told him that group sessions reminded me of Lucy's ten cent psychiatry booth in "Peanuts"; it was psychiatry for dummies, but more literally. I told him these were stupid people advising each other (using the double-negative, no less) on banal situations, like legal matters, made melodramatic using pop-psychology they learned from B.D. Wong on Law & Order.
He laughed and explained that he wasn't laughing at me; he just found it interesting that people using the double-negative would bother me so much. He suggested "we" change my meetings to the evenings, 5:30 to 7:00, which, he explained, were populated by people that might be more agreeable with me, since they were typically more functional and came to treatment after work. I agreed because it means I won't have to go to mandatory AA meetings with the TASC house on Mondays or Wednesdays. It also means I won't see the beautiful high-school-president-cum-heroin-addict Kristal. But I'm not allowed to have a cell phone right now, so it's not as if I can slip her my number and then charm her pants off over dinner and a bottle of Dom Perignon, is it?
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November 10th, 2009
01:01 pm - Update Prior
This is an update prior to getting my laptop so I can make a proper post, meaning my planned, really long explanation that isn't necessary. The best way to do these updates is with bulletpoints:
- Was instructed to draw a picture for a group rehab meeting focusing on self esteem; the picture was supposed to be of or symbolize what positive thing we had accomplished since treatment. I drew a scuba diver in one of those old-fashioned iron suits fed by a flexible air hose fighting zombie piranha with a harpoon. "The scuba diver represents me," I said. "The bullshit zombie piranha represent, like, the legal system. And frustration." The facilitator of the group said I had hit on something spiritual.
- There was a really cute girl in the group today--the first cute girl I have seen in any rehab group--who was president of her high school class and then became a heroin addict. She has a very distinguished nose and admits to liking LOL cats, which no one else in the group recognized but me.
- I am looking to sell blood and sperm in Albany. Anyone know of a place? Your mom?
- My reading has slowed a lot since I entered the house, but so far I've read "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath, "The Stranger" by Albert Camus, "The English Patient" by Michael O-something Indian, the entire Tenth anniversary issue of Tin House, and now have started on "Catch-22".
- I told my counselor at SPARC that I was feeling depressed, and he asked me how often I thought about suicide. I told him, "Everyday, but I've been reading a lot of Plath."
"Who?"
"Sylvia Plath."
"I'm not familiar with her."
>___<
- A girl I had a huge crush on in high school has arranged some kind of 5 year reunion of our high school graduating class over facebook for the 28th of November. She's done this nearly single-handedly; she's one of those people who is going to win a Pulitzer or Nobel prize and genuinely deserve it and I won't be the least bit jealous, which I think says a lot about her. I told her I would help her find a venue too, but then I got arrested and hadn't been able to contact her, and I felt really bad about it (but, of course, it wasn't my fault, so it's the County of Albany who should be sorry). Anyway, it's being held at a bar and I don't know if I'll be able to go, not because I have any qualms about drinking--or not drinking--but my case worker might not like the idea of putting myself in that situation. Which is too bad because I don't know anyone in Albany and I don't think I have ever been more lonely.
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November 3rd, 2009
02:07 pm
I've been reading a lot. I read a lot in jail, and I know I said I'd make a more complete entry about the whole thing, but I just haven't had time. I'm working on getting my laptop, claiming I need it to write and that writing is theraputic to me. Which it is, that's the truth. And I haven't been able to write properly for months. But if I do get that small ammenity, I will be able to tell you all about the ordeal. Here are some highlights:
- Slipped out of my handcuffs and almost got a felony charge.
- Saw a guy get stabbed.
- A guy on a tier was a chronic masturbator.
- A pedophile got jumped and beaten in his cell.
- Read a lot of books, most alright, some bad. James Patterson VERY BAD.
- Returned to biting my nails, which I haven't done since middle school.
- Lost 20 pounds because the food was so fucking horrible I didn't eat it.
- jail cell hooch in six days!
- I didn't shave for over a month!
Things to know about me now:
- I am living in "transitional housing," which is actually very nice and clean and in a great neighborhood, and the food is very good.
- I am drawing like a maniac. I have filled half a notebook already of good stuff.
- My hair is long and sexier!
- I go to "treatment" each day at the SPARC on Central Ave, which is an hour walk, but that's not so bad. It's group therapy, basically, and I'm the only one in the meetings with a college degree, so my job is to sit around and look bratty and bored.
- I also have to go to AA and NA meetings every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday night. I usually bring a book to these, or write down a list of every cliche, platitude, and motto that people throw out like a baited hook into a coy pond. Here's a few of them:
"God is in charge."
"God has a plan."
"I lived to use and used to live."
"Misery loves company."
"Clean and Serene."
All the time with this shit!
- I am going to Food Not Bombs at the Social Justice Center on monday nights at around 7:30 or so. I might start showing up at the tuesday night one at 87 Grand Street too.
If you have any suggestions of what I can do in Albany, let me know. So far, all I've thought of is go to the library to hit on chicks with glasses. HOT
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October 28th, 2009
01:56 pm - Postponed
Like I said, out of county jail after about two months. I'm living in a transitional housing place called "TASC" at 87 Columbia Street, which is a nice part of downtown Albany. If you'd like to mail stuff to me, here's the address:
Jon Covert
87 Columbia Street
Albany, NY 12210
I can't have a laptop or a phone there, nor can I leave without a chaperone to get to the library--for now--so contact will be few and far between (though I'd be seriously kidding myself at this point if I thought anyone cared too much). However, the story of how I got into jail is pretty funny.
Also, my step father has prostate cancer, so fuck him!
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October 23rd, 2009
02:29 pm
Thank you very much, Jasmine.
I have spent two months in county and don't have the time to get into it right now, but it was interesting, if a harrowing experience. I saw a guy get stabbed in the neck with a pencil! I'm in a neat place now and will leave you an address to send mail and corresspond and whatnot.
Anyway, talk to you later!
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October 16th, 2009
11:44 am
This is the address where you can reach Jon:
Jonathan Covert
Albany County Correctional Facility
840 Albany Shaker Rd
Albany, NY 12211
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10:56 am
As you read this, you'll realize this isn't Jon typing, because Jon is in jail and has been since, I believe, September something. For domestic assault against his step-father for which he may serve 9 months. I received a letter from him as he couldn't remember anyone else's address off the top of his head, and it was a long one. He asked me to transcribe it for this venue but I really don't have it in me.
All you need to know is that he is at Albany Correctional Facility, (I will post the address later if you care to write him,)and that no one is paying his $250 bail so in jail he remains. His court date is for some time in November. Use that address to find out what happened. I've already sent emails to Alex and Elly so, well, this is not news to you.
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September 3rd, 2009
02:15 am - The Cousin Who Hanged Himself In The Garage
Here's a thing: when my cousin Chris killed himself at eighteen, I remember being dressed in an oxford shirt and tie. I was in the very back of a minivan and all was quiet and I said, "I think I know why Chris killed himself."
Suddenly all the attention turned on me--the attention of my mother and of Chris' mother, her eye's glazed with tears and looking for meaning in his death. So I said what I thought: "He was really fat."
They ignored me after that and I had my first taste of hard liquor at the funeral, a good irish funeral. I was outside when my cousin tried to pull his brother's body out of the casket and Dan roughly said, "Get a hold of yourself!" I thought that was harsh, hearing of it later. I thought Chris' brother, Drew, should have pulled him out and done what he wanted. I thought it was his right. It was his brother and it was his grief to do what was necessary to confirm it. It was wrong of Dan to try to masculinize it.
But I did really think that was the reason. And though a hundred hot chicks showed up at the wake, even then I knew not one of them gave him the time of day. He was Eighteen and fat. "Why not?" I thought, even back then. "What else do you have?"
He wasn't nice to me anymore anyway. I don't glorify the dead like most people do. He wasn't nice to me towards the end, and from what I remember, they all laughed at my bad jokes. Therefore, I make his demise a reflection of myself. Why not? He isn't around to say otherwise.
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01:10 am - Sage, Rosemary's Baby, and Tyme.
My parents came back from multiple appointments today very irritated at each other and, despite their best efforts, it ruined my good mood. I had eaten fruit and yogurt for breakfast, too, and was out burying the network wire in the yard--independent of being asked to, as is typical of a responsible adult. And then the first thing Dan says to me when he steps out of the car, enters the house and chances upon the overhead network wire in hanging haphazardly in the shed annex is, "You can't just leave this wire like this."
Though clearly I was in the last stages of mounting it, i.e., burying it, where the next logical step would be for me to staple the cable to the studs. Fucking asshole. I think the problem is, my mother guilts him on every wrong move Alec makes, which, at this point, is every second of being alive. So Dan has to defend the decision to have a child, retroactively, by pointing out what I do wrong, by nitpicking the things I haven't yet accomplished in the the future.
Sound retarded? I am at wit's end once again, almost chopping Dan in the windpipe, packing my stuff, and leaving for Boston where I would surely freeze in a few month's time. Instead of doing all of that, I put in my headphones, seethed, and finished hand mowing the more delicate parts of the lawn, around the "orchard" trees, as they call them (a few pear trees that produce chode-looking sacks of rot, and an arbor tangled with a dead grape vine). I even picked up dog shit around the yard and dumped it into the tall grass. Then I returned the bottles and cans, the bulk of which were from my habitual nightly binges, but a good third of which were from my mother's caffeine addiction (how else can she dust every ensconced edge in the mantles with her fervorous OCD?) and Dan's green-tea-infused ginger ale binges (which he supposes calms his stomach from the stress of simply living with his family).
At dinner the other night, my parents mentioned how they went out to a great brunch after church, and I expressed my interest in an awesome brunch. Dan responded: "Why don't you come to church? It won't kill ya." (This is the same man who said, "If you're depressed, you just have to get a therapist. Just pull the trigger, just do it." And I said, "Good metaphor for a depressed person, at which he immediately did a face-palm.")
"I don't agree with it. I don't believe in it. A good breakfast isn't worth me waking up early to hear a bunch of dogmatic nonsense recited from some book for an hour."
The conversation was quickly deflected to the good things the church does and the things my parents don't agree with, which is mostly everything that Catholicism stands for. They can't peg themselves down because, depending on who the preacher is that day, they can't agree with what he is saying, whether he says it by virtue of being a true catholic asshole, or is a young, hip priest and omits his opinion so he doesn't ruffle any feathers or lose his job. My parents appreciate the latter, especially on the topic of abortion. They got to talking how they give money to an african child through the church and how the church helps stop the spread of AIDS, and I said how they don't stop AIDS because they don't help people procure contraception, etc. etc. You know the drill. Christians suck, my parents are stupid, I want to leave, I am still dependent on their fucking money and credit to pay off all these ambulances--glorified taxi cabs with worse service--just because I have anxiety attacks. I will say this: thank God for Alec: he's paid off half of my bills just by being a reckless asshat. The more havoc he wreaks, the more Dan tries to cover it up by throwing money at him, and the more my mother gets angry at Dan because of the revenue going towards Alec. So, to remedy it--Dan thinks--Dan allows my mother to throw a much lesser sum at me, because I require much less because I am much less irresponsible. And, in fact, I take nearly nothing from them, but benefit from their charity, like their leniency on loaning me money for a cheap car.
It's easy: I do things Alec would never do, I.E. yard work and dishes when or before I am asked to do them. It earns my keep. And I do not hold the same illusion as Alec seems to have, that my parents are "made of money," as they are not, for this stupid house is a gravedigger for currency, what with propane, electric, water, and taxes. Being courteous of how many showers I can take per day (where my minimalism comes in handy, as in, maybe I take a shower in a day) adds up, because Alec and his girlfriend--who for all intents and purposes lives with us--takes two showers each per day, and do seven loads of laundry a week. I do maybe a load a week.
I will abridge all of this later. I was looking through the "LJBook" that I downloaded when I thought I would quit this stupid thing an I found that many journal enteries are cryptic, at best, and can only be deciphered through other people's comments and the date on which they were written. So I need to be specific now, and long-winded. If you're bored, fuck you. Or fuck me. Anyway, there are better ways to pass the time.
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August 31st, 2009
11:28 pm - Conduit
I dug a trench from the barn to the house and laid a network cable housed in an old hose for a conduit. This is to connect the wireless modem in Dan's office, which does not extend well to the house, to my wireless router, which I will situate in the shed annexed to the kitchen. There is a problem, however: the 100-foot cable is raw at both ends and requires that I attach the broadband connections.
These connections are a pain in the ass. As far as I can tell, it requires me to sequence the color-coded, insulated wires in the network cable in the proper Solid-Striped-Solid order through a fragile little plastic jacket. I have worked to do this and think I have successfully engineered one end of the connection; the other still eludes me. I gave up at about 9 o'clock because my fingers were raw at jamming these little wires into this plastic sleeve without breaking the fucking thing, and trying to pull them through with a pair of pliers without snapping the tiny plastic barriers between other wires within the jacket, or crossing the wires as I pull them through. It's delicate work, even for these hands which are bred like a tinkerer or other clockwork artisan. My hands do tend to shake a bit towards the evening, though, and get worse as I get very frustrated. And these packets of sleeves and connectors aren't cheap: they are over fifteen bucks for twenty five. I have ruined a dozen trying to get these fucking wires to behave, and mangled a yard of wire at each end.
There's no garuntee it will work even then. If I'm sure I've got the connections down--and still it doesn't work--I will have to see if I can connect these two routers via a short cord in the same room (in theory, it should be fine). If that works, I will have to resort to getting a slightly cheaper Cat 5 cable pre-assembled (I am trying to assemble a Cat 6 now) but will lose the hundred bucks I spent on this cable.
The guy at RadioShack said I didn't need a Cat6 (I didn't tell him the whole situation) but he tried explaining, in broken English, that home networks don't use the same demands that require Cat 6 (as far as I could tell). I did not believe him, though I know no better.
What I know is this: I have a long distance to span from one wireless router to another and I need at least 80 feet of cable; The more cable one has, the more resistance is put up through the cable, thus the weaker the signal; Past 100 feet and you get virtually nothing. I am already worried about running a cable from one router to another. I am not "made of money," nor does "money grow on trees," or do I "make money hand over fist," whatever the fuck that means. I can't picture that one. I already spent a small fortune to attempt to make internets in my house--what more can I do?
On a side note: I am going to burn this box of letters. It is a grim reminder of failure and shortcomings and I'm better off never to see it again. Supposedly, Hemingway, at his first suicide attempt, claimed he did it because he couldn't remember anything after ECT for his dipsomania and manic depression. Well, I consider memory loss a godsend, and that would be miraculous for an atheist. I wish I couldn't remember anything. True, under pressure, I don't remember what I said here and there. I choose not to remember faults of my character, as best I can. They are innumerable. They go back as far as when no one laughed at my "little-person-in-a-box-pretending-to-be-a-robot-gag"*, when I was six or so, maybe further back. Maybe when I built an apartment and nintendo completely out of printer paper and scotch tape between the kitchen island and the wall in my grandmother's luxury home (she now lives in a trailer). Perhaps it was when I devised a scheme to fend off all girls from the tree on which my cousins and I would build our fort by using a pair of pliers to remove poison sumac and grenading the fruits over the stone wall at would-be female attackers (there were none next door, at the age of four or five, but we were aware of "girls" and the dangers and tribulations that we faced at their terrible hand). Maybe it was when I learned to say that the toy T-Rex, on whom the crude plastic cave-men were supposed to ride would "ka-ka", and then was scolded for using that word. Maybe it goes further back. Maybe I'm making it all up.
I bought an issue of Tin House the other day, the Tenth Anniversary addition. It has a lot of cool shit, including fiction by Alice Munroe, Charles Baxter, and (awesomely!) David Foster Wallace (who was featured in the premier issue, and is now dead by way of suicide; this story is about being on anti-depressants!). Also, there is poetry by Rick Moody, and Stephen King, and an interview with some MacArthur "Genius" Grant winner. I think there's some poetry by Sherman Alexie in there too. All in all, they could use an aestheticist on their side because Cabinet looks WAY better. You open Cabinet and you fucking want to read it all day, cover to cover, and you do. Tin House, while full of great stuff, is a sloppy mess in comparison.
I fucking love Cabinet. I finished my copy of the latest issue, "Testing," if anyone wants to borrow it. The "contributors" page inform
*I drew what I felt were buttons and gadgets all over a cardboard box and when my friends entered my apartment at the time, approached them, crawling on my hands and knees in this box, with a grabbing toy mechanism protruding from a hole I had cut in the front of the schematics of this cube. I was a robot, one who was programmed, I suppose, to clutch blindly (I had not devised eye-holes) and haphazardly at legs and appendages. That was the joke. It dragged on a bit too long and that was not the first of embarrassments, but one in the long string of no-hitters that I call my career as a human being.
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August 27th, 2009
10:14 pm - Forthcoming Revision
I had a good day today. It started out pretty shitty because I had to wake up really early (8 fucking o fucking clock, why do schedules start at times like that? Obscene!) and I felt really nauseous shoveling down a breakfast of yogurt and bran cereal and protein shake. I had to get to what I thought was just a "substance-abuse counselor" appointment, which, of course, I had no intention of complying with, but went to shut my mother up.
But what my mother failed to mention (and kind of a key part of treatment, and kind of the holy-grail for me) was that this person was also a psychoanalyst, which I realized about halfway into the session, when I got bored with the intake paperwork and started skipping around it, checking random boxes and tossing papers about. The therapist, Thelma, a Rhode Islander with a funny accent, took the hint in stride and helped me by asking the questions on the sheets and writing it down for me, which coaxing out funny stories about the information:
"Had I ever been hospitalized?"
"Yeah, but I don't really remember where or when. April or May sometime. And before and after that."
"Alright. For what?"
"suicidal Tendencies."
"How does it make you feel to talk about it?"
"...Mostly embarrassed."
"Sad?"
"No, embarrassed. Oops, I'm chewing on your pen."
"Well, that's presenting anxiety, so we'll write that down along with depression as symptoms you're currently presenting. Why did you try to kill yourself?"
So I told her the story (she hates Boston cops too!). Then she asked if I hung out with any friends in Albany and I said how I kind of lost all my friends after that, and she said, "Well then, you have to ask if they were really your friends, bunch of scaredy cats," and that's when it clicked.
Exactly! Bunch of fucking sanctimonious pussies!
So I left there feeling vindicated with the advice that yes, my idea to put myself on topomax was a good idea because it is shown to stabilize one's mood, and curb craving for food and alcohol, so stick with it, and take a multi-vitamin which should help with anxiety (as the alcohol is sucking up and passing nutrients which make you stable) and eat lots of fresh fruit, as the natural glucose will keep you happy and level, without the crash of a candy bar. MORE HELP AND POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT THAN I'VE HAD IN TWO FUCKING YEARS OF HOSPITALS. FUCK ALL OF YOU.
She did assume I was older than 23 (do I look older? I don't think so. I think I look pretty youthful) and she asked me when I dropped out, on which I quickly corrected her. "Oh no, I didn't drop out. I graduated!"
I told this to my mom and she said, "Thank God," and I said, "Thank me, my grades weren't bad at all. I got a 3.8, drinking and pills and all!" And she said she thought it looked like I wasn't going to for a while there. Ain't no God about it though.
Dan and my mother both mentioned to me how Dan's expert guitar teacher, performer and Guitar-afficianado/designer (I forget what the proper name is; "lutier" or something, anyway, "lute" being the base of it) is also on his third novel (hint: it's probably about guitars). Dan mentioned it and the guy wants to see what I write (or else Dan cajoled him into pity-reading my crap). I'm reworking one of my favorite and most under-achieving pieces right now, which is great because I haven't gotten into writing fiction in so long.
We were moving my uncle's shit oout of his house today and it dawned on me how my story "Procedure" should really end. It never sat right with me, because it's too much of a "then he woke up," kind of ending: it's a kind of twist that makes the reader believe one thing happened when really--and maybe more disappointingly--nothing happens. I find things like that to be true to life: you have an expectation of grand thing and it falls flat in to banality. But no one wants to read about that, and I certainly don't want to write it. I'm already busy living it.
Originally, the story was a test of my hand at a typical best-selling thriller. Which I think is actually quite daunting, as they run the gamut of about 400 hundred pages of pulp trash and witticisms. It's like a season of a TV series crammed into one book. I realized I couldn't do it in a short story, so abandoned it half way through. It can be done, and I will, but not now. Anyway, I came out with a lot of good ideas: a scandalous state-government bill called CitySafe, which sounds like a bank, and might as well be, for the proponents; a down-on-his-luck police officer, robbed of a partner and doomed to the graveyard shift in a dead end town taking a routine bullshit call in a boring neighborhood to unearth, what he thinks, is a cover-up murder to fund an out-sourced prison; a lowly file clerk hung by neck, naked, raped and brutalized under a ceiling fan in a pitch dark kitchen; a mustachioed (thus untrustworthy) sex-offender detective strong-arming the would-be hero patrolman from asking questions, which only heightens the patrolman's paranoia. A scandal which rises the top!
But it all lead to shit. I scrapped it and made it about naked people doing sex stuff and the police getting called on them and how undeserving it was. Then the Kung Fu guy died by accident and probably wished, a coupla seconds before he died, that my hero had kicked in the door, alerted by a nosey, wannabe noble neighbor. But I got to thinking, which I was lugging a huge 36-inch Sony Triton TV that is now mine: what is the meaning of "procedure" and what comfort and drawbacks does it offer these people?
So I told my mom about the revision I would make to this story to send to this guy who might know a publicist or something--if all the planets align and the age of aquarius comes upon me and shines it's orgiastic cum-spit into my eyes, or whatever ecstasy is supposed to make me jove-like--and as I was drawing pictures of R. Kelly waving a gun in a notebook on my bed, she knocks on my door to let me know she is going to reread my story. And I go, oh yeah, I should be working on that.
So I opened it up, fixed a few things and am getting into the bigger stuff now, as one must never jump into the middle of a short story to begin a revision. Now, there are only two possible outcomes for "a girl hanging from a ceiling fan" in this procedure, and those will play out as described in the original story. Either it's a bunch of paper work or it's a little paper work and you all laugh about it afterward. That's it. i guess the ending is, are you cut out for a life where you can come to the logical conclusion of a situation when you have a formula to follow, before the catalyst of the situation is even introduced?
I guess I'll post it later. I've haven't given up all hope on my sasquatch story, but it will have to wait.
By the way, I've watched all of "Trapped in the Closet," and it ends with everyone but the pimp possibly having AIDS. I don't think the pimp has AIDS. Or the old people. Everyone else though, I think they all have AIDS. Well, actually, I think it's just the seven of them: Sylvester, Kathy, Rufus, the gay dude with AIDS, and Sylvester's wife. See, the cop, bridget, and big man don't have it because the cop used a rubber. That was made explicit.
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12:10 am - As Cool As Hair Makes Explicit
I went on a date tonight. Maybe not a real date, as there was no romance intended or implied, beyond that we were of the opposite sex. At first glance, she was not a woman I would give a second glance to: I showed up to her upper-middle class, expertly manicured, sterile suburban home, deeply inset on Elizabeth Court--a dead-end culdesac, where the two-story brick-and-glass-and-vinyl fronted houses look identical: they must have a neighborhood ordinance committee that sends you to jail if water restrictions create a brown spot on your lawn. Anyway, I show up in my tight girl jeans (unisex, in my opinion) and my black t-shirt, with my bandana tied loosely around my neck (admittedly, not serving much function unless I'm on the road, where I found it quite handy, but more of a status symbol, accent, or attache here)--a shade of classic punk rock, but the very visage of it to the uptight Albany girls who want to date a so-called "bad boy"--only to be answered by a pretty petite blond girl wearing a pink sweater, gold wrist bands, and a jewel-studded hair-band thing that rests in a crescent pushing back her salon-colored hair (I lack the language necessary to describe her shoes without unjustly making her sound like a prostitute. They were black and looked hard to walk in). By all accounts, not my type.
My type, as my record displays, are big titted, "alternative" brunettes. Frequently, someone expresses themselves through style (which isn't always a safe bet nowadays with the homogenization of punk and alternative rock--it doesn't necessarily go that one's style should separate one from a herd of celebrity-infatuated posers and worshipful fletchers). This woman, was, from a glance, an Abercrombie chick, dead set on the prissy-side of the high school popularity contest, over-achievement, and scoring high in the holier-that-thou bitchery department.
To make matters worse, I had been nervous to go on this date all day, or anxious to define it as a date, which is wasn't, necessarily. Nonchalance is cruel like that.
And at first things were very awkward. But, as the conversation moved on, she is very cool and we have a lot in common. She never let the conversation lull into the off-beat: just before it was about to, she chimed in expertly with a question to me indirectly relating to herself. A memorable one was, "Do you play," she started shyly, "any kind of videogames?" And I said, of course. My PS3 is actually in the shop, and her eyes brightened. "You have a PS3? I am so jealous. The only reason I would get one is for Final Fantasy Thirteen."
"You play Final Fantasy?"
"RPG's are practically the only thing I play. And Grand Theft Auto, but who doesn't?"
Then I became genuinely curious about if she played FF12, which she did, but thought was boring. She asked me if I played FF6, and I said I never got into anything before FF7 and she admitted she didn't have a PS at the time of FF7, but rented one every weekend and would play FF7 on it until she had to return it, and it got her every time when Aeris died and when Sephiroth pulled off Jenova's mask, she had the flu and dreamed about it. I said I played al ot of shooters and she went, feh, and I said, like Metal Gear Solid 4, and she said, "Well, yeah, but it's Metal Gear Solid..." How do you not high-five this person?
Other points of interest:
- She has OCD.
- She is diabetic
- She used to drink a lot but no longer does. She asked if I was a "partier" to which I gave the mixed response, "Yes. I never go out because I never get the chance, but I love to drink."
- She learned HTML in middle school.
- She is a Mac user, but we talked a while about the Windows OS
- Almost every song that came on my iPod she liked, mentioning Rilo Kiley, Amy Winehouse, and Travis. At one point I just said, "Don't you know I like all the coolest shit?"
- I couldn't help but to sing, on an aside while she was getting a cup of iced water at an Orange Julius, a song Julien sang constantly: "Your body's made of water so drink that shit!" It's more like a diddy they will never air, and I don't know where he got it from. She liked it.
- we saw 500 Days of Summer (Pretty Damn Good) and she also has seen Brick and Mysterious Skin, two movies that most people have never seen.
- She also hates Roger Ebert, and when I cited part of his movie review of Fight Club, she remembered it and called him a fat idiot.
- She has read my livejournal before. A long time ago. She said, "Yeah, it was really dramatic and you and your girlfriend were always fighting." I said, yeah, but we're really good friends now! Thanks Elly!
- She likes that I like Tarantino. She wants to see Inglourious Basterds.
I am not enamored, but that is good for me, and different, as so often I build a person up and am let down by my expectations. But for once--and since I have not been on a "date" since I was 16--I think I did well, covertly paying for dinner and dismissing a debate over it, and the same with the movie tickets and not bringing it up, as if she owed me any favors in return, and dropping her off at her house immediately after, no pressure (and none wanted, because I have to get up early, for once). And no care for more than a friendship, which I hope to cultivate because she is really cool.
Well done, Jon. You truly are as cool as your hair makes explicit.
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