Live, if only for the stories

    They say history is written by the winners.  But I want to hear from the people who’ve had their teeth kicked in.  Any time I see someone with a face-scar, or a face that sits sideways from too many long nights, or someone with that thousand yard stare in their eyes, I want to slide a beer across the table, get comfortable on the stool, listen.  They’ve got the best stories.  They tell them painful and disgusting, but with a smile.  I guess that’s what I’m into.  For too long, I’ve pretended, ignored the hook-hand, or the gray, dead eye.  The truth is, that’s the story.  That’s the one I want to hear.

    So, the answer — either crawl into those dark caves, headfirst, like a point-man in Vietnam — or miss it altogether.  It’s possible to get a taste on the internet, I guess.  You can wade into the darknet.  Let the computer light silhouette you in a dark room.  Grimace, wretch in your office chair.  Watch beheading videos, watch pornstar interviews, watch street fights, police brutality, interventions, pimple-popping, tooth extractions, Japanese squid porn.  You can read all the articles in every magazine from now until the end of time, but you’re getting a diluted version. You’re getting editors and poetic license.  Whenever there’s a screen or a dog-eared bundle of paper between you and the story, there’s a bit missing.  Publishers, much like the kitchen staff at high end restaurants, like to keep the edges of the plates clean.  In the middle you might have a sliver of ass-meat, still pulsating, but they can’t show you the bloody apron.  Or the slaughter’s sickle.  Or the prison pen where the animal in question chewed through its own hoof out of fear and boredom.

    Then there’s the fear, always fear, of crawling into a cave and never finding the way out again.  For me, it’s different.  It’s the possibility of not having any desire to crawl back out.  I’ve already got a hunger for it.  Disaster.  Chaos.  Whatever you want to call it.  I’m not apologizing for it.  They’re more interesting.  Gentle, clean, law abiding citizens — they’re good for alibis — not for entertainment.  Not for fun.  

    So you risk becoming the subject.  Risk becoming one of them.  When do you realize it?  Do you one day recognize your own cigarette-tortured voice as feedback on an abused prison phone?  Do you have your moment of clarity in a bar? Seeing your reflection in a pair of unfamiliar eyes who’ve taken a familiar interest?

    It’s a delicate line to dangle from.  Dangerous.  But better than the alternatives.  Better than a hundred years of white picket fences.  Better than sympathy laughter and all the soulless silk ties that mediocrity can buy.

    If history is written by the winners, I’ve got no interest in writing history.  I don’t even bother reading it.  Give me fuckery and fiction any day of the week.  Give me truth too, but serve it cold, on a dirty plate.

    *There’s a third side to it.  A stinking, damp, sorrowful side.  The sad saps who have spent so much time losing, and never earned any good stories.  They lived timidly, tucked away in opium dens, tucked away in office meeting, until their eyes grew beady, distant.  They lost too early, or too late in life.  Tapped out before, or after, the prime story years had come about.  That’s a slippery shit-slope.  Worse than a boring winner — a whole life, without any good stories.