Hello friend,

It’s been a while since we’ve spoke. I’m sorry I’ve been busy. It’s not that I don’t care,  I promise. Time is slipping through the cracks and I’m losing my opportunity to relax before I can’t anymore.

Things are happening again. There’s a constant nagging in my ear that rings like an alarm I can’t shut off and I’m not sure how to stop it. It feels strange. I’m out of my element; A blindfolded backseat driver in a landscape I don’t recognize. I don’t know who or what to expect and I’m beginning to question the reasoning and validity behind the guise of friendship.

I’m sorry that I never come to you with good news. (Not that any of this is necessarily bad by any means.) But the truth is, if life was the way social media portrays, there would be nothing interesting to talk about. Because good news can’t spread like a virus the way a good bit of gossip can.

You don’t go to a therapist to talk about how happy you are.

Two new solo shots from the photo-shoot for our new album, Reincarnate. Both captured by Chad Michael Ward.

Untitled

Hanging on your every breath like a bird without its wings, I float through the sticky air from a post spring rain. Your words are warm against my neck and your aura radiates, meshing into mine. Crows crash violently above and water stretches for miles, turbulent and destructive- Blue as far as the eye can see and into the horizon. Silence. Nothing but waves falling into the sand below. A southern wind blows against our backs, nudging us closer to the edge- The precipice overlooking a life laid out before me. The violent ripples of days and years yet to come. Chunks of rock and debris stretch up toward us- The petrified hands of a thousand souls lost at sea, reaching to pull us down. Like the devil on my shoulder, you lean in and whisper: "Jump."

The Future Of Man

I've been wanting to post something on this topic for the past few months, and every time I start over, I get to a point where I say, "what's the point?". It's so frustrating to see how little people give a shit about the on-goings in the world, or even our country. I understand, though. A year ago, I didn't know what GDP meant, or what a debt ceiling was, much less what was going on in Iran, or Syria at the time. The point I'm making here by writing all of this, is that this shit is fucking important! I've never, ever been a political person. I still don't consider myself one, because most of the stuff I read up on is the gloomy truth that CNN or MSNBC will NEVER air. I've grown passionate about what's going on in our country and abroad because, first and foremost, it affects ME personally like never before in our past. And you should feel the same, because it affects YOU just as much, on the same level. They say fear is a great motivator, let's see how accurate that is. I realize that many people have a very short attention span, so I'm going to be as brief as possible, and I'm going to very generally summarize everything I've read, and been keeping updated on in the last few months. 1. Economics I could write about ten pages on this topic for everyone to comprehend the big picture. I actually just had about four paragraphs written on this one topic alone and deleted it all to summarize the main points. The information is out there, use your friend google to help you dive into these topics more if you're interested. To put it in a very small nutshell: Our country is broke. And the only reason we're able to continue functioning is because the Federal Reserve (the company that prints our money) has been pumping around $80 billion into our economy each month, which at the same time is devaluing our dollar. We are also living in the biggest financial bubble in history right now. What this means is that our system is being propped up on faulty legs, and at some point in the near future those legs are going to give out. Why does this affect you? What happens when our system gives out? Our stock market crashes, banks shut down, money goes, "see ya!" When this happens (it's not an "if" anymore, as numerous economists have said within the next 3-12 months this is GOING to happen) stores will be wiped clean of food and supplies, power goes out because the people running the power plants aren't getting paid anymore, water shuts off because there's no one to pay these people for their work, people will lose their homes because they can't afford to live there, etc etc. I've read multiple times that the average american household has about three days worth of food in their house. After this is gone, people will take to the streets getting food for their families any way they can, yes, this means killing YOU for food. Law and order will go out the window almost overnight. It will be utter chaos and devastation for those unprepared. Don't believe me? Take a look for yourself at what happened in populated parts of Venezuela. Many people who realize that their life savings are gone in the blink of an eye will choose to end their lives. There will be immediate backlash against the government for "screwing" the country, and there will be riots. I read a quote once that fits perfect here: "When people lose everything and have nothing left to lose, they lose it." Because of this, there will be an extreme increase in murder, burglaries, rape, etc. If people act like they do during Black Friday, imagine what it will be like when people know that their grocery stores won't be restocking their shelves ever again. The funniest part about all of this to me is that a species as smart as we are accepts buying the basic necessities of life. These are things we can get ourselves. People did it before there was money, and people can do it again. You can't build a country on top of a faulty system that was doomed to fail from the start. People need to realize that the money they have, they don't own, at all. All the Federal Reserve did was turn our gold-backed dollar into something that was worth an IOU. Then they capitalized on this in the form of inflation, taxes, interest, etc. Our country is basically a complex pyramid scheme run by the corporate bankers. As long as this nation is stuck in the mindset that they "own" their money, we will never fix ourselves of this problem, and we'll continue to let them drive our country into the ground. 2. Fukushima If you don't know what this is, I would suggest you look it up. For a while, I was completely consumed by the economic collapse scenario. Until I read about this, and my next topic. These two could be potentially catastrophic for all life on earth as we know it. Again, in a small nutshell: Fukushima is a nuclear power plant in Japan. Because of the tsunamis and earthquakes over there in 2011, the emergency cooling systems in the plants failed to work properly. Over the next few weeks three of the reactors had semi-meltdowns and the company ended up dumping TONS of radioactive water into the Pacific ocean. Because of this, you can bet that the fish you eat is probably tainted with radiation, if it's from the Pacific ocean. Which, surprise! Can kill you. This radiation is eventually going to to eventually circle the globe and create big problems for us down the road. This is already causing us a major problem here: Children born on the west coast, right after the meltdown and up to now, are already significantly more likely to develop hypothyroidism because of the radiation from across the water. Another problem is that the fourth reactor is severely crippled. It's standing on pools of soft mud from when the workers flooded the reactor with sea water to help keep it cool. If it happens to fall by any means, start praying. How does this affect you? In addition to the radiation issue listed above, Just ONE of the fuel rods inside of the reactor has the potential to kill almost 3 billion people. How many fuel rods are in there? Around 1,500. So, if this thing explodes, it has the ability to kill 45 billion people…..or, the equivalent of our entire human race almost six and half times. They are working on taking care of this as of right now, but it is HIGHLY dangerous and will take quite some time to finish. Let's cross our fingers that there isn't another strong earthquake over there any time soon. Oh, and the latest article I could find said that there were still leaks dumping highly radiated water into the ocean. 3. Peak Oil/Climate Change This is, in my opinion, the most important one. Because this one has the most widespread catastrophic effect on everything. Peak oil is the fact that our oil consumption has peaked, around 2005. We are in an oil shortage (which is why oil prices are rising) and are now in the plateau before the devastating fall of the oil age. Why do you think our country is so hell bent on stealing oil from other countries? Well, that's fine, you say. Well, it's not. Everything we use is made from oil- plastic, rubber, car bodies, anesthetics, etc etc. Almost everything we use today was made from oil in some form or another. Before the rise of oil, our population was sustained at around 1 billion people. After we figured out how to use oil to make all of these things we have now, our population has shot up to over 7 billion in a very short time. It's been exponentially growing ever since. What happens when we can't sustain our oil to make products to provide for all of these people? A die-off happens. We can very well experience an average excess death rate of 100 million per year every year for the next 75 years An ever growing side effect of trying to produce enough to sustain an exponentially growing population is the damage we are doing to our world. The World Wildlife Agency is saying that at our current rate of consumption the earth needs 1.5 years to replenish the natural resources we consume in one single year. They are also saying that by the year 2030, we will need the equivalent of two planet earths just to meet our yearly demands, if we continue on the path we are headed now. Obviously we don't have two planet earths, and we don't have 1.5 years in a single year to replenish what we need. This is very dire news for us. The processing plants we use to refine oil spew hundreds of chemicals into the sky, which is depleting our ozone layer, and warming our environment. I used to think "global warming" was a myth, and a dumb one. But the more I'm reading, the more I'm realizing that this shit is real. If we don't stop polluting our environment by trying to provide for people that we already cannot provide for, our world climate is predicted to shoot up 3-6 degrees celsius. This doesn't sound like much at first glance, but even if it went up 3.5 degrees, our climate would be unsustainable for human life. Fracking is an important part of this, as well. See, since we have scarce pure oil, companies have figured out a way to bore deep into the earth, inject uranium which is supposed to push out oil they can drill. This has been known to cause violent earthquakes, as well as poisoning our earth from the inside. This process is currently degrading around 360,000 acres of land and emitting around 450,000 tons of air pollution. And I thought climate change was made up. Why do you think we've had so many intense earthquakes all over the country lately? Mining tar sands is another way we've been trying to avoid this oil crisis. Which is by far the dumbest idea out of all of these. Tar sands are a combination of clay, sand, water and a heavy black oil called "Bitumen". This can be processed to create an alternative to the more traditionally pumped oil. The problem is, it takes around two tons of tar sands and seven barrels of water to create one barrel of pure oil. Not to mention the greenhouse gases and toxic emissions produced by this process is just a nightmare. So basically, putting more money and effort into creating small quantities of oil, and polluting the earth worse than regular oil mining. Needless to say, this is all very bad news for us. Even NASA did a study this year and concluded that continuing on the path we are on now would have catastrophic effects on our existence, saying our entire world would collapse within the next few decades. We have about three years before the climate change we are causing is irreversible. How does this affect you? The point of all of this is to get people to wake up. People are constantly saying "let's make the earth a better place for our grandchildren". Yeah, right! This is happening RIGHT NOW. This is going to happen in our lifetimes. We need to stand up and make a change for everyone living today. It all boils down to one thing or the other. If an economic collapse doesn't take us out, the radiation from Fukushima has the ability to do so. If neither of those do, the peak oil crisis will most certainly. Who knows? Maybe all three will happen. Or another world war (nuclear this time), which would kill us all anyway. The point is: If we don't divert how our society and world functions in the next couple years to something more positive, we are looking at the extinction of the human race within the next twenty to twenty-five years.

Suddenly Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc, doesn't seem so important, does it?

Time

Things change. Sometimes there's not a whole you can do about it. Being able to adapt and grow along with the twists and turns that come with time is one of the only things you can do to live through the chaos. To keep your head above water when the tide is pulling you under. Everything is impermanent. And people stay the same as much as they don't. Sometimes you completely lose sight of who you are because you think you're doing the right thing. Am I doing the right thing now? Deep down I know what's best for me better than anyone else does. Nothing is coincidence, synchronicity will attest to that. Every moment in life is an opportunity to make you a better person. Because it's impossible to grow without struggle. As Ville Valo once said, "you can't enjoy heaven without the occasional glimpse of hell". This hourglass has dropped it's last grain of sand. Next chapter.

I See You

Now that I have the answers I was looking for all along, I can't help but to see myself in a different light. A place where everything is black and white and there are no shades of gray in between. It's set in stone, and it's now impossible to go back and un-see the truth. This is who I have been all along, buried beneath the facade of who I thought I was. I want to believe my lies. All of them. I want to think that this doesn't change anything, but the truth is: it does. It changes the entire way I see myself- I am a disease; a slow eating cancer. This is the truth. And this will never change. This is who I have kept hidden from myself all of these years- so subconsciously at work that I couldn't see it for myself. Maybe monsters are real, but I don't have to think about them like everyone else does because, deep down underneath it all, they're just like me.

Off in the distance there’s a storm brewing. Intense neon flashes cut through the looming black, and the sun hangs like a portrait in the corner of the world, its peach tint nearly beyond the horizon. Delicate reverberations drift from nowhere to here, the echo of underlying softness comforting and benevolent. Between gusts of cyclonic wind skating clouds across the sky, the iridescent glow of the fading sun is sometimes sallow, and others, a bloody red. Ahead, the dangerous black thing inches forward, and through the soft chimes dancing in the air come screaming thunderous booms that vibrate the asphalt beneath my feet. In the shadows of dying sunlight there’s a fuzzy static in the sky. Then it hits me. Clear specks cover my clothes in spattered, temporary stains. Sprinkling showers. Then, three-carat diamond size marbles of ice. Within seconds, the gust is so strong that its pulling air out of my lungs. Like sticking your head out of a car window going sixty, I’m gasping for air, and these marbles from the sky are pelting my skin leaving tiny, open welts.

Long ago there was a structure here. A sturdy brick box with a concrete foundation and crimped metal roofing. Over time, the mortar began to fail and, storm after increasingly violent storm, these healthy hunks of clay and concrete crumbled and withered from nature’s elements until it was nothing more than a skewed, tattered, two-foot-tall mausoleum. Now, it’s a pile of rubble and distorted sheet metal.

Glittering above me, the storm is at it’s peak, drowning the surrounding field, the ice ripping my clothes, and the wind stealing my air. Jolts of skin-melting electricity shoot into the ground nearby, and the soft, calming chimes in the distance are gone. So deafening is the storm that I try to yell, and it is nonexistent in the roaring thunder, like it was stolen from the same thieving wind that continues to take my breath. Looking back at the pile of rock that was once my shelter, the wind calms for only a brief moment, enough for a quick swallow of wet, chilled air that stings when it hits my lungs.

The sopping mound of stone sits silent, poker-faced, and stern, offering no tranquility or resolution. Opening my arms, I exhale as the last spark of lightning streaks across the sky, painting a single violet-frayed finger in the darkness that points exactly to where I stand.

Sweet Pandemonium

If there was some way to say everything that needed saying, then it may all come spewing out like the oatmeal-soup bile of a bulimic, and this would be a thousand pages long. But nothing makes sense anymore, and trying to retain full composure is faulty at best. Unfortunately, this means confusion on top of confusion. And in this world, confusion is everything. It’s what makes us vulnerable, and what keeps us weak. We are, by nature, afraid of what we don’t understand, and this binds us in constant purgatorial restraints. We are so far beyond anything even remotely close to the every day norm, that when this becomes all you know, it’s hard to understand the reality that the rest of the world lives. To find a common interest, or to communicate in a way that has any meaning is next to impossible. I’ve spent so much time thinking about everything in my life. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to comprehend a good single-digit percentage. I’m at a point in my life where the ties and bindings I thought I needed are slowly starting to untie and loosen, and it is without a doubt one of the most interesting things I’ve ever experienced. It’s as if I’m watching the landscape around me crumble bit by bit, and the only thing I’m able to do is watch, because its like seeing someone drown. And little by little, my life is land-sliding and I’m watching the foundations of buildings and landmarks pick up speed. Shortly, I feel that I’m going to see it all crash to the ground, and my world is going to tilt. Dipping ever so slightly into the deep end, giving me a taste of the chaos that will be out of my hands beyond that point. I’m in a continuous loop of my past, wondering how the impossible odds were in my favor and how I’m in the same mental state I was years ago with such different scenery. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but I can feel it with an intensity that’s inexplicable. It’s spilling out of the seams, having filled up somewhere deep within me, and if I don’t relieve some of the pressure I’m going to burst in some violent explosion where all my insides are spread out over the distance of a mile.

I’m not asking for you to understand, or for you to feel sorry, because you won’t understand, and feeling sorry wont bring peace to my internal pandemonium. I’m asking my mind to file away the clutter and bring some sort of order to the mess that is my brain. I’m asking to let go of the impulses, and let go of the constant backseat narration that comes with my every waking moment. I need some sort of serenity. I need undisturbed sleep. And most importantly, I need complete control.

When I close my eyes all I can see is open fields for miles, the leaves ruffling and dancing in the slight breeze. The sun is on my face, and a pack of smashed cigarettes hide in my back pocket. I don’t know where I am, or where I’m going from here, but all I can hear from somewhere in the distance is “keep it together”- an infinite track list on repeat.

Another new solo.

Hexagonal tiles are everywhere. A giant mosaic of blurred faces and chaotic cities to which ive been before. Maybe in this lifetime, or maybe in another. All these people, they bare such striking resemblance to people ive met before. But I’m somewhere else. When I wake up, I’m not entirely sure I’m really me, or that things are the way they seem. There’s such a strong disconnect from the reality I think I know, that everything feels like I’m an observer. An outsider envading someone else’s life. Where everything is so strange and surreal that this cant be mine. Sometimes I lay here and wonder when this feeling started, or where I was when I first noticed a shift in my perception. I’m in a perpetual state of déjà vu, and everything is constantly blurred in that eerie dream-like glow, and the more I take notice, the longer the feeling lasts. Sometimes I think that one day I’ll wake up and this feeling will be permanent, and I’ll never be able to remember what it felt like to be "me". I’m so far away. Gone on another planet. Somewhere where I’m constantly fighting myself because I want to stay here and be real. To be present enough to feel something tangible. Ive been having dizzy spells every day, and ive had one solid bowel movement in the last three weeks. I have some strange, instinctual feeling that I’m slowly wasting away. As if my mind is gone and my body is beginning to shut down. They say that when you daydream, your soul is temporarily gone and flowing with your thoughts until you come back to reality. What if my soul has been gone for so long that I’m lost in a giant fabricated daydream? What if my soul was never there to begin with? Maybe that’s why I feel so hollow and tired. And maybe that’s why I cant remember things anymore, because my recollection of events has changed in some way similar to how a dream moves along its timeline. I cant be certain of anything anymore. Ive never felt so lost inside of my own head- A strange sort of neutral where things are bland and gray and time crawls along. I'm so tired of being tired, and these same sights and sounds are on repeat. My life is stuck in an infinite loop, and I don’t know who, or what I am anymore.

Party

This is a story loosely based on my "adventures" when I used to go out to parties with friends. There's two more coming that are in direct relation to this that will make this a sort of three part story.

So, here it is:

"....Party? Pt. I"

The music is turned up half a rotation on the silver knob. "Volume 35", the display reads. Bass pounds through the subwoofers, a machine gun ensemble of kick drum and chugging guitar riffs. Rocky's trying to tell a story, and you can't hear anything over the chorus melody in the back seat. 

This is the winter before I stopped drinking.

There's six of us. Four crammed in Rocky's black-cherry Scion TC, along with empty soda cups and stale fast food to-go bags. Lisa and Julie following. By this time, my system is full of six bottles of Blue Moon. 

"Pre-funking", Rocky calls it.

"Are they still behind us?" John asks, flicking ash off the cherry of his cigarette. Alex doesn't move next to me, eyes drooping and red. Stoned.

Looking through the back window, Lisa's swerving. Her big truck back and forth between oncoming traffic and hitting parked cars. She's dancing, paying more attention to the music than her surroundings. Julie's just laughing in the passenger seat. The big ending of the song reaches it's climax, and secretly, there's a mild hope in the back of my mind that they'll get in a head-on collision.

In a perfect world, I'd remember why I make the decisions I do, even when I'm drunk.

Out in front of the garage, on the right side of this house off 22nd ST, we're smoking weed. Alex, John, and me. A chunky college student in a red Cougars sweatshirt approaches. "Can I get in on that?". Like all smokers are friends.

The bud glows orange in the hole on top of the shiny, red apple. Alex takes a huge drag, his lips perfectly sucked around the end of the carved out tunnel in the side, like he's eating an asshole.

"You gotta stop hanging out with Lisa," John's telling me, as Alex lights the bowl up again. "She's bad news."

The drug smuggling fruit is passed around the circle a few times, and my vision is fogging up. "I'm good," the smokey red thing coming by me a fourth and fifth time. John blows a big cloud of smoke into the air above us, and it slowly dissipates and merges into the natural fog hanging over the city.

Standing there in the dark, my toes are numb.

Rocky's walking up the driveway, following the row of shrubs on the left. "You guys are still out here?" He says, "Let's go the fuck inside, it's freezing."

Inside the party, the room is an oversized basement full of people we've never seen before. A bar sits at the far end, in front of a big mirrored wall and mood lighting on the back shelf. The rest is big empty space for mingling, or dancing. There's couches sporadically placed, and a hallway down one side of the room where people are fucking in the bathroom. Hip hop blasts through the speakers and we're talking in a big circle just louder than normal speaking volume.

Usually, I'm not a fan of this sort of gathering, but I figured it would be better to try and meet new people than to sit around at home. I am looking for love, after all.

Jimmy starts telling a story about work, and I'm heavily debating whether or not I should have come here. Mid sentence, he stops and asks, "who are all these people?"

Glancing around the room at all these faces, they look distorted in the dim lighting. Like hollow shadows you can't get out of your dreams, or the warped, nightmarish features people acquire when you're having a bad acid trip. Giving it a second thought, I decide to drink instead of making small talk. "I don't know," I say.

                                                              *

Beer after beer, Rocky tells worse stories than before, and my ability to comprehend is quickly diminishing. Lightweight.

John comes over and interrupts. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, no one cares," he says, the words rolling quick off his tongue like a mantra under his breath.

He turns to me and asks to be his wing-man. "You see those two girls over there?", looking over his shoulder and pointing at a pair of attractive blondes. My head nods. The roof of my mouth is dry against my tongue, and every taste-bud scrapes along like I'm licking rocks. Swallowing, words try to come out, but it's just slurred garbling. "Alright, come with me," he says.

I'm following quick behind, almost stepping on his heels so I don't lose him in the crowd of people. It's not that the room is overly crowded, I'm just drunk enough to get lost if I don't focus. 

When we approach the two, they're just standing in the middle of the room talking to each other, holding their mixed drinks. Their hair looks curled and nice. Lots of volume. They're both wearing skirts, and dangly necklaces. One has an owl, and the other, a locket. 

John introduces himself, and then me. He's trying to play suave. Like he's done this before.  He gives his big blue puppy dog eyes a few times while they're talking, and tilts his head to one side to pretend like he's really interested. You don't need a wing-man if you're truly interested. Girls know that. He tells them that we go to med school, and that we're both aspiring neurologists. "Do you know what a neurologist even is?" My whisper is subtle and John doesn't hear. The last of my beer goes down with ease. This might be my eleventh.

People are dancing around me, grinding on each other. Dry humping. The room spins and tilts with every jerk of my head. My mind drops into a purgatory. A blank canvas where nothing appears. My mouth is still dry, and all that my brain paints is water. 

"We just heard about this party through a friend," the girl with the striped skirt says. "We don't really know anyone here."

My eyes scan back around the room and the present moment hits me. Why are we standing here? Who are these girls? Turning and walking away, John's by himself watching me stagger over to the couch where Alex is sitting. "Sweet," he says turning to follow. The girls look confused, and continue talking to each other. Under his breath he says, "well, there goes that plan."

My friend, Ryan, says skirts are for sluts, anyway.

                                                                    *

A few beers later my hips are swinging to the music. Up against some girl. The music is so loud I can feel the bass beating in my chest.

John's sitting on the black leather couch on the side of the room. His head is in his hands. Too much weed.

Rocky grabs my arm and yanks me away from my dancing partner. She's sweating, and so involved she doesn't notice my absence. 

"Let's go." Again, words are trying to come out, but there's nothing there. "You don't even like dancing, what are you doing?"

A song later Lisa's drunk-driving me back to Rocky's house, and my inebriated brain is in and out of consciousness. Lights pass by in flashes. She keeps jerking the wheel, and my head's tilting with the movements like an overused rag doll. 

By the time we get back, my eyes are almost too heavy to keep open. 

We're sitting in Rocky's basement, and Lisa's talking too loud. He shushes her and says "you're gonna wake up my parents."

She apologizes, giggles, and then pulls a half empty bottle of Carlo Rossi out of the fridge and pours us both a full red cup. "I can't drink anymore."  

"Come on," She's telling me. "I can't drink alone. Then I'd be an alcoholic." 

I look around the room for some backup, but Rocky's in his room, John's in the bathroom, and Alex is passed out on the couch. So deep a sleep, he might've been borderline comatose.

She shoves the glass into my hands and the red liquid swishes around inside. A drinking glass had never looked so uninviting. I think she notices my hesitation because when I look up, she's staring at me with anticipation and says, "come on, a little wont hurt". Taking a deep breath, I tilt my head back and press the cup against my lips so she'll shut up. Sipping, the red liquid is bitter all the way down. My mouth starts to water, and my tongue gets heavy. Turn to the side- dry heave. I try to hide it, but it's too obvious. My entire body is convulsing as I try to keep my insides from spilling all over the shiny linoleum floor. My eyes are watering and Lisa's giggling and telling me to drink more. Forcing down the rest of the glass, the urge to throw it all back up is a watery feeling in the back of my throat. "I need to lay down."

When I stumble down the hall to Rocky's room, he's sitting on his computer. "I need somewhere to sleep", I say.

I follow him back out into the living room, and he grabs a big mattress from against the wall and drops it in the middle of the floor next to the couch. "It's not a bed, but it'll do", he tells me. When it hits, dust flies up, and there's a big brown stain in the middle of the sewn pattern. I cough when the dust particles rise up to my face because it feels right. I can be an asshole sometimes. "Yeah, it's gonna have to do."

The springs dig into my back when I lay down, and Rocky covers me with an oversized indian blanket decorated with a tiger. Looking to my right, Alex is there. His mouth hangs open, and his face is distorting with the spin of the room. I close my eyes, and my body feels like it falls into the white light behind my eyelids, spiraling all the way down.

Three days later, I'm on the phone with Alex. He tells me Lisa and I had sex that night. News to me. Surprising news, to say the least.

"What?!" 

On the other end, I hear him say, "Ow, fuck dude". 

"Sorry, I just....what? I don't get it. I don't remember anything. I don't know how that could be possible."

 I try to pull that night out of my memory, but all I'm coming up with is a collection of still frames. It's like digging into a bucket of lukewarm water to find the remains of a soggy loaf of bread. Faces, beers, and flashes of light. Oh, and the red wine. The dreaded red wine that I almost puked up all over the spotless floor. I definitely remember that. Where was Rocky and John? Who was I dancing with? Where could we have had sex at?The night had so many missing pieces that there was no way I could put them together.

"Oh, it's possible", he says. 

"I'm sure it is. I just don't get how I could even 'perform' in that state of mind." 

I remember learning in health class that the more you drink, the harder it is to get an erection. I wonder if that applies to hormonally charged young adults, or if we have super power-like sexual advantages over our future selves of ten years senior. I just don't get it.

"Don't worry, you were fine." He laughs and says, "I watched the whole thing."

Nephew

She's waddling down the hallway. Penguin walking. Each step slow and steady to stay focused as the contractions hit. Only four centimeters dilated, the nurses tell her to walk the circle around the hospital to help induce hard labor. Every corner she's pausing to let the pain subside. 

Oxytocin- Stimulating uterine tightening and allowing the cervix and lower part of the uterus to stretch and relax to prepare for delivery.

My sister's holding her smooth stomach. A soccer ball riddled with big red lightning bolts. Stretch marks. She's pressing on the top just saying, "feel this. It's hard." 

Down one walkway, there's medical equipment. Wheelchairs, IV poles, cabinets filled with medication and syringes. Down another, the kitchen. A coffee machine, sandwiches, yogurts, fruit. Enough nourishment for everyone. In a worst case end of the world scenario, you could live in a hospital for a few months before all the food's gone.

From another room, a woman is screaming. She's echoing down the hallway into the lobby. The receptionist looks up from her desk to see if anyone else is hearing the same thing. "Probably a natural birth," my sister says. And around the corner, the yelling follows. Like this woman's squeezing a watermelon out of her crotch. 

In the waiting room, my ass is getting numb. Sitting here for three hours and nothing happening, except my ass is dead. That tingly feeling. There's needles in my ass. Then, I'm standing. Walking back and forth from the seating area to the bathroom where the vending machines are. Then, I'm back in my seat. Looking at the flat screen on the wall, I'm straining to just barely hear what people are talking about. A girl is stacking martini glasses filled with Christmas ornaments four tiers high. Jump cut to her twin sister cheering her on. Before she finishes, a commercial. To create anticipation in the viewer. I'm totally confused.

"I just want this to be a natural birth. No drugs," My sister's been saying the whole pregnancy.

All extra thirty pounds of her, she continues down the corridor like she's an old woman with arthritis in her knees.

Within ten minutes I'm in Jimmy's car. We're driving around to talk. Kill time. Before I moved, Jimmy and I would aimlessly drive and shoot the shit for hours. Because we had nothing better to do. Sometimes we'd end up as far as an hour away. A few cigarettes and a friend to talk to can cure just about anything. One time, we're down south in Tacoma at Denny's. Throughout our whole meal, we're the only white people in the diner. Across from the kitchen, where the bathrooms are, two guys go stand in front of the drinking fountain. Pulling out a wad of money, the man with a red do-rag is swapping with the other one for a tiny baggy of some unknown substance. My dad always says nothing good happens after midnight.

Another time, Jimmy's sloshed. So drunk, he can't stay between the white hash marks down the road. Me, I'm sober. Going with the flow. They say you're supposed to drive someone's car if they're drunk and you're not. Even if I tried to get his keys, he'd just tell me to fuck off. Have you ever tried to argue with an intoxicated person? I'd rather save my breath and leave the guilt hanging over their head when I get ejected from the car. My body tossed like a rag doll, and my head hitting the pavement with enough force to liquify the brain inside it's protective cavity. Then I'd shit my pants- it's science.

So, Jimmy gets pulled over, and he's calm. Like he hasn't been drinking vodka all night. My heart's in my neck, and I'm positive he's going to jail. Trying to keep myself together, I take my mind to another place. Home in bed. Drinking a nice cup of coffee. Anything to keep my mind off the fact that Jimmy's going to end up in a cozy cell downtown. 

"Where you guys headed?"

Jimmy tells the cop that we're coming home from a party. The cop's shining his mag-light in his face, and Jimmy's squinting. "Yeah, I had a couple beers," he says. Liquid honesty.

"Step out of the car please."

At this point, I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to get home when they take him away, handcuffed in the back seat. Everyone is asleep, and I don't want to wake anyone up. Especially for this. Maybe walking isn't such a bad idea. 

The cigarette smells like raisins as my mouth hangs on. The paper on the end crackles and hisses as the first drag builds up in the back of my throat. Inhale. Looking in the rearview, and side mirrors, it's hard to tell what's going on. Every drag is a way to count the time. The streets are empty, it's late.

Flipping through song after song, my eyes get heavy. The car is filled with smoke, and monotony at it's best is putting me to sleep. Maybe mom will pick me up.

My third cigarette is coming down to the butt, and Jimmy opens the door. Sitting down and buckling up, he turns the car on. "Fuck yeah," he says. "I passed three field sobriety tests and I am so drunk."

In this case, my dad was wrong. 

By the time my sister's seven centimeters dilated, her eyes are tearing and she's holding her head in her hands.

Shaking her head, she says,"I don't think I can do this without an epidural."

Every so often, an epidural anesthetic shot will go wrong. The injection will engorge the veins and, in turn, the spinal cord suffers from hypoxia. This can cause acute neurological problems or, worse, paralysis from the waist down.

This is the convenience of modern medicine.

In some cases the anesthesia will go to the heart, blocking electrical activity in the ventricles. After that, the rhythm of your heart rate changes. Or slows to a stop. Get even the smallest air pocket pumping through your veins during placement of the shot, and there's nothing you can do.

This is what my sister agrees to when she signs the liability waiver.

The car's parked on top of Summerset, the big hill overlooking Bellevue and Mercer Island. Jimmy's talking about a TV show, and I'm staring down into the city, getting lost in the lights. A bunch of white and red strewn across the picturesque landscape. We've spent more nights up here than I can remember. Just talking. Back before Becky moved to Portland, we'd come up here with her and listen to Loveline on the radio. This was back when Jimmy had long hair. Before he got a job and started being professional. Before either of us even had our own vehicle.

The rain is pitter-pattering off the car, and the windows are fogging up. "You should check this band out," He says, running his thumb around the wheel of the ipod. A country style guitar stars playing, followed by violins within a few measures. It's stuffy in here. "Another one?" He's asking as I pull out a cigarette.

I'm telling Jimmy how awesome the snare in this album sounds, and the doctor is simultaneously pulling the umbilical cord. It's slimy, and the veins are sticking out blue. All the way back up inside, an endless snake being forced out of it's cave. He pulls the slithery rope until the placenta flops out.

In some cultures, the placenta is a symbol of spiritual connection between a mother and child. These are the same people that cook up the organ the next day. Preventing postpartum depression, and helping mammary glands to eject milk, these people are sitting at home feasting on a nice big bowl of placenta spaghetti. 

The doctor's holding this slippery red brain, and my sisters saying "let me see!"

Like she's taking the placenta home to eat.

Thank God men don't get pregnant. Sometimes I think about what it would be like to squeeze a baby out of my urethra. Under the hypothetical pretense that it can stretch under the right circumstances, of course. It would be different than a normal birth, but it would probably hurt all the same.

My finger presses the smooth, clear button with a big bold six. It lights and the elevator slowly climbs. My stomach falls and stays stuck down by my pelvis the whole trip up. Christmas music plays through the speakers. When the doors open, the waiting room is the same as when I left it. Some of my brother-in-law's family are still here, sleeping in their seats. 

Walking past the receptionist, the TV volume is still too low to hear. My phone's ringing, and I have an excuse to go back to the vending machines to talk in a normal voice without waking anyone up. "Reagan's here!" My mom tells me. Shit. I missed the birth. Thinking about the situation some more, I decide that I'm probably lucky not to have been in the room, as much as I wanted to be. Watching my sister's vagina open up big enough to squeeze out a miniature watermelon would scar me for life. I'd need some serious counseling to get past it. Maybe electro-shock therapy to kill the part of my brain that held onto that image.

I'm not sure why they chose they name Reagan. Whenever I think about his name, I always think about president Ronald Reagan. And then about John F. Kennedy getting assassinated. The whole timeline of events. The line of cars and police motorcycles down the street. Him waving. Then his face and skull suddenly exploding backward, folding around the back of his neck. His body laying limp in the convertible and everyone screaming. I've only really sat down to think about it once, but I imagine if I wind up thinking about his name often enough, the thought process would be more or less the same.

The baby's sitting in a little tupperware container getting a bath when I walk into the room. My sister looks dead. Her eyes are closed, black bags hanging underneath. "Isn't He precious?" My mom asks. I don't say anything, and just watch as the nurse manhandles the newborn. Nurses and veterinarians need to be more gentle. For Christ sakes, they're little creatures. Animals are helpless, and baby's still have that soft spot on their head where their skulls haven't fully fused together yet. I know you want to go home, but come on. Take some pride in your work.

My sister says she needs to feed him. He's probably hungry. You'd be hungry too if you hadn't eaten in nine months and just got squished between the walls of a mushy cave for two hours. 

"Yeah, you got good nipple," the asian nurse says. 

What?!? I'm holding my breath and biting my lip to keep from dying laughing.

She's wiping him down, then splashing water on his soapy skin. Reagan's sitting in the tub half sleeping. He looks like a doll that those little girls play with, pretending they have a baby of their own. The kind of doll that makes kids want to have babies far too young.

They escort us into a new room, and my sister puts the baby into his little bed. For the first time, I get a good look at him. There's something so serene about babies. Innocent and at ease. No concrete thoughts, no good and bad. Nothing occupying their mind with unhappiness, and no worry about the future. Their presence is intoxicating. Usually newborns look like aliens with funny shaped heads and eyes and noses smashed together. Not him. He's gonna be a heartbreaker when he gets older.

The next two days are spent at the hospital. Back and forth between home and visiting my sister. I come back, and there are always be more flowers. Vases in the shape of baby strollers. Big dandelions and roses. Colorful shit.

Each time I'd walk in the room after smoking, she'd ask me if I smell. Probably. After the first three times she asked, I stopped responding. It was obnoxious. 

Every two or three hours, someone new is holding the baby. My sister's picking a different nipple to feed from. Or someone's changing a soiled diaper, full of seedy black shit. Me, I'm running up and down six flights of stairs in the parking garage to get the stale smell of cigarette smoke off my clothes. I know it wont help, but I do it anyway with good intention. Ten steps down. Turn. Another ten. Turn. When I'm on the bottom floor I 180 and go back up. Ten stairs up. Turn. Another ten. The whole process takes about the same time it would take to smoke a cigarette. I might as well have just smoked two each time I went out. But, it's the thought that counts.

I'm walking back to my sister's room, #632. Families are passing me in the hallway. Dad's and daughters. Husbands and wives. Boyfriends and girlfriends. Nurses. There's inspirational posters on the walls. 

I go into the kitchen across from the room everyone is in to make hot chocolate. Well, the machine just makes it, and I hold the paper cup while the brown liquid is spouted in. I grab some packets of honey and some coffee creamer and pour both in. Just to make it interesting. On my way out, I reach into the big bucket of graham crackers for my sister. She didn't ask, I was just being nice. Someone walking in the room bumps me and I almost spill my scorching drink all over my hand. "Oops, excuse me," I say. No response. Christ. No one has manners anymore.

The door knob is cold on my hand. Which is surprising, considering the room inside is kept at a solid 80 degrees to help regulate the baby's temperature. Peeking my head in to make sure there's no exposed boobs or baby boners before I jump right in, my mom's holding Reagan. My sister's husband is sleeping on the hard cot next to the hospital bed she's in. 

"I grabbed these for you", I say holding up the package of honey crackers. My sister, watching TV, her head turns to me and she just gives me a blank stare.

"Do you smell?"

God damnit.