Another Lockdown: Da Nang, Vietnam

Groceries from Da Nang, Vietnam, about $20.

I came here from the stars thirty-four years ago like a pissant in desperate neediness for … revenge. I was drinking beer at three years old. I shat in the hallway grunting like mad. I kicked my brother into the corner of a jutted wall at four years old while wearing a karate outfit, my parents rushed him to the hospital. A few years after that, my father took my three brothers and me to the Poconos. As soon as we got there, we were skipping stones in a nearby lake. My brother went to the opposite side of the lake. I skipped a stone and it hit the surface of the water three times then it jolted upward and hit my brother just above the eye, blood splattering, he began to cry. Immediately my father found himself rushing to the hospital.

Don’t fuck with me, man.

Heh, heh.

No, really. I’m a nice guy. I have khaki shorts and tealights and beers in cans here in Vietnam. And I’m wearing protective eyewear that I got in the suburb of Bangkok, Thailand — Nonthaburi. Back then, in September/October of last year, I finished my freelancer work and went out to the streets under the heat and banana leaves, usually going to the mall to cool off or going directly to a nearby open-air market for some grub. There were street vendors huddled together, all Thai locals … and me. The only white dude. Nobody cared about that, I knew how to spend Thai Bhat and I was quiet, composed, full of wonder and vigor and I rarely ever got laid. I wasn’t there for the women, I’d just broken up with my Chinese girlfriend and she was still back in Eastern Europe.

I’d take my food back to my little room, with a small balcony overlooking banana leaves … and I felt good about life. I drank big bottles of Thai beer, wrote, grew my hair out, and found the time to recollect myself in my aimless wanderings — the Earth was my home, man. That was a fleeting feeling. But Thailand — Bangkok, specifically, felt right.

Anyway, this is supposed to be about Da Nang.

After Bangkok, it was Bali for a month. Then Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia — Penang Island — the heat, drunk on Christmas Eve, hungover on Christmas in a Muslim country, heading for some beer at a 7–11 at 10:20 AM.

I flew eventually from a suburb of Malaysia to Da Nang, Vietnam. This is the city where I’ve spent most of my time abroad. I’d left the U.S.A. around October 2018 for Rome, Italy. Then it was Krabi, Thailand — where I began my journey unbeknownst to me why it was happening at all, I was following my gut, my instincts, my nuts, my feet, my beer-thirsty shit-stained soul.

Da Nang was a place I’d researched while living in South Philly for three years. I’d initially wanted to go to Costa Rica back in 2015 to start teaching English as a Second Language (ESL). It was a ticket out of a hellscape. I knew there were better things in store for me: cheap beer, cigars, poetry, ladies, beaches, white sand, scatter-brained panties on my floor, treehouses, noodles, and working hard. I was always hard. Working. I was always working hard.

Well, I’d planned to get back to Thailand in April. But as the Chinese New Year passed like a slow fart, I realized that the world was changing faster than I could keep up with it — before I began traveling around the world, I felt that America was heading for disaster, the world would be impossible to travel as before (climate change), and I needed or wanted to strive for something better as a writer that nobody knew nor cared about. I had to make a big move.

It was like Hunter Thompson back in the early Sixties when he went to Latin America … and discovered it was a hellhole. Only my adventures I forced on myself were somewhat better: internet, smartphones, a strong Dollar. I had everything going for me once I had decided to allow the Universe to guide me through the shit-stained forest of a planet lurching forward into Hell.

Southeast Asia wasn’t like that, though. It was gloriously intricate and the people were friendly, there was an immediate sense of abundance because I was white and I was born in America … and I had a blue passport … my eyes were brown, beautiful (I’ve been told myriad times by the local girls here in Da Nang). So what?

I guess I was forgetting about being a writer. The first lockdown, I rose to that occasion. Sure. I’d stopped talking to my Chinese ex after I said mean things about fortune cookies and her hairy vagina.

I wrote a new novel called The Basement, four one-act plays, a poetry book, short stories, poems. It took me a while to realize that about 98% of everything I wrote went unread. Just me and the editors. Most of them left me messages months later, some of them were getting more positive. But that hardly matters now.

What does matter? Being locked down once again here in Da Nang. Well, it’s another social distancing period. And I am feeling somewhat stronger than the way I arrived.

I started teaching online with a company outside of China (I’d been teaching on and off for Chinese companies the last two years) and I started having conversations with people from all over the world: Australia, Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, China, South Korea, India, Bangladesh, Russia, Iraq, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Turkey, Cyprus, Taiwan, Brazil, Jordan, and the United States.

One thing I’ve learned the most about traveling around the world is how much I can’t stand Americans. Listening to them talking about politics has been the worst experience while traveling…

I can remember it happening to me in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The girl I had met saw my face, “What’s wrong?” She asked.

Some asshole douchebag was sitting at a table with three or four ladies, talking, talking, talking in English … obnoxiously … sucking out all the oxygen from the room. And it happened again in Belgrade, Serbia. Some kid at a table next to us … my girlfriend and I … he was going on and on, in English with an American accent, about Syria and Muslims, and fuck me, he knew everything.

Americans, unbeknownst to most Americans, are know-it-alls. They think they know everything except for why their country is so fucked up. So it’s good to be locked down in a foreign country, especially at the beach.

Capitalism has spread here because it brings people out of their lethargy. Or at least that’s what the dwindling years have supposedly taught us. Actually, the workers here are lucky to make $200–$300/month for a salary.

I guess that’s why I fit in here, as a freelance copywriter/English teacher for ESL online, uh, and a, uh, “writer”.

Making $12,000/year here … and you’re basically upper-middle class. Yippie!

And there’s a white sand beach that stretches for a few miles … it’s been my home these last few months, and then some.

I’m at my best during lockdowns here. I cook, clean, wash my nuts. Drink lots of beer. Smile at children. Help lost people find ATMs. Yell at obnoxious people. And even though I’m a terrible neighbor most of the time, cantankerous, laughing at nothing, blowing smoke rings at the hidden moon usually cascading toward sleep at 2 or 4 AM … I have palm trees growing from my neck and chin … and even my armpits … thinking about the days I used to nap in the park in Colorado Springs or Philadelphia because life felt dead and hopeless.

I don’t feel that way anymore.

Most of the people who helped me to see the light, I think about them. That lurches me forward with my writing, and more importantly — my life.

I can now affect others with goodwill or bad … but I know the difference, or at least I’d like to think so. My delusions are my clouds. I ride them day and night. I know, I know. I should probably wear a condom…

The lights burning inside of my nuts. Yeah.

That’s what carries me forward, anyway. And music, lots and lots of music. Good food. Here’s a list:

Baby onions (3) … 6,800 Dong = $0.29
Fresh garlic (1) … 1,890 Dong = $0.08
Silver Nan Mask … 27,000 Dong = $1.17
Chicken eggs (10) … 30,000 Dong = $1.30
Eggplant (1) … 30,000 Dong = $1.30
Cucumber (1) … 8,250 Dong = $0.36
Broccoli (1) … 25,875 Dong = $1.12
Frozen Striploin AUS (beef) … 50,000 Dong = $2.16
Chicken breast (2 packs of ground chicken, 1 breast) … 61,650 Dong = $2.67
Pepperoni … 33,690 Dong = $1.46
Fresh Salmon Fillet … 90,750 Dong = $3.92
American corn … 15,000 Dong = $0.65
Unrefined salt … 2,450 Dong = $0.11
Roasted peanuts … 13,320 Dong = $0.58
Coconut water 330ml … 19,000 Dong = $0.82
Lemon grass (1) … 3,400 Dong = $0.15
Water spinach/morning glory … 4,320 Dong = $0.19
Bok choy (3-pack) … 14,200 Dong= $0.61
Black coffee 37.5g — Box … 25,000 Dong = $1.08
Pickled baby cucumber (1 jar) … 21,000 Dong = $0.91
Ripe cut papaya … 6,300 Dong = $0.27
String bean (1 pack) … 6,400 Dong = $0.28
Sliced watermelon … 11,680 Dong = $0.50

Ah, yeah. Okay. I was shopping and it made me think of the Bintang Supermarket in Bali, Indonesia.

Then after paying for my groceries, I walked outside into the hot sunshine and the beach was out there, the burning palms, the empty skies, blue, white clouds, careless, and that crystal clear water, shiny, gleaming, glistening … I was in paradise. I laughed. Like an asshole. All the way back to my apartment.

I am once again “locked down” in a paradise. And I couldn’t care less about the rest of the world. At least for tonight.

And that’s good enough for me…

My 14th self-published book is now available as an e-book/paperback from Amazon, Lazy in Da Nang. These are poems I wrote while staying here last year with my Chinese girlfriend between March-June 2019.

My latest Bandcamp release is also available, What Are You Doing in My Room? I wrote these three songs between June-July 2020.

bryanwilliammyers.com

Pomes from Cambodia, Bali, and New Zealand: Tears, Laughter and an Enlightened Sense of Doom (1/15/19 – 3/8/19)

My 13th self-published book is now available. I wrote these poems last year while traveling across Cambodia, Bali, and New Zealand.

I have other ebooks I wrote since I started traveling around the world about 18 months ago.

I wrote these other books from Italy, Thailand, and Bali. (I made each of these ebooks $0.99 if they weren’t already free. I can send free copies too.)

bryanwilliammyers.com

Twitter: @bryanwillmyers

Facebook: facebook.com/bryanwillmyers

IG: @bryanwilliammyers

everything we are taught is false #15

cover15

everything we are taught is false #15

everything we are taught is false #15

bryanwilliammyers.com

EVERYTHING WE ARE TAUGHT IS FALSE #13

EVERYTHING WE ARE TAUGHT IS FALSE #13. Trump and Modi. Coronavirus. Renegades. Government lies. In the words of the late Hunter S. Thompson, the downward spiral of dumbness continues…

bryanwilliammyers.com

Like An Unemployed Journalist, Trapped in My Own Mind: Bali Haikus

My 12th self-published book is now available on Amazon. Like An Unemployed Journalist, Trapped in My Own Mind: Bali Haikus. (This link is for the ebook version. A paperback version is also available. Single file, everybody.)

I now have a special affinity for Japanese and Chinese poets who could paint a picture in just a few lines, all while (sometimes) breaking the rules of grammar.

I appreciate this form very much.

These haikus were written Oct. — Nov. 2019 during a 29-day trip to Bali. It was my second trip to the island that year. This time, I went with my girlfriend. Together we spent two weeks in Legian near the border with Seminyak in Kuta. Then we were in Ubud for two weeks, where we also briefly visited the eastern shoreline. After three nights back down in Legian, we left Bali for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Bali was hot, peaceful, crowded and vibrant. Beer wasn’t cheap. The food was spicy. And the people were friendly and kind.

(I’ve self-published 12 books. Check ’em out, here.)

Downtown Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

I finally got a chance to visit downtown Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, yesterday after spending the majority of my two weeks here wrestling with the demons of Reality. Nevertheless, I’d been able to view the city from my perch here on the 33rd floor of a high rise building just outside the border, in Ampang. Which is actually a part of Kuala Lumpur, I believe. States, districts and municipalities are a commonplace formality that I just don’t have time for, man. Especially when you’re living in a James Cameron film. I’m Spider-Man.

Ah, the splendor of the downtown traffic. I rolled in, finally, as I say, from the outskirts — staying at 28 BLVD — after days and nights of rain. In fact, I’d wanted to come downtown after looking up the Red Light districts, surprised to find they are plentiful here in Malaysia … and the rain started pouring from the sky like diapers and loincloths. I decided to drink beer on a Saturday night, away from the rain.

Sunday morning came and I went down to the first floor. Tried to use my Grap app — and realized that I might’ve been outta internet. Or it could’ve been the bad reception. I went to the nearby convenience store and attempted to resuscitate my phone’s lack of internet. Ultimately, I think I purchased the wrong thing. But, anyway.

I got there.

The taxi driver, wobbly ride that got me downtown in Kuala Lumpur, dropped me off in the middle of the road — the traffic molding to its voluminous surplus — and I handed the bastard 15 singles in Ringgit. (About $3.60.)

Ha! That ended up being about the same price for these brown Ray-Ban shades I bought from an expert patron, a businessman who took the art of selling cheap fakes very seriously. And I enjoyed his candor when he remarked, “Lemme take that sticker off for you.”

“Sure my good man. You are divine.”

I sipped an iced coffee and thought about buying a cheap necklace, a cheap t-shirt, maybe an orange Hard Rock Cafe number, or maybe a cheap pair of shorts. Something I actually needed, since my wardrobe in the last year of travel had basically whittled down to island Drop Out.

Anyway, I really dug those shades, man. I was like a Seventies Spider-Man now.

Far out.

Sunglasses — downtown Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Bowls and plates — downtown Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

So now I’m walking throughout downtown Kuala Lumpur with Mozart and Red Riding Hood. That bitch sneaks off for a free meal. And Mozart goes to find an ATM. He feels much safer outside of his little Artistic Bubble when he’s got a little money in his pocket. He’s a little man. And nobody knows this. But I do.

So I let them scurry away from me, as I’m walking northbound toward the Petronas Twin Towers. For nearly 12 days, I’d been able to see the towers from my Airbnb. They are illustrious in the early morning hours and exquisite at night, all coveted in glowing metal, blinking red cantankerously to keep planes from crashing into them, erupting into a war that lasts forever. No. We don’t want that here, they seem to say.

Kuala Lumpur, believe it or not, is a very peaceful place. (Forget that one of the alleged hosts of the 9/11 evildoers has now settled, under heavy government restrictions and surveillance, in Ampang. That’s a whole other story.)

I see the towers, after walking for about thirty minutes. It’s hot. I’m sweating. A few dudes come up to me to ask if I want a fish-eye lens for my mobile phone to take a picture of the Twin Towers up close. I tell them no. I’m hungry, hot. And the battery on my cell phone had considerably drained during my walk.

But I found the city very relaxed, laidback. Lots of Indian dudes standing around near cell phone stores. Colleges, universities. English language centers. Banks. And Irish and Italian restaurants.

No matter where you go in the world, it seems, there will always be an Irish pub and a place that sells Italian food.

Hooray.

Petronas Twin Towers — downtown Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

I also wanted to see Jalan Alor — the nighttime food market in downtown Kuala Lumpur. However, my cell phone battery was almost dead and I needed my phone to use Google Maps to get me there. Otherwise, I had no idea where I was going.

I looked at the map on my cell phone. Okay. Go straight. Then make a left. I saw landmarks to help me determine if I was going in the right direction or not. Just like real life.

HSBC building. Okay. Make a right. No, it’s a left. Or do I just go straight?

I decided to go straight and there was no shade from the hot, blistering sunshine … it had been cloudy at the Twin Towers and I thought it might rain. But the sun was cooking me pretty good and I felt that was fine because I had spent a lot of my hours here in Kuala Lumpur contending with other things not very conducive to a decent traveling experience. (Pissing Vinegar in Kuala Lumpur…)

I went through a small alleyway, after passing it the first time, and got behind an apartment building. It was a different vibe with a new section of the city — cities are like that, all over the world. Very dependent on neighborhoods and the people who live there, etc.

Then I saw it.

Jalan Alor — the night food market. Stretched out in front of me with red Chinese lanterns. Chinatown.

It was hot. I kept walking, sweating.

What did I want to eat?

I saw a sign for Vietnamese pho. Settled there. Waiting for it. I thought, here I am in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It feels good walking around here, I’m enjoying downtown. It’s like living in a jungle that is a city. That’s what life is, mostly. Anyway.

There. Across the street. A Thai food place. I thought about that: Chinatown. Mandarin, everywhere. And Thai. And Vietnamese. In Malaysia.

I ate the food, it was good. For whatever reason, I found myself eating slowly, more so than usual. And observing everything tentatively like it was all right on the tip of my tongue.

I looked up and saw a young woman peering out from the third floor of an apartment building. She looked cute, friendly. Curious.

Then she let some spit out of her mouth. Yes, she spat. Like a commoner.

I paid the bill. My cell phone died as I was trying to get a Grab taxi … the internet wasn’t working … I wasn’t sure why, but I found myself cursing the convenience store attendant who had given me a top-up for my cell phone that might have been the wrong thing.

I kept moving down the street. Found a taxi. A dude with seven teeth missing in the top of his mouth.

“28 BLVD,” I told him, removing my cool new shades. Sweating. Ready to return to my lair.

He opened a flip phone. Typed in the directions without even needing to know where we were going he followed along and I did too, asking him, “Does that meter work?”

“Meter, yes,” he said.

I was a fucking world traveler. Overlooking everything.

Maybe someday it’ll pay off.

Until then…

Statues — downtown Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Jalan Alor — downtown Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

(I’ve self-published 11 books. Check ’em out, here.)

The View from Bed: How I Changed My Life

20191124_071911 — The view from bed. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

There was a time when I didn’t have a view from bed. There was a time when I didn’t have a bed. I slept on couches. Friends let me sleep there when I was traveling back and forth across America or when I was working a minimum wage job that barely kept me alive.

The view from bed today? It’s the 33rd floor of a high-rise apartment building in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. What happened?

A long time ago, I made a decision. I can remember spending lots of my time searching for immediate solutions to my problem: how can I get my shit together? Man, I was the drunkest at parties growing up and eventually when I really needed a job, I went slightly hungover.

I can even remember going to a job interview in a yellow shirt, red wine-stained lips, and a 9 o’clock-in-the-morning shadow. You weren’t supposed to have a shadow at 9 o’clock in the morning, in the real world. Especially if you were desperately trying to seek employment.

The decision I made, some years later, happened in a cafe on South Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I was staring out through the windows, ignoring the hipsters and their dreadlocks, and the Millenials with their sharp haircuts and their neatly-pressed shirts suddenly went out of focus. I realized that I had forgotten something: myself.

What did I want? How did I want to live my life? And what would make me happy?

I had that chance, after traveling back and forth across America for three or four years, just looking for some kind of a cave or womb to work on my manuscripts or at least to try and find some work that gave me something to look forward to — I finally gave myself the chance … let me repeat: I finally gave myself the chance to think about what I wanted from my flailing, irresponsible Peter Pan life.

Well, shit. I told myself. I wanna be able to do my work at the bar!

And then it struck me like 10,000 lightning bolts. The hipsters and the well-refined Millenials with their up-to-date laptops and Apple iPhones looked up from their incredibly important lives and the workaday world to see me for the very first time. Because up till then I had been mostly invisible.

And for some strange reason, I had wanted it to be that way.

What I didn’t know was all that I had experienced up until that point was always going to serve me, somehow, later in life. It was true — I liked to be a loner and I enjoyed reading books or perusing libraries in private. I’d sit down with a book (or with 8 or 9 books) and I would read from each one. The lives of writers, artists, poets fascinated me. And as I got older — as I was focusing more on myself and what I wanted — my interests became more refined, in a sense where I knew and understand better what I wanted and what felt good to read and learn about.

Soon, I found myself checking out books on chemistry, anarchism, philosophy, astronomy, biology, evolution, capitalism. And whenever I was doing my freelance copy editing work — a job I found by plugging away each day at things I wanted to do, something — anything — to get me started on that path — I would be listening to OpenCourseWare classes from universities like Yale, Stanford, and UC-Berkeley. It was like I was in the throes of a conscious hemorrhage. Only I wasn’t losing anything.

In fact, I was gaining myself. Myself. Finally.

Literature, and working hard at something that gave me a life of my own, peace and quiet (at least in my own mind, not on the streets of South Philadelphia, a noisy place!) gave me my own life, where I started paying my own rent, my own bills, I had my own windows! And a fucking kitchen. Where I cooked for myself, sometimes three times a day.

It was like magic, almost. And I guess that’s what the universe really is and can be, when you get out of your own way, stop overanalyzing everything, and just live.

That’s all I did. That’s all I wanted to do.

The broadening of my perspective is what changed me the most. Instead of looking at everything like a worm — or from the couch, rather — I saw the world like the eagle, the hawk, the clouds, the rocketships, and the stars.

As corny as it sounds, it certainly worked for me.

And maybe it could for you, too.

(I’ve self-published 11 books. Check ’em out, here.)

I’ve Got the Piles, Reader Beware

Reader, beware. I’ve got the piles.

I have to stretch out my back, so when I come up in the elevator in an apartment building in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a girl gets on with me. She might be Chinese. And she probably is.

I stand back, away from her. And she nearly mirrors my movements. As we start rising into the sky, she reaches for her back — at the same spot where MY BACK is stiff.

So that piques my curiosity. What the fuck kind of synchronicity is this? Where was Shakespeare on the day the music died? Her hair is dark, wavy. But straight and fine. She’s tired from work, I’m assuming. She’s rubbing her back. That makes me think she’s in her thirties. And I almost say something to her while I’m holding a plastic bag of three cans of (expensive) beer and a large bottle of water.

The bell DINGS and it’s floor 33. I get off.

Get me?

Lying on my back in a pure, white cloud. It’s a mattress on the floor, next to another mattress on the floor. Pure, white sheets. Pure, white comforters. Matching pillow cases. I have my hands across my chest. Like I’m dead, a corpse. No life left in my nuts and asscheeks. Lifting my legs, stretching out my spine. I count aloud: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. I repeat the maneuver eight times.

Reader, beware. I’ve got the piles.

Travel writing. Nope. Editing haikus I wrote in Bali, that’s how I started the day. I finished the next self-published book, like that. Showed my girlfriend a poem I wrote about her — she’s back in China. Don’t worry. I’m writing about that in another post, it’ll be another manuscript. Maybe. A short book. I’ve been writing lots of those. Pissing Vinegar in Kuala Lumpur.

Then I wrote four other poems. Sent the five poems total to two literary mags.

What else?

The piles used to be a concept that escaped me. It was something famous writers wrote about in their private correspondence before they became famous writers. I guess there was something in the bottom of their spines that needed to be stretched or massaged out of the way.

I’m learning that it doesn’t matter and what’s important is making money. How do writers make money?

I’ve learned today, after researching agents, writers earn money through the Writer’s Guild, TV pilot contests, Short Shorts, a way forward to unload the manuscripts I’ve piled up since I was a shy teenager. And now what?

The Dalai Lama eats pizza. And my back still hurts somewhat. But the night’s just getting started. And I wrote about 250 words before this.

It would take a time machine to unload it all and get you up to date, reader. Wherever you are, are you out there? I’ve got my empty beer cans like binoculars covering my eyes.

Music plays in my half-dead headphones. And there’s an HDMI cable connected from my Google Chromebook to this SHARP LCD TV.

I’m up on the 33rd floor. It’s raining, twilight. Sun gone behind the armpit of Kuala Lumpur, just on the outskirts actually. Ampang. The border of the two states is closeby. Lights echo throughout the streets. Restaurants cooking up something steamy and full of rice, noodles, fish balls. Hookers with their hands on their hips, driving the point home.

Life is about making money.

How to translate the piles into that universal language?

By staring out at the city skyline, finishing this tall can of Carlsberg beer. Laughing on a Saturday night.

Opening up another one.

Self-published Book Release: Rejections, 2016: Rejection, Rantings, and Beer-soaked Nights with Brahms, Bach, Mozart and Other Friends

Rejections, 2016: Rejection, Rantings, and Beer-soaked Nights with Brahms, Bach, Mozart and Other Friends

$7.99 from Createspace e-store

$3.99 from Kindle (free for kindle unlimited subscribers)

I wrote up this mock interview the other day, heh heh heh. This morning, upon waking up — lying there, lying there — I thought of adding to it. That’s what writing does, for me. Gets me up and outta bed in the morning. Hungover. Shirtless. And out the window, from two blocks across, millennials are gathered. They can see me. Unshaven. Hair on fire, or at least waiting to be. For coffee. Kevita. And this book I wrote by my elbow.

With a sketch of my eyes on the back cover.

The book is the stream-of-consciousness vulgar persona I’ve cast into the ether. I write because I can’t help it. It helps me to help myself. If I could put it that way. O, yah. Yah. Sure. There are moments I left in the book that will seem wholly innocuous, cover letters for job applications, column pitches, and manuscript submissions. I wrote stories, too. About a lesbian schizoid, a pizza delivery dude stuck in himself. Plenty of pages dedicated to the worst parts, the terrible aspects of my character — of which, if I didn’t admit to, I would be a total make-believe monster.

I guess that’s why I compiled these rantings, some of which reflect the soulless life. Most are covered in drinking. Though, I believed in wanting to get better. So that’s why I kept at it. No matter what. I didn’t have a choice. No. It chose me. Yeah. I like that. Why not?

My dad used to tell me that I was “born at the wrong time.” I beg to differ. Literally. I’m here, writing to you instead. Like I have been for years. You just didn’t know it. Or maybe you did.

These are silent jabs. Right hooks. And if I punch myself in the face, then. So what?

My advice to people (though you or they didn’t ask) is to get people to think that you are crazy or insane. Then they will leave you alone.

This book is not about collaborations. It’s about playing with myself, in the literary sense. Now I know what you’re thinking, you haughty know-it-alls who want everything and everybody to be and think and have the same opinions as you. I didn’t need attention. I didn’t want it, in fact.

That was the gift.

It could also be a gift from hell. Who knows? There’s such a thing as bitter fruit. Sour grapes. Well, aren’t you just a bowl of cherries…

No, I’m definitely not a bowl of cherries, sister. Just a human being. Who drinks. And writes stuff out because what else is there to do?

I’ll stop here. I’ve other stuff to do, you know. Plus my neighbors can see me.

Writing this. Naked…

Wait! Comparisons. I know that helps, somewhat. If you’ve never read my writing, if you don’t know me — if we’ve never had a conversation — you might find this book (if you take it in your kind heart to give it a try) as some kind of an insult to injury. The book will have to speak to that end. I can’t apologize.

I can be criticized, sure. Or take it, yes. But.

I can’t claim any special precocity. This is the work of a bastard. To be sure. Pissing vinegar. Horrible, horrible. Bad words. Spittle. A terribleattitude problem. Problems with everyone and everything, in fact.

All I care about, though, are the words. A bouquet of clumsy words. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you’re so beautiful. Etc., etc.

Influences for this book (other than rejection) include Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, Hunter Thompson, Hemingway, George Carlin, alcohol, classical music. An inverted Tony Soprano, with very few ladies around and just enough loot to keep a hamster rattling in his cage.

And so that’s what I did. For a little while. Things are different now, yes. I got it out of me. I’m getting it all out of me.

That’s how we move on. WE INSANE SHADOWS OF THE NIGHT.

No. Not insane. Crazy.

Yeah.

Words are my ammunition. I’m locked and loaded, baby.

If a lone wolf screams into the night, and there’s nobody around to hear it, does it make a sound?

I guess that’s why I keep Einstein next to the toilet, my degenerate-derelict haze emblazoned between the tiles on the walls.

Jab, jab. Hook.

But you wouldn’t know a good thing if it came up and slit your throat!

Jab, jab. Hook.

Motherfucker.

***BUTTERFLIES ARE SPECIAL BECAUSE THEY ONCE WERE WORMS***

MOCK INTERVIEW

Bryan William Myers: On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your book?

Bryan William Myers: 666.

Bryan William Myers: What is the genre?

Bryan William Myers: Goth punk disaster porn.

Bryan William Myers: Could you name three of the book’s subjects?

Bryan William Myers: Self-loathing. Masturbation. And schizophrenia.

Bryan William Myers: What do you hope people will think when they read your book?

Bryan William Myers: Whoa. He’s fucked up. I’m glad I’m not him.

Bryan William Myers: Who or what are some of your influences?

Bryan William Myers: Philadelphia Gas Works. PECO Energy Company. And Comcast Cable.

Bryan William Myers: Do you have a favorite quote from the text?

Bryan William Myers: “If you weren’t here, I’d walk outta here right now.”

Bryan William Myers: Do you have a favorite story?

Bryan William Myers: Yes. Three.

Bryan William Myers: Well. What are they?

Bryan William Myers: Being the world’s worst lover. How I learned I’m a domestic extremist. And a very, very, very short story about a webcam girl named Ariel.

Bryan William Myers: Are there any reviews?

Bryan William Myers: Yes.

“Vulgar. Insane. Insipid … I had to put it down.” — Nathaniel Heroine, The System Is My Friend Review

“We’ll never be friends.” — Ex-girlfriend

“I can’t tell if you’re just full of shit or insane.” — Ex-girlfriend

“You know, I’m starting to think that there is really something wrong with you.” — Ex-employer

“I thought you were somebody else.” — Ex-girlfriend

“Fuck you. You’re a terrible person.” — Ex-girlfriend

I made one of those up.

Bryan William Myers: Did you learn anything from this year-long experience of constant rejection, isolation and nights alone with music, beer, wine, whiskey, tobacco and your imagination?

Bryan William Myers: Yeah. Writing, like life, is a lot of hard work. You’ll never get anywhere if you don’t…

An electromagnetic pulse suddenly is launched somewhere in the vicinity of Montana, Idaho, Nebraska or Kansas, wiping out the electrical grid for a majority of the entire continent of North America.

The interview ends.

***IF THERE ARE ANY MISTAKES, IT’S COZ I WAS DRUNK***