writing – pseudo lou

PROTEGE: TRAINING WHEELS CITY

She’s a high-energy lady. Tiny and rapid transfer ideas; switches back and forth between personal and business. Quits cigarettes on Sundays. Different-looking (different in a cool way, not in a like, you know–) people create urgency in her to find out if they’re ‘known.’ If already ‘known,’ she breezes over to me (I feel special) and embellishes her nerves.

“How is the cool way to talk to them, I don’t wanna be like BLah!”

My role is protege. I assume that’s what they’re doing to me, I am chosen. I was invited to a beach party transplanted below the gutted industrial buildings awaiting their very own Transplants and refurbishing for the exodus.

They’re always working on getting the highways are getting wider here. I always said it was a Training Wheels City. If you can’t do it here, you really weren’t helped at all by your folks. I pretty much didn’t make it here. I was helped by my folks. But then I got a lot more help. Enough to where I can go out and chokehold a new opportunity like being cool peoples’ protege.

I feel compelled to give the right answer. Hindsight, I dunno if she were actually asking me how to talk to cool people. I think she literally talks to cool people all day. But I don’t know that. Because maybe she is testing me to see how effective I am at talking to cool people. I always talk to them, since I have been cool. Maybe she needs my input since I see her getting notably less sneaky about refilling beers from the tap; since it’s her Transplanted Beach Party and she’s no longer going behind the tap trailers to hide that she’s smoking the final cigs before she quits on Sunday.

I admire her… even if she doesn’t actually admire me. I’ll live in the headspace where she does admire me though. She said something about too bad I don’t drink because I would — .

No kill. It doesn’t hit me in anyway. I’m salivating more over her cigarettes and hiding for no reason. That’s cool. I love the quit every Sunday thing, that’s fun. She is savant. Every time she wonders into the dark where the gutted buildings await their refurbishing, I move steadily in the opposite direction over the tiny playground stones they used to emulate sand.

I feel relief from the thousandth bathroom break I’ve taken to make room for more soda waters. So many soda waters. I think about how I quit smoking like a year ago a couple days earlier. Lotta people say that’s cool. I agree, plus it smells and it’s always getting more expensive and–.

Don’t you think it kinda fucks us over a little if you don’t smoke? We could probably make even more leighway as protege if we smoked. She offered us smokes and its like, you quit so if you smoked one for work then it wouldn’t matter. You’d go back to not smoking, and your car still won’t stink and honestly, cigs don’t even fuckin’–

I remember there’s powdered caffeine in my pocket in the form of one of those Crystal Light packets, just some brand of energy drink. I toss that into the porta potty hole reminiscing super-quick about cocaine. I think about how I’m an alcoholic-addict hanging out at this Transplant Beach Party where I could relapse but I’m not gonna obviously because I make it look cool and also because I have so much work to do here as the protege.

If I use, there’s no way I can protege. I’m very new in recovery, but I am newer in protege. This is what I fixate on:

This is cool. And dangerous. This is dangerous that I do these things, but it is cool that I can.

So long as I ask for that permission like, ‘can I do this?’ I’m pretty sure that is the loophole God gives to artists or socialites. I’m not choosing this, I’m an artist. I’ve been cool too, and cool with no drink no drugs for way long — long like more than a year. PLUS I’m no longer people who almost couldn’t cut it in Training Wheels City. Now I am the protege of the Transplant Beach Party Lady.

I sanitize my hands and exit casually.

‘Dude…’ I’m thinking: with cool people I know how they want to be talked to. I can answer her, even if she wasn’t really an ask maybe it is. I have an answer. So, when I am the cool person in question, somebody coming up to me should say they like that I am where they also are and why I should know them. They never seem to do that, they talk about a lot of stuff but it’s never short and sweet. Could this be because I have never been the cool person in question? I do see how it might be true seeing as I never have been treated exactly how a really high-level, high-priority cool person gets treated: the right way; the way I know how to talk to cool people. But there’s no proof of me not being cool. I’m just telling you it’s undocumented when — not if I became cool.

So, I tell her –to tell the ‘known’ guy, I said “Say: Hey wassup. I’m Transplanted Beach Party Lady & I’m really happy you’re here. This is my Transplanted Beach Party.”

She looks, tilts her head slightly forward to highlight one raised eyebrow and smiles a handshake into my stomach. It’s absolutely perfect. I am the protege. This is gonna be huge for our relationship. She wonders off, maybe toward a famous person.

I gotta pee.

All social interactions are a + b = c. One of my earliest cool art friends in high school said that. I wonder quite a bit if that’s actually a nail on the head moment. It was really cool; I know that.

Being cool will make it so people consider how they might most-effectively strike up a conversation with you. I think. Well, I know, now; having had an awakening and traversing these early tests to be protege to the Transplanted Beach Party Lady. She’s cooler than even she’s letting on, maybe that’s just a bit of what I can plan on learning from her as I absorb the ‘vibe.’

Earlier today — this same Saturday before Transplanted Beach Party Lady said she’ll quit cigs–Transplanted Beach Party Lady was telling me how before the pandy she was an introvert. Once we were let back outside, she promised a local celebrity/regular a free beverage for every time he introduced her to a new person (cool person or otherwise).

She told me, “I used to not value this place. But if you want to do anything here, you need to get uncomfortable… There’s a ton of cool people here.”

The most simple, most obvious shit sometimes, ya know? Most days in my many careers, short-lived due to the same fireable offense, I knew Training Wheels City was a nobody, nowhere type of spot. Was Uncool. They don’t do anything here. And the artists here aren’t like the community of artists in Going Fast No Hands or the scene in Doing Tricks. I tried to develop the scene. I go to art. But I found nobody’s cool enough to vibe with my art. So I just hung out with people who were actually cool and did my art. We stuck together, sometimes two or three or all four of us. We waited for folks to get cool or see what we were doing was cool, but they never figured it out.

I ended up doing quite a bit of art on my own. Nobody ever saw.

I walk out and get another soda, I don’t see her so I just do a cool, standing still kinda sway dance just away from the dance floor.

Dancing alone is often a toss up whether ‘cool’ or not. Depends on the ‘vibe.’

Transplanted Beach Party Lady grabbed me, needing me to pour one of the acts a drink! He insisted he didn’t need that, that his Ryder being fulfilled was enough, but Transplant Beach Party Lady is way cool — thus vetoing the Artists’ initial cool behavior in not needing anything.

I felt special for knowing how to mix this Rum and Coke, though I’ve frowned upon such a simple everyday drink historically; today this is for a really cool reason. I am the protege. She sees something in me, and I am pulling through. I guess can see how the people before me stumbled at this work. It’s high pressure to be on point. Maintaining the behavior, the ‘vibe.’ Plus, if you’re me, and in this you basically get to be me, you are also working all the angles to not smoke cigs — though it may always look cool and serve a greater purpose for the whole, an impact to career and opportunity and honestly you see your Boys’ smoke one or two after we’ve played a show…it’s like, you kicked the actual stuff what is smoking a cigarette even really gonna –

I am so addict. And right now, we need to be addicted to protege-type endeavors. And we are.

I am vibing to the music. Transplanted Beach Party Lady comes up to me – I always can see her coming up to me she’s got this gigantic puffer jacket on but the rest of her is so small, it’s charming and cute and she makes it work in a cool way, I admire that — she comes up to me and says, “Wassup, you just vibin here?” I tell her yeah and that I’m taking notes.

She notes a couple more ‘known’ folks. I actually do think I’ve heard of them before… though I’m actually not sure what she said just now in general. But they’re cool, assuming I’ve heard of them. Or not.

I imagine I’ve seen most of these people. Like, I know their faces from them coming into my work or they’re around my side of town (it’s just a different ‘vibe,’ it’s ‘chill’) but I don’t know their names or what they look like or if I’ve ever seen them. That’s cool though, I look forward to meeting them.

…Again.

I have seen quite a few of these faces around a kitchen table with a plate at 4 AM somewhere just outside of downtown in my early 20’s. I look so healthy now that I’m different-looking. They probably don’t recognize. Or maybe they’ve since stopped ending up in those types of places and they do recognize so they don’t wanna flirt with disaster which is cool, I get it. But they got the wrong idea, I’m cool now also. Just not in the way we expected to be. Nor in the way that they expect us to be!

Transplanted Beach Party Lady’s husband comes stands by her for a time and I feel like I shouldn’t go over there. It’s cool, I’m literally here to protege. And I’m doing it really well, so there’s no weird thing worth thinking about. She maybe does this all the time and that lightly drives him a little nuts but he maybe knows he’s being silly and she’s just zoomin’ around and networking and it has nothing to do with me. Besides protege-type work, which earlier she said she was talking about the nice conversation we had way earlier on this Saturday the day before she’s gonna quit cigarettes again… I wonder if that’ll make her feel less cool. I quit all kinds of crap recently, and by default that has to be cool.

I am still here. You Stayed Longer Than You Planned to Stay, Why Are You Still Here?

I saw the husband floating back toward the bar (as an opening to approach again) and thanked Transplant Beach Party Lady for everything. She hugs me and insists that if I keep coming back to her world like she does to mine, all kinds of things will start happening.

Are they cool things? I hope that they may be cool things.

CALLED OUT

I’m going to re-engage on this endeavor.

I was pawing my pink cloud like a cat toy upon the first couple of entries (now deleted) sometime in early 2022. Let’s see, I was prepping to spend a couple days in Minerva County for a (comparatively) gentle bottoming-out, I was figuring out how to prove I could go do things alone, I was scrambling to utilize a then-and-now-defunct degree.

I was holding onto outdated items that involved focus, like journalistic pursuits — doused in harsh language, loads of edge! — and the impressive feats I yanked out of myself in the past life.

I fell in love with the glamor of drink, and it ate me up. Then I found that cocaine would make me harder to ingest. Until it, too, unhinged its jaw upon me.

When I returned from my introduction to ‘getting right,’ I wanted all my stuff back.

Surface priority one was material. And I don’t know that that will ever stop; I don’t want to imagine yet another bottoming out to achieve that discovery. Stuff, in that sense, makes me happy. I like pants, and shirts, rings and chains and music and tattoos and vanity so help me God. And I wasn’t afflicted by brothers and sisters so I really enjoyed those fruits. I leaned into Only Child Syndrome just to beat anyone slightly observant to the punch.

I put in enough time to start to realize that wasn’t the stuff I was actually concerned about. That my soul was recoiled for a thousand reasons beyond being a mid-bottom addict. Most of it was because I let natural gifts, ones which I was told and reinforced and celebrated all of my life, drown in arrogance and disregard.

I was the self-proclaimed writer — nay, I still am the self-proclaimed ‘talented’ writer who never writes! My elegant, professional paradox. How would all these potential employers ever know what they were missing without having a word to overlook.

I was a musician! I composer, a collaborator and — I now realize– a catalyst in the projects I was a part of… until I was apart from. At a point I became so infatuated with ‘landing the plane’ (as we lovingly referred to it), I caught myself stammering when I told anyone what band I was in.

We ain’t playin’ no shows. We’re doing coke in our party house, missing the trashcans and arguing over how this sloppy 30 minute riff should go. GB of space being eaten up by leaving record on for nothing of note.

The stuff I lost was effort, and curiosity, and inspiration, and motivation. Drive! I took all the built-in gear for granted, and I took it fiercely. The output I was capable of as fun turned into maintenance is uncanny.

My late father said to me, fresh out of rehab, that I was just real late to the race. And that’s just that. In no way or form am I speeding up to catch you rule-followers. I love the rules now too… It doesn’t stress me anymore that I’m gonna also be late to the finish line. Mostly because we’re all galloping to the same one.

Dad did a ton for me, and now I work on passing down that fortune to anyone else who’s anxious for it. It’s the only way to be spoiled.

And in building new relationships that have to do with giving time and energy and developing patience, recovery-based or out in the world, I had the same discovery as everyone else: life is bright, and vivid, and reciprocal. Here in this section I was about to get sarcastic; consider that fear of vulnerability redacted.

My life is easy. And it’s loaded with the advise of so many powerful, brilliant people. They were always all around me; I had made it a point to stay the hell away from the help for the better part of a decade. IYKYK.

This advisory board grows. It began with my uncle and psuedo-namesake ‘Louis,’ someone who I hadn’t realized was looking out for me quite some time, they’ll be ‘Frank,’ MA and Dad. My Band of Boys. My House of Decided Brothers and Sisters.

Frank‘s word in my ear and on my eyes sounds like its a triple-dog-dare right off the bad. This is fortunate and frustrating. The stunted, lonely child in me must compete to impress against this newfound sibling.

They said, “why don’t you write. it’s easy, just do it like songs” I don’t know if that deserves quotes but that’s what I retained.

Some god voice tells me I can’t say no.

So I recalled an initial conversation with Uncle ‘Louis’ about doing something like this under a fake name and letting it rip. However, my ravenous EGO slid in and suddenly there’s my name, my image, my identity all over this thing; hilariously to be then shared on social media. Narcissist!

(I can say it, my best friend’s a narcissist)

If you subscribed to that spew early on, congrats it’s me as you remember! Our little barely kept secret. But to anyone who tags along here on out, I am a recovering alcoholic and drug addict named Lou Mercy.

LOU for my uncle’s alter-ego Louis; the demon that runs your house when you’re no longer home. Also the nickname for a someone with which things never quite lined up just right romantically.

Hi Lou, you probably don’t remember doing this: but thanks for being the voice that said “You gotta stop” at just the perfect time.

MERCY for what I been shown; and for any of you deserve at your worst.

Especially dickheads.

(I can say it, my best friend’s a dickhead)

I’ve removed all the photographs and mentions of who I am Out There. The voice is likely going to be a give away and the stories ensuing, pending on what comes out of me… It’s no matter.

I‘m a character as it is. But here, I’m going divulge my insanity and confusion via Lou Mercy. I’m just separate enough through the pseudonym to view two versions of myself. No more pictures and artful direction, besides my decided sister’s art, not-so-ironically chosen due to its alcoholic medium.

This oughta double as an about page. The colbrus are cleared, time to get spiritually fit. Life goes.

xx decadence,

Lou

RETENTION

I fear that I might have convinced myself of my own stupidity.

In the years following a formal education, I developed a self-deprecative streak that locked me into routine revelry and an insatiable need to achieve laughs and dazzlement through anything but my own intelligence. Granted, the path to get to some of those laughs took some clever leaps and bounds — self-deprecation runs deep.

Any type of screw-up, minuscule to moderate to historical, the explanation was likely punctuated by, “because I’m such a dumb-[whatever expletive],” to perhaps incite giggles among a by-standing coworker. Sprees of talking to myself during ‘side-work’ yielded whispered jabs at my own IQ for no presentable reason. Sometimes those cracked me up.

Short story long enough, this continued array of life’s miserable-isms, light-hearted self-loathing, and empty ribbings apparently snuck into my conscious mind. Now I think I’m, like, actually dumb. Or stupid. Whichever is the less permanent one.

When it comes to book smarts versus street smarts, I am the former. Which means I can slurp up a ton of information, in a short time and spit it all back out at you in the proper locations and order. It might also be accurate that I take up large hunks of my head with this material and quickly empty them to make space for the next batch of information (whether relevant or trivial).

This almost seems counter productive, because slowly I found that book smarts only bangs on paper. Otherwise, common-sense people take the reins of life, quit schools and systems, whatever else, and they succeed. I, on the other hand, got confused as to why I wasn’t getting all the accolades and job offers in the world and got jaded and pissed off like a petulant brat.

I packed in my absorb-deploy ability for information and swapped for in-and-out abilities with drugs and alcohol. I wasn’t cramming anything for out-dated standardized tests, job-applications, whatever the rest of you were doing while I was ‘out.’

I was ineffectually flattening out the crumpled files of my mind, trying to impress deaf ears.

I still read somewhat, and I was passionate about the lyrics of good songwriters just enough to mash together their thoughtfulness into my own poetic nonsense. I’d like to say I maintain a convincing cadence, complete with affirming head nods and eye contact that any half-tossed fellow like me could associate with and trust enough to laugh along with.

I placed these insipid conjugational craft-cocktails above all else — from good arguments to gripping stories to cascading embellishments. And my accomplices in life did the same right back. What the hell did we ever talk about most the time? No idea.

Not to say that all of it was for nil, of course.

Repeats occurred that could be manipulated for sport–in favor of a different, meaningless result. I mean, for real: tell me you haven’t stolen the spotlight upon noticing someone else was about to tell a rerun at least once in your lifetime. No?

How about jokes? You never stepped on someone’s punchline knowingly just to nullify your homie’s thunder. God bless your friendship if it’s still a no.

Anyway, the boozy back-and-forths soared deftly into my ego — or clumsily over my head in those unmemorable evenings and mornings. I was floating in my own thoughts, paying attention occasionally only to land a ‘good one’ because I was ‘smart’ and ‘brilliant’ to everyone. That narcissism was always, is always and will always there for you. IYKYK.

So it’s strange now, that this weight has revealed itself to me. Weight pun here for you: that time made me dense in the fog of this hefty, revelrous era. I think [do I though?] I halted any higher creative or logical functioning in my fried little brains just long enough to fulfill the colloquialism: If you don’t use it, you lose it.

And all this in a time where — ironically — my only ambition was using.

Though I’ve chewed chin at a championship level throughout the years. I’ve pantomimed intellect and forgotten many a debate topic simultaneously. I know this because a whiskey, amphetamine-rasped drawl loves capturing an unwitting audience. Even the witting ones are doomed.

But, now: I’m in recovery. Which means rebooting my thoughts and having a punishingly clear awareness of my slumbering potential, similarly soaked in flop sweat on a couch we’re both not paying rent for.

Easily, I might let that self-pity paralyze me but it’s nothing different than my stagnancy in the face of any challenge. I could misread this lack of growth as if it were showing me I had peaked in this realm and ought to stay here forever. Settle down, get a divorce. Or don’t. Have a kid. Or Don’t. Start drinking again. Or don’t.

Pretty simple I suppose, sacrifice potential for simplicity and security.

Of course I’m not choosing that. Those occasional tales where a person lives in a wet, devil-may-care way for eras [plural] of their life and get it together. I’m sobering the-fuck-up, ’cause I want to do more cool shit.

I’m addressing that I feel dumb at this juncture, that I’m not stuck an ignoramus. I’m making a last minute attempt to kickstart my cognition.

I imagine there’s plenty of empty lots with potholes to be filled. Might need to hire some crossing guards to help new ideas along to class. I’ll run my highlight reel during recess like a scared-straight program in in case any rowdy ideas start fucking up in my figurative public school system.

…If only I kept track of how many folks told me I was smart while stumbling in the throes of a bender, another lost job, a neglect for a significant other, etc. — I might not even feel so self-deprecative toward myself. Maybe I’d actually believe how brilliant they said I was. Not that their opinions are harder evidence than my own; compliment’s a compliment.

It soothes this thought somewhat: that half of me was ever there, when it comes down to it. Potentially, and I mean potentially, I can restore myself to near perfect capacities, just in time to pretend I was just messing around back there.

As 2022 rolled in — among other changes — I began to treat every day like I have to understand something for a class, or as if work requires it [they currently don’t, just to be clear]. I now occasionally pretend my brain still requires that daily fix –but of a more wholesome variety.

I decided to pump an inhumane amount of this healthy behavior into myself all at once — you know, to make up for all the lost time. This was where I fucked up a little bit.

You know, I really do love me some excess.

Reading multiple books at once, taking copious notes and essentially trying to accomplish way too much had me short-circuiting. It’s as if the books are going to up and run out on me, every stack of them on my dresser, the coffee table, the floor.

Last week I overwhelmed myself adding an old, out-of-print book of my mother’s called Become A Writer to my stockpile. After I tossed it onto the stack, I ran my hands through my hair, like: I don’t have fucking time to learn how to write.

I enjoy rereading thoughts like in that previous sentence. I find a sort of backwards solace in how easily I rile myself up. It’s end times all the time.

Despite of my insane diligence, Googling every sexy word [proof: salacious, elucidated, mercurial… oooh wee] regardless of necessity or context yanks me back from the big picture most of the time. So, unless my subconscious is digesting the info while I sleep, it’s highly probable that my retention volume is taking a loss.

My father jabbed me, asking, where the fuck was this in college?

Again, the archaic educational system was set up for people like me to conquer without much regard. Load me up and dump me out. Don’t care how suggestive that phrasing is — and I’m not trying to brag, I just have test-taking brain.

What’s that translate to in life, really?

What my Dad was razzing me for is the ensuing lack of intrigue or initiative in nearly everything that happens after achieving that degree. Once again, all I had going for me out that gate was predominately absorption.

In the back of my journals, I have this sloppily etched dictionary of those words I find poetic or intelligent, like the lurid ones I mentioned some hundred words ago. I imagine lyrics and future conversations might either enhance or suffer due to my newly discovered eloquence.

If this is how those writers’ favorite writers write, then of course I must look ’em up, learn ’em and rocket them into the ether at will. That way the next reader won’t know what I’m talking about, just like the tradition established by my heroes before me!

But honestly, what do I really look like when I brandish words such as picayune (worthless) or lolloping (clumsy, ungainly series of paces or bounds) or supercilious (behaving of looking as though one thinks the are superior to others)?

Writers’ favorite writers’ works appear to be loaded with such verbiage. They seem so cool and heady when they use them, those writers do. So how could I not mistype new collections of characters into my Chrome browser every six sentences throughout a passage. Just for the ephemeral bliss of being as brilliant as a ‘confirmed’ brilliant scribbler may be.

I can binge and purge information when that information had a planned destination. I’m addicted to repeated formulas, to obtaining more of the same thing all the time, to loading journals past their brim with Pilot G2 0.7mm ink, and so on.

It’s this fiendish behavior that I’ve hit a new interesting vein in my recovery:

Instead of five thousand push-ups a day or baking intricate pastries or building birdhouses, I might have replaced my insatiable need for my drug of choice with information (relevant, or otherwise).

Perhaps this is utterly useless. It’s just another ritual. But that doesn’t mean I can’t make some internal progress with these adorably trivial tidbits and alliteration that really gets me going. It is extremely likely that this (re)starting point yields more comprehensive ways to consume information and apply it when the time proves opportune.

A helpful essay on how to be a knowledge-sponge may emerge. Probably not, because I’m not confirmed brilliant. I’m just working on that self-deprecation and becoming aware of my adult-onset stupidity.

I’ll continue to pour things into my head [phrasing], in hopes that it flexes my the right muscles. It’s possible I’ll still have no idea what to tell you if you ask what I’m reading about. Whatever. All I know is it’s hilarious and great and you had to be there.

I imagine by some sort of divine chemical reaction, more content is retained than I’m even able to take inventory of. It’s just enough to drop a timely line [phrasing again] and feel the rush of being clever with witnesses.

If you read this far, we have a shared hobby or two,

so here’s to figuring it out as we go.

xx,

Lou