i've never reeked of apathy.

i think one of my biggest flaws is how greatly i let others affect me. it's not that i'm impressionable and succumb to peer pressure; it's more that most of my actions, especially when drunk and/or in one of my pensively decisive moods, are directly results of people who have little say in their own lives, and should therefore not even remotely impact mine. she's single and finally talking to me again like nothing happened three years ago: i'm foolishly hopeful to the point of texting her once in awhile (GASP!). the other one's on a whored-up revenge fuck binge: i'm wasting time writing bad poetry about how i don't and never cared. they laugh and memorize my embarrassing stories and memorable lines to throw them back in my face later: i drink excessively in order to inspire those cherished moments so at least maybe when they regurgitate my crippled history i'll be assured that someone out there is paying attention once in awhile. it's a hell of a way to live, basing your life on reactions you may or may not get from others, but i suppose we're all guilty of it to some extent.


my mind just drifted off in a totally different direction. i'm going to go with it, pathetic blog notes be damned!






i found some old cologne bottles i had at my mom's house a few days ago. she set them aside for me in a ziploc bag, probably to quarantine the stench of cheap fragrances that were somehow acceptable in junior high. i brought them all home and set them out on my shelf in the bathroom in case i'd ever feel inspired to deviate from my age-old standard, Polo Sport.

the first night home i smelled the phallic green bottle of Brute and instantly remembered the days when my childhood best friend of six years and i would drench ourselves in that stuff every friday before donning our camo jacket and white t-shirt uniforms at the ice rink. he fell off the deep end with drugs and stealing and getting in trouble with the cops so we parted ways. aside from the mistakes made by my close family, his downward spiral into the world of hard drugs is what most inspired my choice to never go that route. to this day i still haven't dabbled, not even with a little maryjane. it's not that i think i'm better than anyone, it's that i've seen what it's done to so many i've loved. the fragrance made me flash back to those times crucial times of character development further confused by hormones and it was bittersweet. i put that green bottle down and tried to remember the good times we had together before my old friend slid down that slippery slope. the ironic part is that he wound up becoming a plumber in local one in new york city. we both found the same fate somehow, but my tattoos are far better.

two days ago i opened one of the same two brown round bottles i rediscovered. i had just gotten out of the shower so i splashed some on my chest. the smell wafted up quite quickly and reminded me of who used to wear it, and probably still does. i'm not sure what it's called, but for all intents and purposes we'll give the formula a working title of "Dad." it's unfair that even though i haven't seen him since november i'm still walking in his shoes in my own right, making the same mistakes he did at this age. i glanced in the mirror and told myself i wouldn't let myself go too much further down that road. i wish that somehow maybe he could waltz back into my life again and be fucking normal for long enough to give me some fatherly advice in order to avoid his fate easier, but i know him better than i know myself in some ways and that'll never happen. he's too far gone to be the man that i need him to be, too preoccupied with his precious notion of an Afterlife to care much about his time alive, or as my mom always said: "so Heavenly bound that he's of no Earthly good." it's a shame that construction workers have taken on his role in my life, but i'm thankful that i have at least that much. i glanced in the mirror again and splashed some more on myself; a little of that cologne would just make me miss him, a lot of it would constantly remind me not to ever let friends and family go by the wayside for a belief like he has.

yesterday i sprayed some Fahrenheit on after cleansing the sweet stench of failure off my body via soap and water. that was another fatherly fragrance, but it somehow had a less negative association. he never actually wore that stuff so it didn't really remind me of him so much as it did how i acquired it. he bought it for me one time because the other stuff i had been wearing was so cheap (probably the aforementioned Brute) and he wanted me to have a touch of class. i laughed to myself at that one, then and now.

last night while brushing my teeth i opened the last bottle, Stetson, and sniffed it. that was another one of those lame colognes i used to rock hard back in the day, probably before i even needed deodorant. i'm pretty sure i just liked it because there was a cowboy on the label. i capped it and thought of who it reminded me of, though not as warmly as i would have like to been able to. i was never close to my grandma on my father's side for whatever reasons: the distance, the fact that it was hard to have a conversation with her because she was partially crazy (runs in the fam). when she passed a few years ago i didn't cry and i felt bad. if anything it was good for it to happen at that time because my father and i hadn't been speaking for several months over a lyric he misinterpreted in one of my band's songs. (yeah, he's that nuts.) he called me up to give me the bad news and invite me to the funeral, and after that we started talking and seeing each other again. maybe grandma knew her sacrifice would somehow benefit her offspring. maybe her last gift to her Stetson Stud, as she used to call me (once the Handsome Teddy Bear days were over), was worth more than all of the five dollar bills in christmas and birthday cards she ever gave me combined. too bad it didn't last.

just like the one bottle my mom ever bought me, Curve. that came as a gift to try to get me to wear something than Polo Sport for a change, and change i did. i started wearing it when i had first moved out of my mom's condo three years ago, thus beginning my manwhore days. the already double-digit number of notches in my headboard skyrocketed: doubled, tripled, quadrupled, quintupled (?) so quickly that i found it hard to have parties eventually because the girls would have all realized my game and joined forces to beat me into submission and castrate me. there's one memory of that horrid Curve stench that really sticks with me, though. it was the mo(u)rning after, i didn't even have my bed moved into my room from home yet. we woke on an improvised mattress of some sort and she looked at me funny, like it meant more than it should have. i dodged the glare by stuffing my face back into the pillow which must've been covered with the stuff the night before to cover up the smell of the beer spilled on it. i found out later from her angry friends why she made that pained facial expression when it happened, and why she had been looking so deeply into my eyes for comfort during the act: she was a virgin and i didn't know it. another one bites the dust, kid. great. i never wore that cologne again in that apartment after that, not until the few times i wanted to smell like the asshole i knew i'd wind up being again later on that night somehow. i like to play the part sometimes. i like to play myself. i like plays on words.

so today it was back to good ol' Polo Sport, and it'll probably stay that way for awhile. scientists claim that the sense of smell triggers the most memories, and my little sniff down memory lane only proves them right. i've had enough of that for awhile, though. i'd rather be the me that i have been by choice for eight years now than the me that other people have tried to make me via cologne. and besides, i know that sometime somewhere someway this lovely fragrance will find its way into her nostrils and make her gag as she guiltily remember me, and maybe even regret letting it end like it did. it's only fair that i get to ruin potentially pleasant things for them once in awhile, too.






currently reading:

"the selected poems of robinson jeffers"