Tripping in the Woods

The worst facet of any campout are the smiling faces of the self-righteous recovering drug addicts. At Surrender Under the Stars 27, I interacted with more than 100 of these un-incarcerated felons September 20-22 in an ill-advised setting: the woods outside of Dayton, Tennessee. At the time, I considered myself part of their group, but in the months since last year, these damaged people grew exponentially more detestable. Well, unless I wanted to fuck them, but that, along with my tolerance, has shrunk.

Narcotics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women for whom possessing self-righteous egotism and fearing maturity is encouraged, who act cultish or otherwise religious while constantly denying this in defense of “spirituality.” They internalize denial of responsibility as the first step to recovering something, most likely childishness. Through stating that they are “powerlessness over our addiction,” unity is established, and unity is non-discriminative. Yeah, that sounds good.

There’s a warped kind of positivity that comes from religiosity, especially in global waves: acceptance is the ability to convince oneself that it is unavoidable to be sitting on a hornet’s nest. “I’m fucked up...but that’s okay” one member shared, who has none of his teeth besides the ones he bought when he decided to stop inhaling meth. It didn’t help him get laid.

As I said before, even cult members can have symmetrical faces; I always imagined the ugly to be hideous. I find it strange how drug use seems generally kinder to women in this group. It is unfair and strikingly absurd to me how someone could be attractive when their chest still hurts from CPR. Undeniably, I am attracted to challenging women. I cannot decide whether this is dominantly from thinking I can affect a different outcome through being a positive male model not obviously trying to reproduce with them, or that I simply have low self-esteem.

And I cannot help but think that this low self-esteem was what drew me platonically to them. Sure, I partied alone like many other college kids, only all day. I liked the solitude, and I lacked the maturity to not get high constantly. Things were great so long as my roommate was dealing and was gone long enough to not notice me shaking the shake out of his bag.

I have been to camping here three years in a row, and midway through this annum, I stopped giving a shit. At first I thought the feeling would be temporary. Now, I’m stuck with the Registration Chair position because I want to prove something to those fucks I’m not sure I’m better than. Maybe I’m getting older and cultivating my cynicism. Maybe God left me.

I isolated from them as much as I could in search of some “Higher Power.” I found it in the cave-strewn Hawthornian woods nearby, beaten from the trail skimming along a steep dirt slope. None of them dared come here, lest they be introduced to themselves.

The nothingness found me, or, I found it. But really, I could have found it anywhere, from my home to a nightclub, or in the bathroom of each.

God is dead, and these people are dead to me. It is ironic how “Godly” people make life more difficult. But despite my racism, I understand that these people are too closed-minded to realize that they’re close-minded. Spiritual-mindedness cannot always overcome simple-mindedness. I might bother myself over having “wasted time,” but I am everything I have experienced, and nothing I have experienced is me.   

kids on the floor

27 children

20 white, 6 mulatto

made of saline and ashes

fopping on the cold tile,

dusty and dirty

sugar splotches

the blonde results of passion

golden hash

a mish-mash

of Betty Crocker brownie

batter with

dirt-flecked

charr granuals,

a fiery grave danced

upon in the gutters

of Southern cities, the

same as all the

rest,

blessed by some of the

best trivial pursuits

in our neurotic

conforming, regicidal

mediacrity,

wrapped in a nasty navy

leather exoskeleton,

open for interpretation,

by some lady in Iowa

that heard it from

her friend who

heard it on the

public airwaves.

27 children

20 white, 6 mulatto

made of saline and ashes and clay,

secreting constantly

from the bottom and top

middle too, if they could,

with the mothers

listening close

by,

dad's at work,

so he says,

to bring home the bacon

from the Tyson plant

smelling more like a

paper mill than

birds, a

sign of the times here in the South,

so he can bring one more

disgusting imbecile

onto the world to be

controlled by a lord,

oh Lord,

and this vassal will continue

until he reaches Your

great golden plains

because we all have

plans to spend the

sands of our days,our

demands to match what we

stand for.

But that's not the part of the

absurdity I’m referencing.

There are 27 children,

20 white, 6 mulatto

eyeing me with

magical indifference

as I wait for us to be

fed so they can grow

up to be

the people I

tolerate,

condemning lest they

be thrown out

into the sandpaper wind,

speaking the Jester's English,

me being the fool,

fool of the court.

27 children

20 white, 6 mulatto

one missing.

I screamed for my son

and he emerged from

the trapdoor in the bushes.

When You and I are 25

Look: you’ll see that

a cheating spouse

and I

are ugly

because we cannot choose an

attractive child.

This is my perception.

I’m not part of the immersive

amorphous sludge of contemporary

track shorts and fucking Sperry’s.

Distraction is option one.

Escape is the second.

Activity is the third.

These are my morals.

Once I have everything,

I will strive for more

and plunge my lacerated shoulders

into a fountain greedily,

snatch my every dime and replace them

with quarters.

Wet dollars would be absurd

once I had everything.

I have

twenty-five cents.

Twenty-five percent effort.

Twenty-five times a bronze flipped

heads, heads, tails, tails,

twenty-five years old

serving twenty-five to life.

Forever twenty-five.

They will not remember that

I’m twenty-five

when I’m fifty.

I’ve heard not dying’s the goal of life;

mine is to live so I won’t.

I won’t die

until I don’t want to.

Then I’ll be in the ocean,

on a mountain,

in the trunk,

maybe in the ground

or the air,

somewhere -

somewhere less desperate.

less melancholy than

being gone.

But enough bothering the mortician!

Depression should only affect the masters,

not the slaves since

they have the beauty to fight it.

But if you are destined for me,

if each time you wish change in the world,

my shoes are on,

pull yourself together

and join me.

I cannot expect the future,

and it’s all I think about:

the parts I can’t control,

the parts I won’t miss.

When I’m 25

is the question’s end, my dear,

and I hope it ends

when my best is flattened,

and I promise then

that I’ll leave.