GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #259: THE SWAMPS OF BOLINGBROOK AND DARIEN

To be read to this song.


I don't go out to drink much anymore. It's just cheaper to drink at home or at a friend's home. Tonight I had plans to go out to my stomping grounds in Bolingbrook, to Tailgaters. But in going out there it brought back a lot of memories. A lot of memories I'm not quite comfortable with talking about here. Not yet, at least.


I loved a woman who lived down there. I would drive out there on a regular basis. She and I would go next door to a hole in the wall where they made White Russians with whipped cream. Sometimes we went to Tailgaters, but it was closer to go to the hole in the wall. I don't want to think about it too much.


I was early in getting to the bar tonight, so I stopped by her old place, just to relive some memories. It was difficult because everything looked different. Some buildings were gone. A lot of trees were gone. The apartments all had balconies now. The only thing that looked the same was the creek that ran through the area.


I saw the place where so much love and lunacy happened, but it looked nothing like it should have. I drove away having relived nothing. To top it all off the hole in the wall was gone. I think there's a salon there now. It was too dark to tell.


So I went out. I got drunk with my friends. I saw a great band knock out some great covers. I got plastered. It was fun, but as I got ready to hit the road I realized that it just wasn't the same. I think I might have outgrown the whole thing. I'm not sure.


I drove back through the swamps of Bolingbrook and Darien, the air chilly and the soft glow of alien lights drifting and fading throughout the empty space. The rotten husks of forgotten homes. The vast spaces where nature still reigned.


I thought about everything I went through with my friend and her daughter. Everything looked so different that I was certain that our ghosts no long roamed there, coloring the space we used to exist. Instead there is nothing. Nothing to remember us. No one will ever know about what happened within those walls except those who remember. And when we're gone, then we're nothing.


Youth fades and is gone.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #258: WOLVERINE

It all started when I was in my junior year of high school. I was hanging out on the roof of an apartment complex with Rob Tannahill, who went on to become my partner on The Cocaine! Bros. He said that I should grow sideburns. That would make me look cool. I was doubtful, but I listened to him. Sure enough, he was right. I'm a plain lookin' guy, and the sideburns made me a bit more appealing to look at.


But it slowly grew out of control. It got to the point that when my senior year pictures for the yearbook were taken, I looked like Wolverine. Yeah, this is a shitty photo, but it's fucking old, so yeah. Here we go:

Yeah.


I'm probably going to see LOGAN tomorrow. He was not an inspiration for my looks back in high school, no matter how contrary that might seem. Rob was the guy who did it, not Logan. But I really like the way Wolverine is portrayed by Hugh Jackman. I understand why comics fans hate it, but I don't care. I don't like X-Men comics. The movies are the way to go.


PS: My nickname was Elvis. I can see that, but in my opinion, I needed a little less conversation, a little more action, so . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #257: THE REASON WHY

This is the 257th installment of GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS. What have I been doing with this? Sometimes I wonder, myself. How did it keep going so long? What is the purpose? How did this become a pattern in my life?


Well, it hasn't been much of a pattern lately. I'm fucking depressed as all hell. My square job is slowly killing me. I like the people I work with. I love the way we interact. The job is OK, too, with the exception of Wednesday night. The commute, though, is destroying my will to live. When I first got the job I found myself making a choice when I got home: write or work out? Can't have both. I chose write for a long time, but I haven't been getting good stuff lately. It's gotten to the point where I choose neither. The only writing I'm getting done these days is my work on the Zimventures, and that's a fucking joke. Besides, they are already written. I'm just changing them. Improving (I hope) them. I get home from work. I shower the day away. And I lose myself in fast food, booze and TV shows. And then I go to bed. And I go to bed so late that it's not worth writing a GF post because no one will read it.


This started when I was inspired by Warren Ellis and Brian Keene. They wrote something the very instant they got out of bed and posted it for the world to see. I love that writing exercise, except I am a very cranky son of a bitch when I wake up. I am not suitable for words when I'm fresh from slumber. My solution: GF is going to be the very last thing I do before I go to bed every night (hence the title). I think it has worked out pretty well. For the most part.


As I get older I think more about GF and its purpose. Now I consider it more of a diary than anything else. But . . . I've been thinking about my own mortality recently. I don't think I'm long for this world. It's not just my bad habits. Maybe it's paranoid, but I feel like I'm being hunted very slowly. Not by anything physical, of course. Just hunted by my own impending death. Maybe it has to do with the fact that next year I'm going to be 40. I thought I'd already had my midlife crisis back in my twenties. I don't know.


But I think the purpose of GF is more than just a diary. I think it's an accounting of my memories. An accounting of who I am for any archaeologist who gives a shit. I'm reading T.C. Boyle's The Inner Circle. I've always been fascinated by Alfred Kinsey. I would have loved to give up my sexual history to him personally. To have been a "friend of the research."


Instead I'm going to give up my history to you all, for whatever it might be worth.


Here's a memory for you. I have been writing every since I was a child. When I was in seventh grade my English teacher--who I had an enormous crush on--had a project for the class. She said that we were going to all write a book together, and it was to be the life story of a human being. Each of us would write a chapter.


I still have a copy of this book. It's really about twenty pages of photocopied text with an occasional picture. Maybe I have the only extant copy. Who knows? But it's in the pile of stuff with POOR BASTARDS AND RICH FUCKS and that issue of SHROUD I was in, etc.


Luck of the draw: I got the final chapter. My teacher was very aware of my personal trauma, and she said that if I wanted another chapter, she could reassign it. No, I told her. I really wanted the final chapter. Why?


I helped create the guy. His career. His loves and his hates. I even gave him his first name: Montgomery. Even back then I was a huge Star Trek guy, and I named him after Scotty. I knew all about him before the other students even had a chance to delve into his character.


Why did I want the last chapter? I've never told this to anyone before. I don't know why. I don't see anything wrong with it. It just reaffirms how I've always felt about beloved characters. But here it is. Confession time.


I wanted the last chapter because I wanted the honor of killing him.


To those of you who read my fiction, this will probably make a ton of sense.


This is me. This is who I've always been. If you want my history, it is here in all the GFs I've ever written. If you wanted to piece together who I am, this is what you need to read.


Of course, I'm assuming anyone gives a shit. But maybe, just maybe, some archaeologist will discover the internet long after we've all perished. Maybe that scientist will try to piece together who we were. Maybe they can even turn the internet back on and find my mad ramblings here.


This is all data, no matter how silly or stupid it might be. And I hope I can contribute to the charts of whoever comes next.


Goodnight, fuckers.