GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1062: TREADING WATER

 All fucking year I've suffered terrible bad luck. You know it's bad when you win a victory only to have something happen that renders the victory useless. For example, I've been behind on sales all month at work. From Friday to Sunday, I made a shocking amount of sales. That's a victory, right? Except I'm not paid on sales. I'm paid on those sales getting invoiced. So guess how many of my 70+ sales got invoiced yesterday and today? Barely a quarter of them. So I'm still behind at work. My wonderful victory meant nothing.

Here's another example: I had a cage on my foot so I could heal said foot. It worked. The cage came off, my foot was healed. But now a new hole has opened, and it won't heal, so what was the fucking point?

I remember the joy I felt when my first book, Strip, was published. I remember the soul-crushing anguish when it flopped so bad it transcended the very concept. To give you an idea, it sold tens of copies. It didn't even come close to cracking 100. Not even FIFTY. Thankfully it has sold a lot better ever since I rereleased it through Riot Forge.

And now for my favorite example: I survived the nightmare of being forced to leave my childhood home by finding a great place to live in DeKalb. I can barely afford it, but if I just keep making my commission at work, at least I'll survive.

It's time to renew my agreement with the complex, and starting July, just in time for my birthday, my rent is going up a hundred dollars a month.

But hey, my tax return this year is more than four grand, so that shouldn't be too much of a problem, right? Except today I got news that after waiting months for them to do the math to ensure I'm telling the truth on my 1040, they need yet another fucking three months to get that done. How likely am I to get that money by July?

I've been treading water since January, and all it has done is exhaust me. It has frayed my goddam nerves. I am full of stark blinding rage all the time. Frustration? No, that left a while ago. The door did, indeed, hit him on the ass, for all the good it did.

Ordinarily I have friends that I can hang out with, that I can vent my spleen with. And I do have many friends, but none of them are here in DeKalb. No one is even close. But I do have you. I'm sorry to puke all my angst at you. In fact, you don't even have to read this. Tonight you are Schrodinger's Fuckers. Obviously you are there because I'm venting to you, but I'm pretending you're not so I can just let loose.

[This note will make more sense later, but while rereading this to make sure it made sense, I accidentally thought I'd typed "I'm vomiting on you," so see? I'm laughing.]

In my awful gut-wrenching throes, my mind is starting to make plans to sell all my belongings. Get the important stuff to family, sell the rest of it, and prepare to live on the streets, and there's an ugly treacherous part of me that looks forward to it. I know that bastard is a liar and a cheat, but there is comfort to be found in ceasing to fight. I'm sick of putting all the effort I've got in me into merely treading water. That's not enough. It's worse than failure. At least with failure it'll all finally be fucking over. It will pass, I know, but that's what that piece of shit is saying right now.

There's also another part of me that is flat out insane. Those who saw me in my party days would probably say I was pretty crazy, considering my batshit conduct, but that's tame compared to all the stuff I hold back. Once the fight is over, and I've lost, there will be nothing holding that part of me back. There's comfort in that, too. If I've lost, then I've got nothing left to my life but to find ways to entertain myself, and I've got a great imagination. Without my personal library to soothe me? My idle hands would very much itch.

I'm tired of fighting every waking moment of my wretched life. I want to relax. I want nothing more than to REST. I'm not looking for riches beyond comprehension. If you gave me a Ferrari, I'd give it away to someone else. I stopped wearing watches, so a Rolex wouldn't impress me. OK, how about something not material, like sex? That's not a thing I overly concern myself with. If it comes my way, I enjoy it, but it's not all that important to me, so I don't even seek that kind of wealth. All I want is for life to stop it's constant assault on my senses. Let me have at least a week where I can get up out of the water and rest on a boat instead.

Thank you for listening. I'm not seeking advice or comfort, so you don't have to reach out. I needed to get this out of me in the hopes that writing about it will exorcise the horror. The feeling is familiar. I know it will pass. I'm trying to *force* it to pass with this.

I can still laugh. Here's proof of that, and also proof of something I would ordinarily hold back. Earlier in the process of writing this, I paused to think if there's anything in my sewer of a brain that I wouldn't talk about in these things. It reminded me of one of the GFs of old that I scratched. One of the ones I'd deleted and written about doing that instead. It was about the annoyance of getting boners at work. Like, if I'm on break reading an unexpected erotic scene in a book, for example. I'd gone into great detail before realizing, what the fuck? No one is going to want to read about this. This is . . . also, what if someone I work with stumbled upon this? How fucked up would that be?

And that made me laugh. So I figured, what the hell. I'm still me. Don't worry. Go back and reread that bracketed sentence again.

All the same, I can't believe I survived the horrors of leaving Elmhurst only to be confronted with this neverending stream of bullshit. And no, I can't find somewhere else to live. I was making a bunch of sacrifices in moving to Joliet, but I figured I'd use my time there to build my credit back up. But things went south instead, and that credit score is completely in the toilet as a result. There's literally nothing I can do about that, so I'm sure no landlord would ever have me.

My life is . . . fun.

I'll try to have something cheerful (or at least not completely full of despair) for you tomorrow night.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #834: I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO CALL THIS ONE

 I'm fucking exhausted. It's not just the sickness thing, although that's a huge part of it. Imagine feeling at your absolute lowest, and a doctor tells you that you will never feel like this again if you remove one specific thing from your life. You remove that specific thing, and it doesn't work. You feel at your worst time and time again, and it doesn't seem to stop. You'd feel betrayed, wouldn't you?

I know medical science doesn't know everything, and that there are many mysteries that may never get solved. But I'm hurting. I feel betrayed. I trusted them with this thing, and they just take a look at me, go whoopsy, and let's move on.

I can't move on. There's so much more going on in my life right now, and I usually tell you everything. There are a few things I've been holding back on. Two, to be specific. One of them I will never tell you about. The other? I almost decided to write about that tonight. But it's unspeakable, even for me. I can't. Not yet, at least.

It took all my ability to not cry on my drive home from work. That's very unusual for me because up until maybe five years ago, I thought I'd lost the ability to cry. The last time I cried was when I was a child.

It was pretty easy to stop me back then. My stepfather gave me a sharp crack across the face and said, "Boys don't cry." And he stared at me, like he was imposing his will on me. And he was.

Much to my surprise I found myself crying when my mom died. I cried when my dad died. I cried when my grandparents died. And now it seems like it's in my soul again. I can watch something sad or harrowing, and I can feel my eyes tear up. But to suddenly need to cry while I was driving? That was out of the fucking blue for me. And then for me to force myself not to cry? It was like feeling that slap across the face again from across the decades. I felt chastised.

Men are told they have to be a certain way, or they're not men. For the record, I recognize that this is the same for women and nonbinary people, too, but I can only speak of my own personal experience. The indoctrination begins almost at birth when they give you a blue blanket and talk about how one day all the ladies will swoon at your feet. That's taking a lot for granted. Hell, these days it starts with the gender reveal. Gotta have your blue smoke or your pink balloons or what have you, or you think you're not going to be a caring parent.

We focus too much on details. Can't we just be happy that we have a healthy baby? We have to foist gender norms on them before they even know what the earth's air tastes like?

Be a man. Love sports. Fuck all the girls. It's OK if they're not on the same page with you. Bully them until they'll put your dick in their mouth. It's consensual that way. But even if you go beyond that, it's OK. It's just boys roughhousing. Besides, she shouldn't have dressed that way. Gives men all sorts of ideas . . .

But you'd better want your dick in that woman's mouth. If you like other men? You're not a man.

I did not like all the kinds of things men are supposed to like. I always found comfort in books and playing with my toys. Making up my own stories. Getting lost in my thoughts. But I also had my cousin, Erik, so I was able to pretend to like that other stuff by modeling myself after him. It kept my stepfather off my back, and he was the one who wanted me to be a man.

It was odd. My father accepted my ways as manly, or at least boyish, and he didn't seem concerned with beating the shit out of me so I'd fit some kind of mold. Dad was always easy-going, and he often found it was more important to be funny than anything else, sometimes to his own detriment. I'll bet that sounds pretty familiar to a lot of people who know what I value more than most things, sometimes to my own detriment.

Yet despite that, my stepfather was the stronger influence because he had boots on the ground at all times. And I don't like admitting this part much, but some of the blame does go to my grandfather. He wanted to make sure I was a man who liked manly things. He didn't want to beat me into it, but he shamed me often. He'd take me out to ballgames, which I found as an adult weren't that bad, especially if you had whiskey with you. He got me a subscription to Playboy when I turned 18, I think because he was afraid I was gay. Gramps, too, used to say, "Boys don't cry."

I think I would have been a lot better off if my stepfather had accidentally killed me during a beating. I wouldn't have grown up into this thing that feels like the world is slipping away constantly, and I'm losing all of my battles, and I'm not even having fun making up my own stories anymore, and that was the one thing that kept me alive and sane when I was a kid.

I've spent my life trying to just get by. I was advised as a very young boy that it was best to bottle your shit up. Keep bottling it up until it becomes unbearable, then take it out on some poor prick. His offense doesn't have to be that bad, just enough to break the camel's back. And when it's done, go back to bottling it up until next time. I do bottle a lot of things up. I completely get it when Bruce Banner says, "I'm always angry." Because I fucking am. The world is unfair. I've known that longer than most people I grew up with. But as an adult I've always fought for the world to be fair. For people to stop taking advantage of others. Every time you see me rant and rave about the dipshits and fuckfaces taking advantage of us all, that's me trying to bring some balance to the world. I can't make the changes. I can only make people aware. If enough of us are aware, maybe we can gang up on the bastards.

But I can't lash out. I can't take it out on some poor prick. Because I know what I'm like when the rage has taken me over. Instead I self-immolate. I take it out on myself, because if I took it out on someone else, I'm certain I would go to prison for a very long time, and rightfully so.

And that's a man's greatest achievement, isn't it? Destroy yourself before someone else has the chance to. As much as I tried to avoid the manly lessons, I adopted the most horrifying one of them all.

Doesn't it say something that the manliest man of my youth, Arnold Swarzenegger, is on a mission to help young men find real lessons instead of the toxic bullshit that's been handed down for centuries?

I listen to him. I try. I want to be a better person, but holy fuck, I got a raw deal nearly from the start. There's shit in the DNA of my mind that will never come out, no matter how much I twist and turn the knot. I don't think Alexander the Great could cut this fucking thing.

We do so much damage to our children in the name of wanting them to be good people that we will never understand our own destructive natures. Every time I see some asshole saying something stupid on TV or, more likely, in the House of Representatives, I remind myself that they were children once. That someone visited this horror on them, and they have no idea how bad their problem is. They think they're normal. They think it's OK to boobytrap the Rio Grande, and when some kid gets hurt or even killed, fuck 'em. Because they're not Americans, dammit. Only Americans are people.

I think I've worn myself out. I'm going to post one more GF before my hiatus. It will probably be on Thursday, and I'm going to try to not be my own subject. It seems like every time I write something these days it's about me and my problems. I did some good tonight. I no longer feel the despair I started with. I feel like I made a few good points to myself, things to work on. But something's got to give. I can't see myself continuing like this for another ten, twenty, thirty years. I hope I'll find a way to shed this thing (and the two others I won't mention). It would be nice to make it to 50 without burning out like a supernova.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #779: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND THERE IT IS

 It didn't take the universe very long to self-correct itself. Now I'm back to my usual doom and gloom.

For the last month or so we haven't had heat in the house. It hasn't been too bad. Yes, it's cold, but it's not too bad. Yet. Even when it snowed on Halloween it was OK. I have a space heater in my bedroom, so when I'm there I'm nice and cozy, but when I'm in the bathroom or the kitchen, it's not that great. I got in the habit of skipping breakfast most days to avoid being in the kitchen for too long.

But winter is coming, and holy shit, I guess no one can really say that anymore without thinking of Game of Thrones. It's like when Spike said, "Who you gonna call?" on Buffy.

Anyway, cold weather is on its way, and there's no way we can get through the season without heat, so I called a guy today, and he confirmed for me what I've long suspected: the furnace is fucked. FUCKED. Somehow it got full of water, and a circuit board is fried, and of course a new one is going to cost a lot of fucking goddam money.

Thankfully there's a monthly payment plan, but at the same time I really don't want to deal with this. Chiefly among my reasons is the fact that I have no idea how long we're still going to be here. I could be paying for this fuckin' thing for no good reason at all if the bank decides to kick us out, say, in the spring. I'm getting bent over for this?

Goddammit. My brother mentioned there might be a warranty on the furnace. He says it's fairly new, but I don't remember us getting a new furnace a few years ago. I hope he's right. I don't really want to do this, but if I must, and I suspect I must, then I will.

So yes, doom and gloom. And I'm going to need some help. If you've ever been curious about my books, now's the time to buy. Check out my website for all the relevant links. And what the hell, I said I was going to stop editing stuff for other people, but do you need an editor? I'm flexible on prices. Let me know, and we can talk. Jesus God, maybe I should start an OnlyFans. Put on some hot pants and pick a corner on the Sleaze Strip . . .

If you buy Strip, Trail of Blood, Pavlov;s Bitches, 6669: Demon Porn, John Holmes Vampire Slayer, Dong of Frankenstein and Other Pornos You Can't Jerk It To, It Changes a Man and the Audible version of Poor Bastards and Rich Fucks, I will get paid the quickest. Next tier of swiftness is Tales of Questionable Taste, Poor Bastards and Rich Fucks, And Jesus Came Back and Blood. Coming in last are Tales of Unspeakable Taste and The Life and Times of Hieronymus Aloysis Ziege. If, you know, you're interested in knowing how fast you'd be able to help me.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #720: MIDLIFE CRISIS

 To be read to this song.

I should probably be dead by now. It almost happened a few times. Sometimes I wish it had. Because I'm pretty fucking miserable. I put up a good front. My go-to defense mechanism is humor, and it's almost knee-jerk. I don't have to put a lot of thought into that humor. It just sort of happens.

When I was in my early twenties I went through a midlife crisis, or at least I thought I did. It was a grim time, mostly because I didn't do a lot of drinking back then. Not yet. Drinking is a great defense mechanism, too, by the way. Until it's not.

But here I am at the age of 45, and I'll be damned if I'm not going through another midlife crisis. This one's the real deal, though. I felt pretty hopeless way back when, but I also knew that I still had plenty of time back then. Now I feel completely hopeless. I'm rethinking everything I've ever done. I'm looking over the mistakes of my life and regretting a lot of them.

I'm dissatisfied with the way things turned out. This is not the life I imagined when I was a kid. Granted, I thought I'd be a world renowned detective, and what were the odds of that happening? Hell, maybe that's what I should do now. Quit everything I'm doing now and get a job with a private investigations agency. Because I'd never work for the cops. In case you haven't noticed, I have a problem with authority. I'd make a great researcher, and I could probably learn the ropes quickly until I become a PI myself. I used to have that fantasy. Maybe I could do that now. I'll look into it when I have more time.

But I'm thinking back over the course of my life, trying to figure out where it went wrong, and I think I found the cause. Even when I was in high school I had confidence in my writing, and back then I really should not have. But I did. I figured I'd be making a living as an author by now, and yeah, I have books out. Yeah, there are a lot of publications to my name. Yeah, people know who I am. But I'm not even close to making a living on my writing. I'm not even a quarter of the way there. Not even an eighth.

I figured I'd keep a square job until my writing took off, so I've lived that way ever since. What I should have done was go to college for something that wouldn't turn out to be fucking useless. If you know me in real life, you've heard me say this line at least once: "I went to Elmhurst College where I majored in English and Philosophy, two things guaranteed to get me nowhere in the world." It's funny the first time you hear it. But this laugh isn't worth it.

I should have studied something more important. I think I should have majored in business instead. That's a degree I can actually do something with. I had another fantasy: start a used bookstore. I could have used such an education to do that very thing. I always thought I should open a dive bar, but maybe that would have been a bad idea, considering how my drinking turned out.

But I could have used that shit to get myself a real job, not these bullshit jobs I keep kicking around at, earning just enough money to buy a sock to jerk off into and have an extra for when that one gets too stiff. And then I could do all sorts of real job type stuff while moonlighting as an author until my writing took off. Plus, since I don't have extravagant tastes, I could probably throw my disposable income into an advertising campaign, which would really fucking help.

Yet here I sit with my dissatisfaction. You may have noticed a lot of my GF columns of late have been political/social ranting about how we're all getting fucked over by rich fucks with no moral fiber who are encouraged by politicians with no moral fiber so long as they get their payday. What do my rants get me? Nothing. Not a goddam thing. It just makes me even more pissed off, and for what? Why should I care? People bitch about inflation, but I think they secretly love it. There's no other explanation for why we haven't guillotined Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and their likes. So why should I bother talking about it? It does nothing but work me up, and it's never going to change anyone's mind.

And then there's my current square job. How the fuck do I keep getting sucked into sales jobs? When I went for the interview, I was under the impression it was customer service. That's what a lot of companies do now, by the way. They post jobs as customer service when they really mean sales. I was offered the job, and I took it because I was desperate. I'd been out of work for more than a year at that point. I was at the second lowest point in my life. It seemed like the only way to save myself. And now I go to that job five days a week, pissed off that I don't get a full weekend. Angry that a quarter of the calls I get aren't even sales calls. Mad at all the other departments that torpedo my fucking sales. And now they're outsourcing half of our calls? I have to dig deep to get any work done, and it's driving me fucking crazy. It's a lot of effort for very little reward. And to top things off, I came within two sales of meeting my quota last month. Two. 198 out of 200. So I didn't get paid off on all that work. I should have moved on from that job by now. Why am I still there?

I realize that with my history of what is currently called "mental health struggles," that tonight's column might be a little unsettling. If I was going to kill myself, I'd just do it. No one would get any warning whatsoever. I wouldn't want anyone stopping me. So take it as a good sign that I'm writing this. So no need for any pep talks. I'm not on the ledge. I am thinking about making a lot of life changes, though. Ending Goodnight, Fuckers is one of them. Getting the fuck off of social media is another. Hell, I've even thought about abandoning who I am entirely and going to work for the villains. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Good God, I'm even thinking of going into politics! That's how desperate I am. Any fucking dickhead can be a politician. Hell, you don't even have to have even  a passing relationship with the truth. Look at George Santos. Guess what? I graduated from Harvard. I'm a lawyer now. And a doctor. Shit, why not send out a bunch of resumes packed with lies? No one seems to give a shit about that. Are they really going to do a background check?

All those times when I was younger and thought I was miserable? What a fucking idiot I was. All that shit is nothing compared to how I feel now.

Mom died at 53. That's not all that far from where I stand now. I'm running out of time.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #562: YOU CAN ALWAYS GO FUCK YOURSELF

 So here's this thing that has always bugged me over the course of my current job. I haven't run into it at any other sales job because the things I was selling before were pretty singular. Books, for example. Or season tickets to theater. But there are a lot of options for the same auto glass. Many companies do that work.

The thing that bugs me? People who get offended at our prices. Especially if it's over, say, a windshield job that clocks in under $200 when most of the jobs are up in the $500 range. I'll be in the middle of quoting someone a price, and they'll whistle. Or they'll hang up. I get that, and I'm cool with that. But it's the others that get to me. The ones who say, "That's fucking outrageous." Or, "Does that come with a blowjob?" Or, "You're crazy if you think I'm paying that much for whatever."

So you're offended at our prices. Fine. I'm willing to negotiate where I can, but if you're going to be a dick about it, I'm much less inclined to help you. Plus I have about twenty people on hold who might be more receptive to our prices.

"Well, I got such and such a price from this other company!" is a retort I get often. Good for you, Chuckles. Buy from them. There isn't a law that says you have to buy from us. Stop wasting my time so I can help someone else who isn't going to be a dripping goat's penis.

I realize this might make me sound like an asshole, but I'd like to point out that these are things I think. When people are dicks to me, I double down on politeness. There is no fathomable reason why you should react like that when you're just shopping around, anyway. I'd much rather you rudely hung up on me. That saves me from talking to a brick wall, and it helps me move on to the next person on hold.

What could possibly be going through someone's head that they would react so poorly to me giving them a mere quote? Is it some form of self-entitlement? Some holier-than-thou kind of thing? "Dammit, I'm better than everyone else, so I deserve a better price?"

I've been laying off cannabis. For reasons. But my patience with the world is getting thin. I probably need to chill the fuck out.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #280: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY

I graduated from high school in 1996. I remember at the family party afterward, I was given a crisp $100 bill. I have held onto it ever since. I considered it my last move. In case of emergency, break glass. If I ever had to spend it, that would mean I was in absolute trouble. I kept it in several books over the years.


Fast forward to today. I had to dig that motherfucker out because if I didn't, I would be in far greater debt than I have been so far, one that probably wouldn't end.


So that's it. I have no more cards to play. I have two fives and four ones to my name. I get paid not this Friday, but next Friday. Holy fuck, this is grim. Let's fly this fucker with no safety net. Also, please buy my books.