Plague Journal #7

Today we are to travel the distant 3 miles to the grocery store. A dread heretofore felt only in the back alleys of my youth--spazzed out on clarky cat, paranoid and lost, sure that muscular rapists with aids hid around every corner--looms. 
Now is not the time for heroism. I don't own a gun or hide razors in my gums. Now we hold our breaths, like we used to when driving past graveyards. Simpler times. Superstitious for all the right fanciful reasons. 
Some ghosts are real. This is sewage-colored and noxious, we know, but still invisible. Or maybe it's pinkish, red, like sliced gums. You chew it like gum.        
Disease.   
More dead than 9/11. Less than flu or car crashes or starving babies. What level of panic should we be experiencing? 
My nipples are erect, but not tingling. 
Going to down this drink and brush my teeth and kiss my girl and read until it bores me to sleep. 

Plague Journal #6

Having a hard time assembling coherent thoughts, but that's okay. Everything seems to make sense later. I didn't know what to write and considered improvising a poem or song. It began:

Every day begins with Munchausen syndrome,

In the arms of a toxic toupee,

Dangling a dead rabbit,

Pulled from an asshat.

That means nothing and it means many things. It could easily be political. It started political. But it could also be fabulist, historical, retentive gibberish. Most definitely the latter. I've never been able to focus on politics for very long, but the past few years have seen a gradual change. I never used to wake up angry about it. I had more private reasons for being angry. Now, NPR is playing in the house for hours every day. Is this what growing is? Is this a bad cover version of my life? 

I have nothing to say. People are getting sick and dying worldwide, in a way that most of us have never experienced. At the same time, the sense of panic (at least in this household) is sedated at best. We wash our hands and profusely sanitize if we need to go to the store. Other than that, things are relatively status quo. But this new and interesting fear is like having canine senses when a bad storm is brewing.

For the fun of it, lets bitch the black cloud and watch Tiger King

Plague Journal #5

"You been eating long enough now, stop being greedy"

Arf, arf! Woke with this song in my splitting migraine skull, flopped on the couch after chugging last remnants of milk, stared with dull shivers at any un-angular dark spot I could locate, further reconnaissance decoding birdcalls (I know their games), pilfered through opium memories, turned on news, turned off news, closed eyes (is this the magic turd?), food tasted septic, the hours flew.

919 people have died in Italy in the past 24-hours. Hundred-thousand expected infected in Spain in next few days. 323 deaths in Germany. Millions of tents in Turkey/Syria, where infection spreads rapidly. Mass suicides in Pattaya. A 17-year-old in California was turned away from the hospital for not having health insurance, he died soon after. No one gets a funeral. America infection rate surpasses everywhere else(#1!!!)

About me: I have a wife, I drink every night (never before 5), smoke cigarettes (though on day 3 of Chantix), used to make music, now I write and have completed 3 novels, one of which I am editing and will attempt to get published, currently writing a 4th, currently not sick, masturbate or sex once a day, try to read and write every day, currently reading Gravity's Rainbow (quarantine is a time for big novels), cinephile (currently going through Sion Sono's catalogue), in and out of jails, mental hospitals, rehabs, and Scientology indoctrination centers throughout my teens and early 20's, I have psoriasis, it's pretty bad right now, I live in Tennessee and miss the beach.

Plague Journal #4

Kamikaze petal whites careening outside the window, disturbing the cats. What is out there? What am I missing, Pazuzu thinks. DeeDee is less curious. Well, an angel of Death has seen fit to prime the street for domesticated retardation, Pazuzu. You might could just thrive out there, long as a fat starving hawk doesn't crosshair your rather weak camouflage coat. Your glinting bumblebee eyes.

Busted open old DVD wallets today, between group texts with irate co-workers scheming to whip the authorities, caffeinemare writing, walking, smoking, reading, bleeding a little, cleaning dried blood from fingernails, witnessing Disney-esque window stories in horror/bliss, pushups, pontificating, masturbating, contextualizing abdominal pains as figments of imagination, and snuggling with DeeDee and Pazuzu. Watched Taxi Driver and SAFE. Both get better each time. 
Taxi Driver I've seen probably 20 or 30 times, but hadn't watched it in many years. I've learned far too late in life that empathizing with Travis Bickle isn't a positive trait. 

I used to be a rapper. Two of my favorite lines: 
Spit bars straight through you like a fraction.
I've got bigger nuts than mental retardation. 

Plague Journal #3

Letter from Boss

Aside from writing my father's eulogy, these are the hardest words I've ever put down on paper.

On Tuesday, the decision to close the doors was made to protect the safety of our team. Of course, guest's health and safety is important, but to me, nothing is as important as my family, which is my Mom, ____, ____, and of course, the ____ team, which has been my family for 30 years now.

Those who have chosen to know me more as a person and not just a person who signs the checks and deals with business matters know that transparency has always been the way I have chosen to work and run the business. People before profit.

That said, here are some facts:

Before leaving town on March__ all rent, phone bills, and other essential payments were made to our vendors, as always. That left us with the normal amount of money in the payroll account...as we expected to have bang-up weekends ahead which would pay the remainder of the payroll.

That did not happen. We did not expect the world, especially our hospitality driven city to come to a screeching halt. But it did. As we are a day-to-day business, all monies that come in, go right out to pay our staff and then our bills. It's been a tough few years, and profit has been slim to none. ___ has worked painstakingly to assist me in reorganizing our business plan moving forward. Then this...so all I can say is I hope ____ is able to reopen and have a future.

____ calculated the payroll from 2/16 - 2/29 as usual. As there is only the money that was previously in the bank, we have put everything into the payroll account, and you will each receive 72% of what your actual Net paycheck was calculated by ADP to be. (please see below)

s/b $1504.70   Paid $1083.39   Owed $421.31

That leaves the last payroll (3/1 - 3/17). With no income to the business, there is no output. I will be applying for SBA loans, every government stimulus package and grant allowed by law. Any monies that we are able to receive will go to paying you all FIRST (for this paycheck and the percentage of the last), and hopefully we will be able to open the doors again. We are not alone in this. This is a global crisis. It's a real thing.

Please know that this is not going to go away in a month. Our business is 70% travel based and I strongly believe this will unfortunately get worse before it gets better. But I am optimistic. If we are able to reopen, I'm sure it will be a slow process as it will certainly take the market time to recover. I hope you will understand that this is a time to support each other, not for anger. We are all totally confused and unaware of what is coming next.

Please keep each other in your thoughts as I will be keeping you in mine as I attempt to get assistance for our team.

Warmest regards,
______


"all rent, phone bills, and other essential payments were made to our vendors" ... "all monies that come in, go right out to pay our staff and then our bills." 

She also failed to mention that she had just returned from a cruise, which she left for during the outbreak. Where did that money come from, stupid? 

She has apparently left the country. 

At least I'm not peein' out the butt anymore... 

This is report #3, but I've been homebound for just under 2 weeks now. Go out once a day to walk, see what Spring grows, interpret confused facial expressions, drive evermore desolate arteries, make noise to intercept encroaching shotgun silence. 
Crave pickle juice, sickle cell anemia. Dreams of being a gun owner. Play bookshelf Tetris. Avoid too much technicolor brainrot. Blood city is clotted. McDonald's and CVS, basal Hobo Camp ganglia. 

4:17pm. Administered 1 Varenicline (0.5mg) dose orally. Quad Roses expected to last... Whatever good Islay Peat is left remains shelved for full collapse.  

Plague Journal #2

Sunset tore a brushfire through the dirty city chrome. Heralding the gloam. In the twilight, sippin Rye from my wrought iron perch, spotted a tail-clipped rabbit. Little rhombus, still as a broken thermometer. Frozen in terror? The longer I stared the more sinister the aspect. Who's terrified? 

Today nothing stirs. Rainy throughout, reminding me of the three bouts of odd hour diarrhea a few nights back in which I woke my wife to news of probable infection. Isolated myself on the couch with tummy bubbling seltzer and read until things cooled. Symptoms have subsided for now.

Mail arrived early today. The census, the hospital, my last check. Pay came along with a typed note informing me that the tourism-oriented company I work for is too dry in the till to pay laid off employees in full. Therefore I received roughly 76% of what was owed. Furious group texts between co-workers ate up the rest of the day. 

Medicine of Four Roses (1.75 L) slackens the solipsistic noose. Screaming Merry Christmas. They ain't gon' split up the family. They ain't worth a dead hooker's last queef. Nothin' but the devil's business. And how!

Plague Journal #1

The sickness has arrived here just in time for Spring. Each new daylong shower sprouts ungray hues, purple, yellow, majestic white blossoms that remain untrammeled. Unjogged paths now only tickle four-legged paws and hoofs, spray them with kamikaze spores. Glo-Gang woodland creeps.

Training wheels beat the sidewalks with poor black plastic or rich rubber. Inflatable medicine, parents wearing backpacks, eyeing me hazardways. Machine gunner eyes and perked ears, as if the Can't Quit Now choir is just over the hill. Eyeing my cigarette, the poacher, a pressure sequence between us.

From the stair to the car is only metal and stone. Hard living that knows this house better than me or my betters. Once a day I check for frozen arteries, holes underfoot, new responses to my atrophy. The drive is quicker every day. The hustle, less so. Only need to move and make up a life for Ms. Whatsherface, why she's shying from her dying garden. She told me her name once, soon after I moved here. She might be on a dead bed in a white room.

The neighborhood is ... all the houses feel closer together. A lingering spiked ozone nips at everyone like electric minnows. To the park to walk. Fill my ears with oblivious obsolete. Don't really listen, monitoring the Pod People too. Each beating heart is a cause for concern.

The cat before the screen door before the dead potted nothing before the unlit window on the house next door. My daily cinema until sunfall. Rarely a thought. Bulbs burn out. Computer computer's music. Occasionally walk to another window.

It's like bobbing for apples in ice water with sealed lips.