Don’t Play the Fool:
”The fresh face of innocence can carry the guilt of many men.You can see it in her smile. She knows the game. Don’t let her fool you, brother. She’s gunning for you. Lip gloss, eye liner, and a pair of fuck-me heels. This isn’t your average every day daddy’s girl. She’s been around the block and has the baggage to prove it. See how all the guys gawk, yeah, she knows what she’s got, she’ll use it too. It’s become more than game to her–it’s a way of life. She’s got a heart of steel, and the pussy of an angel. She’ll fuck you till your singing, wait til your sleeping, and rob you blind. Some days it’s almost worth it…” ~ G. Paul Stevenson
It is what it is.
I’m an addict. I have been for 12 years, and I will be the rest of my life. It is something that stalks you no matter how long you’ve been sober.
There is a certain shame which permeates your being when you are as deep as I was into the drug scene. A shame that can only be sated by more drugs, and then again by more drugs, and so on… You get to a point where your demons have become so large that you never want to come down and face them.
I hurt many people during my time spent getting high. It’s a horrible feeling to know that your choices in life have caused your friends and family emotional harm. I have spent the last four years getting sober, and repairing as many of those relationships as I could, but many more will never be salvaged. I will always have that hanging over my heart.
Drugs have taken me into several odd situations. Some were fun, some were crazy, and some were just plain fucked up; but in the end the lifestyle just wasn’t worth it.
I’ve been asked if I would I change my past if I could, or if I could take away the pain I caused others. No, I would not. It has made me who I am today. A strong man with a vision for better future. I’ve finally become a man I can be proud of. A man who is generous and helps others.
My life will never be an easy one. I have too much wrong with me, and too much darkness in my past that I will carry until I die. All I can do is embrace who I am, and understand that it is apart of me. It is the only way I can keep moving forward.
“It isn’t malevolent, or carrying evil intent. It just is what it is, and that is, is bent. It takes you by the horns and leads you about. You bow to the purpose, empty and devout. It owns you in the end, and there’s nothing you can do. It stalks you for life. It takes all of you. So, I wish you luck, my friend. You’ll need it for sure. Once this path has been started, it’s yours forever more.” ~ G. Paul Stevenson
Gutter Alumni:
”It’s the gutter alumni back for another line. I’m ready to take back the streets and stack chips like a crack fiend stacks Brillo pads. I got my gear, my strap, my stash, and I’m back on the block.
It’s been years since I took this path, but times are hard, and money talks. I was never really good at slanging. I got robbed, beaten, and more than one gun put to my head. I was always better at using. I ate more product than I moved. Line it, smoke it, hoop it–whatever. Just keep that needle away from my veins and we’re good.
In fact, using is why I’m in this predicament. I drugged myself into the gutter like fat man eats his way into a heart attack.
This time will be different, though. I’m gonna come up. I’m gonna get myself out of this hole I’m in and get off the streets–right after I take this line…” ~ G. Paul Stevenson
I Beg of You:
”The cries of the dead fall upon deaf ears, and a moment of time is lost to the dawn of no tomorrows. The living walk in the shadows of ancient giants, but see only the empty face of their small existence. Man is too busy with tiny thoughts to see the stars beckoning. A hope for something more than the emptiness of our madness. A madness of a world torn asunder by the hollow ideals of selfish men. I beg of you. Look to the stars. Look to the dawning of a tomorrow filled with the hope of a future filled with beauty and love. Look to something, anything beyond the empty we all feel today. I beg of you…” ~ G. Paul Stevenson
Here is a sample from my short story: Infinitus, Ad Nauseum.
”I lied today, but don’t let that bother you, my whole life had been a lie. It’d been years since I was able to communicate with others, and though I’d died only recently, I’d come to grips with the fact that I’d never really existed at all.
It’d been three days. I sweat like a Colombian with a penchant for Peruvian, I was spackled in dry and drying blood, and I’d just had the most honest, one way conversation with an imaginary homosexual corpse one could ask for. I’d come to discover you can only deny reality so long before it denied you back.
After I’d died, I woke up on the wrong side of the looking glass. The fabric of reality wove itself around me; gossamer threads glistening, as if moist. I moved through the thread with ease, but not a drop of dew clasped to my body. I continued forward for some time, but the monotony of the shiny nothing was all I discovered. I found myself hoping for something to happen. I was lonely, and it amused me to no end. I’d spent my entire life escaping from people and the heavy reality they brought into your life. I hated that responsibility. Now that I’d succeeded in my goal, all I wanted was a little company.
My mind had been so quiet since I woke, but now it assaulted my being with incessant chatter. I couldn’t even escape myself in death. I tried to stem the tide by focusing on annoying songs, meditation, and screaming as loud as I could; but it was all for naught. I’d run from myself for far too long, and now it was time to face myself.
I didn’t know where my life went wrong. Maybe it was the drugs; maybe it was the deep seated hatred for everyone and everything around me. All I knew is that it ended with me dead in a gutter, and had started all over again in the mind of the Universe. From chaos to insanity, I excelled in only one thing–misery.” ~ G. Paul Stevenson
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The Letter.
”What brings you to the brink? I know why I’ve come, but you have everything going for you. You have a lithe graceful beauty–captivating and inspiring, an intelligence which can hold it’s own against many an opponent, and the luxury of the ease of life. Are you slumming with the low-lives for a cheap thrill, or is it something deeper than that?
You are not one of my kind. I shouldn’t trust you, and yet, I find myself enamored with your easy nature. I’m lost in your heavenly grey eyes–hypnotic and deep. You seem at one with yourself. An appealing confidence which draws me in more than I should allow.
I question your motives because I cannot fathom anyone wanting to come to a place like this of their own free will. A place where every vice can be had, and every trouble found. I watch you with weary eyes because such grace is beyond the world of my heart, and that saddens me.
Are you here because you feel like you don’t belong with the other genetic lottery winners? Do you feel alienated amongst them, or stifled by some social edict that pushes you outside of yourself? I cannot help but wonder why you stand on the precipice of insanity with me and my kind. The forsaken lands are no place for a woman like you–a woman. You truly are a woman. Not like the girls which frequent our corner of reality.
I hold as much contempt as I do respect for your brilliance, and your startling presence of being. If I never see you again, know that whatever your reason for being here, you have been a pleasant and beautiful escape from the self-hate and loathing we breed in spades beyond the land of no return.
There is something in you that brings out the nurturer in me. A long abandoned aspect of rusty ability, and faded belonging. It cries out for your safety. It bids me to shelter you, but that is more than I can give. So instead I give you this warning. Don’t stray too far into the depths of hell. It’s an empty existence among us demons. You wouldn’t be the first of your kind to fall, nor the last. Go back to the safety of your family before you get hurt. It would be a great loss, and a truly empty tragedy.” ~ G. Paul Stevenson
Dreams…
With any goal there are stops along the way. Places where the resolution of hopes and dreams fall by the wayside and leave you emotionally destitute. Let them take you on a ride to completion, and when they can take you no further, discard them. That is where you will find the determination you left by the wayside.
I’ve had many such roadblocks in my life, and not just in my writing. I know many of you have as well. You can only do what you can do, but in the end, you must see it through or grow stagnant. That is the crux humanity faces daily. Do you keep going, or do you falter and give way to dejected inadequacy–only you can answer that question. I myself am tired of giving up and watching my hopes and dreams pass me by.
My dream to write has been born from a lifetime of these failures, and the experience they’ve brought to me. That is the key to writing; to any endeavor really. Don’t pretend to be something you’re not. Don’t lie to yourself and embrace the delusions of falsehoods based upon some crazy dream to be great. Find that greatness within yourself, make it a reality, and give it your best shot.
Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there. Yes, you may and probably will fail once or twice. The thing is, if you don’t even try, then you have already failed. Every hope and aspiration is automatically dashed. Is that what you want from life?
I know that I may never become famous, or rich, or win awards for my work. I also know that I would rather have tried and failed, than to have never tried at all.
So, this is my shot, and you better believe that I’m going to take it.
“With no dreams, there is no life worth living. With no hope, there is only the blank death of still life harboring self pity and dejected horror. ” ~ G. Paul Stevenson
