Gum Up The Works

I wake with a swiftness. I look at my watch. It's Six O'clock. I look again, it's twenty to Seven. Was the first time that I had awakened just a dream? Did I lapse? I rise, too tired to do exercise, but then again, I just had a good night's sleep. I do thirty sit ups and find them easy. So are thirty push ups. Fuck.

I jump into action, and am out before you can say shit three times. Outside it is cold. Really cold. I'm glad that I have my cap. Now, if you kidded yourself into believing that Fall was a long way off, today cleared your clock. The trees would be turning brown in the higher elevations by now. I walk briskly to Starbucks.

Have you ever noticed...yeah this is time for another observation...that when you use sugar from one of those tall sugar dispensers, that as you pour it, some clump of sugar inside just has to come along and gum up the works? It happens to me all of the time. I'm pouring a steady flow and then here come a clump and everything stops. Where did that come from? Did the entitty of the sugar gather in congress to stop me from my treat? Is it a course of life that there will always come something to stop the action, to kill the joy, to gum up the works...so to speak?

Morning Meeting is that for me. I'm moving in the morning, getting shit done, getting up early to do it, and in the middle of it I have to stop for this horseshit. I know, you are getting tired of hearing about this Morning Meeting shit, and frankly I am too, but I'm living this, I'm going through this every day, and I'll be damned if it isn't the lowest point in my entire life. And my doctor is too moral to just give me an excuse for all five days. I love the man, but I wish there was a little bit more of a conniving streak in him. He is enough that he wants to give me a flu shot every time he sees me. That shit gets me sick every time that I take it. He has a refrigerator full of that shit, and every time he looks at that damned thing he remembers to give me a shot.

Well, I know that it's very bad of me, and it will catch up to me in the end. I'll be giving Kelly The Ten Year Old an opportunity to give me more punishment in the future. But I said fuck it to today's Morning Meeting. That's right, quite possibly one of the worst moves that I've ever made. This would make an entire week of not being there, but what the fuck?

I sit my fat ass in Starbucks. I work on my articles.

As I work, Piper Perabo walks by, holding a Starbucks cup of coffee and walking with a fawning assistant. She's the second so called star that I've seen in a Starbucks, no, there was a third, Cameron Diaz in the Madison Starbucks. Starbucks seems to draw them. Well, they have the money for it. You'd think I did too. But that's ALL that I use my money for, ever since I've lost the appetite for destruction, for Jack Daniels.

I have a meeting with my therapist today. Nurse G. You remember, the one with the five year plan? She's since dropped that shit. I'm looking forward to meeting with her and discussing the finer points of my life...NOT. Well, why don't you change therapists, Hobobob? Well, I know that some out there think that the tortured artist shtick is getting tiresome, but what is life if you don't have pain and suffering? This is just my way of approaching the nonsense. Remember, I'm not in my own little heaven of my own making. I'm here, in a living Hell...of my own making. I've not resigned myself to this, no, I'm just accepting of the small things that grate against my nerves.

It gives me a new outlook, just like it will do you when shit goes South. My therapist is as South as I can get. Ahhh, nothing like a good combative therapy session. Yeah, I walk all the way up to ICD on this chilly, overcast day, and come up with a new poem, mind you. Or the shards of a new poem, and get to Dr. G, who keeps me waiting in her waiting room for a half hour mind you. Now I make it a point to get there on time for her to keep me waiting? Okay, of course you know that I am already steaming. The moment I walk into her office, there is a gasping, panting pause, two lovers finding themselves hungry for each other, eyes locked, heartbeats away from explosive passion. We freeze, silent and still, then boom, we are all over the office, across the desk, knocking over things with a crash and a bang, off the chair, onto the floor, rolling around into table legs and knocking chairs over. This is how my session goes, a knock down, drag out fight with feet and hands, punches and kicks.

I have nothing to say to her, and she draws me out, asking questions that I feel are aggra- vating. Then, once I'm out of my shell, she laces into me about drinking. How much of an alcoholic that I am, and that no matter how much I would like to, I can never drink again, because it's "Poison" to me. This really wouldn't bother me if it wasn't her fucking mantra. Over and over again. This bitch won't get off it. Which makes me come back at her, telling her I don't agree, and I don't see her as being correct in the least. She takes insult to this and comes back at me about being a drunk in the street, living off society and being in a homeless shelter. THIS is my THERAPY. When we are through, we are literally spent, as if we were fucking for an entire hour. I leave disheveled, tired and annoyed. She is grateful that I'm leaving her office.

And that's what I call going South. No matter how hard I try to have it go some other direction, we always end up back here at the end of the session. This one is no different than the three that have come before. What I should plan to do next time is to lace into her in the hallway, pin her up against her closed door and have the knock down drag out right there in the hallway for all to see. See how she likes everyone to see her therapeutic style.

Ahhh, I don't give that much of a fuck. It's exhilarating in a way. It lets me get my ya ya's out. Maybe that's her way of doing things. Maybe this is therapy served up the other way. Anger management therapy. Or better yet, anger therapy. Could this be what she wants, whether I like it or not? Some white knuckled treatment that is supposed to shake me up? Hitting my face instead of licking my face?

During the session my MP3 recorder begins a high pitched whistling, the head- phones, being too close to the microphone was giving feedback. It alerted Dr. G, and she suspected that I was recording her. I told her it was my player trying to play music through the speaker. She accepted it. So what was she supposed to do if I fessed up, claim that I can't record my own session???

I don't think so.

Suffice it to say I had to stop the motherfucker until I could figure out what was wrong.

All in a good day's headshrinking.

I walk to Starbucks for some real therapy, with my therapist, joe.

Hobobob