READERS CHOICE.. hahaha or This post will be long and have no meaning.

So, earlier in the week, I offered up my willingness to post a story either sober or wasted. The majority response was that I not only be tipsy, or buzzed, but that I be on my face-under arrest- with my pants around my ankles in the process of divulging some great vulnerable or outrageous gem of a tale from my life as I was essentially sticking my tongue out at the Universe in general (under threat of personal persecution), while I wagged my bloodied middle finger at you all.

I am at present, barely buzzed. I have electricity. Children sleep safely in my home. I afforded gas for my car today. I smiled at a stranger. I allowed a total cocksucker to cut in front of me when the freeway ended suddenly. I considered others even when I was full of poison to criticize them while careening through the endless populated and divided veil of civilization's highway.

I am not drunk though, and this post has got fuck all to do with history. Dick Cavett will not pop up in the middle of your first impressions of the Holocaust in an Auschwitz/Hollywood high school- scholastic low budget death ride of a VHS tape to tell you that "YOU WERE THERE".

You are here, motherfuckers. You always were. The arrow that you look for on the interstate rest area maps to show you the exact place that you left your final and everlasting shit is exactly where you thought it would be, because you travel the road that everyone travels and there is no getting lost. There is only running out of gas or breaking down and finding yourself in a visualized horror film as you fumble your way through socializing with strangers as a dumbass asshole in need.

You think you have a tire iron. You think you have a tire. Thank god you don't have to shit anymore, and your stomach is full of beef jerky and rockstar.

I have a friend who spends hours out of his mind in darkness by the river in Austin.

I lived in Austin for a few years, and spent some time crossing the Guadalupe- whether on Lamar or on South Congress. Sometimes I dodged bats, who would scream out by the hundreds of thousands at dusk. From a distance they looked like a giant locust swarm trailing away from town, but I always pictured them as one creature.. kind of like the flying dog in the Neverending story.. organic. peaceable. beautiful. Until you realize that you are knee deep in guana, crossing the bridge that they call home and every 50 feet there will be a strange man or woman declaring weakness or a down and out stranger showing a true vulnerability like some toll ogre and you just want to get home to listen to your music.

Your journey starts out as a walk where you enjoy the thick summer nights of a city with great history.. and inevitably ends up with you fearful and depressed because life is all around you and it beats you to pieces for your soul. You are on your way home from work. On your way to your next job 30 minutes after you get home. Your housemates are painfully self destructive and equally self involved and you have no idea who you are- but who has time for that? You only know that tomorrow will not unnerve you, or you are as fucked as the rest. You are fucked anyway, but you're making friends.

I am on my fifth beer.

My brother was accepted by MHMRA as a necessary recipient of services on Friday. One of 30,000 accepted in a city of 5 million. I travel back to the look on my face and my body language with their offices as kid gloves stood next to me, out of it. Trip after trip to their offices to present the correct paperwork and there was another problem. I slapped the window that separated us from them.

"What do I need to do to make this happen today? THIS GUY NEEDS HELP." My voice cracks as I gesture toward my little brother who is not expressionless, but just the same useless in seeking his assistance.

Hours pass. I take breaks while tossing salads for rich oil barons to make calls to the Mental health and Mental retardation association so that my brother doesn't blaze AGAIN, before seeing an intake.

Hours more pass. I track him down several times by CRUISING houston for his specific walk.

I am the last person to snoop or read your emails or follow you or investigate you but I have to ask my brother for a key to his apartment.

Why? Because sometimes, the family thinks he is dead.. and you need a key to figure that shit out before an apartment manager would give a fuck to. Sometimes you have to drop off a cell phone you bought them or $14 in groceries from the dollar store- or pay a utility bill in your already fucked up credit of a name even though you resent spending your last dollars on someone who is such a jerk that they would BLOW their own money on luxuries like butter, eggs and milk. You get angry that you spend two hours of your day tracking down someone who thinks the NSA has a plan for them because they are so brilliant and you are never able to tell them that they are out of their mind when you find them because they will see you as a traitor who has extraordinary resources instead of being just a sister sick with ..... hope.

I have a large family, but I grew up with a small nuclear family of four.

I saw my father (my "real" father last when I was 5.) Through my efforts, I managed a letter from him while I was working 80 hour weeks in the Aleutians because I had accidentally contacted my grandfather. My father wrote that he wanted to be in touch.

BEST IN SHOW.

Beer #6

I will skip the bullshit about how my father's family has reached out to me or been in touch with me over the past couple of years. Its depressing, and if I told you how I REALLY felt, you would think I was a total asshole- because I think my new family.. the one I was searching for answers from my ENTIRE life- are crazy, ignorant bastards. Smoke that.

They're so fucked up, that they would never know this even if I told them. Think of a Georgia family with a pitt bull and a cooler full of cheap beer, and that's what it would take- to set you straight with my long lost family- IF YOU TOLD THEM I WAS FULL OF MUTINY- to sell me down the river.

fucking hell.. why did I agree to do this?

beer 6 continued

So.. I have a friend in Austin....

He has been charged with organizing and digitizing the branch Davidian Waco nightmare.

Recently he was asked to make a photo montage of the burned bodies of victims from Waco.

He spoke to me from the river in Austin.

I have to be greater than this less than.

I sure as fuck cannot rely on you, because if you are like me, you act like you don't give a fuck about anything other than maintaining your comfort and projecting your status.

You and everything about you looks great.

Take this chaos and shove it down your throat and up your ass and THEN call me for coffee.

I wish you would, I have no friends anymore because I am a mother, but mostly because you are all motherfuckers.

There.

DRUNK POST.