did my first girlfriend and i ever sleep together?

like in the same bed?

like as in an overnight date?

no.

we had a few adventures in the back seat of my grandmas cadillac

but we were never in a situation where we could spend the night.

at the time i thought that was tragic.

but really what would have been tragic is if she and i were the only ones that we would have ever felt love to.

im so happy that she was my first girlfriend, and that today is her birthday.

but im glad i got to kiss all the others that came after her.

because they taught me things she could have never.

not because there was anything wrong with her.

but because they were soooo different

and had their own backstories.

i wonder about my first girlfriend mary

we used to talk on the phone for hours every day. was it a year? more?

it was our internet.

never ran out of things to talk about.

how is that even possible?

there were three channels on TV and obviously i wasnt doing my homework

what on earth could two teens in the middle of nowhere be saying?

what opinions could have formed by then?

then she moved to california

then i moved to california

and then almost right away she was a mom with kids

and a man who turned out to not be great.

should there be fortune tellers?

just like in major situations like that: do NOT marry this man,

but i guess the kids. maybe the boys are good.

of course theyre good.

so maybe we dont need fortune tellers.

maybe some things are worth the sadness.

it would be weird to have dinner with her after all this time.

maybe too weird.

but she did teach me how to write every day.

today is my first girlfriend’s birthday

have i always been lucky in love?

yes but it never felt like it.

usually i wanted more. especially when i was young, i felt alone. i felt like everything was a long distance relationship.

back then you had to pay actual money to make long distance phone calls. major props to my mom for paying those crazy phone bills. major love to the post office for sending my little missives.

back then there werent blogs or email or even electricity so you would whisper something into the ear of an indian and he would ride his horse to the next state over and whisper it into the ear of the next indian who would ride his pony to the next state. and so on and so on.

finally when the last indian got to the pretty girl he would dance your message to her and she would hopefully understand every word and the spaces inbetween.

it was called the tony express.

mary was taller than me and smarter and softer and cooler and she would write actual letters

on stationary. in different colored pens. and cool envelopes.

every day we would write and confess our love even though we didn’t truly know what love was technically. we were teens. we were so midwestern. we were so wanting to live the california life.

first her. then me.

but never we.

not out here at least. not for any period of time more than a few days.

so i sent her a bear. and in the arms of the bear was a cub.

and in the cub was a piece of my heart.

and back then the indians would charge extra for shit like that.

but i had extra.

theres a couple days i always remember

may 11 is my first girlfriends birthday. mary. i’ll never forget her birthday and i dont think i have forgotten her phone number either. 528-1722?

those were back in the days where you didnt need area codes. those were back in the days that when a girl held your hand at the movies it was the coolest thing ever.

those were back in the days where a giant farm divided you from the fantasy girl of your dreams so you just called each other on the phone and talked for hours and hours.

when i first got her number i wrote notes before i called. even then, my biggest fear was boring people.

i liked her so much i lied.

i would tell her the dumbest lies like oh yeah im in a band. i play guitar.

what?

finally when i fessed up i promised that id never lie again. and ive done a pretty good job with that.

she moved to california. and look at me. less than a year later i had moved to california. and ive never thought twice of moving back.

anyways happy birthday mary, whereever you are. i hope things are good.

 

thinking about deleting my twitter

i dont have anything bad in there, but who knows.

people can say well why not delete your blog too? and i would say mind your own beeswax.

amber is snoring next to me and its so comforting.

googlestalked my first girlfriend ever because i havent done that in a super long time and i just wanted to see a picture of her and make sure she was alive. found the pic. she looks different than i expected. brown hair instead of blonde. also younger. last time we talked she told me that she had caught her husband cheating. that was such a long time ago. found her new last name. which means she musta met another man and got hitched which i approve of. she was so nice to me. i would write her letters every day.

maybe i still do.

and thats the difference between twitter and blogging, people, these are love letters to the ether of the otherlands

tweets are just darts at an invisible water balloon thats being thrown at your face. will you get wet? will you miss?

there was a car chase today where they did the pit manuever to a dude literally four times and each time he was able to get away after being spun around. it was remarkable.

then they just let him drive south down to oceanside. which is why i was thinking about her. cuz she lives down there.

i have had such a blessed life. so above average compared to what it could have been. i dont have movie star looks. i wasnt at the top of my class in shit and i wouldnt be if i went back in time. my family wasnt rolling in dough. i went to community college, alone, no friends in a new city. while working at mcdonalds. even the girls at mcdonalds wouldnt go out with me.

but i persisted.

cuz what else you gonna do? give up at 18? no. i wrote her love letters and she basically said thank you next, which was good. out with the old. and the new life was good. you meet friends after a while. one thing leads to another.

thank god i had a car though. i drove alllll over LA back then. all these streets and towns i had heard about in records or tv shows. id even fill up at a gas station and id think, did Kareem ever come to this gas station? did Elton John? LA was this magical place. the one city where dreams could come true to you and you and you.

and come true they did. over and over again. did i think i would be 52 with a 32 year old gf snoozing next to me writing notes to the superdooper in infinity land? no and thats why life is grand. all the stupid shit you think will happen when youre a teen is weirder and better and a hundred percent different than your dumb head could imagine.

and the weed is legal.

today is mary’s birthday, she’s 24

born on a new moon in the woods of darkest africa, mary waltzed onto an oceanliner when she was 16 to america

she had no ticket, no reservation, and no money so she was ordered to sing show tunes to the elderly

and steal from the drunk.

once in the land of the free, mary was accepted by a catholic orphanage where she learned how to sew, hem, and sing psalms.

after school she read to the blind and helped rehabilitate returning veterans from our many wars.

her techniques were unusual but successful and when she graduated she applied at some of the top medical schools

but was denied because she failed the piss test.

not the drug test, she knew all those, she failed the urine exam because hers contained a fluorescent glow that the lab had never seen before.

“THATS NOT ILLEGAL!” she tweeted while trying to explain that it was due to how she healed the sick.

Ever the selfless saint,  young Mary would disrobe the soldiers, thoroughly examine them, and then suck the shrapnel and bacteria and mayhem out of their wounds and spit it out onto the floor.

Clearly some of it was ingested, she argued, BUT ITS NOT ILLEGAL she cried.

And cried.

Earlier this year she was awarded a Purple Heart for her service.

Except it was a Purple Mouth.

With distinction.

Happy birthday Mary and thank you for your service!

not a bad labor day weekend

mary and anne

didn’t drive. why bother?

decided to actually enjoy the weekend for the first time in a long time.

watched the cubs steamroll past the giants.

watched a whole bunch of movies and tv shows.

ate and ate and ate.

got my steps in by playing pokemon go.

but i still didnt have as good of a weekend as soon to be birthday girl mary who went to burning man in a private jet

and then took this selfie with oscar winner anne hathaway.

apparently lots of movie stars and pop stars go there now because they can sorta be in disguise and sorta be freeeeee as a bird away from the prying eyes of the press

it’s fun sometimes to cool ones jets.

i even read some bukowski this weekend, which was tough because of the two tvs, computer, laptop, and phone.

maybe my next break i’ll totally unplug.

which will be quite the stretch.

today is mary’s birthday, she’s 24

mary hugging bearas you well know by now she was my first girlfriend when we were in high school in illinois

i havent heard from her since she sen me a little toy truck several years ago

and we havent seen each other since there were fires in san dieger, where she has been living since forever.

when we were kids we would write each other every day using stationary and colored pens and i would draw things and she would say the sweetest things and i would say them right back.

every day the biggest thrill in the world was going to the mail box and getting one of her letters. it was like getting a message from Heaven itself.

maybe im still writing her with this blog.

maybe i moved to california the day i could just to get her back

maybe i never moved out of california so we would maybe one day run into each other and say oh hey

would she even recognize me?

maybe i wear a cubs hat every day so she would

maybe ive never gotten married or had kids or gone to jail so the door would remain open and we could finish what we started in schaumburg and hayward

which was making out in the back seat of my cadillac right before the cops broke it up because why would a beautiful, tall blonde girl want with a skinny dude with an afro?

maybe life is figuring out the answer to that.

what if she moved away to hawaii long ago and im just a dog going to a bowl thats been empty for ever

and right next door is a damn dog food factory but hes just sniffing that empty bowl

that used to be filled with pork chops

and apple sauce.

hawaii it is

this is a song about a super hero named mary

its not fair that the evil people in life appear more interesting than the good.

its not fair that the crappy parts of our lives get more press than the sweetness.

it sucks that the radio waves will forever be filled with victim songs of sorrow

and diary pages are loaded up with longing and sadness and fear.

the busblog has always tried to keep it positive, not because im so sticky sweet or optimistic or wonderful, its because i spent so much effort writing bitter sad scary poems that i found it a waste of time because evil begat evil.

which isnt to say that ridding myself of that bile wasnt helpful. any time you seriously can evacuate yourself from poison is a fruitful exercise, just beware of being in a constant mode of exorcism.

and it was hard. no doubt. this blog launched a month before 9/11, youre telling me it couldnt have easily developed into some negative paranoia of hate and deceit? of course it coulda. and it woulda been easy.

the lie is that easy is good. the fib is that its harder to change.

yes it would be slightly harder for me to go to the gym every day. but not that much more. this is hollywood, there could be worse places than being a single man in a hollywood gym filthy with aspiring model and actresses.

the fact that those types do nothing for me also shouldnt be a deterrent, for it would be easier for me, thus, to get my gym on.

hard is not that hard. change isnt that intense.

life isnt that long.

thats my problem with gyms. id like to live a little before i tap out. what good is spending so many hours in a gym? how come treadmills arent wired into the Grid? all the iron being pumped, wheres that energy going? thats my problem with it.

i got problems with everything. who doesnt. id love to write a book with all of them in there. then id like to burn em.

id like to drive around the country and go to book signings where afterwards we go out back and light em all on fire.

id call it bring marshmellows and it would start off with something like this is a song about a superhero named mary.