Other than the aforementioned writings; well, the day I left Austin and Texas is the day my social life ended.
Although I’ve lived in 3 different houses since then, I’ve had no friends. Neighbors, sure. No friends. Never dined out once. No social life. No vacations. Never even spent a night away from the house.
After I was expelled from Texas like that? What with everything else that happened in Austin before that? Then lost the million-dollar civil suit. Banished from the family after Mom died. I made one last stab at life – only to get banned from my class reunion at Annapolis.
Okay, I can take a hint. This is me, going away. B-bye.
Had a couple more of those scary “coincidences.” Looking for a place to move to when I lived in Vicksburg, my preference was to buy some land and build me a nice house with a swimming pool and a basketball court. Chanced on a property outside Jackson, Mississippi. On Moncure Lane. Went to check out the lot, not yet recognizing the name.
Then when I arrived. FLASHBACK CITY. This is where one of the exploration drilling rigs I worked on at Exxon was. Gulp! The Moncure Wildcat. Got me in the Three Mile Club. (Three+ miles deep, a big deal back in ’80. Still is!)
A year or so after I moved to a minuscule town in the mountains (the Appalachian Trail goes through here and we’re at the edge of the Great Smokey Mountain National Park – never been to either); well I mustered the gumption to attend an Anglican Church in an historic chapel in town.
OMG. Who do you think I ran into? Walter Skaggs, one of the superintendents I worked for when I was at Exxon’s Inland Drilling Group. Like, all of FORTY years ago! Old geezer remembered me. How we played golf once. . . That was the last time I went to THAT church. Hell, to ANY church.
I don’t much like it when God intervenes in the domestic tranquility of my life, as you may have surmised. Although, I must admit, these little asides do add a little pizzazz to an otherwise VERY boring story. \
Hey, thanks, Dude. I owe you one – or three.
My only friends since then (has it been 20 years? Damn) have been the characters in my screenplays. And my cats. First Jaxx. Then when she died of kidney failure, Oscar. Bevo joined the household a couple of years ago. HOWLING at the front door in the middle of a snowstorm. Welcome, friend.
Nuestro casa es su casa. Our house is your house.
I had settled in a tiny little town with a BIG footprint. (An old geezer down the street seen Sasdquach once. Cherokee kids over in Chenoah, too.) Robbinsville, North Carolina.
Right there at the foot of “The Dragon.” World famous motorcycle trail through the Tennessee Mountains. 320 curves in 11 miles of traitorous. A dozen crosses with fake flowers along the way.
My eye doctor finally found a prescription med where I get almost a day’s work out of my eyes. (Relax, the VA is putting me back on the old Rx, so before this book comes out I’ll be back in the Dark Ages.)
But I’m not complaining. I keep my eyes closed when I’m not reading (haven’t read for pleasure in 30 years, my old sci-fi favorites). I use drops. Omega-3s.
Winters are the worst because the air is very, VERY dry. A humidifier helps a little. My eyes are red all the time (bloodshot). Folks no doubt think I’m an alcoholic. Tiny little town in the middle of the Bible Belt?
That’s okay, I don’t give a sh*t what they think.
I’m healthier than 85% of American youngsters (blood pressure, pulse, lipids). I stay very fit. My gold standard is that I can still qualify to enlist in the Army (75% of young kids can’t) despite my disabilities. And the other 10%? I still love my country, despite all that has happened because I know they weren’t true Americans who did all that.
Kids these days? They overwhelmingly favor communism over democracy.
Who, me? Wear the uniform? Not even on Halloween. (You want communism? You want to live a life like I just lived that you have just read all about?!)
Excuse me, but those 75 percent of youngsters who can’t meet the bare minimum standards to enlist in the Army? Most are disqualified because of weight, but also mental problems and drug use. Surprise!
Marijuana these days is LITERALLY 100x more potent than the weed when I was growing up. Hell, that sh*t now is worse than hashish back then – cocaine even.
I mean, really, folks – the Army fitness bar for enlistment is very low. They know how to get folks into shape. All they need is solid bones with a few scrawny muscles attached. They can work with that. So, these kids must be pretty sorry specimens indeed.
This makes me think of the 60% of trans kids who are obese. Hello? The doctors don’t see something odd when an OBESE male is convinced he wants to be an OBESE female? (Hint: body fat skews your hormones to the estrogen side. Doh! Of COURSE, he thinks he’s female. “Lose weight, stupid. Then – Join the Army. “Be All You Can Be.” After Basic Training and you still want to go trans; well, – we’ll see.)
I still don’t take meds for the schizophrenia. A couple of years ago I discovered that GABA, a very inexpensive supplement, helps a LOT. Wow. Excellent.
I only tried GABA because I read several formal, peer-reviewed scientific studies. I don’t put ANYTHING into my body that hasn’t been studied at length like that, for many years or investigation by impartial scientists.
(And trans kids dump chemicals into their system that have never been studied, not one iota? Obliterating puberty – that time when the body fine-tunes itself, coordinates the brain, heart, bones – every damn thing. You want to wreck your body like that?)
Our almost-nationalized healthcare system should have a rule. We’ll take care of all the usual stuff. However, there’s a maximum limit on what we will pay if you are obese, smoke, do drugs, or any other out-of-the-norm stuff.
Wanna go trans? Okay, the complications are going to max out your supplemental – immediately. Need any help after that, it’s on your dime. Now. How about let’s go play soldier in the Army.
I’m sorry if I sound like such a bigot over the whole trans agenda. “Recreational” drugs. And obesity, to a lesser extent. You have to see where I’m coming from.
My brain is fu*cked up. Seriously so. You’ve seen it. With the hood propped open. The engine sputtering.
You want to be just like me? Everything odd you put into your body risks that. Everything that keeps your body off balance, to a lesser extent – O.B.E.S.I.T.Y. for one.
You truly get a kick out of weed? Try running six miles in the mountains. The endorphins will blow you away. Drug highs dissipate in a few hours. Fitness highs last for days – weeks. And. It’s. Free.
Eat a healthy diet. You’ll feel like a million bucks in no time at all. Still want to go trans? For God’s sake, find out what your birth sex is like before you do that. Get through puberty. Have your first orgasm; and not with some centerfold or in a one-night stand like is the standard on TV in the movies.
Orgasm with love in your heart, not effing lust! Now. You still want to drink the Kool-Aid?
I keep a VERY strict routine. Thanks to Oscar the cat, I NEVER sleep late (except one day a year in the fall when they do Daylight Savings time – and I mean really, just that ONE day).
I eat well. Don’t smoke. No alcohol. Not even caffeine (which dries the eyes out). 45-minute walk 2x/day (FAST, enough so you can barely talk – any slower and it won’t help your heart OR your cholesterol levels).
Weight-bearing workout most days on one muscle group or other (knee-, frozen shoulder-, and tennis elbow-exercises).
But most of all it’s the ROUTINE that keeps me halfway sane. Up at the exact same time. Breakfast at the exact same time. Lunch. Dinner. A half-hour of TV with Bevo snoozing in my lap before turning in – at the exact same time.
I spend as much time as I can each day writing one thing or another. Studying. Editing my screenplays.
This. Routine. Does. Not. Change. It’s 7 days a week 365.25 days a year.
Even a slight deviation as small as taking a morning off for a VA appointment throws me out of whack. It takes a couple days to get my sane back.
I can’t complain about the VA doctors. Except. Lately, they really have gone woke, trying to make up for past injustices, I suppose. Anymore, the Hippocratic Oath doesn’t apply to white people.
“To hell with protein powder. Eat red meat. Every day. Lots of it,” Dr. Hall told me.
My dermatologist said, “Stay off the Internet. Got any questions, ask me,” after I had 10 spots of skin cancer removed a few months ago.
(One of them was a GIANT mole on my nose that’s been there for 5-6 years – nobody ever noticed it before? Annual checkups? Starring RIGHT AT IT.)
I asked him a simple question about skincare. Didn’t answer what I asked about. This is me – on the web.
“Wear a shirt outside,” he said. The INTERNET said, “Shirts only block 20% of UVA and UVB rays,” especially cotton, which drops it to 10%.
Like, hello? Who would YOU believe?
It’s hard not to wonder where I’d be if Dr. Parra had kept giving me therapy back then. (I don’t blame her or the VA. The problem is with their FUNDING. The problem is Congress. The VOTERS – who apparently despise veterans.)
I probably would have done okay in grad school. Be a professor right now. Hell, maybe even a Nobel Laureate if my transistor model panned out.
The Solar System model? NASA would have saved multiple BILLIONS on their Mars missions, all the energy my Mars Pathfinder routine would have saved them. Hey, that’s not on me. That’s on Texas.
That’s on the whole evil “NASA Culture” that the US Navy investigation blamed for the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003.
What, with my 100% rating, I’d be a big shot at NASA by now.
I could see a VA social worker now, I suppose. It’s not an MD therapist, but it’s something. Except I have zero “social” now. Nothing to “work” on, either.
I can’t even afford to go church (which is pretty much the social life here). Zero $$ for the silver plate. Not even $$ for gas to get there. Ran myself into the ground with bad financial decisions.
In retrospect, it was a kind of suicide attempt. It worked!
I’m sorry that 65% of Americans are also living paycheck to paycheck. It’s a miserable way to live. A little oversight from the VA could have helped. One shred of interest from my family or neighbors.
But no, we don’t want no schizophrenic in our family. In our neighborhood. Too late now. I’ll be dirt poor throughout my “golden years.”
I wrote a letter to the editor for our local rag The Graham County Star. Got people to take down all the “FREE INTERNET” spam signs along The Dragon, that breakneck road across the Tennessee mountains to Knoxville. Too distracting.
Complained once about the Tennessee DPS giving me a ticket when I was driving a NISSAN Armada (like, the biggest vehicle ever made – damn ride was so smooth, better than my old Mini roadster, didn’t have clue one about my speed).
“Sir? . . . That fast? . . . Don’t my disabled license plates count for something? . . .
“You trying to bribe an Officer of the Court?”
Yeah. I paid the $250 fine by mail. Tucked a letter in the envelope, however; telling the effing judge to send some troopers to slow down the racing bikes on The Dragon so us mere mortals can cruise along at the standard 9 MPH over the speed limit that the taxi guy in Muphy told me is the limit on DPS radars.
I’m on good terms with my neighbors, but nothing more. I keep the yard up, pay my homeowners dues (for the most part; right now, on account of my financial straits, I’m paying my annual dues monthly).
I mind my own business.
I leave table scraps and nibbles out every night for a raccoon (who I’ve only seen once in the last six years – scared the both of us!!).
I whistle and bark at a nice black and white dog down the street when I’m out walking – he YELPS back (but HOWLS at everybody else passing by).
Haven’t sold any screenplays yet. Conservative? Hollywood? BLACKLISTED!!! That’s me. (Please don’t tell them I said that. Only kidding.)
But, hey – I developed my writing “voice,” like you seen here, with all the crazy sentences and grammar bad enough to get me an express ticket to Hell. (Even after Dr. Grammarly underlines things for me.)
I look forward to the hummingbirds returning from Mexico next spring. I worry at the tail end of hurricane season, when they’re making that trip, that it won’t wipe out my little buddies. (They return to the exact same place every year in the spring.)
A really bad cold snap froze my pyracanthas out last winter. They grew back real nice this year, though. I’ll be happy next year when they cheer up the place with those bright orange berries again.
(When you trim them, they don’t flower the next season.)
Oh, and those audio voice-over hallucinations (when you hear somebody say something they didn’t actually say) that caused me no end of trouble after I got expelled from Texas?
I was looking at one new house before I left Vicksburg, a real wreck that the realtor called a “fixer-upper.” A real stinker. Hah! I had a terrible olfactory hallucination – s.h.i.t. smell.
Okay, brain. I get the message.
I found a “fix” for the voice-overs. Well, for one thing, they don’t happen if you aren’t EVER around people. Doh! Just. Stay. Away. From. People. It works – amazing!
Otherwise; well, I just watch Spanish-language TV now. Love those telenovelas, especially the older ones. I’m starting to get voice-overs again, even in Spanish. But, hey – when they start bothering me, I’ll switch to Italian.
Ciao bella! Buongiorno!
I had a few video conversations with a nice lady in Brazil last year. She tried to help me learn Portuguese. Said I speak with an Italian accent, which evidently offended her no end. She told me to listen to Brazilian rock and roll music.
Get. Your. Accent. Down. Straight. Senor.
Oh, wait. Got a phone call . . . As in, like, the first one – ever. (Other than spam calls.)
Yelllowww?
. . . Mr. Christ? Oh, wow. What’s going on, dude? Long time no see.
Beat.
What did I do wrong this time?
“Now that you mention it, I just got a fax from Brother Lucifer, asking for candidates.”
You called the right place. . . . Oh, me? Sorry, guy. I DO like warm climates but more as in FLORIDA – warm?
“Shut up, O’Cleary. Your sister Regan put down a bunch of chips, asked me to call you.”
Huh? You guys have a casino up there? Doh! Wait – you know my ancestral name?
“Sinner ID on the phone? What kind of operation do you think I’m running up here?”
About them openings in Hell, Mr. Christ, Sir. Got a boatload of suggestions for you. I mean a whole damn new wing of the insane asylum.
“Hang on. (Hollering across the room.) Mohammed? Moses? Get over here. . . I’ll put you on speakerphone.”
(quietly) What about Brother Lucifer? Isn’t he the one doing the recruiting? I don’t mind pissing you guys off, but definitely not the Big Guy.
“And you wonder why my line is busy all the time. Talk!”
Okay. (YELLING) Everybody got a pencil and paper. . . Mr. Christ?
“Call me Jesus. Everybody does.”
Yes. Sir. Mr. Christ.
“William . . . “
Okay. This is me. TALKING . . .
.
.
.
Regards,
WH Clark
12.2.2023