Up All Night.......

It is funny when the night is silent and your thoughts race through your head.....life starts slapping you in the face and telling you "Snap Out Of It". 46 and I still have the low self esteem that has stricken me most my adult life. I want to scream at the world and ask whomever if we can rewind about 35 years and start down a different path.I tell people what I really want is to have my name on the cover of my memoirs with said title above and I want to tell that cautionary tale. It would happen that I finally decide to move on with my writing when it seems the book is soon becoming extinct with the closure of many large bookstores and being replaced electronically with the Kindle and such. I look back on things and still seethe at the fact that one man and one action can destroy innocence and turn a potentially good person into the stagnant adult I have become.

I so much wanted to have my parents be able to go into a store or library and find my writing on the shelf next to other authors etc... Instead I have turned into that stereotypical writer who hides behind defeat as if it was the Congressional Medal of Honor. I watch and listen to those around me and say to myself why cant that be me....I then hear that thud of defeatism and dreams vaporize and I am back in my prison which I have created.  I have been told by so many, including a former journalist from the Philadelphia Inquirer that I am an amazing writer and said journalist wished he had my talent. It is the sword that so many artists die from which are wielded by the artist themselves. I may bask in the critiques but I carry that sword all the time against my throat. It has been called self sabotage and I can be its poster boy up in Times Square. I have always loved anything dealing with the written word and the dream of one day accomplishing my publication seems to keep me on this earth.

I discussed what drives me and it is the tale of a lost youth and the pratfalls of addiction that can fill up a volume of my prose. I see the faces of those lost to the greed of political ambition in the time of the struggle of  gay youth in the early 80's to the lows one makes in order to feel a part of this world. I want to write of the dank corners of hell one travels too in order to keep sane among the denizens of his own personal demons. I want to fight back at those who destroy youth all for their own carnal needs not caring for the destruction of that fragile psyche innocence. I want to examine why a Father can destroy the ruins of what was into the dust of despair. I want to find out why love has eluded myself while others bask in its splendor on a 24 hour axis switching partners like torn socks. I want to investigate how the ill informed can get so close to deciding the fate of this country. I want to stay above the surf as I feel myself slipping away with the undertow of everyday living. I want to find out why I have let words of put downs mold the man I have become. I want to find out how to break away from the stranglehold of fear before I have become to old to enjoy the spontaneous ways of life. I want to have that spirit of that child I once was a year before I got into that strangers car. I want to go to sleep at night and not wish it was all over. I want to be proud of who Michael is and was. I want to have friends and not acquaintances. I want to feel worthy of love from a man who will not judge on the sins of the past. I want to be able to stay in a room of people if one there does not like me. I want my family to respect me for my struggles and not condemn for my failures. I just want to go the fuck to sleep because it's a busy day today.