Pinball Intoxication

It was Saturday afternoon and I had been invited to a small private party on the other side of town. I was told to buy my stock of preferred beverages to bring to this little soirée. An hour later I found myself in the kitchen of a 1 bedroom flat. The kitchen had a nice feel to it, and I got a positive vibe from the place and the people I was with. Yes, this was going to be interesting.

The conversations started very formally, but as the alcohol assumed control of us, the nature of the discourses turned more sarcastic and distorted. My personal favourite subject revolved around men's tendency to masturbate even, when they were in relationships. The female members in this conversation were unable to grasp this notion, even when I defined this to be “Quality time with your own cock”. Of course, they wouldn't understand. After all, they were equipped differently.

I felt back in my element again. It didn't take long before more guests arrived to the scene to participate in our alcoholic depravities. The majority of these people were Brazilians. Again, my mind started travelling down memory lane. I experienced this moment of Calor Humano again. It's that very sensation that I thought that you would never feel again.

My enthusiasm had pushed me to consume alcohol beyond my physical endurance, and in a heartbeat I found myself losing all basic motor skills and a stomach raising a white flag surrendering. I had to find the bathroom as soon as possible. I opened the door that would lead me to the bathroom. To my horror I found a long corridor with the bathroom at the end of it. As my motor skills were completely flawed at this point, I tried to focus on each step I took towards the sanitary salvation, but I was doomed. I found myself bouncing from one wall to the other like a human pinball. I cursed internally in every language known to man and tried to assure myself with the firmest conviction that my mind was stronger than the alcohol. I was dumb believe so. My brain had left a nice sign with a message stating “Be Back Tomorrow With A Hangover”. I was alone with my desperation.
After a lot of effort, I reached the end of the hallway, and had been previously told to pull the long white cord to turn on the lights in the bathroom. I saw the cord, but I was unable to grab it. I felt like a virgin trying to find the right hole. It was damn near impossible to grab hold of something so simple and so close to me.

Of course, the rest of the evening passed with my going down on the toilet various times and passing out on some stranger's bed. Despite the unfortunate events at the end of the party, it had all been worth it. The Calor Humano had made it all worthwhile. When I came home and lay in my bed, I could faintly the details of my conversations, but I could remember the sensation inside. I couldn't help but smile and with that very same expression of happiness, I fell asleep.

Edward T. Shufflebottom

Vita Veritas and The Void inside

Yet another day had passed, and here I sat in my home shifting like carnal rocking horse between the states of daydreaming and thinking. I had come a long way since, I had first arrived here. In many ways my endeavours had finally paid off, and I was now living the life that I had imagined months back...well maybe not quite...but a good approximation.

The thought started with the usual train-ride to work, where I stood looking at the people, who were mostly buried in the privacy of their portable music-players or newspapers. I wondered if these people looked at me, as I looked at them. Did they think, what I was thinking? Did they live the life, they were meant to be living? I could see no creative or ambitious vanity in their eyes. Instead I saw routine and indifference.

Life was indeed odd. Every day was like a thorough assraping and the only way to survive was to acquire a liking to consistent buggering, or let the void within engulf you with its numbness.

I was in the same queue that led all the way to the deep pit of lost dreams. The pit where dreams were exchanged for a fixed salary and a place to stay. Was life about this all along? Had I been biased all along, thinking that somehow things would turn out differently for me?

Life lay beside me like a dangerous predator that I had to stroke gently and carefully to avoid a confrontation that I would surely lose. Yes, Vita Veritas an untamed beast to be respected and feared...

Edward T. Shufflebottom

To Those Who Got Away

Today a good friend of mine told me, how a long lost friend of hers had contacted her after many years. There was apparently some romance involved in all of this. It was nice to hear that people are actually

It is amazing how your feelings towards someone can remain unaffected by time and other external factors, while other things crumble and decay in the very same process. Those feelings are usually reserved for those you developed a connection with, but you never had a chance to explore. They are the ones who got away away.

It's debatable whether or not these feelings only exist due to lack of knowing, what might have been, or if it's a rare instance of having connected to a real soul mate. Nevertheless, you occasionally find yourself mindfucking yourself and hoping to ejaculate an answer that will quench your thirst for the factual vision of a non-existing alternative future. Why had that one person gotten away? Was it my fault that things never came to pass? Rarely will you ever know the truth or see that person again.

Something that has puzzled me about all of this, is our lack of ability to act on our instinct and desire. We feel it strongly in our hearts, but we procrastinate the revelation of our feelings until it's too late. We end up feeling sad and with a heart that aches for closure and knowing.

Years and years from now, you will sit in the privacy of your home, happily married and with the kids playing in the garden, and think of the beautiful brunette or the tall blue-eyed bartender and damn your cowardice to hell.

We all have someone, who got away. It''s that person that will haunt you memories forever. Remember, your heart will always want to wonder why not...

Edward T. Shufflebottom

The Walkabout Experience

I had gone to explore the night life of this part of the city with a couple of friends of mine. It was here that I was introduced to something that completely took me by surprise. It was a cultural niche invented by the Australians, the infamous 'Walkabout'. The atmosphere was quite unique. It was a hybrid of a pub and a disco. The subtlety of the pub was there, but was cocktailed with the disco element that made people dance due to the lack of seats.

In the centre of all of this, I stood absorbing this cultural input. However, as the input started to stagnate I started to notice something else. The concentration of human abominations was alarmingly high. Wherever I looked I saw nothing but genetic crimes against humanity. It was evident that the corrupted segment of the Human gene pool had decided to party here tonight, and while I stood finishing one drink after the other, I was struck by a crude realization of how some of these beings would go home to fornicate and possibly reproduce some mutant offspring that was twice as vile as themselves. In this environment I was indeed a prostitute against my own will, because I would have to be paid to have any type of sexual interaction with the opposite gender.

We left after a few hours and on our way home, we came across of one those poor homeless souls. This one was extremely proactive and very aggressive, when it came to asking for money. I wasn't scared, but was surprised at this overly desperate behaviour.

It was getting pretty tiresome to always have to hand out money or cigarettes to those less fortunate. It was a constant battle trying to endure the guilt trips. Perhaps this was why the people in this city quietly ignored everything and everyone around them to filter out the poverty and misery. Maybe some day I would be like them. I would walk blindly past those, who were less fortunate holding out their hand with the faint hope that, I would drop a coin into their palm. I was hoping that I would never follow this creed of social apathy, because it was undeniable that the benevolent nature in me was slowly starting to decay...

Edward T. Shufflebottom

The Postcode Mentality and the city of ciggie snatchers

Much had happened since, I departed from the feline cesspool. I had finally gotten a place of my own and dubbed it home. It wasn't actually a penthouse, but the foul stench of dog and cat shit wasn't nothing more but a distant memory. I was able to think back of the entire episode and chuckle at my frequent state of mental pandemonium.

I had opened my eyes to many new things, which I had been blind to before or at least not given myself an extra moment to dwell on. Wherever I went, my eyes fell on poor unfortunate homeless souls. Some of them would patiently await and hope that you would drop a coin or two into their hand, while others would actively seek you out to promote their sad condition and burden you with a guilt trip, “Can you spare some change for a cup of tea?”. Of course, I wasn't that gullible. Since when did tea get poured into cans of Carlsberg? Along those very same streets, kiosks and grocery stores with exclaiming discounts on every type of alcohol known to man, store owners encouraged these souls to spend their hardly begged money. It was sickening and sad, but nevertheless I indulged them. I gave them whatever change I had on me. Ideally I would prefer them to spend the money on something that would benefit them, but then again, who was I to pass such judgement? Who was I to say what was beneficial or not for these people?

Something else I noticed was, when the homeless aren't looking for money, they are looking to acquire cigarettes. I couldn't count the amount of times throughout the day that I was bombed with the question, if I could spare a cigarette. Standing still and smoking a cigarette was like being a freshly furnished turd waiting for the flies to arrive.

My new job had presented me with more material for my mind to work with. I finally realised, what I was doing, wasn't what I was supposed to be doing. The geek talking of complex data structures and methodologies that never interest me was being force fed into my ears, but my mind was somewhat distant. I was out of synch with this environment and these people. There were only two persons that I had bonded with. Each of them carried a element that I could easily mirror my personality in. The rest emitted vibes of fraudulence and riding horses, they needed ladders to mount. I communicated little or never with these people. I might have come across as being timid or introverted to them, but I felt that we had nothing to say to each other that would have served as a catalyst to initiating the semblance of basic friendship. At this point, they were people I worked with and nothing else.

Every evening I found myself standing outside like a furnished turd looking at the naked trees occupying the grove as far as the eye can see and the dull grey sky The pavements were dirty and stained with the residue of dog shit. It seemed that dogs in this country really made an effort to shit in the middle of the pavement, and people who walked just wanted to step in it. In fact I can imagine they jumped into it. Maybe they liked the extra padding on their shoes, so they could slide down the street to reach their destination quickly. But it was out here that I found my mind clearing up and able to put things into perspective.

Yes, Life goes on...

Edward T. Shufflebottom