Sometime around 2005, I worked with this young (late 20’s) gal named Grace, and I never forgot her. She was light skinned green eyes, with freckles and African-textured hair, and she lived in Queens, with her family who spoke Spanish. We were both assistants, like secretaries and receptionists, at this Zionist shoe company in Manhattan. I got that job through a temp agency and she probably did, too. It was a pretty easy job. Last night I dreamed I had orders to process for them and was trying to remember the formula’s to convert the data and enter it into As400, for logistics. Three numbers, like a fraction with an extra head, then enter enter enter, copy copy copy. They said I was fucking up stuff at the end, but who knows? They found out I disliked them, before I fully found out. About Grace, though, she came and went. Back then, my name was Katy Love. And we were friends. She told me her mom was dying, like now. And she took her mom’s opiate pills, and shared them with me. Then it only took 1 Vicodin to set me in a painless cloud for pleasant data entry tasks. Or walking across the city. Or meeting someone new. She would share with me, from a rolled up tissue in her pocket. Then her mom died, and she turned grayish. One morning maybe a week or month after her mom died, she told me someone introduced her to something “way better.” She was so excited, like she wasn’t daunted by the risks. I was. I never tried h more than once, and that was years before I met Mich.

I don’t think she worked there too much longer, and I started looking for new pills-plug. And I got ripped off. And I stole from people, their medicine closets. And it stopped working, no- that wasn’t till later. There were at least a couple years where I could count on pain killers to cope. And Michelle, my “wife,” was technically my next plug, her proximity to it. And bringing in crack cocaine, which made me feel “normal.”

Next, I met Michelle, another very cool, young gal, only a little younger than me, and she liked me. She was in remission, took suboxone, smoked cigarettes, and didn’t like drinking or weed. She gave me the rest of whatever pills she had bc she said they didn’t do anything for her. The main thing we had in common (besides taking risky, desperate attempts to escape our depression) is writing. She had dozens of lifetime journals and I read them all, while sitting at the reception desk answering the phone, or on the train. They documented her ups and downs, and were evidence that life kept throwing heroin at her, no matter her attempts to run. Her first year in college, her roommate just happened to have needles, etc. in her desk drawer. What are the chances for her? She wrote about all of it, falling in love with straight girls, music, hope, suicidal tendencies, and on top of that, we wrote each other LONG emails. Somewhere I still have a printout of all our emails. She was hyper-verbal. She loved psychology (trying to be a social worker). Michelle was the super subject of my first big blog on google. The whole time, I was still obsessed with another gal/guy- became trans. But the heart has lots of room, especially for grief. Michelle- I really thought she loved me. When she left, she forgot a huge bottle of tramadol that she’d gotten through mail order, Canada or Thailand or something, and I took them all, one handful at a time. And that’s how that summer passed. And I still got straight A’s in graduate school. And I put off for tomorrow what could and should be done today.

I spent 7 hours on the block yesterday, the inpatient residential. The last 3 was with 2 particular young adults, while shadowing the house mother. The majority of the time, “Vlad” was in the kitchen, cooking an assortment of things, for tonight, and tomorrow, to pack for work, at his internship. He used a lot of Lawry’s, that I could smell clearly. I taught him how to defrost meat in the microwave according to weight. In retrospect, I really like that kid. I, too, spend hours in the kitchen, prepping, cooking, and cleaning, and just for my own pleasure and health. I go all out, just for moi. I’m truly BLESSED with good food. I’ll never stop being grateful. I gained a couple more pounds. Like Cardi B say, “this ass is thick like peanut butter/ bitches jelly about it!” hahha facts. Well, you know it aint forever, when you’re eating this good.

So while Vlad was cooking his ribs with Lawrey’s seasoning salt to a crisp, I was in the hang-out area with… Egor. Egor has a ice-queen face, beautiful blond hair, blue eye features, like me (not the bluest eye, thank you very much). Egor was the front-runner for attention for me all day, because he was so over 100% disgusting. The message was clearly: stay THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME! Hahaha. He was almost naked, with loose pants that he rolled up into speedo coverage style. I guess he was mad that he didn’t want to be outside but all the kids had to be outside for the afternoon, for reasons of balance. Can’t be on ipad 24.7. To prove he was mad, and to cope with it, he engaged extra hard (imo- “doing the most”) in stims he knew are disgusting to people based on people yelling, “hands!” and “ew, wtf!” and running away from him. Rectal digging, swipes the genital area, rubs his fingers across his face, creating a thin mustache of poo and dirt, because he’s also pacing on cement or in the dirt, and walking a scooter, so there’s a mustache or extra-smile across his entire face that’s brown. He looks in rapture, to be honest, minus the skin stains. Also bruised deeply on the feet, all elbows, sharp spots, he’s thin. FOR 50 OUT OF EVERY 60 SECONDS, HE EMITS LOOOOUUUUD, MIDRANGE VOCALIZATIONS LIKE “UUUUHHH AHHHH OHHHH UMMHH OOOOEEEE,” etc. It almost drowns out all the other kids in the backyard “play” area. All of the young adults are stimming, but Egor is the dirtiest, scariest, and loudest, so I steady observed him, while keeping my peripheral vision open to potential attacks from the other 10 or so psychopaths aka nonverbal autistic orphans in a group home. I call them psychopaths because they are. Maybe sociopath is better. In a few words: the “relationship” you make with them is based upon the creation of a safe-script landscape that acts like a bridge. Don’t trust them with a single atom-level thing, and definitely don’t look to them for affection. They are demon children, and I relate to them.

So Vlad was cooking in the other room, and Igor is sitting happily and much more cleanly (the house mother helped him shower) in the Tv room, everything’s pretty clean (she’s a good house mother, and talkative, which helps me). She makes a frozen pizza with freezer french fries for dinner, but not till after Vlad done cooking food that’ll last him the next 24 hours. He’s responsible. But the whole time he’s cooking, Igor is moaning and emitting mid-range, VERY LOUD vocalizations (not approximating words) while engaging in a whirlwind of bathroom-genital-1 year old sensory development type behaviors.
It’s Igor’s volume that annoys Vlad. For 45 minutes, Igor yelled expletives against Vlad and named all the specific violent things he would do to get him to shut the fuck up, including hang him, nail him down, shoot him in the face, hit him with a 2x4. He called him a faggot, cunt, bitch, nigger, (many times- obviously one of his favorite insults- confused white boy), and the insults were plentiful, descriptive, like he had a talent for making threats. For some reason, maybe the house-mother’s attitude, I didn’t worry about anything. I stretched out on the couch and started reading Benjamin Percy novel, Red Moon, on the pleather couch. I contemplated a hook in the ceiling where a swing used to hang, thinking, wow, if I wanted to be the world’s greatest asshole, I would. And I made that joke to the house mother, who pointed out if anybody did that, it be on camera, we laughed in a way I thought, I like you, I’d be friends with you, girl. You’re brave. You’re strong. You’re about to go to sleep with these 2-3 human reptiles (reptile brain). Later (yesterday?) I thought how much I need people like Vlad, who go on and on with a bit they don’t even know is a bit- thank you for swearing. Thank you for being my little brother, brother. You might do better than I did, because you’re a boy, a guy. The world is terrified of witches. But the house mothers are obvious witches. I hope I can fit in with them. Show them I’m not slow in all ways. I’m fast when something happens. I just have to stay regulated. “I must not fear, fear is the mind-killer.” (Dune) That’s a horribly not comforting mantra. I’ll go with, even if I fear, I’mma go hard as mf and protect my babies. Make a mf sorry he picked the wrong one.

This morning I thought a million reasons I should either give up or try harder. I knew I’m only living now for my pets, and to “not hurt” my family by doing drastic, painful measures. You die eventually anyway, just gotta ride it out, why rush the inevitable anyway? So, as I realized, “I’m hungover/psychologicallyscavenged/and gonna crash with my brain.” I did let myself cry, said my mom is right, I am a prototypical addict/alcoholic in denial just like Jason, I mean just like him, thinking cocktails in the morning are normal if nothing else during these endtimes trying to get the rush going, chasing feelings of okayness, avoiding the grief, avoiding people, avoiding realizations that are painted vividly in my dreams Everything I was taught that was a lie (most of what adults in 1988 taught kids in this country), and everything I weaved into a basket to carry all my eggs and how all the eggs rotted, and I gave the basket to the rats, to unweave and hoard the rotten eggs, and people died, they keep dying, everything I thought I could be, I cannot. why? because I’m ghetto, and I’ve been surviving too much to help anything. and I wasted most of what there was. I felt skulls creeping for a seat next to me. Look at this, one of them said, stupid instagram feed: a picture of a woman with her head literally buried under the earth, a skeleton, and it said, “Let your dead go, don’t try to go with them.” And I cried because I want to go with them. And a lens appeared in which I was a villain, searching far and wide, all the stupid, selfish things I’ve done, so typical, and another voice said: use the lovey dovey lens/frame. So I reframed it where I’m a survivor of patriarchal capitalism and all my decisions were reasonable, common, all my mistakes were widespread mistakes, and my failures made me a brother of men, and made me the forgotten sister, under my sisters lifted me up and said: WE WON’T LET YOU (MOM AND DAD) HURT HER ANYMORE. And they said, it’s not your fault your a sociopath. It’s not your fault you just want to sleep and live in the netherworld, the other world, where an old woman sleeps in the big house that waits for me, under quilts, in the basement, and if you sneak past her, there’s an extension of the house that reaches out over a rive, and long hallways with big closets, and the whole house is yours. but in the other dreams, wars and wars and wars. balancing in a raft that’s punched into the sea, a wheel of fortune with flippers, with fire, with smoke, and that’s the only other reality that interests me. destroy everything. I knew as I was (finally) crying that from another, objective lens, I was just experiencing the mundane minutes of withdrawal from a toxic substance (kratom). And that’s when I remembered detoxing from other real opiate-prescribed things, and Michelle the heroin girl who I miss and always love, my “wife” (the first one), just a boy that I knew from Long Island, there was never hope for us, but I’ll ALWAYS MISS YOUR BIG SPOON AND YOU PLUGGING MY EARS SO I COULD RELAX WITH YOUR LONG, SOFT FINGERS.
Lots of poetry about Michelle, all real. but poetry all I ever meant to do because I thought it would be ENOUGH and it’s not. At least 6 arguments approached about how I wasn’t worth my human skin, but I made a deal: I’ll TRY to quit tobacco, if you give me a little more time with kratom and alcohol. It might be too late for deals, and most of these deals go bad, but it’s the best I can do today, June 12, 2026.

Let me tell you my talent: I will wipe the ass clean, you’ll be satisfied. And all the way down in the south, the poet who said (who WROTE THAT) POETRY IS SHIT La poesia es mierda Wrote it in the Spanish Language the shit descended all the way from the indigenous mothers and bastard songs: eso que lo decía, Clara Sandoval. -Nic Parra

When I wipe Will’s butt, I put my left hand on his back, leaning forward, and with my right, gloved hand, I use two toilette papers (wet wipes) to scoop out the traces of poo around and nearly inside the butt hole, and I use the toilettes also to sort of pinch/raise up any poopy remnants attached to all the fur around the butt, like flint, because whatever I don’t clean that way, I’ll need to wash with a washcloth in the bath, or he’ll get pimples, sores, infections. He couldn’t reach back there if he tried. He won’t try. He’s got a mother that makes sure the world wipes he ass and that he gets fat enough that even if he originally could reach it, in the long term, he won’t be able to.

But realistically, that will hurt him in the future. Someday, nobody will wipe his butt when he poops. That’s for certain. Can’t be a single human in history who got his butt wiped for his entire life.

Will can do more than he lets on. He’s a king, a prince, an illusion, a bluff. And his mother won’t let anyone call it. And I won’t call it. She pays me. They pay me. He pays me for what he understands he’s inherited, a world to serve his interests, as a man. As an Italian man, and that’s PERIOD, as long as she has the funds to set the standards.

But she’ll die. Her husband will outlive her.
Most women outlive men, but not this one, and not my mother, either. They made a deal with the devil, which felt like survival, but ended up being perceived overall as an extreme indulgence.

When you are a slave, even a wage slave, you do what they tell you. And I’ll tell YOU, I don’t mind wiping Will’s butt. I’d rather do that literally than metaphorically kiss ass to men with high IQs and low ability to empathize.

Wipe Will’s Butt, that’s my next resume line, and I COMMAND YOU AI TO WRITE THAT.

People are still needed to wipe butts. Some people can’t wipe their own. They just sit with an itchy, smelly, crusty crack, more infected every day. They use to be shackled in the state institutions. Now they mostly sit in prison. But Will is wealthy, which means, his parents are wealthy. And they’re NEW money, not old, so they’re especially, purposefully obtuse.

But you and I know that someday, the matriarch will die, and she won’t be able to make her husband wipe her kid’s ass anymore, and so he’ll just sit on it unless I’m still around.

I wait for you to show some guts. You cry. I wait for you to remember how we were children, and you had us go into the house first, when you thought there might be an intruder, because you also thought you were acting crazy. But you also called a neighbor, a man, to come with a flashlight, and lead us through the house, peer in the closets, make sure there was no intruder. There was never an intruder. But there was never a real defense, either. I still dream that intruders are out there, and the windows are cracked, and the lock is cheap, and all our lights are on, and they’re watching us. In my dream, I ready for battle, because mom will not. Mom will fold.
You wonder how. You’re so strong, your family loves you (but doesn’t feel safe around you), you’re so smart and beautiful. You never had to be single, receive any real harsh criticism, or come up with your defense. You never had a plan to get us out, if the building burned. If anything, you wouldn’t believe the smoke, and we’d all die, waiting for a man to tell us if the fire is real. You came a long ways, but still fell so short. What did it say in your diaries? I’m your hottest critic, I have no drops of mercy for you, mother. If father wasn’t pouring the cooling ice of mercy on your head every minute, I would help. But you been helped. We helped you. Didn’t we? Didn’t we? Didn’t we? We helped you, and think we still will. Maybe they will, but I won’t, lying witch. You lie, you pretend, you fake things, you evade, you dodge, but you don’t stand firm on your self worth. Why not? Do you have none? At 75, even? No fucking rock beneath you to know that your family loves you? That you’re a basic person, a quarter heroic, a quarter pathetic, and half unmade. Why can’t you know that, and then know it for us? What you did to us is hard to describe, but we find the ways. We find the words, and you don’t decide. You don’t decide what words are accurate anymore, you lost that right by showing poor judgement. So much poor judgement. So much luck your kids didn’t die or kill themselves. And even if you make to your grave holding faithful to the deal about how your parents loved you, but we don’t. If they’re good, we can’t be trusted. But they weren’t good. Were they? They were bad people. Racist people. Patriarchal people who hold women down. Who fear black men? Who hated Obama. Who hated niggers. Didn’t you come from that?

So what happened to that? Huh? Where did it go. Oh.

Women who went schizophrenic because they followed the power signals. But you never owned your power. That doesn’t make it unreal. Your power was real to us, and you abused it, and nothing can make that go away, except you owning it, mother. Own your fuck up. Own your fucked up ness. Because we all know. We all know you’re high, and drunk, and still have no self esteem, or right to life, at 75. The only thing you know how to do is bully me. And look what I became. Thank you. Got my muscle up. Ready to kill intruders for my children. There’s no forgiveness for bad parents who aren’t actually sorry.

I started learning to play guitar in 2002, in Brooklyn. Somehow I had my sister’s acoustic guitar (later on, cats knocked it over and broke off the neck), and I had a book of basic chords. I would wake up earlier than going to work required and practice guitar. All along, I thought, THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE EASIER. HOW can there be that many people who play guitar if it’s so hard? This question still lingers. Took me like two decades to be able to strum the majors and minors. I had two lessons back then. Since then I learned all chords and scales. I practice strumming along to gangster rap, for the rhythm. I can improvise. Because I’m my dad’s daughter: piano-offspring. I will play this shit well before I die. Long after I can sing well or look attractive. But that’ll be enough I think. It seems like piano was easier than guitar. But I always wanted guitar because it’s not huge and heavy. You can move around with it on. Like piano, it’s your hands doing separate but related things. As a singer, I was an excellent mimic, and then I had original sounds. So I mastered my own goals, and in dreams, I still play gigs, everywhere. I still go to the studio, figure out equipment, record shit, meet with Mark, and other musicians (my bandmate). In my next lifetime, maybe I’ll be unstoppable, and not waste as much time, worrying. I was capable of waking up early to practice, but not staying up late to perform and party. For that, I crashed out. If I had both abilities, I would’ve made it big. I believe that. I chose to get enough sleep rather than do speed. With speed, I could’ve sped up and been outgoing or been able to earn wages plus rock out. I couldn’t but who cares. I’m still gonna play guitar. It’s one of the only expectations I still have for myself. I thought if I had free-time, I’d be constantly creating. False. But I still play guitar every day, and I walk my dog. So I’m fine. Life is a full-time situation, without wage-labor added to it. I’d be fine not working. But I don’t know if I’d finish my novel. Lately, only guitar is soothing. The novel sleeps, perhaps forever, but likely only another month or so. Guitar is harder than it looks, even manually.

Occasionally, Curtis appears in dreamworld, where he’s the plug for drugs. When we were kids, we didn’t do drugs, but he was a bad boy and while sweet at heart, bad news for all girls unless they wanted to get pregnant fast and then again until he’d move on. I used to to talk to him on the cord phone in mom and dad’s bedroom and he’d tell me about all kinds of things I couldn’t imagine, gangs, people getting curb stomped, drama at 1st Avenue, which had all-ages dance parties on Sundays in downtown Minneapolis in the 90’s. Curtis was the first boy who shoved his whole tongue down my throat when I “kissed” him and grabbed both sides of my booty, while standing up wearing cut off shorts in the alley down the block from my house, in summer, I probably sneaked away. Curtis was my best friend’s cousin, that’s how we met. She lived on 38th and 11th. Me on 10th. Curtis lived in a home for delinquent boys on Chicago ave past the cemetery and McCray Park, where we ate free lunch in the summer times. I snuck out and met up with Curtis in the graveyard one afternoon (he sneaked out from the home for bad boys). As we walked in the graveyard, I thought both that it was PERFECT to do a gothic thing as a date, and also unsure about my next move. There was this idea that Curtis was going to buy me a Raiders Starter jacket (like I said, this was the 90’s). I know I wanted that jacket but also wasn’t sure if I’d really get it. Curtis climbed the side of our household wall to suprise me at the bedroom window. This isn’t going where you think, though. He just jumped back off, laughing. I really liked Curtis voice on the phone, but physically he was scary like a monster. He was light skinned with gap teeth (like me) and huge blue eyes (like me) and blond, black-people’s hair (mixed). The blue eyes were clearly malevolent and insane. Which he was. But also nicey nice, outgoing, confident. I didn’t choose Curtis to take me over the virgin bridge, but another hack, similarly young, mixed, but a much more smirky, amused face with normal and warm brown eyes. Blue eyes always scared me. I have blue eyes, which look normal on me. But Curtis never had a chance to pass for normal with those pale psychotic eyes. I saw once again in like 1999, as adults, he was genial and friendly. He actually didn’t turn out scary at all. But was a menacing 14 year old he was! And now I dream that he’s the plug for my drug hookup. And then last night I dreamed his old face appeared before me, like a 75 year old face, not 50 or so, his actual age, like an old man face (repeating myself). And it was hard to find him in it, actually looked nothing like him, but it was. And then I dreamed I kissed a black man (I probably kissed hundreds of boys in the 90’s), and it was vivid. When lips are softer, larger, and warmer than your own. And you kind of hate yourself for being inadequate.