Heartbreak Hotel

The other day I was being interviewed by a young lady named Candice who wants to do a documentary on my band. When she first came to me with the idea I agreed, not because I wanted our band to get exposurd to a greater audience, but primarily because I have come to grips with the fact that I am a full blown attention whore. So far she has some pretty good performance footage, me arguing with my band-mates, me cursing out a heckler, me kicking some asshole directly in the chest, I'm starting to think that she will title the documentary: HumanityCritic: The man, the Spaz, the total fucking psycho.

Anyway, she was interviewing me the other day and asking me questions that I personally thought were very personal, outside the scope of band related stuff. But since she is a very kind individual who has showed extreme passion behind doing a documentary with a front-man with the temper of a petulant five year old, and a guy whose own mother describes as a 32 year old "boy", I figured I would answer all of her questions honestly.(Some ladies would say that I was hung like a 5 year old as well, but you can't believe the rumors.) She asked me about my family, habits, dislikes, very standard questions until she got to the question, "Can you tell me about your most extreme heartbreaks? Immediately your mind goes to heartbreaks of the relationship variety, where some misguided trollop of a woman loosely juggled with your emotions like a fucking circus clown. But as I sat there, I realized that I have had heartbreak in my life more extreme, that had nothing to do with some girl I loved simply because she didn't totally "irritate" me, or because she lacked a "gag reflex". I went into detail about two "heartbreaks", and here they are..

Stella:(picture not Stella) I used to date this chick named Renee who lived in a extremely bad neighborhood. It was so bad that I used to call her area "Little Beirut" for all the gunshots you would hear during any given night. Every time I left my car to go inside her house I always looked back at the car, the same way someone might look at a weekend fling as they boarded a plane, having to deal with the fact that that might be the last time you ever see them again. Yes, it was that bad. Anyway, during the course of me "dating" Renee(I put quotes around her name because our length phone conversations consisted of the ever romantic, "Hey, whatcha doing? Can I come over? cool!") I became friendly with her elderly neighbor, a woman named Stella. Stella had to be like 75, but she was still sharp as a tack and she took a quick liking to me, probably because she said that I reminded her of her grandson.

Through many conversations that we had I learned several interesting things about her, like her active involvement in the civil rights movement, tales of a brother of hers that was lynched, but most of all I learned her extreme love for music. We would sit in her living room that always smelled like cornbread, which I mean in the best way possible, and we would spin records for hours listening to Ella, Nina, Count Basie, Miles, you name it we played it. She was also a first class riot, especially when she would say to me, "HumanityCritic, you know the girl that you are messing with is easy don't you?? I hope you aren't falling in love, so you would be smart if you had the same emotional investment in her as you do your socks. She's pretty easy!" I would always nod in agreement and say, "Stella, I'm not with her because of her mind. Plus, I could never get serious with anyone who has to think for a moment when asked who the president is, plus there is a good chance that if me and her had a child together she would name my offspring some ghetto ass name that she thinks is unique, but is actually a Ethiopian word for asshole. Don't worry." Stella had a special place in my heart, and I anxiously awaited the days when I would see her, seeing her frail body answer the door and the look of happiness on her face.

So you can imagine my shock and horror when I learned that Stella was brutally raped and murdered outside her house as she got her morning paper one day. I was in a state of disbelief for hours after Renee had told me what had happened over the phone, it was also a shock that her neighbors either didn't see anything or they wouldn't cooperate with police. The reality set in when a police officer, who probably shouldn't have told me anything, went into vivid detail of how many times she was stabbed and the two probable men that committed that heinous crime. As he finished up the horrible specifics of what happened I dropped to my knees and sobbed uncontrollably. I looked up at the police officer with my tear ducts about to explode and said, "Are you going to get these motherfuckers?" and he assured me that he would. That wasn't enough for me, and since 75% of the people on Stella's block wer either on drugs, or selling drugs, I seriously considered threatening people to get some answers, on some Hollywood dectective shit. I realized that my anger was out of control as I heard myself saying the following to Renee, right before I planned on getting some guns and doing lord knows what: "I'm going to find out who in the fuck murdered Stella! If I have to put a bullet in a dope fein or a dealer, fuck it, because no one would miss those motherfuckers anyway!!" As soon as those words left my mouth I realized that I had lost it, the look on Renee's face told me as much. Plus this isn't Hollywood, because in real life "good guy" vigilante's get shot the fuck up, and the last thing I would want is to break my mothers heart.(Even though I did try to beat the living shit out of the two individuals who "wouldn't cooperate" with the police. The cop shouldn't have told me that shit either, but I can't fault the guy in aiding some good old fashion "street justice") Stella's murderers, as of September 19, 2005 are still at large.

My Father: I have gone on and on about my father, to the point that many of you are probably saying "OK, we get it, you had issues with the old guy!!" If you say that, I would be forced to agree with you, but he is the main topic of conversation because a lot of what he did I feel has shaped the asshole that I am today. Granted, I am a asshole who didn't need any help being one, but his behavior definitely didn't help matters. Anyway, for a 2 week period during his last days in the hospital we had bonded in a way that we had never bonded before. We talked about the years he stayed in Japan and all the women he "dated" while he was there. I talked about all the shit I hid from him and my mother while i was a kid, we even watched movies together and hit on nurses as they came into his room. I knew that he was shitty to me before, and that I shouldn't forget any of that, but I was so starved for his affection and approval that I wanted to take in all the kindness that was coming in my direction. As he got sicker, the kindness wore off and we were back at square one with me feeling like a 27 year old "accident".

The first major heartbreak was when my father, grasping for every breath, apologized to me for how he treated me and told me that he loved me. It hurt me deeply because why did he need to be near death to express his love for me, I would have rather he not apologized and been consistent. Lastly, the incident that tore my heart to shreds is when he held my brothers hand and IN FRONT OF ME told him that he was the "good son" and he should take pride in the fact that he wasn't "a disappointment" like HumanityCritic. Right when he said that my mother immediately looked at me, I smiled back and nodded to her in a "don't worry about it" kind of way and silently left the room. My whole life, when he would do something horrible I would say to myself "I'm not doing that!!", referring to how I wouldn't treat my child. I sat down outside his room, laughed to myself to keep from crying and said, "I'm definitely not doing that!"