100 things
1.) I cry a lot.
2.) I hate changed my job.
3.) I love my home by the sea in Santa Cruz, California.
4.) All I want to do is write.
5.) I wanted to have lots of kids. I have had a lot of fun trying have none.
6.) I miss love my mom and dad.
7.) I don’t eat beef. Not anymore.
8.) I have dry skin.
9.) I wanted to be either a comedian or a priest when I grew up. I’ve been both. Now I am a truck driver who wishes he was a writer.
10.) I don’t know how to can back up my truck.
11.) I like butts more than boobs.
12.) I’m alone most of the time, and I hate it.
13.) I don’t drink anymore.
14.) I don’t smoke. But I had smoked up to five packs a day.
15.) I can’t tell a joke. Not even to save my life.
16.) I drink decaf coffee only, not the caffeinated kind.
17.) I have RLS or restless leg syndrome.
18.) Best way to get rid of me is to ignore me. I’ll go away fast.
19.) I’m broke.
20.) I think I’m much more like Harvey Pekar than Charles Bukowski, but I enjoy reading Bukowski more than I enjoy reading Harvey.
21.) I am very shy.
22.) I am a very private person.
23.) I enjoy anonymity more than fame.
24.) I studied Court Reporting and I got up to 180 words per minute on the stenograph machine.
25.) I started court reporting because I thought I was going to be a reporter for the newspaper in court rooms.
26.) I really am that dumb.
27.) I have always wanted to be a writer.
28.) I enjoy Hemingway more than I enjoy Faulkner.
29.) I never learned how to write from schools. I just read.
30.) Once I write it, I never go back and read it. It always seems dumb when I do.
32.) I am Serbian. I have been a Serbian Orthodox Priest.
33.) I turn away more women than anyone I know. Sometimes masturbation is just so much simpler.
34.) I don’t eat sugar.
35.) I don’t have a bed at home. I sleep on a couch. I like it.
36.) I used to rob people for a living.
37.) 37 is Cool Hand Luke’s number in jail and it’s my favorite number.
38.) I’ve done every drug but ecstasy, and DMT. Maybe one or two others, but I’ve done a lot of drugs. Oh yeah. Not done Crystal Meth either.
39.) I started driving when I was 7. It was a Willy’s Jeep on the farm I grew up on.
40.) I had my first sexual experience at nine years old. It was with a baby sitter. She lived in the house.
41.) I’ve been stalked.
42.) I have tattoos.
43.) I have PTSD from a childhood of beatings.
44.) I won’t fight, but I will scream and yell when I’m losing that which I love.
45.) I get scared quicker than I get angry.
46.) I’m enjoying growing old.
47.) I’ve been beaten up by a gang.
48.) I lived on the street for 27 years.
49.) In my entire life I have only earned about 120 thousand dollars. $120,000.
50.) I like to see people doing good, and being happy more than I like to watch anyone suffer.
51.) I know right from wrong.
52.) I believe I never should have moved to Arizona.
53.) I lost everything I owned three times in one year.
54.) I have seen my family’s life destroyed by a fire.
55.) I have nearly drowned on five different occasions.
56.) I am afraid of spiders, and heights.
57.) I attribute anything I have learned about writing to a woman who calls herself gekko, a man calling himself Dr Zen, and a dubious character who goes by the name of Sour Grapes.
58.) I think I am attractive, but who knows for sure. I mean really.
59.) I can live on ten dollars for a month.
60.) I have a really bad back.
61.) I walk pigeon-toed.
62.) I was a fat kid. Now I seem to be too thin.
63.) I am good on the computer.
64.) All I want to do is stay home in Santa Cruz. I may never return.
On May 25, 2007, I returned home to stay.
65.) I pay $520 rent each month.
66.) I drive a 2005 Blue Kenworth W9 long nose I walk everywhere I go.
67.) I have four five brothers, and no sisters.
One I’m not supposed to know about.
68.) I am hungry most days.
69.) I have real small fingernails. Everything else is proportionate. A Palm reader told me that the small nails indicated I would never realize my full potential.
70.) I have longevity in my genes. I will, regrettably, probably live a long life.
71.) If you are my friend there is virtually nothing I won’t do for you. If you are my enemy, I’ve forgotten you already.
72.) I make 22 cents per mile that I drive, 22ยข. I write for my living.
73.) This is both harder, and more fun that I thought it would be.
74.) I respect the police. Funny, but I do.
75.) I am circumcised.
76.) My foot size is approximately thirteen. I am about six foot three inches tall.
77.) I enjoy Alt.Americana type music: Lucinda Williams, Uncle Tupelo, KPIG, Robert Earl Keen, Uncle Tupelo, Wilco, Steve Earl, Hank III, Sirius Radio Outlaw station 63, and so forth.
78.) I don’t like that people betray one another.
79.) I am very sensitive, and get my feelings hurt often.
80.) I have very bad teeth. They hurt a lot.
81.) I like marinara sauce on spaghetti.
82.) I like sushi.
83.) I like the San Francisco Giants. They will disappoint me each year in some new, and exciting way.
84.) I sold stuff over the phone for 26 years.
85.) I had a pony named Queenie given to me when I was young. I didn’t know how to care for it, and I watched it suffer and die. It still makes me cry to think about that.
86.) I saw my first dead person before I was five years old.
87.) I shot a gun before I was six.
88.) By the time I was twenty four my liver was nearly gone from drinking.
89.) I have more people that think highly of me than I feel I deserve.
90.) Low self-esteem is a step up for me. Do people still say low self-esteem?
91.) I am superstitious.
92.) I don’t think that suicide is wrong.
93.) I don’t believe in an “after-life”.
94.) I want to be cremated when I die. I like what Jim Thompson the writer wrote: ‘Just lean [me] up in the alley and let the dogs piss on me [when I'm dead].
95.) If I have hurt you I am sorry.
96.) If you have hurt me I’ve forgotten about it. But I’ll still be careful around you.
97.) I wear a silver ring on my left middle finger. It was from the only woman I ever wanted to marry.
98.) I can hold my pee all day long. An ex said that she couldn’t believe I only went twice a day. Sometimes I only piss once a day.
99.) I was married once when I was twenty years old. The marriage lasted for one month. I lived with her for 8 years before we ever got married.
100.) I have brown eyes, and I smell like a question.
