I've Always . . .

. . . entertained the notion of doing an open-mic at some point in my life.

Something about standing on a stage with only a mic and the echo of one's own voice has a dangerous appeal. I look at this as my equivalent to a roller coaster. I've never tried to write material but instead have a monologue that bounces around in my head.

"I've been single for a few years now. I still date. I go out. But nothing ever crosses that month long threshold. Being in your 20's and trying to find love - it's sort of a cocksuck. Cause you're still so young and you think you've got so much just waiting for you. There's only one other thing in life that I can compare that search to: Internet Porn.

Most people think internet porn is easy. That you pull up a site, take off a sock, and boom, you're done. 1998. '99. That might have been the case. Not today. Now there's so much out there, everyone can be a connoisseur. Ladies in the house, think about the most disgusting man you've ever met. He was probably some heavy breather with scales and a blood rash covering most of his visible skin and he always wore a knife on his hip. He was always wet. He'd stand so close to you you could feel his breath. And you spent the summer in fear of him when you worked your first job at the IGA. Yeah, if that guy found you naked on the internet - I can guarantee he probably wouldn't jerk off to you; that's how selective the internet porn consumer can be. I've lost jobs. Plural. Jobs - because that quick fix before work ended up lasting hours.

What happens is you start looking, and within the first few minutes, you find something that works for you, so you start - but you stop not too long after as you want to make sure there's not someone you know on the next page. And that next page takes you to another and another, then to a different site. Jpegs have given way to mpegs which give way to full movie downloads and mobile content. And the further you get, the more insane the shit you find becomes. You start telling yourself so many things so as to not do complete damage to your psyche. "This actress is good. It feels like she's crying for real." "As long as a chick is present alongside the tranny, it's not gay." "She only looks like my sister.

So night has fallen and your hungry and you've got no more spit. Enough. So you just want to go back to that first clip you found. But that was hours ago. Now you're on some Norse server. Not only does the text on these sites no longer resemble english: it no longer resembles words. It's an entire language written on wing dings and drawings of engorged rams. You even try to go back to where you started, but so much new stuff has pushed what you wanted out to sea. So you have to accept it's lost and you find something that sort of reminds you of what you remembered from that first clip, and you masturbate to it, begrudgingly. Sighing when you finish. Then button up and start the second shift at Game Stop.

And that's the search for love."