Noah Cicero - The Collected Works of Noah Cicero Vol. I

For three different reasons: sex, vomit, and politics.

I’ve had sex with at least five different people who were in the bar that night.

Got in a physical altercation with a Republican.

And vomited on some kid’s drum set.

I told him I had food poisoning.

That was bullshit, although I felt he deserved it.

I didn’t even know why I was there. It was lame.

I decided to walk to the back room where karaoke takes place to see if there were any fine pieces of ass back there.

I walked back there carrying my BV and Coke.

I stood in front of the stage.

Some has-been preppy was singing an Elton John song. I think it was “Tiny Dancer.”

I like “Tiny Dancer” so I listened.

The guy was singing his heart out up there.

He was a good singer too.

He hit the notes and didn’t fuck up at all.

I started to sing along with it.

A lot of people were.

There were like eight people by the stage singing and dancing a little.

As I stared at him, I realized why there are karaoke and open mic nights.

It’s because during school people are given all these chances to play sports, sing, act in plays, be in the band, all kinds of shit. But when they graduate it’s all over, so many chances are taken away when a person graduates. A lot of fun is just cut off.

I started to cry a little when the guy started singing the chorus.

I knew at that moment there wasn’t much difference between that has-been preppy’s singing and my writing.

He just wanted to take a break from the shit of the world and express himself, have fun, and share his talents with other people, even if only eight other people cared.

I knew this girl in high school.

Don’t remember her name; it isn’t important.

On the weekends she used to take sleeping pills.

She would get home from school and take two sleeping pills.

Sleep till four in the morning.

She would walk to the kitchen.

Light a cigarette.

Get a glass of orange juice.

Take three sleeping pills.

Then she would go upstairs to her room.

Lie in bed smoking.

Staring into space.

Then close her eyes and fall asleep.

She would wake up around noon Saturday.

Walk to the kitchen.

Get a glass of orange juice.

Take four sleeping pills.

Go back to her room.

Lie in bed.

Smoke cigarettes.

Stare into space.

Then close her eyes and fall asleep.

Around nine o’clock Saturday night she would wake up again.

Go to the kitchen.

Get ham and cheese out of the refrigerator.

Make a ham sandwich.

Get some orange juice.

Take four sleeping pills.

Go to her bedroom.

Eat the ham sandwiches.

And fall asleep.

Around six Sunday morning she would wake up.

Go to the kitchen.

Get a cup of orange juice.

Take five sleeping pills.

Go to her bedroom.

And smoke cigarettes till she went to sleep.

Sunday afternoon, she woke up again.

Would go to the kitchen.

Her family was eating then.

There was pot roast on the kitchen table.

Nobody spoke to each other.

She would sit down and eat a few scraps of meat.

Then she would take six sleeping pills.

Go back to bed.

And smoke cigarettes till she fell asleep.

At four Monday morning she woke up.

Instead of going downstairs.

She would lie in her bed and smoke.

And go to school when the time came.

In a small living room with nice furniture and a color TV bought by the mother’s dad.

Sat a Youngstown family eating dinner.

The mother sat on the couch drinking a forty.

The father on the floor.

Three children sitting about the room.

The dad got up and walked to the kitchen, bumping the mother’s leg with his leg on the way there.

The mother said, “Hey motherfucker, you did that on purpose!”

The kids didn’t look up.

“I didn’t fucking do it on purpose,” said the father.

“I know you fucking did, don’t bullshit me. I know you, you’re starting shit!”

“Whatever.”

He went to the kitchen.

Came back to the living room.

Sat on the floor and continued to eat dinner.

The mother stared in anger while she ate.

She sat there for about ten minutes pretending calmly to watch the television.

She stood up.

Kicked the father in the back of head.

His head flew forward.

She slammed her plate on his head.

Then sprinted for the door.

Flung her forty of beer at him and ran outside.

The mother stayed outside for about ten minutes letting the father cool off.

Then she came back in and sat on the couch like nothing happened.

The father was sitting on the couch and said to her, “I should so kick your ass, but I know you’ll call the fucking police and I don’t need that shit.”

The kids never looked up the whole time.

I like to go to Denny’s.

It is nice there.

The servers are nice.

The service isn’t bad, and most of the customers aren’t assholes.

I was sitting there for a few hours one day.

Relaxing, being pointless, doing nothing.

The Arabs were there, they are always there between the hours ten and one at night, and then they leave.

I think they’re Saudis and they own gas stations.

Not sure though.

Arabs own all the non-corporate mini-marts and gas stations.

I have no idea why; maybe there was a movement in the Middle East to infiltrate America through mini-marts and gas stations.

Probably not. That sounds really stupid.

Hell, I don’t know, and I don’t really care.

But they sit at Denny’s every night and if you talk to them, they are friendly.

The server that night was Chuck. He has an extreme lisp and doesn’t give a fuck about his job.

He doesn’t care to the point that when you want some more to drink, you have to get up and find him half the time.

I don’t care. Getting up and finding him gives me something to do.

And he’s a lot better than Gina, who talks your ear off about her husband, I don’t know his name. She only refers to him as “my husband.” Which is common among Youngstown women.

Gina is like twenty-two and her husband is like eighteen. I don’t know how that happened.

She probably had a dad who was a rolling stone, as people like to say, and now she wants a little boy to control. Which happens a lot in Youngstown.

I’ve never seen anyone in Youngstown get married for good reasons.

As psychologists and most anybody knows, people stay in relationships because they share the same value structure.

Most of the values I see that keep people “in love” are:

— drug addiction.

— mediocrity.

— inertness of thought.

— racism.

— laziness.

— lameness.

— self-loathing.

— violence.

— alcoholism.

— to control someone and be controlled by someone else.

— love of objects.

— pretending they are richer than they are.

— money.

Yeah, that’s marriage in Youngstown.

That’s Youngstown love, baby.

My parents’ values are in that group.

While I was at Denny’s I drank a hot tea.

I can’t drink coffee.

It makes me vomit.

I used to drink tons of it, you know, I would sit with my Kerouac book, drink coffee, and be cool.

For some reason I started vomiting every time I drank coffee.

So I don’t drink it anymore.

Now I drink hot tea.

No honey or lemons.

The hot water with a tea bag and two Sweet N’Low sugars.

People tell me all the time that Sweet N’Low gives people cancer, I don’t know about that and don’t really care.