I read a lot of trash where and when other people might watch mindless TV or play video games. And when I say trash, I mean it honestly, and without a shred of negative judgment.

The same way that a person can love hoopty cars, or get a kick out of kid art, or unironically enjoy the kind of dive bar that skeeves the fuck out of almost anyone who can afford to drink elsewhere, even if it's the parking lot of a gas station that sells single shoelaces, copper choreboys, and not much else besides Night Train and Old English, there's a certain freedom in low expectations.

Over the last few years I've found myself following a Chernobyl double handful of bottom-tier, fan translated martial arts/daoist cultivation comics with the same central theme: a main character who overcomes first the mortal obstacles of a mundane or even cursed origin, and eventually defies the heavens to become a transcendent power unbeholden to the world.

"Defying the heavens" is the stock phrase. To overcome by force of will the forces of fate and fellow man that seek to depress one into the local minimum.

Let me be clear. The majority of these works are undisguised juvenile male power fantasies, and the joy of the reading is in the comfort of formula with the occasional interesting twist on the established templates. They are meandering, unreliable, and generally fall afoul of any number of anti-obscenity laws or standards, being works without serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

But let's set that aside for now, and put a bookmark in "defying the heavens".

I had a conversation recently with my brother, and the central theme was how utterly exhausting it is to expend so much effort on a daily basis refusing to yield to the circumstances of our lives.

I am a poor person.

I am a poor, mentally ill person in America with very little family that is worth mentioning as such. I loathe the culture in which I was born and by which I am surrounded, and despite the benefit of experiencing, deeply and personally, many different cultures from many different places in this world, I have found none which I feel serve me any better.

During a recent psychological evaluation, the shrinker asked me to describe my feelings.

I expressed first and foremost a deep, pervasive, and permanent sense of alienation from other human beings, even those few to whom I would say I am close, emotionally and socially.

She asked me to elaborate, and given the context of the moment, I told her something that I watched her carefully parse and process.

"The closest thing I've found to a culture with values approximating my own was living among Afghan hill savages, but unfortunately they have ideas about women and children that are a deal breaker for me. As far as America goes, you know what? Fuck 'em. They've got nothing for me, and I've got nothing for them that doesn't raise hell with the way they need to see the world."

I grieved for the America I thought I lived in the same way that a person can grieve for anyone or anything, and the only thing left of it is the part of it that lives in my memory.


In the animal kingdom, creatures great and small use color and form to hide away, or to stand out. It is obvious what the benefit of being invisible is. For a prey animal, it is a means of preservation. For a predator, it is a means of ambush.

Standing out comes in grades.

One of course thinks of the birds - males advertising fitness with incredible plumage, the fitness to evade predation despite it and the fitness to feed the biological excesses necessary to grow them. One also thinks of the lizards and fishes that identify their species and sex to potential mates and rivals. Some particularly fascinating species even exhibit cryptic coloration, with certain of the males appearing to be females so that they can sneak by territorial and harem-keeping males. There are in fact cuttlefish such that the females will look for the largest, most physically fit territorial males for part of their brood, and the cleverest, stealthiest males for the other part.

There are bugs that mimic the eyes of owls to scare away lesser birds, and then there are those animals that have warnings. The dart frogs. The box jellyfish. The rattlesnakes.

"You might kill me," they say, "But you will pay a heavy price."


I have certain vices and impure pleasures.

Among them is the irresistible urge to bait fools.

There are certain days whereupon I have nothing to offer my fellow man except whatever crazy person shit comes tumbling out of my mouth. I believe in giving plenty of fair warning on these days, and so I dress accordingly.

The purpose of a dress uniform is the same across the organizations that employ them, whether military, jungle tribe, or biker gang - to impress upon the general public your allegiance, and to display the particulars to those who have the eyes to see.

I have a particular cut-off denim vest that has seen many years of hard wear in gutters, alleys, gravel washes, and endless smooth macadam shimmering with mirages. It has been through dumpsters, thunderstorms, fistfights, truck stop heroin dens, a hundred different Waffle Houses, and a couple funerals - and it looks like it. Stress points have been tacked and repaired a dozen times with whatever thread was on hand.

One of the waist pockets was long ago converted into a warrant pocket, with a stiff zipper cut out of an old military duffle bag and a little ring I rigged up so I can put a luggage lock on the pull. What's in your pocket? Get a warrant.

And when I'm traveling cash and have my bankroll locked in it, the only way to take it from me even if you know it's there is to take the colors off my back. None have tried.

It is adorned with embroidered and enameled trinkets and most conspicuously with a defaced American flag stenciled on the back with rattlecans. In the language of vexilology, thirteen horizontal stripes alternating red and white; in the canton, a skull and crossed bones on a blue field.

Old Glory with a Jolly Roger instead of the 50 stars.

It says I AM MY AMERICA. It says I DO NOT GIVE A FUCK. It says COME GET SOME IF YOU THINK YOU HAVE BEEF.

It literally says F A F O at the top in big block capitals and it literally says AHOY at the bottom.

A little girl one time asked me what it meant, and so I told her.

It means almost the same thing as the American flag, except instead of a constellation, it shows that I don't owe anything to anybody who isn't in the same ship as me. It means I believe in the things America is supposed to be but I don't believe in the American people.

She thought about it for a second and said, "Well, it was a little scary at first but I don't think it is now."


A very typical scene in the trashpile is the main character being mistaken as an easy mark by ignorant thugs or the type that might be called "King Turd of Shit Mountain". The MC is going about some innocent business, shopping for trinkets or stopping for a bowl of noodles, and some dumb bastard comes along and starts some trouble.

These scenes serve two major functions. Firstly, in order to highlight the fundamental character of the hero - is he (and it is almost always a he) looking for trouble, trying desperately to avoid it, or simply accepting the world as it is presented? Does he try to disengage, or skip directly to crushing them to pieces without a thought, or does our hero (or sometimes villain) at least attempt to let them off lightly?

And secondly, these scenes are a cheap excuse for them to flex on some twerps who had it coming, cheap thrills for the reader.


I never roll dirty when I'm dressed up for trouble. No weapon, no weed, and nothing I'm worried about losing or giving away. Sober, if not clearheaded, and always with my most charming and polite behavior.

It puts an upper end on the consequences - to me, to them, and to bystanders - of baiting shitheads, and it puts an upper end on the kind of trouble I can cause if I'm not as in control of myself on a bad day as I think I am.

And there are two kinds of not talking to police: the kind where they have a bunch of evidence bags, and the kind where they don't.

And I never start it. I only let it happen.


Once in Florida I was down on the boardwalk and some day-drunk cretin wearing nothing but a pair of swimtrunks and some Pit Viper shades up on his forehead came stumbling out of a bar, his woman in tow trying to keep up. I was trying to find somewhere to sit and eat my ice cream.

I walked by the pair, giving the guy plenty of space to fall on his face without taking my ice cream down with him, and as I passed I heard a soft

"...don't..."

and then he yelled at my back.

"YOU SOME KINDA ONE PERCENTER OR SOMETHIN?"

One percenters. Outlaw bikers. No one percenter would ever mistake me for an example of their species - I don't have a three piece patch and I don't claim a locale. I claim nothing but the size 11 wide footprints under my boots. I don't have to say Lone Wolf because anyone who knows enough to care can see it anyway.

I ignored the drunk and took a bite of my ice cream, but the slap-slap-slap of agitated bare feet on sunbleached lumber was making itself known behind the clunk-clunk-clunk of my square toed shit kickers.

Now this, this is the exact kind of fool I like to bait - someone who has demonstrated their ignorance and poor judgment. Here is a belligerent fellow, unarmed, barefoot and more or less naked, wobbling drunk, who is going to start some shit with a guy wearing layered denim and heavy boots. A guy who's poured in enough liquid courage to think that he can redeem his self-image by picking a fight with the meanest looking sonofabitch he has to hand.

And it's not even like the lady was carrying his heat for him - all she had was a little clutch.

I waited until I was sure he was just out of grabbing distance and whipped around. And sure enough, he was already bringing a hand up, yanking it back as my abrupt turn startled him.

"...don't...." again, from the woman, two fingers on his elbow from behind. As far as he was concerned she didn't even exist.

"No," I said. "I'm not the kind of one percenter you're talking about. More like half a percent, maybe less."

You figure about three percent of Americans ever serve in the military, and a tiny percentage of those ever see the elephant, maybe five percent. Even if it's ten, we're still talking 3/10ths, so we'll round to 0.5 to pad out the big goddamn chip on my shoulder about it.

Nothing from the bozo, feeble thoughts desperately trying to push aside the vapors of cheap domestic swill.

"I don't even own a motorcycle," I said, squaring up and laying my hands, right hand open and relaxed, left hand keeping the soft serve cone vertical, at waist level on top of the side pockets of my vest, the reflexive posture of active readiness when one is rigged for a real fight, ready to snap up into fists, or out into a grab, or down onto the belt line to find the heat.

"Welllll," he said, wobbling, feet still planted where they had been mid-stride, "Welllll.... I never seen YOU around here before! Who the hell are YOU?"

"Don't," she said, voice rising in volume and pitch. I could see she knew what was coming just as clearly as I did.

"I'm nobody, man. They shot my name off in the fuckin' war."

I watched the hand he had been reaching with slowly clench into a fist, and I watched him press his lips together. The second the criminally weak jab started, I kicked his front ankle out and he went ass over teakettle, spilling to the edge of the boardwalk and damn near going off it.

I took a step back and watched him crab for a second, try to get up, and fall back down again.

"I'm sorry," she said, "I'm so sorry."

"No worries," I said. "Are you gonna be okay?"

"Yeah," she said, "Thanks." Picking him up now, trying to grab his sunglasses before he smashes them. "Thanks."

"I'm done here," I said, going to look for somewhere to eat my ice cream, the slurred invective streaming up from the deck every bit as satisfying as the sunny ocean breeze.


Almost all of the time when I go out into public my aim is to be invisible. Tree bark. A discarded leaf. A shiftless peasant among shiftless peasants, just some meatbag that slides off the eyeballs and never even enters the conscious mind.

But sometimes, I wear a warning. Bright colors and rough edges. Part of why I do it is because if you're in a state of mind that leaves you feeling scrutinized, watched, surveilled, the best way to take the ambiguity away is to be god damned sure everyone is looking at you. Part of why I do it is, well, really a warning.

Poke me and you're probably gonna get some crazy person shit. Maybe you'll get a bunch of lightbulb jokes. Maybe you'll get a diatribe on the nature of perception. Maybe you'll get an obtuse threat meant not to alarm you in the moment necessarily but rather to stick fast in your long term memory, to be recalled occasionally for the rest of your life.

Listen buddy I don't know when the last time you shit your pants was, but I'm pretty close to shitting them for you, so keep it up and you're gonna need to look up the closest laundromat.


In one of the books that nobody remembers in the wake of that Johnny Depp movie, Hunter S. Thompson relays a bit that the original Hell's Angels used to do. When they were out and about in fancy dress, the living visage of some marauding heathen band intent on the value of your life's work and your daughter's purity, they'd do good deeds, like maybe stop on the highway to help with a flat tire just as polite and perfect as though they were the roadside assistance crew making their last stop of the day before going to practice for the church choir.

I like that bit, too, and go out of my way to be as polite as you please. To do the little good deeds that can sometimes make a person's life a whole lot brighter. Hold the door. Buy the guy behind me coffee. Help the lady at the dump heft the bags from the back of her hatchback and up into the overfilled compactor. Slap some bum a fiver and a couple smokes and slide on to my next errand.

Be the ray of sunshine I absolutely don't look like and don't feel like, cause fuck 'em, that's why.

Be the unfathomable master passing by who picks up the overturned oxcart with one hand and replaces the busted halter with a hank of rope woven from dragon's beard.


I was on the only decent sized road between here and there, no particular schedule, and on a big straightaway saw an ollllld lady struggling in the grass next to a Prius pulled halfway off the shoulder.

I had plenty of time to pull in thirty feet behind her, put on the hazards, and cock the wheels to make sure we didn't both get murdered by physics if someone playing with their phone rear-ended the truck.

"Ma'am, are you alright?"

She looked up with the two halves of the collapsible tire iron in her hands, and I could see a toddler jumping around behind her.

"Well," she said, "I've just got a flat. I've never had to change one on this car before so I'm just trying to figure out where the jack point is."

"I can help you if you want, it looks like you have a little handful there."

"Would you?" she asked. "I sure would appreciate it."

So I laid down to look up under the car and find the jack point, a stamped rib spot welded to the frame. I pointed it out to her, "for next time", and swapped the tire for the spare.

"Ma'am, while I was changing your tires I noticed the tread is getting a little low. I don't know what your situation is but if this was my car and I had to take my little VIP around in it, I would definitely get some new ones."

"Oh my goodness," she said, "Yes, they're on order, but the mechanic says the supply chain, from COVID, you know! I asked him if it would be better to use my winter set just while we wait, but he said since they're studded I shouldn't do that!"

"What a pain in the butt," I said, tossing the dead one into the spare compartment. I could see her reaching for her purse so I made a beeline for the truck.

"Wait, wait," she said, "Let me give you something!"

"No ma'am, I wouldn't think of it. I'm just doing what I wish everyone would do."

Back on the road, about ten miles up, I pulled into the station that has decent gas and a great rotary meat department. I was washing my windshield while the tank filled, squeegee in one hand and jalapeno dog in the other, when the grandma pulled up to the pump behind me. I pretended not to notice as she got out and walked up to the back of the truck.

"I'm leaving this here! There's nothing you can do about it!" she said, and stuffed something into the handle of the gas pump. She drove off while the guy pumping gas next to me stared, first at the departing Prius, then at me.

When I was finished with the windshield I walked back and grabbed the twenty she'd left. When I turned around to holster the pump, the other guy was still staring.

"What was that about?"

"You know how it is, man, I got that magic dick. The hos pay ME for the business."

He choked on that while I hopped in and cruised off.


Of all of the people who have ever said some bullshit to me about my colors, every single one of them has been a nailed-to-the-church-doors spot-on stereotypical middle aged conservative white male, and the MAGAs are over represented compared to their general demographic.

I think that these people are so absolutely used to facing zero consequences for saying whatever bullshit is on their mind that they don't even think about it before they open their mouths, and they're so absolutely convinced of their righteousness that it never even occurs to them to check the vibe before they begin their denunciation.

It is the greatest kind of catharsis to have your enemy's mascot present themselves for a public beating. It is the greatest exercise of power to reach out and knock some dickhead off the pedestal they've put themselves on.

I dearly love the chance to let some smoothbrain closet fascist know that there's still one piece of America they don't get to dictate terms to.


I was standing in line for breakfast and the place was running dogshit slow. I had time to kill and wasn't bothered. It was the only place in town that was even open, the rest of them still being gutted out for flood cleanup. Most of the crowd was relaxed and seemed to be regulars, but there were definitely people who were unfamiliar and in a rush, probably there for the same reason I was. There was nowhere else to get anything to eat or drink without winding back through a hell of a lot of ugly traffic, and even then, it was gas station fare.

I could feel the guy behind me boring holes in my back between irritated sighs, tuts, and foot taps. Wounded Warrior Foundation teeshirt, MAGA hat, cargo shorts, and Dad Force Ones. The overgroomed goatee with the double length flavor savor and polarized wraparounds told me he had the keys to an absolutely enormous luxury pickup in his pocket. The guy was straight out of a fucking meme.

Finally, oh finally, he just couldn't take it anymore and all of the irritation and inconvenience built up to a critical charge like electrons in a thundercloud and the bolt came crashing down on the tallest thing in the area.

"EXCUSE ME SIR DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW DISRESPECTFUL IT IS TO DISHONOR THE AMERICAN FLAG LIKE THAT?"

All these people getting in his way, forced to come to this fucking librul cafe with their rainbow groomer bullshit everywhere to get his coffee, late from the traffic, and now confronted with some Un American Son Of A Bitch who probably voted for the Communists.

It took, as it always does when I get a bite, every bit of bearing to contain the outwelling of joy from my heart. I went with my trustiest move and played the Dumb Card as an opener.

A look over my shoulder to see who's talking, the sudden realization that the speaker is staring right at me, and a "Huh? Me? What do you mean?"

The restraint to let him drag out his soapbox, to let the righteous anger build, to make no attempt to answer or interject in his all-caps rant about how people like me are the problem with this country, the moral fabric, the symbols of our nation and people, the disrespect for institutions, disloyalty, and so forth. The patience of an ambush predator to wait for the perfect opening.

"...AND IT'S AN INCREDIBLE DISRESPECT TO THE MEN WHO SERVED THIS COUNTRY AND"

Got 'em. Got this mother fucker cold now. He couldn't possibly have seen, from where he was standing, and probably would not have recognized if he did, the four inch wide Afghanistan Campaign ribbon on my left breast, stitched down over the glue mark where it used to say "Earl's Auto".

There's a demographic that champions veterans in the same way and for the same reasons they champion the unborn - they have a blank slate to project their values onto, one they don't ever have to square up with and look in the eye and answer for all of their bullshit.

"Hold up, hold up," I say, reaching for my wallet. "Just wait a second man, I think there's been some misunderstanding."

And I pull out the little piece of plastic that says I got alllllllll fucked up in the war, and I hold it out to him, like a badge of office.

He's looking at it now. It's clearly some kind of official card, but he's obviously never seen one. He's struggling with the semiotics, so after a moment I help him along and point to where it says VETERANS AFFAIRS, and SERVICE CONNECTED.

Still nothing. So I wait for him to start to say something and immediately cut him off.

"Aren't you going to thank me for my service?"

Silence for just another moment as he pondered and then rejected whatever, if any, explanation he might have imagined.

"Just what do you mean by that?"

"Well sir, 'Veterans Affairs' means I did in fact fight for this country and everything it stands for, and 'Service Connected' means I came back with a lifelong disability. So are you going to thank me for my service or are you gonna keep being an asshole?"

I didn't wait for it to catch up to him before I turned back around and stuffed everything back in my pockets. Everyone in earshot was staring at him, to include the cashier and customer at the counter with a fistful of change hovering in the air between them. Suddenly everyone was looking anywhere but at the two of us, and resuming their conversations.

This is my greatest trick. Inevitably, inevitably, anybody mad about that flag is also what Master Carlin would have called a cop sniffer, a soldier sucker. They have absolutely no idea what to do when their little performative bubble gets popped by some never seen sharp point of reality, when they run aground on some uncharted shoal that wasn't on the map they believe is the only way the world could be.

They have an idea of me and they think they own me because of it. They have fallen in love with an idea and they are incredulous to find out that I am not their manic pixie dreamgirl.

Two or three customers bought their coffee and muffins before MAGA said anything else at all. I think it was the silence that got to him again, being trapped with whatever was rattling around in his head, unable to sit peacefully without having some last word, and it was an exasperated "Well how was I supposed to know?" directed at nobody in particular.

The woman behind him in line did a bad job at choking back a laugh, and when he realized it was directed at him, he stormed out.

Nobody said a word about it and I drank my coffee on the patio in peace.


I was with my girlfriend at an abortion access fundraiser being held at a burlesque club. Between sets, the performers were mingling with the crowd. One of the performers had shown off a routine I really liked - aggressive music, a viciously swinging baseball bat, and the exact kinds of gyrations that a person wishes to see at such an event.

Having already picked up that many of the performers in the show were part of a set of overlapping collectives, studios, and performance troupes, I wanted to ask her about the routine and how she'd developed it. I had to hang around a little awkwardly at the edge of the small crowd around her during the next intermission, and when it was finally my turn to bother the talent, I did.

We chatted for a few minutes (she had, in fact, developed the routine herself and had been working on it for five or six months) and there was a break point where she suddenly got more comfortable talking to me. Shortly after I noticed it, she reached out slowly and put one finger on a particular patch, the one of a power fist with the fingers running fleshpot rainbow from pink to brown. It goes with the little Baphomet pin. This flag isn't draped on the white Christ.

"I like your patches," she said.

I nodded and told her what I always tell people who have eyes to see.

"I know what I look like, and I want to make sure people know who's side I'm on."


I wrote a manifesto and I wear it on my back. It says F A F O in varsity letters across my shoulders right at eye level for the average human being.

It means "Fuck Around and Find Out". It is an imperative and it is directed chiefly towards myself.

It means to defy the heavens.

It means that the world wants me to be a sadboy, to sit in the hole, to eventually get the nuts up to blow my fucking brains out because I might as well be dead.

It means I refuse and I cultivate myself however I need to and sometimes I wander around in the world I have resigned from in order to calibrate my perspective.

It means I invite King Turd of Shit Mountain to examine his assumptions and test his fortune.

It means some days I'm all fucked up but I still have to live and the only way to function is to put on the social equivalent of war gear and put on the psychic equivalent of a show of force, buzzing the hilltops with the heavy guns just to make the bastards keep their heads down.

It means that my idols are dead and my enemies are in power so I'm going to be the example I need for myself.

It means I'm still alive despite the tribulations and I still have something to say despite the assumptions that speak for me.

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