What "Bad" Is

I was lying in bed after doing my katas and lifting weights, trying to relax by reading Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” for the thousandth time because I love that book when it struck me that damn near everyone in my life knows what “bad” is. I don’t mean bad as in “he’s a bad guy” or “this is a bad job” although both are pretty close. I mean bad as in life. How life can be a complete and total motherfucker, skinning your ass every single time you try to make a move for yourself. Some people find Jesus, and I guess that helps a little. It has never helped me, but it helps some, and that’s perfectly fine with me. Some people find drugs, and that’s not very good, but I can’t judge because I certainly used the poisons long enough. Others whiskey. And yet others use judgmental behavior, calling their fellow humans pieces of shit for not doing this, that, or the other thing.

It’s that judgmental behavior that makes me sick to my guts. I know a lot of folks that know what bad is but there ain’t a single fucking one of you that knows what it meant to live in the Depression, the GREAT one, not this half-assed Obama-driven pile of phoniness we live in now. I see folks—I won’t mention any names, but I see folks—who went years without a job finally get one and after three months start talking shit about those who don’t work. Granted, a lot that don’t work don’t want to, and yes, those fuckers ought to be skinned alive and their goddamn laziness-perpetuating President along with them. But some folks out of a job do want to work and can’t find one because they don’t have an address, or they don’t have the right clothes, or they have a criminal record, and they’re not lucky enough to have Mommy and Daddy take them in until they can find one.

You judgmental piles of shit ought to take something into consideration—you do NOT have it bad. Not yet. You’re going to soon enough, but you don’t. Just wait. You fucks will crumble like cookies because you have no clue what it is like to have to drum up work for yourselves—to callus your hands swinging an axe, to dirty yourselves cleaning gutters, to pound nails, to cut grass all fucking day with some geriatric cunt yelling at you because you accidentally missed a single blade thinking about how nice it will be to finally, after twelve hours, get home and have a beer or smoke a joint, or to sum-pump sewers to pay the rent on a trailer that always floods when it rains too hard. No. You folks who have never had to do anything like that don’t know what “bad” is.

I write my fucking balls off in order to stay away from “bad”. I’ve done bad, I’ve done my time, and I’m fucking sick and goddamn tired of it and it still isn’t over. I’m sure I’ll have to flip another burger or swing another axe or crawl into another shit-pipe before my ship comes in, but that’s okay with me, I’ve done it before. And I don’t judge anyone. My scales are all broken. Why the fuck should I?

So the next time one of you cowardly cocksuckers tries to say something clever, know this—you’re NOT clever. If you were, you get paid to be clever by writing words, even if the pay is just a pittance. I’ve been paid for it…have you?