Like rules, promises, glasses in a bar, glass jaws, my penis gets broken from time to time. One broken penis every three or four lifetimes is about right, should be the norm, more than enough. I seem to have one broken penis a year- nothing normal about me!

It's the same penis. My penis. I owe him. He owns me. He- a tough little guy! I- a proud father! I use the word "little" loosely. My penis gets loose from time to time, goes on big streaks then gets tired, ill, needs a break thus gets broken- the serpent eating its tail or some shit like that.

I'm trying to finish, angrily working on my first book over the pond. I'm in England, London to be exact, back in a mental state of exhaustion, sick of man, his crippling views, resting my bones, waving a white flag impregnated with cum. One needs to get the poison out! Usually they do so by throwing it on others' faces. A little flag waving will suffice. Man always throwing flags around! What happened to balls? To be in love with a piece of cotton!

I've been splitting my time between Ealing Broadway and the Paddington Tube Stations, most if not all the pubs in-between. The Kiwi, Leon, has dual citizenship. His parents are from London. He was born in New Zealand. I've been passing out on his couch once or twice a month in Ealing Broadway. During the week I stay rent free, with minimal funds, always broke chasing an empty pocket dream, at Haasy's sister's place, Michelle's place, a woman I consider family myself, another supporter with vision not nearsightedness. How many of us need glasses!

The situation is ideal, for Michelle, for myself. We work all the time. Michele works all the time. She works more than anyone I've met, heard of, care to meet, or care to hear of. The three months I've spent living here thus far have seen the same routine five, six, usually seven days a week- if I'm not passed out on the Kiwi's, on Leon's couch. Come five thirty a.m. she's out the front door heading down to the Paddington Tube Station for her forty-minute ride to work with a book. Come ten o'clock at night she and the book wearily open the front door to find me drunk amongst papers with ink all over my hands, face, shirt and soul. I've written more in these past three months than I had the thirty-one years prior. Just because one writes doesn't mean he's right. Just because one reads doesn't mean he's literate.

It's good to have Michele around, family around. We laugh all the time when we're not working. I even laugh when I am working. You should read some of the shit I write. One day, some day, shit will win a nice fluffy blue ribbon. He's comical, ludicrously so! But for now shit will have to step on the stool, peer through the window and wait his turn. I'm busy. I constantly talk about life, shit, tell stories, jokes, play music and sing to Michele in a voice better left turned off. It seems we're always working!

The life of the writer is a lonely one. More so for those of us broke, unknown, pissed. I can't imagine how desperate it must be for the ones that can't write. Some string-less violin held by a pianist in an empty concert hall with the cops blaring the car's siren two blocks away, the game, breaking and entering, needing to run, heavy feet sinking in a puddle of remorse. And then there's shit, shaking his head.

I've broken into my style, my life, my slave coffin sunk in the ground with words farting, burping and sneezing emotion. This has pushed everything else aside. I've closed the lid, sometimes gladly so. Other times- forty, fifty, sixty, seventy percent, not so much when you realize it owns you. The style? The life? The coffin? The sunk, farting, burping and sneezing words! I'm now a hermit amongst men that I dislike.

I haven't been speaking with my friends much…at all. I'm over the pond, have isolated myself. VD is depressed, suicidal. He's always talking about depression and suicide. It makes me want to suck on a gun handle with a twitching finger- one who has a hard-on for the trigger, an itch that needs scratching! Or is it a scratch that needs an itch? Another three seconds I'll never get back. Shit still shaking his head!

Haasy is always busy it seems. Wrapped up, stressed with things that he finds important; work, obligations, married on the other side of the pond, different. He may not think so but he is, everyone is, I more than he, we more than most. Marriage changes things, living for two instead of one, my mental abortions with volume. His lack of effort has insulted my ego. The inner child kicks on!

I'm different all right! I'm found on the inside, now lost on the outside. How lost is the outside world? No matter! But how the burning coin flips under the meteor shower.

I sit and play guitar by the window at the bottom of the staircase, Michele's staircase. I know better. I don't own shit! I'm tired of shit owning me, shaking his little stinky head! A ghost of some little child, not certain of its gender yet, sits atop the stairs and looks down upon me. I feel its sadness. It's sad for me, my life as lost as its. The window is our only source to the outside world. The youthful apparition is my only source to human contact. How many children, women and men walk with a ghost's spine? I find it. I found it hard to walk down the two streets for groceries. Someone is always in a hurry, bumping into me, not saying sorry. I write now in past and present simultaneously. One is the other whether we realize it to be so or not.

Everyday I say goodbye to the little ghost and force myself outside for an hour long run. Sometimes it goes longer then an hour. Sometimes it's a twelve pack and a lot of anger if someone cuts me off, honks, or yells. I'm hardwired still, the ways of the western world. I don't want to be fat. There is nothing artful, wealthy, accepted about blubber. Cut off twice. Honked at once. A handful of people yelling at each other, everyone, two hours later I'm naked, showering.

No need to have class when no one is around. That's precisely what we should run the world off of! What should be done! What should be! We could have the monkeys set up the world and look at it when, only when, man isn't fucking it up!

I'm not sure what class is really? Another slanted distinction, some greased label sliding downhill for the dump-sight insanely yelling 'WEEEEEEE' the entire way down. Maybe a sense of caring, a mutual respect for others is better, would be better used here, everywhere, more so then some societal down casting. But people forget. They turn off the caring switch at night before bed, they're exhausted. Then after another hazardous night stirring in sheets they get up late and rush off to work with toilet paper clotting thin blood on their sunk-in faces not remembering to turn the caring switch back on. Not remembering they had turned it off twenty-five years, seventy hour work weeks, two failed marriages, lost friendships with all three kids that are on the fast track to the same life as Daddy, and three leased Porsches ago. How busy are we? Honestly!

No need to piss in the toilet when you're showering alone. I had to piss. I piss a lot. No doubt, I get pissed often! Too easily these days! Shit shakes his head, knows it's easy to be pissed.

Sometimes it, the piss, comes out sideways, finds a sticky spot on the floor and waits for an unknowing bare foot in the middle of the night. There are those rare occasions when it comes out in two lines, identical mass, pressure, one going right, the other going left, both eyes in the bottom of the bowl squinting helplessly. Most of the time it comes out straight, thick, powerful, the concept of pissing on something, in something, a rebellious liberty all to often taken with a grain of salt. Then there are those times when it all backfires on you, lets you know that piss will always be, you will not. Passing a stone, sexually transmitted disease, wasted sperm, the concept that life begins and ends here, depending, gallons of blood vomited through a stuffed pig.

I froze, capped the hole with my thumb, squeezed my prostrate, got a grip on the urinary track and stopped the bleeding. Sometimes Tantric Sex books are handy for other situations then just self-inflicted hand-jobs. I wouldn't allow myself to piss any longer. Pissing blood! An army of blood! Redness everywhere! These, the moments dipped in a bloody bucket, when the battlefield is proud of its self. It's stronger than man and knows it. So it shows off dead children, scars, alert, no warning, laughing with the water as they wiggle down the drain hand in hand escaping the decaying torso, the pungent smell of fear. All I could do was watch, helplessly. I couldn't watch, my hand on my penis. The drain. The water. The blood more then anything, sucking my heart out of my pounding chest. How long ago had I slid down the drain?

I couldn't hold the blood in, my emotions in. My penis was drowning in it, them, choking on something, a roadblock of flesh stretching sideways in my urinary track. I started up again, took my thumb off the hole, eased the prostrate, pissing blood, blood everywhere, the contrast of red against white shocking, the only song needing to be screamed! It plugged, my penis' urinary track, drips of blood escaping from its damn one squeezed drop at a time. I. Damned to be living in this unfair world.

I milked it, my penis. What a life! Slowly I worked the clot out through its tip. We all get tips- don't stand up in a moving canoe! I grabbed it, the choking clog dead in the bathtub. It a lost piece of gum content to have found a toothless mouth, blood everywhere. I turned off the water. I turned off my penis again. Have I been turning of my life?

I headed downstairs, naked, wet, dripping, no need to concern your self with such matters of little importance when you are dying. I grabbed a beer, maybe my last. That more disappointing than the last breath, maybe, you never know until both are sitting across from one another, arm wrestling with dislocated shoulders, elbows, wrists, fingers. I called the Kiwi. I called Leon. He gave me a medical emergency number. How do those work if one is decapitated? Some answers will never be found, intentionally so! I figured what the heck, everything a chance, the ones not taken more so then all the others stapled together.

"Emergency hot line. This is James. How may I help you?" The voice on the other end of the phone says, concerned, knowing, a friendly reminder reminding what I need to revisit. Was I ever there?

"Hey James. How are you doing?" I answer.

"I'm doing well sir. But I'm afraid the real question is how are you doing?"

"I'm doing fine thanks. It's my penis that has the problem."

"Your penis?"

"That's right. My penis."

"What's wrong with your penis sir?"

"The little guy is vomiting blood."

"Excuse me?"

"The little guy is my penis. He's vomiting blood."

"You have blood in your urine sir?"

"No. The blood seems to have taken the urines place. I filled up the bottom of the bathtub ten minutes ago. All red!"

"You urinated in the bathtub sir?"

"Off course. I was showering alone. And James. Please call me Beaver."

"I see Beaver? Are you hurting, feeling ill?"

"No."

"And where are you sir?"

"Beaver."

"Where are you Beaver?"

"My friend's place, Michele's place. I don't know her address or phone number. I wasn't exactly expecting a broken penis, to have to know where I am. I'm just visiting for a few months, escaping what the clones consider reality to be, escaping the clones you know."

"Sorry sir, Beaver. Not entirely. Let's get back to your penis and its whereabouts if that's all right? Do you know what vicinity of London you are in?"

"Yeah. Michele's place is a few blocks away from the Paddington Tube Station, just down the street from the Pride of Paddington- A shit pub really, full of foreigners. And do you know why it's full of foreigners James?"

"No sir I do not."

"Because we don't put emphasis on the fact that we are all foreigners! And do you know why we are all foreigners James?"

"No sir, Beaver."

"We are all foreigners because we came up with the expression foreigner James. That's why! Alienation with no visitors!"

"Well put sir, Beaver... I think. For a man in your state you have an awful lot of opinions- I mean a lot to say."

"Need to get them out before I die! So back to my broken penis James, what do you think?"

"Not to worry sir. There is a hospital just down the street from the Paddington Tube Station, St. Mary's Hospital, on Praed St. Is there anyone with you who can get you there safely?"

"You're talking to him James, I'm all alone. But I can walk; will probably stop there after a quick pint at the Pride of Paddington. They got this beautiful foreigner bird pouring piss there. You should stop in when you have a chance."

"I'll take that into consideration sir."

"Beaver James."

"Are you sure you can walk there on your own Beaver? You are urinating blood. That could be a severe problem. Internal bleeding. Kidney failure. A number of explanations really."

"Life's filled with problems James. Life. I'm beginning to believe it's no more then how we deal with problems."

"I'm sorry sir? What?"

"Life James! Life! It's nothing more then a few smiles and some food sandwiched between pistols, rifles, machine guns, grenades, landmines, bazookas and tanks firing mental and physical ailments at the broken penis vomiting blood amongst foreigners."

"Are you sure you're not light headed sir, Beaver, feeling woozy?"

"No James. I feel fine. No discomfort. I'm just pissing blood. Uncomfortable about having to go to some hospital so I can pay them for sitting around for a few hours."

"So you are going to go to the hospital sir, I'm sorry, Beaver? You are urinating blood you know?"

"I'll go after I finish my beer and put on some clothes- do you think I should go? I feel fine. I'm just pissing blood. Women piss blood, vinegar, all types of shit all the time right?"

"You are not female sir, Beaver. And yes! You definitely need to go to the hospital! Sooner than later! And sir. Beaver. I can't tell you what to, or not to do, but, you should really stop drinking if you are urinating blood."

"I'll stop drinking when I'm done drinking. Thanks for the help James. Keep up the good work."

"I hope everything works out for you sir, Beaver."

I hang up without replying. Five seconds later the phone rings. I ignore it, walk over to the refrigerator and take out another beer, crack it open, slap my kidneys with my free hand a few times, take a sip of the cold beer. The air from the refrigerator is cold on my naked body. I'm cold, death already setting in. I haven't felt this alive in years. I drink three more beers, naked, cold, the only thing warm, the red handprints covering my kidneys. My penis doesn't seem to mind. He hangs patiently, waits for me. I dress- piss once more to make sure, the toilet a red can of paint. Off to the fucking hospital.

St. Mary's is a large hospital, a few blocks worth of buildings it seems. I'm in no shape to look at the directory. Fuck directories! I'm dying! I want to speak with a person. How funny! Now I want to speak with a person. Why? Always wanting what we can't have, never enjoying what we do! I head for one of the dozen or less buildings. The sliding door slides. I walk up to the receptionist.

She notices me but doesn't give a shit. I notice she notices me but doesn't give a shit, the shit still shaking its smelly little head. She's old, late seventies, on her cell phone, talking away without shame. The type that has been employed here for the last forty some years of her life. The longer a person works at a place the less fearful they become of termination. Work habits fall into a toilet of who gives a shit. Bitterness sets in. I wait. I'm bitter. I'm dying.

"May I help you sir," she asks, annoyed with my presence, that I made her hang up the phone.

"Important phone call honey?" I ask sharing the agitation she gave me.

"Excuse me sir!"

"Your phone call, the one that took over your employment responsibilities. It must have been important."

"Well! Speaking of importance!"

"I'm pissing blood lady! Hopefully dying! Take your cell phone, shove it up your ass and point me in the direction of the emergency room with your free hand!" I say, knowing why I wanted to speak with someone, her phone ringing again.

"Take the elevator to the second floor. It will be on your left hand side." She tells me, answers her phone and goes back to chatting, to not giving a shit about me.

I headed left out of the elevator. Friday night. Sixish. The emergency room overpopulated, the emergency staff under-populated. Forty minutes and some change later I make it to the front of the window.

"What seems to be the problem today sir?" A black woman, nice, caring, must have just started, she still enjoys her job, thinks she's making a difference.

"How are you doing?" I ask. I always try to be polite to the ones that are caring.

"Fine sir. Thank you. How may I help you?"

"I need to see a doctor. I went for a run this afternoon and have been urinating blood ever since."

"Do feel any pain at the moment sir?"

"No. I had a few beers."

"Sir! You are not well!"

"That's forward."

"I mean you shouldn't be drinking at a time like this!"

"I thought times like these were exactly what alcohol was for." I say, shrug my shoulders up to my ears."

"That is some sense of humor you have sir."

"No sense. Just humor."

"Fill these forms out, bring them back to me, then have a seat."

"That won't be necessary."

"What won't be necessary sir?"

"The forms. I have nothing but a broken penis. No contact phone number, address, occupation, medical insurance. Nothing but the broken penis."

"Then just put down your name, age, contact in the US, religion, reason for visiting etcetera."

"Religion?"

"Just in case sugar. Nothing to worry about."

"What if I'm not religious, just spiritual?"

"Let me guess. Brought up Catholic?"

"Did all the bullshit. Baptism. Confirmation. Expelled from Catholic school by sixth grade. Doesn't matter. Repenting and paying go hand in hand with those guys. You pay, you're saved. Doesn't matter. Thought it was all damning crap after my first time in the sack. So what do I do?"

"I'm not sure. But something tells me it's these moments when you really know what you are sugar. It will come to you."

"Ok." I said writing down Juan Kastore, 32, Haasy, 01-1-415-902-5555, ?, and broken penis. I handed it back through the window and sat on the floor, every seat was taken.

I know where my next book should be started, completed, revised…if I make it that far! Hospitals. Dead silence. Death has a way of doing that. Shutting people up finally. Not one person saying a word, everyone just sitting patiently, an egg truck of soon to be patients. When you need help, truly need help, you'll tolerate a lot of shit, a lot of time wasted. Two hours forty-three minutes one broken penis and a bursting bladder later I was called into the nurse's room.

"What seems to be the problem sir?" She asks. Exhausted. There but not. Caring but not. Working a double on one lunch.

"Doesn't it say it on the form?" I ask. Embarrassed. She's young, younger then I, maybe twenty-five. How can she be a nurse? Getting old is full of surprises no one speaks about.

"Yes sir it does. It says broken penis. I'm going to need a little more information than that."

"I went for a run earlier today. Not long, about an hour. When I was done I urinated in the shower. It, the urine, wasn't urine but rather all blood. A lot of blood, completely red."

"Do you run often sir or was this a one time on a limb type thing?"

"No. Not an on a limb thing. I run all the time, six days a week usually. But since I'm here, in this predicament, I must be honest. I enjoy my beer, wine and seven sevens. I drink more then I run. I'm fearful that my kidneys may have finally gotten their fill."

"And you say it was entirely blood when you urinated?"

"A thick, sometimes clogged, stream of red syrup."

"Fine sir. Please come with me. We need to have someone look at you immediately!"

She grabbed me by the hand dashing us both off down the hallway. A few turns, all white, bright lights, some scene trying to portray someone's concept of heaven with a few screams heard from hell and I was sitting in the back up emergency room- a small closet barely big enough for the bed with no sheets and one plastic chair.

"Have a seat on the chair for now please. The doctor will be in shortly. Before I go I must know. Are you faint or feeling ill?"

"Just bored thanks."

"I don't know if this is the time for being funny sir."

"That's good."

I could have had that second book done, number three in the editing process and number four at least bestowed with a good title. That's not saying much. I have a page full of titles back in the states waiting to be given life. One of my biggest fears- the books never live up to the titles. Another two hours and twenty-four minutes, what else was there to do but count, and a Japanese girl walked in the room holding a small cup.

"So sorry. So sorry sir. We so busy. Very busy night sir. Doctor see you now. Please first." She tells me bowing. Then she hands me the small cup and turns around, her back facing me. I unzip, my bladder sweating now, working overtime for free. Holding onto a piss is never that bad until it knows it's about to be released. Then it starts kicking and screaming. I know why babies do it as they enter the world.

"You guys should use larger cups you know." I say holding out the red cup in my outstretched arm, the same color of red clinging on to the front of my faded blue jeans.

"So sorry sir. So sorry." She tells me taking the cup, looking at the front of my faded blue jeans with the bulls-eye over the zipper and walks out. I look around for a second, walk over to the sink and let the rest of the fire engine red out of my bladder. Nothing else to do after that but count seconds, sit back down on the plastic chair and blow on my crotch.

"Mr. Kastore. I'm sorry for the wait. I feel horrible." She tells me, long legs, thin with curves, blond, beautiful.

"Not a problem. It's Friday. My penis could have picked a better day for a flat tire."

"It might not be as flat as you think."

"How so Doc? Didn't you see the cup of blood? Look at my pants. I would say the little guy has blown all four. It's my kidneys, my liver right?"

"Or wrong."

"Did I mention I passed something?"

"No Mr. Kastore you did not. At least it is not down on your broken penis folder."

"That's funny you know."

"What's that Mr. Kastore?"

"That we've scanned our souls, ourselves, onto paper. Bills. Police reports. Pages in a hospital once the respirator stops. A eulogy in the local post."

"I never thought of it that way. I guess I'm too busy."

"Aren't we all?"

"I suppose so. I am truly sorry for the wait. I can only imagine what must have been going on in your head given the circumstance."

"Trust me Doc, no you can't and the circumstance is only a small variable to the larger equation. Besides. I figured out book number two, book number three and five other titles."

"And who said waiting for over five hours was all bad."

"Next time my penis breaks down I'm bringing the laptop."

"Speaking of your penis. You have nothing to worry about. I have seen this time and again."

"No offense Doc, but you're a doctor. The fact that you've seen this before doesn't make me feel much better. It's like the mortician telling me she's seen death!"

"True. Please lie down stomach up on the table. I am sorry there are no sheets. We only use this room for emergencies."

"Again. Not very reassuring doc." I say lying on my back, her hands needling around my kidneys, my pelvic area.

"You're a runner Mr. Kastore?"

"Amongst other things."

"Me too. Any discomfort." She says, her hands working in my stomach.

"No. None. That's the oddest thing. I feel physically fine."

"I see this in a majority of men who partake in long distance runs."

"I ran a marathon, the Rock 'N' Roll in San Diego a few months ago."

"How did you do?"

"Four hours two minutes."

"Not bad."

"Considering I was at a Padres game drunk and stoned the night before, drunk for three weeks with my buddy Rocket on the Tight Lies Tour before that. That's what worries me. My extra-curricular activities."

"You may want to watch those in the future but this time they had nothing to do with it. You simply tore something down there from all the running, the pounding your body has been taking."

"That's it."

"That's it. Much like weight training, your running muscles tear then rebuild themselves bigger and stronger. I would recommend not running for two weeks to give it time to heal."

"And drinking?"

"I wouldn't recommend that ever."

"I guess I won't ask you to join me for a celebratory drink after work then."

"Men. Even when it's not working they're still thinking with it."

"You have to go with what's carrying the brains."

"You are free to go Mr. Kastore. And do not worry about the bill. I do feel horribly about the wait. Making sure the bill gets lost is the least I can do."

"Then don't worry about the men thinking with a broken penis thing."

"That wouldn't do me any good now would it."

"I guess not."