The Score

1.

Utilizing a different structure without changing the original context and semantic meaning of the text is an effective way to eliminate plagiarism.

Lissette revealed to me that she wasn’t overly passionate with her husband. “When we initially started dating, it was rare that we would engage in intercourse more than twice in a day.”

The ridiculousness of the claim is self-evident. I must bear in mind her fragility – and my own. We encountered each other in a cafe in Berkeley exactly one year and three months ago when she was still married.

She was perusing a book of fantasy and I had nothing in my hands. We were enthralled with one another, though we both had our reservations. We were madly and passionately in love, as if we had no regard for our safety or what the future would bring.

Then we woke up one day, uninterested, and started to search for someone new. It was then that she whispered in my ear, “It’s a lost cause. This won’t work out.”

2.

A new approach to the issue is required, one that will bring about a resolution and restore balance to the situation. A different perspective is necessary in order to find a satisfactory solution. A fresh point of view must be taken to make sure the problem is addressed properly.

This piece is not concerning the end of my relationship with my girlfriend. As I set out to compose it, I was in the vicinity of a closed restaurant and Lissette hadn’t returned home from the Burning Man celebration in the desert.

I had in my possession a book about the late Theo van Gogh, the film-maker who was slain by an Islamic radical in Amsterdam. I had recently ceased taking speed as it was no longer having any effect on me.

I was running out of cash and I was unable to stay concentrated, continuously starting and then abandoning projects. I researched war zones and conversed with famous people and politicians, yet none of it seemed to matter.

At the present, I’m discussing this.

It was 2006, two months before the midterms, and I found myself in bed with a 23-year-old volunteer who had long, thick red hair. I had thought she was Russian, but she told me she was Spanish. Her skin was very pale.

I was uncertain what to do with her breasts. We were lying there semi-clothed and it felt like a dead end. I had wanted her, but I could not decide what I wanted from her. I kept asking myself what it all meant, but I knew I would not be given an answer to such a question.

At this period, I spotted a woman on Valencia Street in San Francisco with a purple nightdress on. She had a slight limp, gripping the arm of a punk rocker, ambling past the coffee shop. Although she was nearly glamorous, the Mission was her backdrop and in that area, nobody was glamorous other than the kids in the street gangs with their polished brown skin and blue scarves tucked into their back pockets.

At that moment I was out to eat with a female sex worker, an ex-girlfriend of mine who I had only dated for a short while.

I am usually only involved in short-term relationships, and they are always with individuals in the sex industry, because it is the only type of person who comprehends the desire that is unassociated with sex.

It is an irrepressible, unachievable, pointless craving. We ended up in the rear of Delfina restaurant, where I confessed that I was financially struggling and could not afford a fancy meal.

She assured him there was no need to be concerned.

This woman had been violated by her dad and one day a customer appeared that looked a lot like him. She tied him to a wooden cross, attached clamps to his nipples, and struck him until his back bled.

He begged for her to let him come back, but she declined. I then relayed to her my own dream about my dad where I held his ears and shouted in his face. My father is now old and disabled, and I have not spoken to him in years.

At another point, she was in Florida and crying, and her partner put her in the closet with a gun and shut the door. He stated that she should just take her life, and that was when she knew their relationship had ended.

While we were seated at the table, I clasped her hand. Her hands were strong and her palms were rough. After she had finished with her last appointment, I accompanied her back to her place and we rested on her sofa for a few minutes.

Having just returned from Connecticut, I was surrounded by loyal supporters who were putting in long hours to vote for a multi-millionaire to the Senate. They were all opposed to the war, as was the businessman. It occurred to me that this individual had employed and terminated people, which wasn’t indicative of his character, but rather a fact of life. Regardless of the outcome, everyone would be disheartened, especially if he were elected. They would all leave feeling dejected.

This was a major source of my issues. I was envious of these folks. Their youthful optimism. Even those who were more mature than me. I have done political work. I have been a believer. It was always unfruitful, leaving me feeling foolish and disappointed.

I was ruminating on the crossing points of a scantily clad woman with a shady background and the new politics.

The only point of contact between these elements was me, and I was seated in front of the former Kentucky Fried Chicken store, pondering what I should do with my life. I had had enough of the breakdowns, and was fed up with constantly being on the brink of a panic attack. This is what I was considering. I knew I had to do something, but I just didn’t know what.

3.

A third point to consider is that the structure of the text should be changed so as to remove any potential plagiarism while still retaining the same overall context and meaning.

After Burning Man was done, it was two days before Lissette contacted me from Reno.

She declared that she had no intention of returning home. She was having the time of her life. Her tone was one of indifference. It was almost as if she was daring someone. “I’m having a great time,” she remarked.

She told them of a man she had met who was planning to teach her how to weld and work with glass. Furthermore, she mentioned a person she had encountered who was moving to San Francisco to work in the prison and was going to stay with her for a few months in her apartment in the Tenderloin.

Lissette, who works as a dominatrix in San Francisco for $150 an hour, was staying in a hotel room with one of her clients when she told me all about her journey. She had been driven out to the desert by a client and was about to be driven home. I was less than enthused by her rosy version of herself.

She had made commitments to herself on the playa- creating more art, spending more quality time with her son, and not caring as much about what I thought. Her plan was to be content, forgiving, and carefree. Afterwards, she had danced in front of the fire.

I encountered her wearing a new T-shirt from Target and black lingerie, perched at her desk with one leg tucked beneath her. Although her windows were shut, I could still make out some of the structures in Union Square peeking through the frosted glass.

I exclaimed that I wished I had gone to Burning Man with her, to which she responded by accusing me of lying.

I inquired about her joy. She mentioned she hadn’t been content with me since we reunited. We hadn’t engaged in any activities. We had been seeing each other for over a year. I asked her if she had any physical relationships in the desert and she told me no. There was a platonic companion she had out there and they had a conversation at the end of the playa, where the mountain suddenly rises, about the potential of what could have been.

I recollected the events of last year when the City of New Orleans was inundated during Burning Man and people were partying in the desert while the authorities of Jefferson Parish were keeping watch over their bridges with guns and unfortunately, people were perishing in the New Orleans Convention Center.

Lissette stated that she had made the determination to end our relationship while she was in the desert. She was camped in a tent city when she came to this conclusion.

To guarantee that she would not change her mind, she allegedly had sexual relations with three men and then ingested two doses of ecstasy and acid. This was at variance with what she had previously told me, however I suppose she was waiting for her appropriate time.

We were in her bed, me lying down while she spoke. “I’m expecting you to talk me down from this,” she said.

I posed the question, “How can I accomplish that?”

I retract my statement. I no longer want to end our relationship. I am in love with you.

I inquired, “Do you regret fucking those other men?” She had draped her limb over mine and stripped off my shirt. I kept caressing her butt, giving it a tight squeeze. It’s the most beautiful bum I ever beheld.

Despite the fact that I was thinking about her sleeping with other dudes, all I could envision was her backside wiggling up and down and how scrumptious that seemed.

“Just give me a month,” she pleaded, and I queried her as to why she thought that would be enough. She replied that she wanted to be sure I was feeling the same anguish she was, so that she would know she was loved and I would feel secure, and not be kept at a distance any longer, with the outcome being that all would be well.

I replied to her I had no idea and needed to contemplate it. At the same time, I desired to have sex.

She began to toy with my nipple, nipping me. I inserted a digit between her legs. She demanded I confirm I would encounter her again. It was not equitable, but fairness had no part in it. I assumed it should be feasible for me to have a genuine relationship, the sort that are shown in magazines, that “satisfy” and “aid”. This had to be an option for me even though I had never experienced something similar.

I had been on the verge of saying yes, yet I ended up not doing it. I uttered, “I really don’t care who you were with in the desert”. The desert’s just the desert. I’m aware of the music, the lights and the drugs. I’m glad you had a blast. It may have been the most outstanding show of ephemeral art that was ever put together.

Sleep with whomever you want. But then I thought, I’m lying in bed with a person who’s insane and they had tried to hurt me before, and would probably attempt to do it again. They had an elephant gun pointed straight at my heart. Thus, I said I would need a day to contemplate it, and that’s how she understood it was over.

She uttered, “It’s time to end our relationship.”

I expressed my disagreement with the statement by saying, “That’s absurd.”

As I departed from her place, a thick fog engulfed the Tenderloin. It was nearly at my shins. The atmosphere was cool and humid, and it wasn’t totally dark. There were drug dealers and college students in front of the red and green flag of the taqueria. Thousands of people had travelled to the desert with art to burn and drugs. A temporary, spontaneous city.

She would phone and announce it was finished. She wrote to me, describing all the time we’d shared and she had felt lonesome.

That night, sitting at a bar, I felt the ground move beneath me. I was intensely disoriented and upset that I hadn’t stayed with her.

I wanted to tell my buddies about it. I would work up to the punch line: “And then she slept with three guys just to make sure she didn’t change her mind. And then, get this, she still attempted to reverse her decision.”

Would I disclose that information to others? Should I point out that she had made clear her intentions to the men before engaging in sexual activity and they still went ahead with it?

4. 

It is essential to restructure the text in order to eliminate any potential plagiarism, while still preserving the original context and the semantic meaning.

I have a story about Andy Warhol that I experienced when I was growing up in Chicago. I recall the Kelly house on Sacramento Street, where the father had passed away and the oldest of three children had moved away.

The younger son was trying to do himself harm and the daughter was in a very fragile state due to the loss of her dad. The house was filled with junkies and thieves, people I was already familiar with. It was like a sealed-off epidemic.

There was excrement coming out of the lavatory and there was a fierce dog that had to be kept locked in the daughter’s upstairs room. People were sleeping in every corner of the house and some of them were incredibly attractive, particularly Justin, who would sleep with either gender.

Maria, Justin’s girlfriend and my first love, was a beautiful and tragic figure. Her grandmother had kept her imprisoned in her closet and sent her out to beg for heroin money when she was only ten or eleven. She often phoned me crying, telling me how she had been masturbating with a vacuum cleaner and could not stop, and how her legs were bruised.

At other times, she would tell me that she had gone to the petrol station in the middle of the night wearing just her underwear and high heels.

Everything about her seemed to be a plea for someone to sexually assault her. I was in love with her, yet I had no idea what to do. We had met in a group home when we were both fourteen and had tried for years to find a way to console one another, but we both wanted similar things and really needed someone who wanted something different.

On occasion, I shared a bed with Justin as well. He would entangle himself around me like an octopus. I’m not sure if he did that with everyone or if it was just for me. His tresses were dark and his arms were thin. When he applied makeup he resembled a female dragon.

As things got worse at the Kelly house, I had already moved out to go to college, located 150 miles away.

But I couldn’t stop myself from coming back every weekend. I had been clean and sober for six years by then, but I couldn’t bear being alone.

That’s what the Kelly house was all about; it was a refuge from loneliness. The squalor and drugs were just a side effect.

Chicago’s North Side was reminiscent of Warhol’s iconic Factory in New York; however, the drugs there were more cost-effective and fame was never a possibility.

Not long ago, I encountered Ted from the old area. He was walking down the street and I found out he and I now lived in the same neighbourhood on the border of San Francisco. He asked me what I was doing, and I almost began to cry because I couldn’t answer.

I had things that I was dealing with, like this essay, a screenplay and a personal oral history. But the honest answer was that I was overwhelmed, or maybe, optimistically, I could have said I was recovering. He continued to ask if I would be participating in the elections coming up, and I said no, not this year. I didn’t want to go anywhere that was unfamiliar, such as a new city, mall or campaign office. I only wanted to stick to places along the way between where I lived and where I worked.

I encountered Ted for the first time about fourteen years ago when he was tending bar at the Heartland Cafe and I had just graduated and was starting to use heroin and dance in the gay clubs.

At that time, he was managing a small theatre. He was older than me, didn’t fit into my circle of acquaintances, and appeared to be quite put-together. He was just visiting. He had a good family background.

His dad was a high-ranking airline employee and owned a penthouse in New York with an interior garden. He had gone to NYU for scriptwriting, due to a phone call from a family friend. One time he slept with a female friend of mine, Angel’s, and when Angel asked him why, Ted answered that he did it because he was a writer, which made Angel punch him in the face.

He is currently the literary director of a major theater in the San Francisco area, yet we rarely get the chance to meet up. In the eight years that I have been living here, we have only seen each other five times.

According to him, his wife was at home writing a children’s book. They possess their own abode and are also looking after a canine.

He expressed to me that they were content and I believed him. Our conversation was brief. I was headed to purchase some nails; I had the intention of hanging a picture. My ex-partner’s servant created it as a housewarming gift for me. I just recently moved into a more affordable flat in an area where there were numerous dogs and kids and I was attempting to make it comfortable. The thought that kept coming to me was, “It’s alright, I’m not too far from life.”

I mused, “What am I doing with my life?”. He wanted to know what I was up to.

5.

It is essential to switch up the structure of the text in order to remove any plagiarism. Meaning and context must be maintained while making sure the formatting is still the same.

Once the Kelly family had disappeared from my life, when I was just finished with college, the universe appeared to revolve around Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. There was no real interest in politics.

At the time, Bill Clinton was president and all I knew about him was that he was against welfare and he had a lot of people locked up. I would meet Angel at the Beachwood and we would watch the games on the tiny TV there with Lisa, the social worker, and Pat, the postman. The barkeeper lived in two rooms located next to the bar.

Back in the 1990s, the streets of Wicker Park were starting to change. Angel and I would sometimes take part in some of the illicit activities going on, such as heroin or cocaine. Lisa had an apartment nearby, where she lived with her twelve cats and her fragments of broken mirrors.

However, the one thing that was truly significant was the Chicago Bulls.

MJ would often make six three-pointers and score thirty-five points in the half when the situation was dire.

That particular season, the team won seventy-two games due to their impressive defensive plays. Scottie Pippen with his long arms and crossover dribble and B.J. Armstrong with his youthful looks were a sight to behold. Coach Phil Jackson and Tex Winter were responsible for the triangle offense. Later on, Dennis Rodman joined the team, snatching fifteen rebounds per game and covered in tattoos.

His image had to be taken off of a building because it caused traffic jams on I-94. He frequently visited the Double Door on Sunday nights to listen to Liquid Soul and his birthday party was invitation-only at the Crobar. He had a wild streak, as he was once found sitting in a car with a loaded shotgun under the seat.

In the mid-’90s, the Chicago Bulls had an incredible run. They consistently beat Detroit, Portland, Phoenix, Utah, Orlando, New York, and Houston.

There were great players on these teams, including Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, Patrick Ewing, and Clyde the Glide, who never got the chance to wear the championship rings. Even when Michael Jordan left basketball to pursue a minor league baseball career, the Bulls still did well.

This led to the building of a new stadium on the South Side, with a statue of Jordan out front. It was named the United Center, though there was a petition to name it after Jordan’s father, who tragically passed away in a carjacking in North Carolina.

After relocating to Los Angeles, basketball was not as important anymore. Although the Lakers had Shaq, the bars still left the music playing instead of the game. Patrons were talking over the music, talking about the film they were producing, the screenplay they were writing, or the pilot they were acting in.

There was a lot of space in the bars and I stopped caring.

Eventually, I concluded that politics was the exclusive hobby of adults, just to acknowledge it was nothing more than a playground, with nothing but hostile jabs, discrediting of character, attempts to rise in power, and union formation. There were repercussions, but it was essentially pointless. It exposed the most awful side of human beings in a magnified setting. At the start of the 2000s however, I began to take a keen interest in it, much in the same way that I was enthralled by basketball.

I studied the figures, compared them to one another, monitored who was gaining or losing momentum, recalled the data, and ardently supported my preferred team.

At a later point I encountered Phil Knight, the creator of Nike and the one who transformed celebrity endorsement.

He attempted to introduce me to Michael Jordan, however I had to be on the radio that day to discuss the upcoming presidential election. We were only acquaintances, yet we got along well. When we went for dinner, I would jest about paying the bill, and he would attempt to give it to me, but I never accepted.

As I’m reevaluating my life, I am now aware that I made a less-than-ideal decision somewhere along the way. When I’m out watching sports with friends, I can’t help but be somewhat bored. They only care about their own fantasy players and the stats they rack up. I used to be able to check the stats in the newspaper, but now I’m just looking at the players with their Nike swoosh uniforms on a television screen.

I’m envious of my acquaintances who keep up with athletics. They read about soccer while I read about the hostilities in Iraq. Certainly they take in news about the war too but they don’t pay attention to it in the same way.

Unfortunately I’m bored with the war in Iraq and the more clandestine war on terror. The advocacy and the he said, she said of the everyday headlines. I would like to watch the sportspeople, the core of human aspiration, warriors in the stadium, the lush green pitch or the even wooden boards. I desire to perceive their tall bronze arms stretching, fingers extending from inside that immense huddle of guys, all of them jumping up, grasping magnificently for the ball. And I want to be concerned about the result.

6.

A different way of expressing the same sentiment is to alter the structure of the text while still preserving the semantic meaning and context.

I have many memories of my experience living in Los Angeles. Hollywood was an appalling place and I had the fortune of not being there, instead residing in Granada Hills, located right off the Ronald Reagan Freeway.

We had a bachelor party one day. Strippers, accompanied by an Indian bodyguard, were there, as well as an actor from the TV show Seinfeld. One of them was intoxicated and grabbed me by my hair, pulling my head back so it was between her breasts. Then, she asked me to tell her she was gorgeous. I responded that I did and even joked that I might be in love with her.

I was perplexed at the actor’s joy as he was taking shots off the woman’s chest. We were in a rundown house located in the San Fernando Valley with no sights to admire and surrounded by dirt and smog.

I was living there, sleeping on the floor and looking through a magazine full of illustrations and tales of men being abducted and given hormones by their partners. The area was full of dogs and puddles of urine. The actor then got a house in the Hollywood Hills, which was much nicer, however, I still couldn’t understand why he was so cheerful. He had just got a part in the new Batman movie. I wished I could be as content as him.

Once the bridegroom became angry, the situation quickly escalated into a violent one; the Indian man quickly ushered the strippers out the door while the rest of us tried to restrain the groom by his limbs. What could we have done differently? We had all grown up in a violent environment and that Seinfeld guy never came back. Most of us then left Los Angeles or got into the porn industry.

Those who stayed behind found themselves lifting weights in strip malls and tinkering with their cars in front of their pale ranch houses; the lawns of these houses were so filled with tools and parts that the grass was barely even visible. They slowly blended into the smog and the landscape, quickly fading away.

The other night I was reminded of Granada Hills while watching the news. A journalist had done an investigation on a property developer, and he was now back with a follow-up. Suddenly, the man’s wife came running and doused the camera with water.

Then, the developer himself showed up and without warning, punched the journalist in the face. He stepped back and delivered a powerful strike. The journalist did not attempt to shield himself, revealing his fear.

They both tumbled to the ground, and the camera kept rolling. The reporter’s face was bruised and bloody when the police finally took the developer and his wife away in handcuffs. This incident took place in San Diego, but it could be anywhere in Granada Hills, with all of its small homes and bright sunlight.

7. 

The following is an alternative way to express the same idea:

In the past, Lissette would cut me and make intricate designs in my shoulders and insert needles. My breathing would become slow when the needles penetrated. It was like I was in a boat and everything was alright. Initially, when we were together, she used her keys to etch a series of _L_s on my back.

The wounds were deep and uneven, and it seemed they wouldn’t mend, but they eventually did.

My ex from before Lissette left three distinct marks on my side with a scalpel. There were also marks from a woman in Michigan who burnt me with a cigarette on the back of both of my hands. Lissette then decided to create an E out of the scars on my torso, the first of a total of 10 letters.

She kept a knife with a grip handle near my bed, which was a gift from one of her clients. During one instance, she tied me up and held the blade against my neck while I had been blindfolded and my chest was bleeding. I made an attempt to kiss her, pushing up against the knife that was pressed against my jugular.

She accused me of having a lack of self-preservation.

My usual caution had disappeared and I was uncertain if it would ever return. It wasn’t accurate to say that I still had an excellent instinct for self-protection.

Lissette tried to mark ownership into my flesh with a knife, but incorrectly. She omitted a s from the word. When I pointed this out to her, she said it was ruined, and then we split. But eventually we reconciled, and she made a new attempt to get it right.

I was so aware of the analogy between our relationship and other things, I chose not to consider it. It was comparable to Jim Morrison’s death in the tub or Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts – both of which symbolized what I was thinking.

I felt barely able to move given all the cutting, beating and intercourse. We would stay in bed for days, with the linens becoming stained with blood and lube. She would go back to her spouse, but she would return before I had a chance to regain my strength. In a bid to ensure she wouldn’t depart without providing me with my next ‘hit’, I would try to keep her amused.

I was reminded of my buddy who fractured his leg playing soccer when we were adolescents, and he was on his bed in the hospital when the staff wheeled him into the psychiatric ward. His mom had him admitted.

I would pay him a visit. They got him settled in Northwestern, a pleasant hospital by the lake, much nicer than the facility they put me in when I was discovered with my wrist sliced, asleep in a hallway–a public hospital with filth spread on the walls. That’s how it was with Lissette–it was like being locked in a room. I rarely went out. I yearned for my pals. I felt like there was nothing I could do.

This is the extent of my knowledge when it comes to matters of the heart.

After Lissette and I parted ways, I had to reconcile my depression. I had been considering suicide since the re-election of George W. Bush two years prior, and the idea made me so despondent.

When I was thirteen, I experienced a deep depression that caused me to make numerous suicide attempts.

This was due to the passing of my mother and my living on the streets. I was eventually put in jail when they discovered I had no knowledge of where my father was located. I had, in fact, seen him that same day. He had caught me sleeping in the house I was raised in and he still owned. To punish me, he physically assaulted me and shaved my head.

Afterwards, the state took charge. I was confined in a mental hospital, followed by a series of group homes.

During this period, I had no appreciation for culture. The other residents of the group home would watch Eddie Murphy movies and listen to house mixes, but I would not indulge in either. I didn’t watch television, but I did read The Catcher in the Rye and found it to be terrible. What did I care for Holden Caulfield and his struggles as a privileged person attending a boarding school? That didn’t reflect my reality.

The culture had a greater impact on me than I realized. These house mixes would revolutionize music for eternity. At the same time, a war on drugs was taking place and marijuana was becoming pricier. While Joan Didion was in El Salvador, the CIA and the government’s connections to the Nicaraguan contras caused crack to appear. Cocaine was too expensive, but crack was the drug of the masses. We utilized pipes made from pressure gauges to smoke the rocks and ended up burning our lips.

The election of Harold Washington as the first black mayor of Chicago brought a surge of construction to the South Side, which was my home. Buildings proudly displayed ribbons and signs with Washington’s name on them.

His residence was located near the lake, not too far away from the group home. On his successful reelection, one of his staff members who was also involved in drug-dealing took seven of us in the house van to watch him come out of his building and deliver an address.

However, this wasn’t what I was most worried about. I didn’t pay attention to the mayor. I was more focused on Farrakhan, who was attacking the Jewish community and his mosque was located close by, as well as Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition. I was beaten up at the Garfield train station, people wearing Adidas suits stealing my Nikes, leaving me to walk home in socks.

Memories of this incident and the violence and changes in lower class society, which are not usually reported by major media outlets, came back to me. At that time, we were insignificant as sand at the bottom of the ocean, not understanding that the movement of the planets is what actually dictates the tides. We were too low to even see beyond the thick, dark sky.

8.

This text has been reworded to avoid any plagiarism while still keeping the same context and meaning.

When I was twenty-three years old, I had just been discharged from the hospital due to a severe heroin overdose. After completing college and grad school, I had reconciled with my dad. When I returned to my rented place near the college, I noticed the yellow walls and the low ceiling.

While I was studying filmmaking, my class watched a variety of films by filmmakers such as Godard and Truffaut. We observed Chaplin’s humorous falls in one of them and the closing scene of The 400 Blows, as well as the farcical image of Crazy Pierrot flailing about wildly as he desperately attempted to put out a blaze that he had caused by wrapping his head with colorful dynamite sticks and igniting the fuse.

Anna Karina queried, “Where did you locate me?”

Pierrot responds, stating it was an accident.

In Badlands, we deliberated over Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen, and what could excuse the rest of society for the criminal behavior in M. After all, the killer could not have been held responsible for their actions.

After spending a week in the hospital due to a stroke, I was released and noticed that my body was full of strange boils. I had difficulty walking and left the hospital late in the evening with a pronounced limp.

Two years after Kurt Cobain’s suicide, I had the same plan. I had lost a lot of weight since I’d left the hospital and wanted to end my life in a lake, but the cold temperature made me fear it wouldn’t be successful. Consequently, I went back to the hospital in tears, as it was past midnight and there was no one to talk to. Even the friend who had been with me when I overdosed had abandoned me to die.

A person at the medical facility gave me some Klonopin. Subsequently, I registered in a substance abuse program. Within the program, I could openly weep each day without any judgement.

In the same year, I was transporting cameras in Seattle while working on a docudrama concerning Prefontaine, with Jared Leto playing the lead role. This individual was the original symbol of Nike, a long-distance runner from the University of Oregon and a protege of Bill Bowerman’s. The company’s headquarters is home to a sculpture of Prefontaine.

Following the end of the grunge movement, I was residing with a girl from a well-to-do family who was sacrificing everything–including me–to give into an addiction to cocaine. Kurt Cobain had passed away. Mudhoney hadn’t achieved the success that was expected. Pearl Jam had left town.

Alice In Chains were absent. Soundgarden had disbanded. It was during the summer in Seattle, yet the only thing that could be found was rain.

There is ongoing debate as to whether Cobain’s death was self-inflicted or not. Many commented, “How foolish, he had it all.” However, it was clear that he was deeply unhappy. Others argued that once a person has a child, they should not be allowed to take their own life. My opinion was that although they can take away so much, they can never take away the right to choose one’s own fate. This is the ultimate get-out clause in any agreement.

9

In conclusion, it can be seen that the structure of the text has been reworked to remove any plagiarism, while still preserving the context and semantic meaning.

I wrote to my buddy Heathen expressing my desire to be in a secure yet open setting. I added that I would rather be on a leash or have something in my teeth so I wouldn’t be compelled to talk.

This was after the publication of my book, which brought forth my father’s protests that there was nothing wrong with me. He argued I was just indulged and not abused. He tried to persuade people that the institutions I had been to were actually quite pleasant.

I informed Heathen I had been occupied with writing an essay that would bring together all I had ever witnessed and finish with a person standing before a gulf, ready to jump. But I didn’t aspire to leap. I desired to be unclothed and vulnerable and desired. I had no wish to be aware of who was doing what. I had no aspiration to be involved with the politicians, the gone ballots in Prince George.

I pondered Daniel Pearl’s statement, “I am a Jew. My mother is a Jew.” I contemplated Theo van Gogh, Mohammed Bouyeri stepping out of the darkness.

Theo asking for compassion. “Please don’t. Please don’t.” First a bullet, then even more. After that, Bouyeri cuts his throat, pins his manifesto to Theo’s chest with a knife, and Amsterdam is never the same again.

In 1992, I experienced life in Amsterdam as a barker for the Casa Rosso, a live sex show. At that time, I was seeing a prostitute from Australia and Miriam, a cabaret dancer from Suriname who was married to a convicted murderer. It was the first time a woman ever restrained me and hit me without me paying for it. I had no knowledge of the world’s ways back then. It wasn’t until thirteen years later that I found love.

In my missive I had asked Heathen to pierce and penetrate me, to laugh at me, and even to drag me by the hair. I desired to be objectified and held back, to be smothered and smacked, and to be talked down to.

After my return from Israel, I noticed the smoke arising from the towns in Lebanon beyond the hills, and I looked into the cannon of a tank, and saw an aircraft staying still in the heavens while the Caterpillar D9s pulverized the soft red earth on the boundary.

I walked along the fence, keeping watch for snipers, squeezing my hands and pushing them against my skull. I conversed with residents in abandoned cities scared to walk down the street. I discerned for the first time that war is not about devastation, it’s about apprehension.

I explained to Heathen that due to the current sexual climate, I had lost my partner. I then went on to describe how I desired to be penetrated by a strap-on while the person wearing it conversed with their companions.

I requested that the entire situation be photographed and shared online. I was not interested in any sexual activity with another person, yet I did wish to have my body sat upon by those who were fully clothed. I would be the only one not wearing any clothing.

Amidst a clash of cultures, a new Crusade with advanced weaponry was taking place. I regret being so selfish. It had nothing to do with the well-known Dutch filmmaker. This century’s major conflict had reached the limits of the Enlightenment with direct violence.

One man, mentally unstable, coming from a discriminated background, without many chances, and surrounded by radical Islam, was found with a collection of Jihadist pornography DVDs at his home, featuring beheadings, throat slittings, and other atrocities.

On the other side was a minor celebrity, a Dutch Bill O’Reilly, full of hate and biased ideologies, a descendant of a renowned painter.

A female voice shouted out at Bouyeri as he refilled his firearm–“This isn’t right!”

He answered in the affirmative, saying “Yes.”

Back then it was 2004.

2006 was two years after the assassination of Theo van Gogh. At the same time, my partner was engaged in a sexual relationship with three guys inside a tent in a new city, constructed in a week, that had around forty thousand people in it, all of them coated in a light layer of white dust, seeking a high. It was a desert haven of transitory art that would be burned up.

“That’s when I made up my mind to depart,” she uttered. I highly doubt she was familiar with Theo van Gogh, although I’m confident she went to both the Van Gogh Museum and the Anne Frank Huis.

Eventually, Lissette left a short message and a few of my items at my front door. Within that assortment, there was a white box with a plastic bag tucked inside containing a sugar cube of acid and a capsule of ecstasy.

She desired that I would recognize what she had observed. The pills and the sugar would make me comprehend, much like Rex Hofman in the story who drinks a cup of tea to figure out the mystery behind his wife’s disappearance three years ago and later realizes he is in a coffin, buried alive.

Afterwards, I sent Heathen a note outlining what I wanted in the current political environment.

I communicated that I desired the same things as everyone else, just with the specifics varying. Everywhere I gazed, I perceived connections. It wasn’t that it lacked coherence, it was entirely logical, though lives were fragmented. Juggling so much at one time was not a challenge for me. This is me. This is the world today.

I concluded the note by expressing my desire to confront fear and to be able to cry in the presence of someone who is not hesitant to make me sorrowful and who does not cease just because I shed tears.

Heathen replied to me and indicated that she desired the same outcome.