Howdy.

If you looked you might have seen me in the street
a little flush from the chill creeping up my cheeks
See I'm a lover, love so hard I'll take away your breath
and I'm a killer, loving everything I love to death
I set the world on fire every chance I get
Stack my problems up high and smoke up my regrets
So while my babies drew me pictures that I'd never get
I took it running with a brown cloud in my chest, fuck the mess
- yours truly


My name is Dustin Cleary, but a lot of folks just call me Dutch. Less syllables and a little less Christian, maybe. Right now I'm sitting in a shitty, sparsely populated bar called Jimmy's in a relatively back-woods  town three thousand miles from everything I know, writing to you on an allegedly stolen (take THAT non-admission of guilt, Judicial system) Kindle. I'm twenty-three years old, and I once tried to get a job at Safeway in a little Washington town called Cle Elum, but the background check they performed produced a stack of papers as thick as some academic journals.

I didn't get the job, sadly.
Getting from the West coast to the East is no small feat when you're a homeless jack-boy*, and for me, going back would be hazardous for a number of very good reasons. I have been addicted to drugs for more than half of my short--but extremely eventful--existence. Don't hold that against them; the chemicals are an accessory of my very alternative lifestyle, not the other way around.

That statement is probably true, as you'll learn the more time you spend reading my ramblings.

I am presently sober, in case you wondered, and it sucked getting that way. You may or may not know this, but kicking brown** is an extremely uncool, weeks-long process. You see, there comes a time in every addict's career when he or she must look at the facts and decide that there is probably a dependency issue. In my case with opiates, the day I realized that the mother of all head colds was the result of twelve or so hours without hitting the tinfoil was definitely that point. Every day as an opiate addict is a struggle against dope sickness***, but it's not all that bad. Honestly, it gave me an edge. I mean, I would have been high as fuck on something and allegedly ripping things off without shame or guilt regardless. Here I had found a justification for the bleeding hearts and inquiring minds of my rather more "sane" relatives and loved ones; God knows it was nice to have something other than a shrug to offer that mother of FAQs: "why, WHY, do you live this way?"

If you're appalled, well, I think your nine to five job and overweight Kitty that you spend hundreds of dollars keeping alive against all natural odds are fucking ridiculous. Do you know what money meant to me on the West coast? A dub sack**** and a superfluous trip to the casino to push buttons on brightly colored slot machines until it was square one again. Why, you ask? Well I ask you: why not? Hey, fuck you if you can't take a joke. To me, the real joke is the biggest one of all: life. I have detoxed countless times, fully and completely. In jail, or when I burned too many bridges in one week and had to take a step back for a minute; hell, even out of boredom. You know what? I went back every time. I'm not a trembling, needle freak waste case. I've never put a needle anywhere in my body, and if I had I doubt it would have made much of a difference. I'm not some drooling, feeble-minded moron with nowhere else to go and no idea how to pull my head out of my ass, either (well.. some would probably say that isn't true, but for the sake of argument let's go with my version, deal?). I was never a victim of circumstance; my parents aren't to blame, at least not in any way that I am going to relate here or that is relevant to anyone (including myself) but some pencil necked psychologist with a big head and a bigger notepad. Rebel? Danger? Mistake? Fuck it. What I am is, perhaps, too amused and too unimpressed. I love the street more than I love function; there is beauty and freedom in the chaos. There is a world beyond the bounds of polite, sterile society, and I am a part of it.

Don't get me wrong, everyone has problems. I do, too. Problems like a mother fucker. I've had my share of identity crises, pathological spasms and crusades of change. I just own what I am beyond the typical stereotypes, and I try to keep the finger of blame pointed inwardly rather than at everything around me. Accountability is something my father tried to teach me, back in my other life. Some of it stuck. I put the rest in my pipe and smoked it, baby. Ha ha.. I digress.

You're probably wondering about the whole West to East migration, at this point. Would you believe me if I told you that I was bored? That's part of it, albeit a very small one. A friend of mine told me that the drugs are a lot better here, but that's obviously not it because I'm sober for a change. I haven't stolen a single thing from anybody or anywhere, either. The truth could be that it's my nature to be inconsistent and I was itchy with the regular irregularity. It could be some kind of subconscious social experiment of the self. Really, I came upon a great deal of money and resources by allegedly dubious means which I will probably disclose to you at a later date (because it's too significant not to) and it seemed like the thing to do with all of that. If you wanted to get really technical, you could take me down a peg and say that the alleged means of my acquisition of that temporary wealth necessitated a temporary removal from my usual lakes and rivers; you would be right. I guess that makes me in hiding, in a way, or on the run. Hmm. It's as good a reason as any, though it doesn't exactly stroke my ego. Who knows, maybe the slow, plodding pace of life with a drunken mechanic in South Carolina will do something for my perspective. Maybe this is where I turn the proverbial leaf. We'll see. As for my enduring presence here in blogdom, well, I seem to have LOADS of time on my hands these days, so keep coming back if you care to.. it works if you work it, baby. :)

*jack-boy: a male (for the female version, substitute "faulty bitch"), who allegedly takes other peoples'/corporate establishments'/some small and defenseless animals' belongings for a living

**brown: a pleasant but very addictive opiate, also known as "heroin"

***dope sickness: opiate withdrawal, severity of symptoms range from the common cold to a bad case of the flu depending on the addict and the size of their habit. Skin is typically very tender and irritable, nose runny, aches and pains that are normally manageable border on ridiculous. Vomiting is typical

****dub sack: twenty dollars worth of dope. In the Pacific NW, this means at LEAST 1.7 grams of Marijuana, .2 grams of heroin or crystal meth, or .5 grams of cocaine (but who the fuck buys a dub of soft coke?)