Tosh's Journal: September 17

TOSH’S JOURNAL

September 17

I barely exist. Well, perhaps to you, I barely exist, but for me, I am the star of my own world. I just don’t have the resources to make a proper appearance or become the person you think I should be. I’m a songwriter as well as a writer.  I don’t have a record deal nor a relationship with a publisher. Still, I can create something, make something that can be admired if you allow me that pleasure. I have the tendency, or some say the talent to choose the wrong type of woman. The ones that make me purr are usually married and married to powerful men. I want a taste of that power by being with their women. To taste what they have eaten, even though it’s a by-product of their ability, their position, it is still a high for me to get close to it. There is something in my DNA that makes me want to throw a punch before thinking it through. I don’t consider myself a vicious man, but once I taste their blood, it is like wine to my senses. I once read that there are no accidents or coincidences, that every gesture or thought is pre-planned. If I was meant to be productive, successful, and I guess happy, then it would happen.

I have been told that “You’ve got a million-dollar talent son, but a ten-cent brain.” The problem is that I need attention before anything else. I can’t stand being ignored or not to be the focus of attention. It’s always a shock to me when people don’t respond to me right away. Everything I do or see is an extension of me. I take a walk down Waverly Drive, and I know the architecture, the road signs, and even the trees as objects that should have a relationship with me. I find it odd that a thing can exist without me thinking about that thing. As I try to finish my memoir “I Am Not Ashamed,” I find myself in a deep sea of doubt, and that, to be honest with you, leave me scared. I wrote a song called “Angel of Death,” which confronts my fear of not being around. “Can you truthfully say/With your dying breath/That you’re ready to meet/The Angel of Death.”

My taste for married women came from the feeling that I’m alive and here at the moment. I don’t like to think about the next day or even the next minute. When you get to it, I want to be famous and admired - and the love or lust from a married woman brings that intensity in life. My girlfriend’s husband, Franchot, threw a punch at me the other night, he missed, and I broke his cheekbone. It felt good to do that.

On the other hand, I won the battle, but I may have lost the war. It felt right at that moment, but now people are beginning to doubt me or even worse, not caring at all. There is only so much pain to go around, and I can’t be seen as the pain giver, because people will be tired of me. And then what? “Just a deck of cards and a jug of wine/And a woman’s lies make a life like mine/Oh the day we met, I went astray/I started rolling down that lost highway.” - Tosh Berman