UNFUCK THE FUCKNESS

"The Scroll"

written and lived by Jan H.

For the grown, the curious, the wounded and the wild - No Filters. No promises. just the truth as it came to me.! Parental guidance advised !

I’m not here to convince anyone of anything.
I’m not against men, women, or any of the other fucks.
I just write about whatever moves, burns, or makes me laugh.Read. Reflect. Criticize. Laugh.
Find yourself. Complain. Enjoy. Lose yourself.
I don’t care.This is The Scroll.
It’s not curated. It’s not safe. It’s just honest.

unfuck the fuckness…wasn’t planning to write any of this.
It just started - old noise, rambling memories,
and uncollected thought,
like water through a crack in a stone.Maybe it’s for no one.
Maybe it’s for that stone on my desk.
I just needed to let it out
before it turned into silence
or the world fakes me into comforting silence.If you found this,
well

It’s not that I feel lost.
I’m not lost.It’s boredom.
Fucking boredom.Anything new is just another disguise.
Another version of what’s already been made.
Another thin layer of meaninglessness
over meaninglessness.I’ve lived richly.
Traveled. Learned languages.
Eaten food that felt holy.
Loved deeply.
Raised a son who lights up my soul.And still -
the older I get,
the more all of it seems watered down,
distilled into memory.And this is the world my son is growing up in!If I have thirty, maybe more years left -
what will those years look like?Fuck, I used to feel everything.Now everything is just another day.I’d love to see the world through different eyes again.Now and then I see this guy in my village -
the local misfit -
he walks the same stretch of road every day,
lost in his own simple world.And half the time I drive by, I think:
maybe he’s the happiest person I’ve ever seen.
Because he doesn’t get all the stuff we get.
Luckily.

THE TWO DOORSI’m trying to live a healthy life.
I cook everything fresh for my family.
Drink healthy water, good wine, some exercise and sometimes even organic weed.But this world - this age - pushes me into two different states.One is meditation.
Fairly new.
Eyes closed, sometimes open.
Sunset or sunrise.
Watching. Breathing.
Free of substances, free of distractions.In those moments, even with my beginner’s practice,
I’ve been to places my brain, my soul, never touched before.The other is oblivion.A glass of wine, a joint.
My wife next to me or alone, drifting into that warm, floaty place.
It’s beautiful.I wouldn’t trade those moments for anything.I know I shouldn’t drink.
I know I shouldn’t smoke.I certainly shouldn’t shoot for an orgasm in that state -
when you fuck for hours
and kind of forget why you’re fucking.But there’s a kind of beauty in those altered states.
No one can badmouth it if they’ve been there.Would I recommend it to my son?
I don’t know.
Probably not.
But maybe I should.THE OTHER DOORSAnd now - fifty, and that one fucking year -
I find myself wondering about the other doors.Not drugs that hollow you out.
Not the ones that make you addicted.The other ones, the ancient ones.
The ones spiritual guides have used for thousands of years
to open minds,
to see beyond the thin veil of this world.I’m not advocating anything.
I’m not saying they’re good for you.But if reality is choking me,
then
where
the fuck
else
am I
supposed to go?

BostonOne night I met a state attorney.
Late, in a bar.
She was drunk - sweet drunk.She asked me about Europe.
Told me what she did.
And then she said,
“Let’s go. Let’s escape. You and me.”She was wild and romantic, maybe a bit too much.
It was our first encounter.
Nothing happened that night.I didn’t see her for months after that.
Then, the second time, we kissed - determined, open-eyed smiling, hungry.
And again she whispered,
“Let’s run away.”We didn’t.Instead, a couple of days later,
I picked her up from her office
for what she considered our “first date.”I took her to Ponkapoag Pond,
an old Indian trail where I used to walk my dog.She laughed.
“This is wild. No one’s ever taken me on a dog walk for a first date.”It wasn’t wild.
It wasn’t even a thing.
But to her, it felt outside the script.On our third date, she came back to my apartment.
She undressed in front of me,
slid under my blanket,
and smiled - somehow proudly.“You can do whatever you want with me.
But I’m going to sleep now.”And she did.
Just like that.I poured myself a glass of wine
and sat there in the quiet,
wondering how we’d all gotten so tangled up
in expectations,
scripts,
and performances.

Fuck the metaphor. Be the earth.I noticed people like to compare themselves to dead, famous or
god-like individuals, icons or their devoted students.
They also imagine themselves as hawks. Lionesses. Even skunks.
Maybe I’m referring mostly to western society - I don’t know that - but what if our imagination wouldn’t be so freaking limited and we would allow ourselves to be part of it all.
To realize we are a part of everything and everything is you. Of course this isn’t a new thought, not a new philosophy, no new way of seeing the world, but do people allow or really dive into portraying themselves as a mountain, a hill, a rock.Imagine your a forest, you don’t know geography, you don't know measurement, you can’t count, you just know, you are a forest, wildly connected to trees, moss, plants, the soil, warmth on leaves, fog between your branches, the sound and touch of animal feet on your skin, the wind swaying your smile. Your infinite roots. Imagine the peace beyond all the memories running through you.Imagine you’re a herd of wild mustangs, not just one animal, but the entire herd, all the muscles, all the manes, the ever restless ears - that’s all you - the energy and the skin contact amongst the running spirits, amongst sleeping brothers and sisters. The huffs touching the ground, all the intensity while inhaling all that freedom - imagine you are all of it.And my favorite one - imagine you are water.
A drop, a sip, a wave, a pond, dew, a cloud with all you water friends, imagine you are a stream. Imagine you are a stream. See the stream from your water perspective, how you splash against a rock, the flow around a fish, the fish isn’t in you, you flow around it wishing to grab it, but you don’t know what a solid state is, you can’t imagine ever holding something, all you know is the constant movement of the stream, the unstoppable freedom, you don’t know anything but freedom.And still - some part of you will wake up tomorrow and try to be a lion.Why?When you could be anything,
when
you could feel everything.

BOSTONTHE POET AT THE RITZAnother woman - an attorney too, older than me.
We became good friends, real friends almost instantly.No games.
No bullshit.
Long talks about life that stretched
until the chairs were stacked on the tables.And yes, we ended up in bed once.
I regret it.
Not because we didn’t enjoy each other,
but because it wasn’t meant for us.The moment I remember isn’t sex.It’s the night we left her favorite bar
and walked toward the old Ritz-Carlton.I had a book of Russian poetry with me -
I don’t remember why.
There was a poem I loved,
about a woman and her dog.We stopped in a doorway next to the hotel
and read it together aloud,
our voices low into the night.A cop car slowed at the sidewalk, stopped, the officer listened, nodded at me, smiled,
and drove on.We just kept reading, lost in the moment.It was one of the most brilliant, romantic moments of my life.
The song "I Try" by Macy Gray will always be hers.

a reflectionI don’t even know why I’m telling you all this.Maybe because I’m choking
on all the layers of glossy nothing
we’ve built our lives around.Maybe because I want my son to grow up
in a world that remembers what connection felt like
before Tinder,
before swipe culture,
before thirty-second reels.Maybe because I need to remind myself.This isn’t a memoir.
It’s not advice.
It’s just a man
dumping a bucket of honesty
into oceans of meaningless clicks
and credit card swipes.And even now,
I’m not sure I’ll ever feel satisfied
about telling you all of this.

PARISI was in my late twenties and deeply, deeply in love with the city.
I lived in Saint-Germain, felt welcomed even by the cobblestones.
Wherever I went, whatever I did, I was received with such care and openness -
it felt like an old bond, family, like I’d always belonged.The weirdest things happened to me and I just absorbed it all -
autumn, small diners, jazz, the streetlights and fog.
Paris - a guiding parent, my best friend.After I was done with my writing, early in the evening,
I’d grab a table in some neighborhood café,
order red wine and just sit with whatever was going to happen.Sometimes a skinny woman in a thick black turtleneck
would walk past the cafés selling - I don’t know -
maybe magnets and lighters from a belly tray.
I never showed any interest, but after a while
we greeted each other with a friendly nod.One evening she stopped at my table.
“I know something about you,” she said in that heavy French accent,
“and you won’t believe me, but it’s true.”I offered her a chair, a glass of wine and a cigarette.
Her eyes sparkled with conviction, joy.
“Our birthdays are on the same day,” she said,
“the third of May.”I smiled, pulled out my driver’s license. May 3.“I knew it,” she said.
“The moment I first noticed you.”She was radiant, a queen of Paris for this small moment,
and I was lucky enough to be there for her coronation.

before after and whileWhen I cook, I feel somehow whole.
Softly required by my own creativity,
comforted by routine,
sparked by a glass of wine.But when I paint,
I feel challenged by myself -
which is so fucking exciting
and brutally tiring.The discourse between me and the canvas,
the choice of colors, the means to bring the colors into action,
the fight to use my own imagination
without remembering the works of others -
it’s a few hours of total freedom.
Wild freedom.
The moment so present
it cleans out all the wants
and the unwanted.No one will ever understand
the process, the fight and joy you experience - they don't have to.But they’re not looking at the painting.
They are thinking:“Does he have a classical education?”
“Does he have a gallery?”
“Is there money in it?”Nobody looks anymore.
Nobody sees.
They scan.
They price.
They move on.
Just as empty as they were before.But that’s okay.
I don’t paint for you.

Tired of Patience I

Tired of Patience II

I'd just moved to Madrid.
still finding my rhythm.One night I met a girl from Kentucky,
taking Spanish classes for a month.We had a good run - three, maybe four days of pure chaos:
partying, wandering, tasting the city at night.
We put confidence and trust into a four-day bender.The first night she crawled under my blanket after coming out of the shower.
She looked at me and said,
“I’m Jewish.”I grinned, immune to religion.
“Hey, nobody’s perfect.”She laughed.
“Do you mind?” she asked.
“I mean, fucking me… you being German. Me being Jewish.”I shook my head.
“No,” and thought that moment was already unforgettable.And then, her next words...Those next words in that thick southern drawl:“Darlin’, ya can use any hole ya want.”Brilliant - just pure gold for the ages.But the following nights weren’t about all her holes.
It was this passionate intimacy we were able to create
without really knowing each other.God, I hope my son reads this someday.

PlanetsYou’d have laughed, old friend.
We were staying on Koh Samui, Thailand.
It was a weekday - Sam asleep, worn out from school and Muay Thai,
his mother reading beside him, the world folded and quiet.And I - for no reason at all - decided to shoot myself into another orbit.
Headphones on. Cheap wine.
A little weed that wasn’t really mine to handle.
Tiny whiffs, guarding what was left of my sanity.I danced around the living room,
the one across the lawn from our bedroom -
and when the bottle ran dry,
I thought, well, the universe probably wants me to go get more.So I floated to the Mini Mart.
Head full of Malva Vela’s “Chavela.”
No plan, no hurry.Inside, there was
this woman at the counter,
beautiful in a way that had nothing to do with desire.I didn’t even hear my own footsteps.
Just the music.
I moved toward her,
six-pack in hand,
and she began to sway too.For a moment our eyes met -
and it wasn’t flirtation.
It was clean energy,
like two tiny planets passing each other
in the infinity of our lives.
Almost holy.I paid.
Bowed with both hands pressed to my chest.
And danced back out into the night.Might have been one of the sexiest moments of my life.

HOW TO EAT PUSSY AND THEN MAYBE SOME GRILLED EGGPLANTForget everything you’ve seen.
You’re not there to conquer.
You’re there to listen.If you ever want to understand closeness, start where the noise stops.
Forget the anecdotes, forget the tricks.
Listen like you’re learning the sea again - slow, salt in your mouth, sun on your back.
Nothing to prove.
Craft, not conquest.Two people, same circuitry, flipped and mirrored.
When you finally pay attention, the rhythm tells you what to do.
Stay with it until the tide turns and you’re both grinning, wrecked, grateful.
That’s the whole story.
Everything else is garnish.Anyway, let’s talk eggplant.Lay the finger-thick slices out on a towel.
Hit them with salt flakes.
Then walk away for half an hour.Don’t rush it.
The salt pulls the water out - a small act of patience that keeps the eggplant from turning into a wet sponge later.When the slices have given up their tears, wipe them clean.
Peel the skin if you feel like it.
No rules here.
Some people like the char, some don’t.Heat the grill until it’s properly hot - that steady, confident hiss when oil hits metal.Dust the slices lightly with flour; it gives them a little armor.
Drizzle some olive oil on the plancha and the garlic, dry tarragon, Cubebe-pepper mix on the slices.Lay them down.
Listen to the first hiss.
Don’t touch them.After a few minutes, brush the tops again and flip.
Five minutes later you should have slices that are tender, marked, and a little smoky.
They should smell like summer and woodsmoke and a kitchen that’s been used by someone who truly likes you.Serve them as they are -
as you are.

understood

FAREWELL TO WHO MIGHT HAVE BEEN MY BEST FRIEND EVERJan G. - out of respect for his family - though I’d love to scream his name every day.Such a beautiful, unfinished young man.We were friends for three years in school, part of a pack of four who thought we’d run life together. Fate had other plans.
He moved to London, I moved to Boston. We called each other - time-zones apart - usually when the other wasn’t drunk. Two different lives on different continents, yet I always felt a pull, like a window left open somewhere between us.He came to visit one October, with Daniel, another close friend from our school days. I told them to bring dark suits and white shirts - even though we’d only ever known each other in hoodies. I was organizing private parties back then, the kind where the invitation was the secret. My Haitian business partner and I were treated like nightlife royalty, carte-blanche in Boston.That week was everything: rooftop breakfasts, long walks on Ponkapoag Trail with my dog, dinners in jazz bars and cheap diners, nights that bled into sunrise. The after-hours at my place, we had the old weed that makes your soul smile for no reason, some blow, a few beers, and all the stories in the world.Jan had a beautiful girl on his lap every night and made sure we noticed. He was radiant, proud, full of light - and had no idea that most of us in that world were living off borrowed brightness. Behind every glossy night there was loneliness. We fought it the only way we knew how: by staying close, sleeping in each other’s arms, sometimes too close, holding each other through the blur.He never saw the drag he had on people - that open smile, those eyes that grew wide when he spoke. Intelligent, slightly clumsy, allergic to solitude. A puppy of a man who wanted everything at once, maybe because he knew there wouldn’t be much time.Two weeks after they left, Daniel called.
“I have bad news,” he said.
I knew immediately.Jan died in a motorcycle accident in Seville.Shock passes. What remains are ambushes - moments when a memory cuts your heart and you realize life would be better right now if he were here.That first evening, I couldn’t stay in my apartment. I went to my favorite bar instead. Word had spread. One by one, people who’d met him during that short week came in to find me and offer their condolences. It felt like a funeral procession built out of strangers.No week passes, even now, without me thinking of him — the beautiful, unfinished man who still drags open that window somewhere inside me.

• Tell me when you drop new stuff

THE TWO PRINCESThere is an image.It keeps coming back.
The same picture, so simple it hurts.
The Little Prince, standing on his small planet, facing away from me, staring at the horizon.
And next to him, on another planet, stands his mirror.
Another prince. Same small planet. Same silence. Same sadness.
They hold hands across the space between them,
like two halves of a single thought trying to remember itself.It only ever shows up when I’m quiet.
When the noise stops.
When the pretending - “like the fuck I know what I’m doing” - finally gives up.
Then it’s there again, hovering between worlds,
an old truth trying to find its way home.One of them is me before the world started counting.
That’s the eternal child - the one who still builds worlds out of thin air,
who believes the impossible isn’t a category, just an excuse.
He’s wild, curious, inconveniently honest.
He doesn’t rehearse his wonder.
He’s the part of me adulthood keeps mistaking for weakness.The other one - the older me -
he’s the one who built walls to keep the wind out.
He’s the one who loves his family,
fixes stuff, pays the bills, responds to whatever,
and sometimes catches himself staring at the floor instead of the stars.
He carries everyone else so well
that he sometimes forgets to carry the boy inside him.They’re both right.
They’re both wrong.
And maybe the whole damn point is to learn
how to hold your own hand across the worlds
you’ve built between who you were and who you’ve become.Then there’s the other thing.It wasn’t a dream.
I was alone, a few years ago - don’t remember where or what the hell I was doing.
I just heard it.
My own voice, from somewhere deeper than thought.
It said:
“Hey, I want to tell you something.”That was it.
No thunder. Just stillness.
Everything stopped. I stopped.
My reality seemed to take a breath and wait.There was nothing to answer.
Myself called upon myself.
And I realized what I meant.
There’s a part of me that’s been waiting to speak - probably for years - because finally, I was so exhausted from the noise around me that I was able to shut up long enough to hear it.Now, whenever that image returns -
the two princes, hand in hand across their tiny planets -
I think maybe that’s what they’re saying to each other too.
“Hey, I want to tell you something.”Who knows, maybe the universe goes quiet,
listening.

"Hey, I want to tell you something."

…the next piece will follow. Soon.