About John Dishwasher

In January 1994 I dropped out of society.

Since then I have lived in thirteen different cities stretching from small-town New England, to Virginia, to Mexico, to Los Angeles, to Honolulu. In those cities I have held nineteen different part-time jobs, and met and worked with both parolees and students, both drifters and professionals, both working moms and immigrants, both unmistakeable lunatics and borderline suicides. I've mopped floors with them and cleared out warehouses with them. I've fried onion rings beside them and watched them deal drugs. We've celebrated flush nights selling aluminum siding over the telephone, and cursed missing the last bus home. And we've watched out for each other on ocassion, but we've also left each other standing in the rain. My neighborhoods have been rough and vibrant. And I've been saved from the street by my credit cards too many times.

I've lived this life for seventeen years for two reasons: One, because I had a feeling the safe, well-worn grooves of society were not reality; and, two, because I wanted to write about reality.

For the same reason I dropped out of society, I have little interest in begging it to make me famous.

Those people are not my people.

I have come here looking for my people.

If you are interested in truths instead of illusions; if you value revolt instead of conformity; if you honor the chance-takers and the bold; if the big questions haunt you; if struggle and hardship inspire you; if you refuse to exploit or be exploited; if you aim to live truly; if you have the courage to face reality; if you sense something permanent beneath all this fluff that surrounds us; if all this fluff that surrounds us exasperates you, then you are my people.

This website is totally free. It offers you a Mexican road novel, nineteen short stories that range from surreal to violent to romantic to metaphysical to funny, some essays, some "antique" poems, and a strikingly relevant "supermodern" play. This is just part of what I have produced in the last seventeen years. It's here for your perusal, and more is coming. If you like it enough to want to be notified when I add more material (which happens about three times a year), add me to your myspace friends, friend my facebook page, follow me on twitter, or join my mailing list.

The rest of what I have to say is in my work and in my scarce participations in obscure forums in obscure groups full of vital people doing their best to maintain their integrity in a duplicitous world.

For free access to all my works visit the works page.