Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Monday, May 30, 2011
ThoughtBubble Comix vol. 1, #1 - GARCIA
Wow. Early. And fucking freezing. Oh maaan…
California was known the world over for it’s girls and it’s surfers but Stinson Beach in March was cold cold cold.
Desolate man, fuck
It was a whisper in his mind, somehow leaked into his mouth. Turned into words. Silence - in response - told him he was alone. He was not awake, but he was no longer sleeping.
Hunter ?
He looked in the backseat and in the front seat.
Jeez man what the fuck ?
Then he saw. Below the frosty window-fog clouding the dirty windshield, a shape wiggling around in the middle distance. It was moving, but not fast and with no grace whatsoever. The opposite really - it seemed as if the person was falling from place to place, in dire need of rest after each pathetic burst of precious 7:30am, Stinson Beach-in-March, energy.
Hunter. Rummaging in the beach lot trash looking for breakfast.
***
Rob. Hey Rob mannn…
No response. Hunter was…Dead. No, his chest was moving. Ah. He wasn’t looking for breakfast, he was loosing his dinner. Had the common courtesy to take it to a can. Hunter: All class.
Rob, what the fuck dude? Where’d everybody go?
From inside the bucket:
The last I knew Bear was pushing that fucking thing around and wailing and then he was ripping up something. Newspaper or something…
Garcia smiling with the fragmented return of his memory
Yeah mannn. He was fuckin’ fucked up man. Yelling…I was getting a little scared. Fuckin’ Bear has weapons.
Yeah. I followed him out here, and I saw him race up to the top of the bluff out over there. I think he started a fire.
He did man. I fell asleep while he was dancing around it. He was yelling the word “shoes” over and over.
Hunter was still looking at the now-deserted bluff. In relief against the sea. Bathing in chilly No Cal ocean breeze. In the day it didn’t seem so far away as it had last night. Hunter with a lazy slow-motion double-take:
Wait…“Shoes” he was saying?
Yeah. Shoes man.
Hrmmmm. Hey what time is it?
Garcia looked at his watch…
It is….Hey man, fuck…
He made a sour face at is friend, whining:
Thing is out man. Some state of the art shit.
Hunter chose not to discuss the watch. Saying…
…I’m hungry dude. Let’s go get a ride back with Babbs or something. We gotta get the wagon towed…
Where’s that house man?
Uggghh. Hmmm.
They both just sort of looked around feeling sick and depleted for a while. Racking their crippled sense of direction. Stinson beach, giving no quarter in the frozen sunlight. It took 2 frozen hours to retrace steps, compare intel, define objectives. In San Francisco they were calling Garcia “the Thinking Man’s Hendrix”. But this was not San Fran, and most “thinking” men were probably home sleeping. Not likely to be suddenly regaining consciousness in a broken car on freezing, deserted Stinson Beach.
***
The girls expression was one he'd never seen before. Just that tiny glance though, and he found himself puzzling feverishly over just what it was she needed, and the means by which he might provide it. She was that hot, like to make a guy noble. Fuckin' chivalrous, he was. He crouched down next to her, squatting facing her armrest seat on the faded leather sofa. He put his face to hers, almost nose-mashing, and spoke:
Hey there. I'm Jerry. I think I can help.
At the same time he listened to Kesey, stage-whispering to Neal on the opposite end of the couch. Garc tuned in without breaking eye-congress with the girl. Heard Kesey:
…So yeah I didn’t even see. I came in here, started opening bottles of fuckin’ punch, pourin’ ‘em in trashcans and whatever. I didn’t even realize it was gone until Babs is tappin me onna shoulder, and he gives me this fuckin thing…
Kesey held up what looked like a 12oz. Coca Cola bottle and mushed it in Cassady’s foreground.
…Says “where’s-a-acid boss?”
Cassady, flipping his claw hammer with his right hand, was leaned in to Kesey. Almost - it looked like to an amused Garc - as if he was going in for a kiss. He saw understanding, then concern cross his buddy’s face. Neal, still speaking:
Woah. Like all of it? She drank that whole thing?
Fuckin’ yeah she did. She fuckin’ drank all of it. Last week I took an even tablespoon on a clean tolerance and I spent the next four days looked in my bathroom, tryna' fuckin’ see down the drain in my bathtub.
Neal - all furrows and nervousness now - leaned even closer in. Stage whisper replaced by something louder:
That’s all we have!? MotherFUC…
No. No. Listen. No. I have plenty more. All these…
he held up four more 12oz. bottles of clear liquid. It looked like water.
…Are full. But Neal, dude she ate like a million mics. She has to go see a doctor man. In like an hour she’s gonna start seeing fire and brimstone. In two she’s gonna think she’s a zebra. By tonight she’ll have probably attempted to kill somebody. She has to go, but I dunno man, I got two strikes.
Neal said:
I jumped bail just last week …
…Waving his arm to make a point.
Shit boss everybody in here is dutch with the law. She’s gonna have to ride this shit out. No choice. Hey doll!
The girl, who’d been staring at Garc while he stared at Kesey and Neal, snapped to. Annunciating sharply through slurry, active lips. Garcia saw her eyes were beginning to glaze and expand.
Me?
Before then, Cassady hadn’t noticed that the girl was amazing looking. But now, sizing her up a bit, he noticed a tiny waist, nice rack, great blondish hair, and a pretty, hot-chick smell. Looking up and down, he lost focus on Kesey, leaning over him to get more of himself near the girl.
Yeah. Um…Darlin’? What’d you do? Why’d drink that whole thing?
Well, somebody told me there was acid in it. I came here to take acid.
She looked satisfied, if not pleasantly surprised to have been able to fashion an answer. Then added:
So I drank it.
Cassidy, flipping the right hand hammer ever higher, but leaning and turning directly away from it:
Uh huh. Ok. So, uhh, you’ve done this before? (flip, flip flip...)
What go to parties? Sure!!
No doll. I mean, Have you ever eaten acid?
Nope, that’s why I came here. Why?
Cassady, Garc, and Kesey all now flipping nervous weird glances back and fourth. Never?? Garcia spoke:
Ok, well, good! We’re gonna’ have a great time. An remember: Any questions, you can ask one of us.
Oh thanks that’s really great. Hey I think I know you! Wait. Are you Marty Balin?
Oh my god you are! I’m sitting on a couch with Marty Fucking Balin!
Jerry nodded. Said:
Hey Kesey, can you throw me one of those bottles man?
Kesey said nothing, threw the acid.
Garc turned back to the girl:
What’d you say your name was again?
Oh me? I’m Gracie Slick! Ha! No I’m not. I’m not really her. I just said that cause you’re Marty Balin! Gracie plays in a band with him! I love him. You, I mean. I love you Marty.
She stares directly into his eyes for a full 80 seconds, as if she were now watching the Airplane in person. When she snapped back she spoke very firmly and deliberately:
My name’s Mia.
Mia Great…
Said Garcia, opening the acid bottle. He raised it in mock-toast, saying…
Here’s to you Mia.
He upended the bottle. Glogging it all down in one go.
Cassidy, dismayed at having Garcia steal his idea, spoke up:
Uh-Uhh hippie. Not on my watch.
He threw the hammer hard up toward the low plaster ceiling, the nail-claw smashed through and - for a moment -the hammer was still. Imbedded in the plaster and suspended over the heads of the four people on the couch. All, except one, looked up. Cassady - not looking up - snatched one of the remaining two bottles from Kesey’s lap opened it, and buried it in a shot-gun gulp. He looked at Garcia. At the girl.
Well, whaddaya say we hi the bricks?
Kesey, opening the last acid bottle and guzzling it all the way down, said:
Yeah we can’t stay here. We just stole all the drugs!
They tried their best to be low-key in escaping.
The Big One
*Originally published in 2005 at an awesome, and now defunct, e-lit site called The Rose and Thorn.
Mark feels earthquakes before they get here. My first earthquake happened on a Saturday and all that day he’d been acting weird. He kept saying, "Isn’t today a weird day?" But no one thought anything about it because Mark always acted weird, thinking about things in ways the rest of us didn’t.
There were five of us playing cards at his house that night, on the floor since Mark and his roommate Clyde had no table. Mark had been in and out of the game, disappearing into his bedroom for long stretches. "Just checking my e-mail," he kept saying.
Around 10:00 pm he asked us if we smelled something and then the whole room started shaking real slow back and forth. "Woah, shit," said this guy John I was dating at the time, "Shit!" Maybe not my first earthquake – I’d been in LA two months by then –but the first one I really felt. I remember thinking it was slower than I’d imagined, but scarier too, the ground moving under us that way.
Mark took charge like he’d been preparing. He’d lived in LA longer than anyone there. He ordered, "Everybody stand in the doorway, quick!" This skinny guy in unmatched sweatshirt and sweatpants, his hair messy like he was always between naps.
We squeezed in the patio doorway, all laughing and sort of freaking out. Mark ended up behind me and I felt his arm across my belly. Nothing sexy or anything. I thought how nice it was for him to do that, like he was protecting me.
I didn't see Mark for half a year after that; not until he called me last week. I had only known him through my girlfriend Kerry, and she moved back to Maryland last spring. So that was me between May and October, still new to LA, my best friend gone, no job, watching cable in my Beverlywood studio apartment. Then Mark calls, "Angela? This is Mark. Remember me? Kerry’s friend."
I went over that night, happy just to get out of my building, some fall in the air, long pants and my red hoodie. I picked up a twelve pack and we hung out and watched Survivor and then the Emmy’s. His roommate Clyde had an advertising gig, had to get up early. So Mark and I hung some more, talking a little. I wouldn’t even have brought it up, but we’d smoked a little weed and had the beers and I was sort of delirious because I’d been sitting in my apartment for four months thinking that that might be the rest of my life – that loneliness – and Mark was so cool to call me and invite me over and everything, and I wanted to be his friend so I said, "Remember that earthquake?"
He smiled, watching the Emmy’s, and didn’t look at me to say, "I made that happen."
I smiled too, though I wasn’t sure why. I kept looking at him and he kept not looking back, so I turned back to the TV – an elegant older woman thanking her agent – and ten minutes may have passed before Mark said, "Want to see something? Give me that newspaper." It was on a milk crate they used for an end table, by an overflowing ashtray and the last of my fifth beer.
“Clyde hates it when I do this shit," Mark said. He opened the paper the same way my dad used to in the morning, jerking the sides so it folded back on itself. He scanned this page then the next until he found what he was looking for. "Honest Youngster Rewarded for Returning Lost Wallet," he read.
I felt dumb, smiling like I had been for so long. I think I felt a little scared too, something in Mark’s eyes. "What does Clyde hate?" I asked.
"He doesn’t hate it. He just doesn’t believe in it. Come sit by me."
I thought then that he wanted to hook up, and that was okay. I’ve always liked him I guess, even though he’s a slob. I moved from the bean bag to the couch. Not right next to him but close enough, and still smiling. I thought I must look shitty, bloodshot eyes and beer breath, my hair smelling of smoke. He didn’t seem to notice.
Mark started breathing deep in and out, like a skin diver about to go under. The paper sat in his lap and I saw the article, a thumbnail photo of an older dude and a little boy, the older dude holding a wallet out, both smiling.
I said, "Cute," just to have something to say.
Mark kept breathing, sucking and blowing through puffed cheeks, the breeze ruffling newsprint. I laughed but I was wondering if I should just go, if this was some weird joke he liked to play on friendless girls.
His final exhalation was different from the rest, impossibly deep like he blew all the breath out of himself. He leaned forward over the paper and stayed awhile like that, airless, spent. Then he inhaled the article about the boy returning the wallet.
He inhaled the words right off the newspaper. They shifted at first, a’s and e’s and d’s and c’s, then they dislodged – lifting and streaming through the air, sliding into his mouth. One long breath was all it took, Mark’s lips pursed like a flutist. The headline went last, its larger letters seeming to weigh more. When they’d disappeared Mark sat up and smiled.
I said, "What the fuck did you just do?"
Then all at once I knew everything in the article, that the Kid’s name was Esteban Rodriguez. That he found the wallet between the seats at the Nickelodeon on Wilshire. That it belonged to Chuck Martin, a producer at USA Networks, and Chuck gave Esteban a $200 reward upon its return. Esteban planned to spend $30 on roller blades, and put the rest in his college fund, which made his mother proud but in no way surprised her.
I knew all this the way you know the backstory of a dream – seeing some of it, remembering the rest. The whole of the Esteban and Chuck’s shared experience enfolded me for awhile, enwrapped me, and it all came out of mark, radiating from within him like rays from a film projector.
He didn’t stop smiling once the whole time.
"What the fuck did you just do?" I repeated. There were lights at the edges of my vision, little electric tadpoles swimming.
Mark said, "Hey are you…?"
I said, "What the—" And passed out.
* * *
"Will you do it again for me?"
We were in bed. Not that same night. That same night Mark brought me around with cool water on my forehead and drove me home in my car and walked back alone. Two nights later I came over uninvited and kissed him in the doorway and asked only whether Clyde was home. He said no. Two hours after that I asked, "Will you do it again for me?" Maybe three hours.
He asked what I meant and I poked him in the shoulder and said, "You know." He kept smiling.
"I can’t just do it."
"Why not? Does it hurt?"
"No, but the more I do it the realer it gets."
"Show me again."
He mock sighed, like I was a pain but not really. "With what?"
I jumped out of bed and started searching – naked – through the sediment of clothes, DVD’s, books and magazines covering his room. Mark watched and I didn’t mind.
"Here!" I shouted. It was a thin trade paperback. I tossed it in bed beside him and jumped in after, pulling the covers up and giggling at the chill. Mark put his one hand on my belly, laughing with me. He picked up the book with his other, and said, "I don’t know about this."
“Why not?”
He fanned the pages, “You ever read this?”
“No, but I’ve read about it.”
He smiled and rolled his eyes. The book cover featured some sort of formless impressionist painting along with the title and author, White Jazz by James Ellroy. “Well,” Mark sighed, starting to take deeper and deeper breaths, “What the hell…”
Two days later, after Mark inhaled the last of the LA Quartet, we were left to deal with the fact that Ellroy’s stuff was almost too pure. It kept us from sleeping or eating, kept us strung out on violence and plot, chewing our tongues and looking paranoid over our shoulders. It was all we could do Friday night to tiptoe into Clyde’s room and grab his copy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Strange Pilgrims so we could come down to Light is Like Water, holding each other amidst the lush, foreign English.
The next day we got into Stephen King’s early work – Christine, Salem’s Lot, then Cujo for the two-dollar matinee thrill of it. Clyde moved out the next morning. He left a note, something about the dog barking he couldn’t take anymore, the tire tracks in the kitchen and gunshot holes in the walls. Mark considered inhaling Clyde’s note, but wasn’t sure how handwriting would go down.
That was last week.
Now all the books in the house have blank pages. There are letters on the floor, letters on the walls and ceiling. Sometimes Mark shows off, blowing sentences, paragraphs, entire chapters onto windows, counters, the TV screen. We’ve spent eons in Lippman’s Baltimore, LeHane’s Boston, Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha. We’ve been up Twain’s Mississippi and down Dubus’ Merrimack, Mark and me. I’d been so lonely by myself. It’s amazing what one more person can do.
Mark snorts Hunter S. Thompson to keep us awake. It makes me crazy. He makes me crazy. Seems like five minutes pass and now the sun’s coming up, the two of us just talking and talking all night. He searches the apartment for unused books but there’s nothing left. He tries not to seem nervous. He inhales a golf instruction book and the food section from the morning paper. He makes eggs Florentine while I roll putts into a glass on its side, letters in a million fonts sticking to the ball.
Eating eggs, Mark inhales the nutritional information off the side of the Sunny Delight. We see a factory, vats of painful orange liquid. I push my glass away.
"It’s getting more vivid." I say.
"It is, yeah. And now we’re out of words."
He’s joking of course. There’s always more. I laugh until I see that he’s serious, "What do you mean out?"
"Out. There’s nothing left in the house."
"Well we better go to my place, I…" I stop because he’s looking at me, his head tilted just so. "What?"
"We were there three days ago. Don’t you remember? Tom Clancy? Salman Rushdie?”
Shit, I forgot. Submarines and presidents and the Indo-Pak diaspora and I forgot. God, how long have we been at this? What do we do now? I’m trying not to look like I’m freaking out but must be failing because Mark says, "It’s alright, Angie. You’ll be okay without it."
He’s right of course. I’ll be fine, except, "No I won’t."
"There’s always more words. We can’t stay here forever. Let’s just take a few days. Get ourselves together—"
"Borders." I say, never meaning anything so much.
"What?"
"Borders. By the mall. Let’s go to the bookstore."
* * *
Borders Books fronts La Cienega below 3rd Street, but you enter through the parking lot on Blackburn. The first floor is dominated by a wide central staircase leading up to the CD’s and non-fiction and that’s where we start, Musical Biography, Mark inhaling entire books at a time, his capacity at a new high. Soon enough Jerry Garcia, Syd Vicious, Mick Jagger, John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Sun Ra are on stage by the café, Karen Carpenter on drums, Charles Mingus on bass. Shoppers gather to watch, some laughing, some looking around like there might be a camera hidden nearby. Mark can’t stop giggling, letters pouring from his nose like milk. I grab his hand and we head downstairs to Romance, So What echoing after us, louder than anything through the sound system used by Motley Crue on their Theatre of Pain Tour (’85-’86).
We suck up Romance – not just the words now, but the garish covers as well – and a host of Fabios start athletically copulating with large-breasted women in the café. We suck up Mystery and overweight police detectives start grid-searching Calendars. We suck up the Classics, and the Trojan fleet bursts through the 3rd street wall, the Red Sea flooding in after, covering Religion to the top of the shelves.
A Minotaur descends the stairs, holding its ears against the band, which has segued into Midnight Rambler at top volume. It sees a Romance wench and goes into heat, rutting against the cash wrap.
Things get ugly in Military History. Red Coats take the Magazine racks. Vietnam grunts hump through Children’s Literature. Doughboys don masks against a mustard gas attack by the greeting cards, while a Roman Senator gurgles and dies. A Blackhawk helicopter flattens the Sioux nation with rotor wash before a Snitch sends it crashing into Biography. The explosion is barely audible over the band, now simmering below Martin Luther King, shouting his Promised Land speech spoken-word style. Harry Potter zooms by on a broom, knocking Mark to his knees.
Cops in dark blue LAPD uniforms storm the back door. I think Mark inhaled an OJ book in True Crime, but these might be real cops too. Not that all these others aren’t real as well. Just ask the patrons and employees of Borders Books, who see and feel it all along with Mark and me. It’s real because Mark makes it real. And the more he takes in, the realer it becomes. And life is better lived this way; not trapped in a studio apartment watching television but feeling and seeing and living the world’s finest imaginations.
But this noise and confusion is too much, and Mark has my hand and drags me out, past the Imperial Star Destroyer docked by the exit, preparing to fire upon Dora the Explorer and Boots the Monkey who don’t see it coming. Mark is screaming, “It’s too much! Let’s go! It’s too much!!”
Outside I fight him. I push him away and make for the entrance but he has me and won’t let go. He’s stronger then he looks and I’m worn out from days awake and he shoves me into the car and I bang my head on the door jamb and he locks me in and comes around and starts the car and peels out, leaving behind the dross of a million big thinkers.
* * *
I scrape and claw the whole way home. I scream and cry too but Mark just drives, muttering, “It’s too much. Just like last time. Too much…”
He parks outside his apartment, where I know there are no words, and comes around to get me but I won’t let him drag me inside. Instead I shake him off and march ahead. The world feels barren. The air tastes thin and the night’s black looks grey. Inside I huddle in the bean bag, chin on knees. I try not to think of the words and what’s probably still happening at the bookstore. Or maybe it’s not happening at all. Maybe it fades without Mark. Or maybe it lives forever, all that creation loose in the streets.
Not having it hurts, a physical pain in my side. I’m nauseous and exhausted and furious with Mark for taking it all away.
I tell him so, shouting, “Fuck you!”
He shakes his head and mutters, “Look at yourself,” like I’m embarrassing.
I throw an ashtray at him, the one from the end table. It doesn’t even come close.
He has me by the shoulders suddenly, his face in mine, “LOOK AT YOURSELF!” They stop me, his eyes. There’s a loose t on his chin. “You think I don’t feel the same way?! It can’t be like that though. Not in public. People can’t take it.”
“But I need it.” I put all the pleading I know into the words, “I. Need. It.”
He lets me go, sits back. “I do too.”
Mark walks back into his bedroom then returns a minute later. What’s in his hand blots out everything else, like the stains on your eyes when you’ve looked too long at the sun.
“Oh my god is that—”
It’s a book.
I searched the house hours ago, top to bottom, and found nothing. He must have had it hidden.
I start to babble but he says, “Shhhhhhh.
“Come sit next to me.”
I do. On the couch.
It’s a big book. He lays it across both our laps. The cover shows a wide prairie below a razor blue horizon. The book is called California’s Geology.
“Promised myself I’d never pick this up again,” he says. “But I could never throw it away either.”
He flutters the pages which are thick and make a noise like birds. I see words in dense columns; graphs, charts and photographs. Some pages are already blank from where Mark has done his work.
He finds his place. He knows it from the feel, just where he wants to go. He cracks it wide, the spine creaking. Artwork spans both pages, a cutaway earth in all its colorful stratum. Emblazoned across the top in two inch high letters: EARTHQUAKES: CAUSE AND CONSEQUENCE.
I gasp. Mark is breathing deep, in and out.
I put my arm around his neck. I put my hand against his chest. I feel the breath leave him, then come rushing back in. The pages flutter again and it’s not just some of the letters now, it’s every word and image the book has to offer. I feel them rush into him. I feel them turn him on inside. I feel them shine through.
The ground begins to move beneath us and I can’t help but laugh.
It feels so familiar.
It feels like the big one.
Mark feels earthquakes before they get here. My first earthquake happened on a Saturday and all that day he’d been acting weird. He kept saying, "Isn’t today a weird day?" But no one thought anything about it because Mark always acted weird, thinking about things in ways the rest of us didn’t.
There were five of us playing cards at his house that night, on the floor since Mark and his roommate Clyde had no table. Mark had been in and out of the game, disappearing into his bedroom for long stretches. "Just checking my e-mail," he kept saying.
Around 10:00 pm he asked us if we smelled something and then the whole room started shaking real slow back and forth. "Woah, shit," said this guy John I was dating at the time, "Shit!" Maybe not my first earthquake – I’d been in LA two months by then –but the first one I really felt. I remember thinking it was slower than I’d imagined, but scarier too, the ground moving under us that way.
Mark took charge like he’d been preparing. He’d lived in LA longer than anyone there. He ordered, "Everybody stand in the doorway, quick!" This skinny guy in unmatched sweatshirt and sweatpants, his hair messy like he was always between naps.
We squeezed in the patio doorway, all laughing and sort of freaking out. Mark ended up behind me and I felt his arm across my belly. Nothing sexy or anything. I thought how nice it was for him to do that, like he was protecting me.
I didn't see Mark for half a year after that; not until he called me last week. I had only known him through my girlfriend Kerry, and she moved back to Maryland last spring. So that was me between May and October, still new to LA, my best friend gone, no job, watching cable in my Beverlywood studio apartment. Then Mark calls, "Angela? This is Mark. Remember me? Kerry’s friend."
I went over that night, happy just to get out of my building, some fall in the air, long pants and my red hoodie. I picked up a twelve pack and we hung out and watched Survivor and then the Emmy’s. His roommate Clyde had an advertising gig, had to get up early. So Mark and I hung some more, talking a little. I wouldn’t even have brought it up, but we’d smoked a little weed and had the beers and I was sort of delirious because I’d been sitting in my apartment for four months thinking that that might be the rest of my life – that loneliness – and Mark was so cool to call me and invite me over and everything, and I wanted to be his friend so I said, "Remember that earthquake?"
He smiled, watching the Emmy’s, and didn’t look at me to say, "I made that happen."
I smiled too, though I wasn’t sure why. I kept looking at him and he kept not looking back, so I turned back to the TV – an elegant older woman thanking her agent – and ten minutes may have passed before Mark said, "Want to see something? Give me that newspaper." It was on a milk crate they used for an end table, by an overflowing ashtray and the last of my fifth beer.
“Clyde hates it when I do this shit," Mark said. He opened the paper the same way my dad used to in the morning, jerking the sides so it folded back on itself. He scanned this page then the next until he found what he was looking for. "Honest Youngster Rewarded for Returning Lost Wallet," he read.
I felt dumb, smiling like I had been for so long. I think I felt a little scared too, something in Mark’s eyes. "What does Clyde hate?" I asked.
"He doesn’t hate it. He just doesn’t believe in it. Come sit by me."
I thought then that he wanted to hook up, and that was okay. I’ve always liked him I guess, even though he’s a slob. I moved from the bean bag to the couch. Not right next to him but close enough, and still smiling. I thought I must look shitty, bloodshot eyes and beer breath, my hair smelling of smoke. He didn’t seem to notice.
Mark started breathing deep in and out, like a skin diver about to go under. The paper sat in his lap and I saw the article, a thumbnail photo of an older dude and a little boy, the older dude holding a wallet out, both smiling.
I said, "Cute," just to have something to say.
Mark kept breathing, sucking and blowing through puffed cheeks, the breeze ruffling newsprint. I laughed but I was wondering if I should just go, if this was some weird joke he liked to play on friendless girls.
His final exhalation was different from the rest, impossibly deep like he blew all the breath out of himself. He leaned forward over the paper and stayed awhile like that, airless, spent. Then he inhaled the article about the boy returning the wallet.
He inhaled the words right off the newspaper. They shifted at first, a’s and e’s and d’s and c’s, then they dislodged – lifting and streaming through the air, sliding into his mouth. One long breath was all it took, Mark’s lips pursed like a flutist. The headline went last, its larger letters seeming to weigh more. When they’d disappeared Mark sat up and smiled.
I said, "What the fuck did you just do?"
Then all at once I knew everything in the article, that the Kid’s name was Esteban Rodriguez. That he found the wallet between the seats at the Nickelodeon on Wilshire. That it belonged to Chuck Martin, a producer at USA Networks, and Chuck gave Esteban a $200 reward upon its return. Esteban planned to spend $30 on roller blades, and put the rest in his college fund, which made his mother proud but in no way surprised her.
I knew all this the way you know the backstory of a dream – seeing some of it, remembering the rest. The whole of the Esteban and Chuck’s shared experience enfolded me for awhile, enwrapped me, and it all came out of mark, radiating from within him like rays from a film projector.
He didn’t stop smiling once the whole time.
"What the fuck did you just do?" I repeated. There were lights at the edges of my vision, little electric tadpoles swimming.
Mark said, "Hey are you…?"
I said, "What the—" And passed out.
* * *
"Will you do it again for me?"
We were in bed. Not that same night. That same night Mark brought me around with cool water on my forehead and drove me home in my car and walked back alone. Two nights later I came over uninvited and kissed him in the doorway and asked only whether Clyde was home. He said no. Two hours after that I asked, "Will you do it again for me?" Maybe three hours.
He asked what I meant and I poked him in the shoulder and said, "You know." He kept smiling.
"I can’t just do it."
"Why not? Does it hurt?"
"No, but the more I do it the realer it gets."
"Show me again."
He mock sighed, like I was a pain but not really. "With what?"
I jumped out of bed and started searching – naked – through the sediment of clothes, DVD’s, books and magazines covering his room. Mark watched and I didn’t mind.
"Here!" I shouted. It was a thin trade paperback. I tossed it in bed beside him and jumped in after, pulling the covers up and giggling at the chill. Mark put his one hand on my belly, laughing with me. He picked up the book with his other, and said, "I don’t know about this."
“Why not?”
He fanned the pages, “You ever read this?”
“No, but I’ve read about it.”
He smiled and rolled his eyes. The book cover featured some sort of formless impressionist painting along with the title and author, White Jazz by James Ellroy. “Well,” Mark sighed, starting to take deeper and deeper breaths, “What the hell…”
Two days later, after Mark inhaled the last of the LA Quartet, we were left to deal with the fact that Ellroy’s stuff was almost too pure. It kept us from sleeping or eating, kept us strung out on violence and plot, chewing our tongues and looking paranoid over our shoulders. It was all we could do Friday night to tiptoe into Clyde’s room and grab his copy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Strange Pilgrims so we could come down to Light is Like Water, holding each other amidst the lush, foreign English.
The next day we got into Stephen King’s early work – Christine, Salem’s Lot, then Cujo for the two-dollar matinee thrill of it. Clyde moved out the next morning. He left a note, something about the dog barking he couldn’t take anymore, the tire tracks in the kitchen and gunshot holes in the walls. Mark considered inhaling Clyde’s note, but wasn’t sure how handwriting would go down.
That was last week.
Now all the books in the house have blank pages. There are letters on the floor, letters on the walls and ceiling. Sometimes Mark shows off, blowing sentences, paragraphs, entire chapters onto windows, counters, the TV screen. We’ve spent eons in Lippman’s Baltimore, LeHane’s Boston, Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha. We’ve been up Twain’s Mississippi and down Dubus’ Merrimack, Mark and me. I’d been so lonely by myself. It’s amazing what one more person can do.
Mark snorts Hunter S. Thompson to keep us awake. It makes me crazy. He makes me crazy. Seems like five minutes pass and now the sun’s coming up, the two of us just talking and talking all night. He searches the apartment for unused books but there’s nothing left. He tries not to seem nervous. He inhales a golf instruction book and the food section from the morning paper. He makes eggs Florentine while I roll putts into a glass on its side, letters in a million fonts sticking to the ball.
Eating eggs, Mark inhales the nutritional information off the side of the Sunny Delight. We see a factory, vats of painful orange liquid. I push my glass away.
"It’s getting more vivid." I say.
"It is, yeah. And now we’re out of words."
He’s joking of course. There’s always more. I laugh until I see that he’s serious, "What do you mean out?"
"Out. There’s nothing left in the house."
"Well we better go to my place, I…" I stop because he’s looking at me, his head tilted just so. "What?"
"We were there three days ago. Don’t you remember? Tom Clancy? Salman Rushdie?”
Shit, I forgot. Submarines and presidents and the Indo-Pak diaspora and I forgot. God, how long have we been at this? What do we do now? I’m trying not to look like I’m freaking out but must be failing because Mark says, "It’s alright, Angie. You’ll be okay without it."
He’s right of course. I’ll be fine, except, "No I won’t."
"There’s always more words. We can’t stay here forever. Let’s just take a few days. Get ourselves together—"
"Borders." I say, never meaning anything so much.
"What?"
"Borders. By the mall. Let’s go to the bookstore."
* * *
Borders Books fronts La Cienega below 3rd Street, but you enter through the parking lot on Blackburn. The first floor is dominated by a wide central staircase leading up to the CD’s and non-fiction and that’s where we start, Musical Biography, Mark inhaling entire books at a time, his capacity at a new high. Soon enough Jerry Garcia, Syd Vicious, Mick Jagger, John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Sun Ra are on stage by the café, Karen Carpenter on drums, Charles Mingus on bass. Shoppers gather to watch, some laughing, some looking around like there might be a camera hidden nearby. Mark can’t stop giggling, letters pouring from his nose like milk. I grab his hand and we head downstairs to Romance, So What echoing after us, louder than anything through the sound system used by Motley Crue on their Theatre of Pain Tour (’85-’86).
We suck up Romance – not just the words now, but the garish covers as well – and a host of Fabios start athletically copulating with large-breasted women in the café. We suck up Mystery and overweight police detectives start grid-searching Calendars. We suck up the Classics, and the Trojan fleet bursts through the 3rd street wall, the Red Sea flooding in after, covering Religion to the top of the shelves.
A Minotaur descends the stairs, holding its ears against the band, which has segued into Midnight Rambler at top volume. It sees a Romance wench and goes into heat, rutting against the cash wrap.
Things get ugly in Military History. Red Coats take the Magazine racks. Vietnam grunts hump through Children’s Literature. Doughboys don masks against a mustard gas attack by the greeting cards, while a Roman Senator gurgles and dies. A Blackhawk helicopter flattens the Sioux nation with rotor wash before a Snitch sends it crashing into Biography. The explosion is barely audible over the band, now simmering below Martin Luther King, shouting his Promised Land speech spoken-word style. Harry Potter zooms by on a broom, knocking Mark to his knees.
Cops in dark blue LAPD uniforms storm the back door. I think Mark inhaled an OJ book in True Crime, but these might be real cops too. Not that all these others aren’t real as well. Just ask the patrons and employees of Borders Books, who see and feel it all along with Mark and me. It’s real because Mark makes it real. And the more he takes in, the realer it becomes. And life is better lived this way; not trapped in a studio apartment watching television but feeling and seeing and living the world’s finest imaginations.
But this noise and confusion is too much, and Mark has my hand and drags me out, past the Imperial Star Destroyer docked by the exit, preparing to fire upon Dora the Explorer and Boots the Monkey who don’t see it coming. Mark is screaming, “It’s too much! Let’s go! It’s too much!!”
Outside I fight him. I push him away and make for the entrance but he has me and won’t let go. He’s stronger then he looks and I’m worn out from days awake and he shoves me into the car and I bang my head on the door jamb and he locks me in and comes around and starts the car and peels out, leaving behind the dross of a million big thinkers.
* * *
I scrape and claw the whole way home. I scream and cry too but Mark just drives, muttering, “It’s too much. Just like last time. Too much…”
He parks outside his apartment, where I know there are no words, and comes around to get me but I won’t let him drag me inside. Instead I shake him off and march ahead. The world feels barren. The air tastes thin and the night’s black looks grey. Inside I huddle in the bean bag, chin on knees. I try not to think of the words and what’s probably still happening at the bookstore. Or maybe it’s not happening at all. Maybe it fades without Mark. Or maybe it lives forever, all that creation loose in the streets.
Not having it hurts, a physical pain in my side. I’m nauseous and exhausted and furious with Mark for taking it all away.
I tell him so, shouting, “Fuck you!”
He shakes his head and mutters, “Look at yourself,” like I’m embarrassing.
I throw an ashtray at him, the one from the end table. It doesn’t even come close.
He has me by the shoulders suddenly, his face in mine, “LOOK AT YOURSELF!” They stop me, his eyes. There’s a loose t on his chin. “You think I don’t feel the same way?! It can’t be like that though. Not in public. People can’t take it.”
“But I need it.” I put all the pleading I know into the words, “I. Need. It.”
He lets me go, sits back. “I do too.”
Mark walks back into his bedroom then returns a minute later. What’s in his hand blots out everything else, like the stains on your eyes when you’ve looked too long at the sun.
“Oh my god is that—”
It’s a book.
I searched the house hours ago, top to bottom, and found nothing. He must have had it hidden.
I start to babble but he says, “Shhhhhhh.
“Come sit next to me.”
I do. On the couch.
It’s a big book. He lays it across both our laps. The cover shows a wide prairie below a razor blue horizon. The book is called California’s Geology.
“Promised myself I’d never pick this up again,” he says. “But I could never throw it away either.”
He flutters the pages which are thick and make a noise like birds. I see words in dense columns; graphs, charts and photographs. Some pages are already blank from where Mark has done his work.
He finds his place. He knows it from the feel, just where he wants to go. He cracks it wide, the spine creaking. Artwork spans both pages, a cutaway earth in all its colorful stratum. Emblazoned across the top in two inch high letters: EARTHQUAKES: CAUSE AND CONSEQUENCE.
I gasp. Mark is breathing deep, in and out.
I put my arm around his neck. I put my hand against his chest. I feel the breath leave him, then come rushing back in. The pages flutter again and it’s not just some of the letters now, it’s every word and image the book has to offer. I feel them rush into him. I feel them turn him on inside. I feel them shine through.
The ground begins to move beneath us and I can’t help but laugh.
It feels so familiar.
It feels like the big one.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Wife II - Encounter: Meat Counter
Hey.
Hey.
Hey.
What?
Nothin…
OK.
It’s just…Nah. Forget it.
Uh…Sure.
Awright. But just don’t say no. I mean, you can say no, just hear me out first.
Mm Hmm. Ok…
I want - Dude this is hard - You wanna’ fuck my wife?
What? Dude…
Now see there? You answered right away. You’re basing everything on what you think you know. What if my wife’s hot? What if I’m offering money? Huh? What about that?
Dude. Am I, like, on camera? You…You’re filming this right?
Again with the hidden camera! Why the fuck does everybody say that? No! No camera. I just want somebody to fuck my wife. Is that so hard to believe? Don't you...Actually, No. You know what? I think I just took the offer off the table.
The table?
Yep. Table? No. The offer off of it.
Offer off of it?
Yep. Nope.
Dude, we’re on line at the deli counter
(Number 124? 124!)
Yeah. An hour ago I asked a guy in the gym. What’s your point?
No point.
Ah. OK. Now it’s no point.
It’s just weird man. It’s not a question I usually hear at the Deli.
So think on your feet man. Life is opportunity!
Yeah. Well, I think I’m gonna just stay with “no.”
Well, offer off so…
(Number 125? Number 125! No 125)
Oh right. Offer off.
(number 126!)
Excuse me, did he just ask you to fuck his wife?
Who asked you dicklick? Mind your own fuckin’ business!!
Awright, awright. Just asking. Thought I was hearing things.
It’s ok dude. I’m just stressed. Everybody. ..It’s always “No,” quick at the beginning like I’m tryna’ move aluminum siding. MotherFUCKin’ wife’s HOT!
Damn man, how many people you ask.
Nevermind. A lot.
Um, do you have a picture? Of your wife?
Offer over for you fucker. Quick No’in dick. I do have a picture too, but you ain’t seein’
(Number 127?)
Can I see the picture.
I dunno dude, I’m so, just like, drained you know? The whole thing is just….It’s taxing.
Well lemme just get a look. Maybe it’s your lucky day, right?
What you? You fuck my wife?
Well, I have fucked, uh, people.
Yeah, I can see that. You look like you fucked a few people…It’s just that this fuckin guy. So negative. Just leaves a bad taste…
Dude can you just leave me out of it? Dirty shit-bird, it’s in rotten taste to ask people questions like that in the supermarket. “Will you fuck my wife?” Dude. Wow. Just…Wow.
You see this guy. How he is?
Negative.
Right?
Why you gotta hate on his wife man?
(127! Number…)
That’s me. 127 is me! Just a ½ pound of the oven-roast chicken, and a small container of Willow -Tree chicken salad.
You had the Dave’s? It’s really…
I had the Dave’s. The Dave’s sucks. I want the “Tree!”
Jeez sir, I’m just sayin’
Oh don’t get mad at him. This guy over here practically called his wife a slut. I’d ‘ve punched his fucking face off. You gonna let that slip youngster?
Excuse me, Ma’am? First of all the walker is on my toe…
That’s on purpose asshole.
Uh, right. OK.
(all set sir. Turkey and a Small Willow Tree salad)
Thanks, dude. And he did not call my wife a slut ma’am. It’s really. It’s none of your concern…
I made it my concern you ball-licker. I’ll call the cops on you, you pervert.
Hey man, are you gonna let me see that picture? I gotta be at work for 4:00...
Yeah. Yeah, hold on. Matter of fact, gimme your cell number I’ll text you.
What’s yours I’ll text you
You hear me, Sonny? This ain’t over! You woke the dragon!
Owww. Shit. Mother….Lady what the fuck!
Ooooooohh. Dude you ok. Let me help you up.
Help him up again, I’m knockin’ his ass out!!
Lady go away! I think I’m gonna fuck this guy’s wife!
Stop swearing in the market you sick fuck!
Oww! Lady what the fuck!
Oh jeez. Dude I’ll call you if I like what I see. I’m gonna split.. This old bitty might be dead and I got three strikes.
Ok dude. I think my arm’s broken. Were those brass knuckles?
They’re made of steel. But you saw! The lady charged me…
(number 126!)
***
Oh fuck yeah,. Fit to kill, she was. Charged you dude. Wow, look at her nose!!
(Number 129. 129? 129!!)
Cleanup in aisle six!!
dogshitmusic - Memorial Day Funk/Soul Party
Hercules – Aaron Neville
Get Out My Life Woman – Allen Toussaint
Blackwater Gold – African Music Machine
Walkin the Dog – Rufus Thomas
Give Everybody Some – The Bar-Keys
On The Corner (Unedited Master) – Miles Davis
No More Mess (On My Thing) – The New Process
Don’t You Hear Me Calling To Ya – Junior Mame
Just Kissed My Baby – The Meters
The New Boogaloo – Otis Spann
Big Chief – Professor Longhair
Mini-Skirt Minnie – Sir Mack Rice
Babies Makin’ Babies - Sly & the Family Stone
Burnt Biscuits – The Triumphs
Giggin’ Down 103rd – Watts 103rd St Rhythm Band
Them Bones – Eddie Kirk
Funky Tonk – Miles Davis
Tighten Up – Archie Bell & The Drells
Lightshow in the Holy Land
He’d been wandering for weeks, starving himself, hardly drinking. His strength had left him days ago, and he’d fallen into a desperate cycle of mad raving, followed by a bout of mad roaming. Then, his ability to move and rant spent, he’d lay wherever he fell. Drifting in odd, half-waking states, the backs of his eyelids showing, all day and night, marathons of strange alternate worlds. He saw himself in one, dressed in the garb of a 20th century catholic white-collar, preaching to an empty church and the pews went back as far as he could see. In another he saw the seas of the earth, all stirred and roiling with strange creatures turned up from the muck. They walked on earth and drank the firmament till there was nothing left but water. Then he was swimming down there. Lower than anybody had ever been, lower than the sea floor. He reached the bottom and then burrowed in. He broke through crust. He tunneled into solid rock. He came to fire.
Winter was coming to the desert and the nights, already freezing with sharp sustained winds, tested him. Finally, after many days without water, he found it. It was tough to see, running down the crack between two-thousand foot limestone walls and pooling a little bit in a crawlspace some thirty belly-crawling feet into a cave at the base, where the cliffs met the soil in a dry, open canyon. He saw the water glistening at the very top of the walls and knew that it must be gathering somewhere below. He dropped to his knees and then his belly and shimmied in.
He spent the night there, drinking every few minutes and soaking his hands. His feet were a problem. He couldn’t see them but he felt like he had deep, festering sores down there. He had ditched his sandals a week into the trek, long after the damage had been done and done again. A great slash across the top of both feet where the straps had been. A great gash and open bruises on the bottoms, he guessed. Walking with bare feet in the desert, it was a wonder he still had feet. For the first time in weeks he lay, reasonably safe and warm, and actually fell into a restful dreamless sleep.
Deep in the night he woke with a fright. He was sure he’d heard something out by the crawl space entrance. Voices? Was it thieves? Romans sent to kill him? He began to crawl for the outside desert. Halfway there the crawlspace and the whole of the desert outside lit up like daylight. It wasn’t lightning, because it lasted and lasted. A minute went by, Josh made the mouth of his cave, stood up outside. Saw the white, overpowering light. Greater than any bright day. Super-heating the dry air instantly. He knew suddenly, then crawled into his cave again. More determined now to have some semblance of rest. It seemed he’d be having a guest in the morning.
He had just begun his low crawling back to the oasis when he heard the footsteps. He yielded quickly under the rock and turned in time to see a man called Anwar running up the draw at the cave mouth, and then scurrying by. Moving fast, he could see.
In the morning he hydrated, rinsing his feet and hands and drinking a long drink. Then he picked a rock outside the cave and waited for his father to arrive unannounced.
***
Winter was coming to the desert and the nights, already freezing with sharp sustained winds, tested him. Finally, after many days without water, he found it. It was tough to see, running down the crack between two-thousand foot limestone walls and pooling a little bit in a crawlspace some thirty belly-crawling feet into a cave at the base, where the cliffs met the soil in a dry, open canyon. He saw the water glistening at the very top of the walls and knew that it must be gathering somewhere below. He dropped to his knees and then his belly and shimmied in.
He spent the night there, drinking every few minutes and soaking his hands. His feet were a problem. He couldn’t see them but he felt like he had deep, festering sores down there. He had ditched his sandals a week into the trek, long after the damage had been done and done again. A great slash across the top of both feet where the straps had been. A great gash and open bruises on the bottoms, he guessed. Walking with bare feet in the desert, it was a wonder he still had feet. For the first time in weeks he lay, reasonably safe and warm, and actually fell into a restful dreamless sleep.
Deep in the night he woke with a fright. He was sure he’d heard something out by the crawl space entrance. Voices? Was it thieves? Romans sent to kill him? He began to crawl for the outside desert. Halfway there the crawlspace and the whole of the desert outside lit up like daylight. It wasn’t lightning, because it lasted and lasted. A minute went by, Josh made the mouth of his cave, stood up outside. Saw the white, overpowering light. Greater than any bright day. Super-heating the dry air instantly. He knew suddenly, then crawled into his cave again. More determined now to have some semblance of rest. It seemed he’d be having a guest in the morning.
He had just begun his low crawling back to the oasis when he heard the footsteps. He yielded quickly under the rock and turned in time to see a man called Anwar running up the draw at the cave mouth, and then scurrying by. Moving fast, he could see.
In the morning he hydrated, rinsing his feet and hands and drinking a long drink. Then he picked a rock outside the cave and waited for his father to arrive unannounced.
***
Ernie Jr.
Ernest Mott Junior, who’d been a guard in Providence about three weeks, said on his application for employment that he’d had “experience” with fire-arms. This was true, but also deliberately deceptive, as most of Ernie Mott Jr's “experience” had come in the form of shooting, and killing, an unarmed Mexican man, accessory-murdering his entire family, and then efforting a clumsy cover-up of the whole affair.
Roslinda and Jesus Diaz had attempted an illegal crossing of the Mexican / American border fourteen years ago in 1995. They paid a man named Coursin $376 for a hand-drawn map of a safe, hidden route between Odessa Texas and the Mexican high northern dessert. They traveled light, having been relieved of most valuables during a pre-flight garage sale. The Diazs were, however, a family of five, herding along not only their children - Javier and Ilsa, five and six respectively - but also a 40-pound sack of laundry, Roslinda's 76 year old mother Inez, and a pet parakeet named "Jeeto". The going was difficult, the path hidden and indistinct in the darkness. The poor Diaz family, exhausted, starving, and confused from the complicated map, popped out of the dessert almost a mile away from the unguarded hollow through which (Coursin's map indicated) they could pass safely into the United States. Searching in the dark to get back on course, Jesus Diaz ended up leading his family to violent death in the shape of the Odessa, TX redoubt of one Ernie Mott, Sr.
Ernie Senior had been away that weekend, leaving his only son - Ernie Jr. - house-sitting the palatial home base. The house was an adventure unto itself, with a sauna/spa/popl setup, tennis and basketball courts, and three well-stocked wet bars. Ern Jr.- perhaps knowing he'd never be able to handle the job by himself - called a few friends to help out. Jr.'s friends - solely in the interest of thorough, detilail-oriented housesitting - had procured a few hookers and a lot of cocaine to help them help Ernie Jr. The music was loud, the clothing sparse and the partiers well-geeked by the time poor Jesus Diaz stumbled from the tree line of the Mott domain.
Motion-triggered floodlights bathed Mr. Diaz in shiny whiteness, blinding him momentarily. Ernie Jr. had been fucking one of the hookers outside, (because he liked to see the stars as he fucked) and saw Diaz emerge from his brush. Ern Jr. kept right on fucking, reaching for his pants and his Colt .380 just as Jesus sprinted for the shadows across the sea of well-kept Texas. Junior reached the pants at the same time Jesus reached the shadows, and Jr. - still pounding away - emptied six chambers in into darkness, partly in frustration, but partly because it felt cool to fuck and shoot at the same time. The funny thing is, Ernie didn’t miss, connecting with four of six hollow-point rounds and killing Jesus Diaz dead before his corpse hit the ground.
Now here comes Roslinda, sweating and running, swearing in Spanish, but not for Jesus. Instead, She goes booking across the lawn after Ern Jr. And his hooker. The girl is still getting fucked, but she's a Tex Mex whore and it's not her first rodeo. The whole way, she sees the crazy Mexican bitch ridin’ down on her and keeps on bone-dancing. She waits until the last second, just before Roslinda Diaz makes contact, the whore rolls, ducks, thrusts, and surprises the Mexican bitch with a low tackle. Down they both go, spitting and yowling like feral cats.
Meanwhile the other find the Diaz kids cryin’ under the full moon. Now they got 'em all tied up, deciding what might work, when that same crazed hooker who downed Roslinda says:
"fuck this shit"
and goes the fuck off. She went in the kitchen, grabbed a big tin funnel, and shoved it down the Mex bitch’s throat through teeth, tongue, and everything else. Before anybody can stop her, she’s got a big handle of Drano from the cleaning closet, and she’s pouring it on Roslinda, tryna get it in that funnel with the Mexican still choking and hollering and convulsing.
Well that was about the cruelest thing Ernie, Jr. had ever seen. He’d never meant for things to get this out of hand. All he’d wanted to do was to fuck a hooker while shooting an invading Mexican family. Watching Roslinda screaming and burning like that drove Ern Jr. to a very poorly timed attack of consciousness. He put Roslinda in his car, her family still crying, and tied up in his kitchen, and drove her dissolving ass 78 miles to he nearest hospital. She had shit and blood and Draino leaking out of every pore, and she about ruined the interior in Ern Sr.'s new Lexus.
They got to the hospital and the girl was dead, her face and head half turned to soup in the Lex. Ern Jr. was a mess, physically and otherwise, and he told the hospital the whole sordid story, including that he shot a guy, and the psycho bitches still having the Mex family tied up at the ranch. For three days the Texas Rangers and Odessa PD combed Ernie Sr.’s grounds, coming up with the dead, hacked up body’s of the two children and Jesus, and the dead hacked up bodies of the two hookers, and then two more older hacked up bodies that nobody knew shit about, and aren’t really part of the story. Ernie Sr. remained on VK, but his lawyers sat down with all agencies concerned and hammered out some terms they could all live with (excepting - of course - Roslinda, and her family, and the dead whores). The specifics aren’t important but the upshot is that Ernie, Jr. had to come north and start fresh.
***
And he did just that. Ernie left Odessa the very next day. For a guy whose had his share of weird luck and bad breaks, youd've thought the sailing would’ve set up smoother for ‘ol Ern Jr. But youd've been wrong: Three years, almost to the day, that he and Roz Diaz had crossed paths, here was Ern, dying of drunk Drano, leaking rancid fluid from holes both old and new. far from home, at night, and nobody knew shit.
Ernie was surprised: The pain didn’t seem to throb or ebb and flow in any way. Instead his entire being seemed to have been re-calibrated to ONLY be concerned with pain. A decaying pain, a pain that bellied some terrible progress deep inside him. The only movements his limbs would commit to were the jerking, death-throw spasms smashing through his body every few seconds. His back was arched all the way, and he’d thrown both arms out of the sockets early on. He was bent and contorted as far as his body would twist. Still the pain came stronger. He felt organs, bones, complex structures liquefying. Fluid was running in buckets out of every pore, every orifice. It was seeping out of his ass and eating the flesh from the outside in, and still the pain worsened. He had a psychotic break, totally shut down everything not involved in pain. For six hours he melted and twisted and burned and prayed for death. His assailants had underlings throw his remains into the Providence river. Gladiator Assassin perimeter security found him just before sunrise. They dug a hole, buried him still twitching.
There had been too much drama all day and all week, they decided. The press didn’t need to know about every fucker who shot their way into GA. This weekend there would be bodies. This was the first weekend Gladiator Assassin started going out live to the world.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Senior Moment
As he got closer to the Autumn Pine’s front doors, he noticed that, for the first time in his experience, the staff had apparently left the front door unguarded. The little office behind the plexi usually populated by a particularly lame CNA named Hannah. Every single engagement of any kind that he’d shared with the girl was immediately added to a list of awful things that he, Jeff, had been forced to deal with. He developed each list during the course of his work-week, scribbling ideas into a miniature, college ruled notebook. His “Idea Book” he called it. 1000 people had visited his blog in the past 365 days, and he was vociferously proud of each and every single one. Hannah had enjoyed a rising popularity in the blog of Jeff’s life, as he’d begun to secretly to record his conversations with her, and then upload them, and stream them from his blog along with the transcript - texts he’d also posted. It was cruel, sort of, and he knew it. But she was such a bitch. So mean to everybody, that Jeff felt there was some karmic debts at stake, and he the self-appointed bill collector. Faithful servant of a greater good.
But today she’d vacated her post which was way out of character. This, in concert with the way the electric-eye sliding doors were stuck open about two feet apart, the way they’d look, he thought,(at the same time chuckling over the absurdity of it) if somebody had forced their way in. As if anybody would waste the effort trying to get into a place that smelled like AP
He came to the nurse’s station in the middle of the floor and found it completely empty. The door open was one thing, but nobody home in the middle of the floor in the middle of the day? Just as he stepped away from the station he made the connection: Thursday AM: Movie day. Whole place usually went if it was a good one. Today - he saw - was a good one. He picked a one - sheet headed by the words MOVIE SCHEDULE off the deserted common desk in the hallway. On The Waterfront had been the first entry of the day, but somebody had crossed it out, shoe-horning The Deer Hunter into the margin and rainbowing it over the redacted Brando classic. The Deer Hunter was Jeff’s favorite movie hands down. He forgot about his grandmother. He forgot his infant son stuck in the his locked car. If he acted fast he’d be able to catch most of Deer Hunter's three long hours, begining his viewing well before the awesome Russian Roulette scene. Just then, a blop of what looked like wet red clay, landed dead center of the movie list. It splattered, and the blowback had almost completely covered, the schedule pad. Jeff grabbed at it but it was slippery, wriggling out of his spasm-wracked fingers.
Greaaaaate. Jusssss….
And he died, crumpled to the floor still clutching the pad. Jeff’s legs did a funny little twitch dance as the last smidge of electricity bolted through him. The gigantic cop who’d shot him in the back of the head smiled at the pathetic little movements, and soon he was belly laughing like a loon at the corpse he’d just produced. He was still laughing as he raised the three-foot sledgehammer overhead, and….
Brought
it
down. (smack/splat!)
A strange, desperate sounding laugh, and there wasn’t a soul around to hear it.
But today she’d vacated her post which was way out of character. This, in concert with the way the electric-eye sliding doors were stuck open about two feet apart, the way they’d look, he thought,(at the same time chuckling over the absurdity of it) if somebody had forced their way in. As if anybody would waste the effort trying to get into a place that smelled like AP
He came to the nurse’s station in the middle of the floor and found it completely empty. The door open was one thing, but nobody home in the middle of the floor in the middle of the day? Just as he stepped away from the station he made the connection: Thursday AM: Movie day. Whole place usually went if it was a good one. Today - he saw - was a good one. He picked a one - sheet headed by the words MOVIE SCHEDULE off the deserted common desk in the hallway. On The Waterfront had been the first entry of the day, but somebody had crossed it out, shoe-horning The Deer Hunter into the margin and rainbowing it over the redacted Brando classic. The Deer Hunter was Jeff’s favorite movie hands down. He forgot about his grandmother. He forgot his infant son stuck in the his locked car. If he acted fast he’d be able to catch most of Deer Hunter's three long hours, begining his viewing well before the awesome Russian Roulette scene. Just then, a blop of what looked like wet red clay, landed dead center of the movie list. It splattered, and the blowback had almost completely covered, the schedule pad. Jeff grabbed at it but it was slippery, wriggling out of his spasm-wracked fingers.
Greaaaaate. Jusssss….
And he died, crumpled to the floor still clutching the pad. Jeff’s legs did a funny little twitch dance as the last smidge of electricity bolted through him. The gigantic cop who’d shot him in the back of the head smiled at the pathetic little movements, and soon he was belly laughing like a loon at the corpse he’d just produced. He was still laughing as he raised the three-foot sledgehammer overhead, and….
Brought
it
down. (smack/splat!)
A strange, desperate sounding laugh, and there wasn’t a soul around to hear it.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Out of the Machine
Cowboy Boots are no kind of thing to get kicked with. Trust me, I’ve taken a fairly complete sample of most footwear, and from both sides too. Even in the Marines, riding the very tip of George Senior’s Desert Storm toward Saddam‘s Bagdad, I longed to switch out my canvas and steel reinforced rubber combat Desert Eagles for my warn-ass Tony’s back home. Don’t get me wrong now: kick a guy in the head with U.S. Army-Issue and he’ll probably stay down for a while. But you get a good one with the eagle-beak point of the cowboy leather and you might as well be taking a full rip with a ball-peen. Tissues will be exposed. You might see twitching. The last thing I remember, before waking up in an astringent-smelling pitch-dark (Fuckers put me in the cleaning closet, was three pairs of pointy, leather cowboy boots dancing a nasty Bojangles on my neck, and on my face. One pair had a steel tip. I felt around my body in the dark, and stinging, ragged holes manifest like mutant Braille under my fingers. They sing out when I touch: My shoulder, my stomach, my legs. Everything is coated with a slick, smelly substance. I feel around the wound in my abdomen for a moment and accidentaly stick two fingers into my stomache. That’s how I discover that the fingers on are broken.
***
My best friend when I was in elementary school was a guy named Jimmie Tenny. Jimmie was a roly-poly chap, but athletic. Since we became friends right around 5th grade, we ended up with a lot of shared first times. You know, the type of bullshit that adults, and even older kids don’t really give a shit about, but what seem, like, apocalyptic at the jump. Tenny and I didn’t have a Lone Ranger / Tonto type thing either. We were both vicious jd’s trying, openly, to pull as many chains as possible. We drank booze for the first time together, and a lot of times after that as well, we broke into a house together for the fist time (graffiti-ed the SHIT out of the finished basement walls and then bolted, only to get caught immediately just coming from the crime-scene), If we didn’t quite get laid for the first time together then we certainly talked enough about it. We challenged each other, like a Bird / Magic type of gig.
Then came summer. Last week of school, to be exact. Summer 1985. That’s when I lost him.
Or maybe “lost” isn’t the right term there. I mean, I knew where he was. Jimmie was in his house. All the time. Listening to the noise of his mother crying, and planning for the eventual return of his father, Joseph. Dude went out for cigarettes on a Sunday in November, right around the time when the department stores are switching out skeletons and ghosts for elves, wreathes and Santa. Dude just got an idea, and fucking ran with it.
After that, Jimmie and his mom and his brother were just figments. I’d see them sometimes, moving like Zombies through town, slack-jawed at the carport of Polk Junior High. And I remember thinking that Jimmie hated his dad, and his mom did too. Dude was a fucking jerk. So why the Zombie faces? And why so fixated on a possible return? Cause they were. I mean, if you could get the kid talking at all, that’s what he wanted to talk about. The misery. After a while it just got fucking unbearable.
But before I got even fifty miles into my escape, it started hitting me. It was bad. I actually had to pull over. The facts: I left as a direct result of an event, an accident, that I alone was the cause of. Jimmie’s Dad, as far as he told anybody, didn’t have any such trigger to his AWOL bid. I hope my wife recognizes that, and I hope in time my children do too. But looking at it without prejudice, all I can see is my wife and kid wandering from room to room in their empty, miserable house. The misery, the confusion, and those awful, tear-burned eyes. All my fault.
***
I hear voices outside the door, along with quick strides and the noise of four cowboy boot soles tramping past on, what was that, cement? Wood floor? I could make out this conversation as they went passed.
Well where did you put him?
The closet we just passed.
Two of the boot-noises stop, and two keep going for a few steps, and then they stop too.
That closet? This one right here?
The steps that stopped first are walking back toward me now. I hear the other guy start back as well. He’s playing apologist, and you can hear in his voice that he’s scared.
Well, where was I supposed to put him? Under a tarp on the loading dock? Parade him around the warehouse a few times. Boss I…
No it’s all right Denny, you did good. You did good. You took his I.D. and such? I’m gonna’ send the boys to plant him up near the orchard in back.
Yeah I did. I got ‘em. Actually no. No I didn’t. Lemme just…
Yeah why don’t you just…
And then the door opened.
***
My wife says: We’re ordering. Kids want pizza.
And that’s what it all turned on. Just that little proclamation, and life, the world, people…Everything there is altered forever.
How long?
Go now. Go to the ATM. They don’t swipe cards.
Mm hmm.
And hurry! The quicker you go the quicker you’ll get back and we can put ‘em to bed.
I was in the car with the stereo bombing not three minutes after her last word, “bed”. In retrospect, I should’ve slowed down.
Before I went to the ATM I needed a little weed-time. The trees that November were famously delicious and heady. The protocol: three hits for every four hours of consciousness. Then pick up the pizza, and head home for a CGI kids movie. Typical for us on a Friday, and awesome. Instead of puffing in the car outside the Kingston Pizza, I took a detour to drive around a bit. I headed for the Fox Ridge, a neighborhood adjacent to mine. I’d planned to smoke, and see the gigantic houses of people who lived not three minutes from me in my 1300 square foot castle. It had just rained, and I had Frank Zappa pounding out of the stereo.
The trees I had were crazy. Even for a grizzled old stoner like me, this is some strong plant. I’m riding now, maybe fifteen-twenty miles an hour. Partly because it’s practically my neighborhood, like, my own kids are going to be playing on these blocks within a few years. Mostly though, I was going slow cause I was driving with my knees. Breaking off a tree-nugget to stuff in the one-hitter. I’d missed my turn to get out of Fox Ridge and now I was driving even slower, trying to decide weather to turn around or press on and do the whole loop again. I saw a few kids and on the lawn to my right and up about three-hundred yards and made my mind up to stop and bust a U. The idea never went honored though, because right then I took a pull of the glass weed-pipe. I slowed almost to a complete stop, put a flame to the trees, and inhaled, still just barely crawling along in the big blue Buick Century, Presidential. As the pipe came free from my mouth, two things happened. The first, was that a sizable chunk of burning sour diesel came blasting out of the thing. I watched it in slow motion as it paused at the apex of its flight. The second thing, was that my right foot shifted back over and feathered a bit. The Buick Presidential accelerated. I remember the last cogent thought that came cranking through my skull: the kids. And I looked up.
No kids. I was about 50 feet away from their yard and they were nowhere to be seen. I registered this, and then the spilled weed started branding itself into my right testicle. The pain was sudden, but there was to be no slow-developing discomfort, Instead my entire mid section began to cry out in agony. I slapped hard at the thing, and a caught my own balls with the swing. Fetched’em a good one too. Part of the burning thing burrowed deeper under my sack and continued to blaze a trail of burnt nut-flesh, while another section bounced up into my left eye. The ball-swat started to bark and my mid-section was flipping and contracting. On top of that I was blinded in both eyes and in terrible, inescapable pain. It didn’t even register - not right
away anyway - that the car’s left front tire had run over something. The driver’s side window, however, was open, and before the rear tire went over the bump I heard a strange thing from directly below. I heard the voice of a little girl exclaim a breathy…
Ooooh!!
…Then, when the rear tire rose and fell, I realized what had happened. I punched the brakes, opened my door. Bracing a little for what I knew was there. I stared for a while that seemed like a year. And then I left.
***
There they were, looking down at me. I tried to say something smart-ass (Can either you gents direct me back to the freeway?), but nothing came out. The guys looked disgusted, so I must have been a site. My broken fingered hand was still stuck in my stomach and both areas were starting to ache and throb. Neither guy said anything for a while. The guy who was obviously not the boss said:
Well there he is, just like a told you.
Mm Hmm. Ok. Ok. Ok. Let me think.
When he said this he ran both hands over the top of his head and down the back side, revealing a goofy looking widows peak, almost on the very top of his skull. Again, I tried to crack wise and failed.
Man what’s with his eyes?
What?
Well they’re open. That’s creepy.
The Boss reached down, closed my eyes manually.
There, ya fuckin’ faggot, better?
***
I was deep into Connecticut before another complete thought dared enter my seething mind. The whole way from the scene of the crime to the highway to the interstate was conducted with the deliberate efficiency of auto-pilot. Now though, with only greenway visible for miles on both sides of I-95 Southbound, I began to deal with the options. My life - I thought - was over. That much was a fact, and I made sure I damn well knew it before I moved on. The wife, the kids, the house, the cars. Over. All of it. I had our bank card on me to hit up the ATM. I had fifteen dollars to my name. I hadn’t picked up the pizza. Following all that, I thought I’d better pull off and fix all that needed fixing. I hit an ATM in the Stop and Shop of Norwich CT, and then headed for the prepared foods. I spent 84 dollars on things I thought I might need. I was underway again, looking for a gas station on my side of the road, when the Radio came with an emergency alert. They interrupted the Foreigner song “Urgent,” and I had to laugh. C’mon! Ya gotta admit that’s weird right?
***
My best friend when I was in elementary school was a guy named Jimmie Tenny. Jimmie was a roly-poly chap, but athletic. Since we became friends right around 5th grade, we ended up with a lot of shared first times. You know, the type of bullshit that adults, and even older kids don’t really give a shit about, but what seem, like, apocalyptic at the jump. Tenny and I didn’t have a Lone Ranger / Tonto type thing either. We were both vicious jd’s trying, openly, to pull as many chains as possible. We drank booze for the first time together, and a lot of times after that as well, we broke into a house together for the fist time (graffiti-ed the SHIT out of the finished basement walls and then bolted, only to get caught immediately just coming from the crime-scene), If we didn’t quite get laid for the first time together then we certainly talked enough about it. We challenged each other, like a Bird / Magic type of gig.
Then came summer. Last week of school, to be exact. Summer 1985. That’s when I lost him.
Or maybe “lost” isn’t the right term there. I mean, I knew where he was. Jimmie was in his house. All the time. Listening to the noise of his mother crying, and planning for the eventual return of his father, Joseph. Dude went out for cigarettes on a Sunday in November, right around the time when the department stores are switching out skeletons and ghosts for elves, wreathes and Santa. Dude just got an idea, and fucking ran with it.
After that, Jimmie and his mom and his brother were just figments. I’d see them sometimes, moving like Zombies through town, slack-jawed at the carport of Polk Junior High. And I remember thinking that Jimmie hated his dad, and his mom did too. Dude was a fucking jerk. So why the Zombie faces? And why so fixated on a possible return? Cause they were. I mean, if you could get the kid talking at all, that’s what he wanted to talk about. The misery. After a while it just got fucking unbearable.
But before I got even fifty miles into my escape, it started hitting me. It was bad. I actually had to pull over. The facts: I left as a direct result of an event, an accident, that I alone was the cause of. Jimmie’s Dad, as far as he told anybody, didn’t have any such trigger to his AWOL bid. I hope my wife recognizes that, and I hope in time my children do too. But looking at it without prejudice, all I can see is my wife and kid wandering from room to room in their empty, miserable house. The misery, the confusion, and those awful, tear-burned eyes. All my fault.
***
I hear voices outside the door, along with quick strides and the noise of four cowboy boot soles tramping past on, what was that, cement? Wood floor? I could make out this conversation as they went passed.
Well where did you put him?
The closet we just passed.
Two of the boot-noises stop, and two keep going for a few steps, and then they stop too.
That closet? This one right here?
The steps that stopped first are walking back toward me now. I hear the other guy start back as well. He’s playing apologist, and you can hear in his voice that he’s scared.
Well, where was I supposed to put him? Under a tarp on the loading dock? Parade him around the warehouse a few times. Boss I…
No it’s all right Denny, you did good. You did good. You took his I.D. and such? I’m gonna’ send the boys to plant him up near the orchard in back.
Yeah I did. I got ‘em. Actually no. No I didn’t. Lemme just…
Yeah why don’t you just…
And then the door opened.
***
My wife says: We’re ordering. Kids want pizza.
And that’s what it all turned on. Just that little proclamation, and life, the world, people…Everything there is altered forever.
How long?
Go now. Go to the ATM. They don’t swipe cards.
Mm hmm.
And hurry! The quicker you go the quicker you’ll get back and we can put ‘em to bed.
I was in the car with the stereo bombing not three minutes after her last word, “bed”. In retrospect, I should’ve slowed down.
Before I went to the ATM I needed a little weed-time. The trees that November were famously delicious and heady. The protocol: three hits for every four hours of consciousness. Then pick up the pizza, and head home for a CGI kids movie. Typical for us on a Friday, and awesome. Instead of puffing in the car outside the Kingston Pizza, I took a detour to drive around a bit. I headed for the Fox Ridge, a neighborhood adjacent to mine. I’d planned to smoke, and see the gigantic houses of people who lived not three minutes from me in my 1300 square foot castle. It had just rained, and I had Frank Zappa pounding out of the stereo.
The trees I had were crazy. Even for a grizzled old stoner like me, this is some strong plant. I’m riding now, maybe fifteen-twenty miles an hour. Partly because it’s practically my neighborhood, like, my own kids are going to be playing on these blocks within a few years. Mostly though, I was going slow cause I was driving with my knees. Breaking off a tree-nugget to stuff in the one-hitter. I’d missed my turn to get out of Fox Ridge and now I was driving even slower, trying to decide weather to turn around or press on and do the whole loop again. I saw a few kids and on the lawn to my right and up about three-hundred yards and made my mind up to stop and bust a U. The idea never went honored though, because right then I took a pull of the glass weed-pipe. I slowed almost to a complete stop, put a flame to the trees, and inhaled, still just barely crawling along in the big blue Buick Century, Presidential. As the pipe came free from my mouth, two things happened. The first, was that a sizable chunk of burning sour diesel came blasting out of the thing. I watched it in slow motion as it paused at the apex of its flight. The second thing, was that my right foot shifted back over and feathered a bit. The Buick Presidential accelerated. I remember the last cogent thought that came cranking through my skull: the kids. And I looked up.
No kids. I was about 50 feet away from their yard and they were nowhere to be seen. I registered this, and then the spilled weed started branding itself into my right testicle. The pain was sudden, but there was to be no slow-developing discomfort, Instead my entire mid section began to cry out in agony. I slapped hard at the thing, and a caught my own balls with the swing. Fetched’em a good one too. Part of the burning thing burrowed deeper under my sack and continued to blaze a trail of burnt nut-flesh, while another section bounced up into my left eye. The ball-swat started to bark and my mid-section was flipping and contracting. On top of that I was blinded in both eyes and in terrible, inescapable pain. It didn’t even register - not right
away anyway - that the car’s left front tire had run over something. The driver’s side window, however, was open, and before the rear tire went over the bump I heard a strange thing from directly below. I heard the voice of a little girl exclaim a breathy…
Ooooh!!
…Then, when the rear tire rose and fell, I realized what had happened. I punched the brakes, opened my door. Bracing a little for what I knew was there. I stared for a while that seemed like a year. And then I left.
***
There they were, looking down at me. I tried to say something smart-ass (Can either you gents direct me back to the freeway?), but nothing came out. The guys looked disgusted, so I must have been a site. My broken fingered hand was still stuck in my stomach and both areas were starting to ache and throb. Neither guy said anything for a while. The guy who was obviously not the boss said:
Well there he is, just like a told you.
Mm Hmm. Ok. Ok. Ok. Let me think.
When he said this he ran both hands over the top of his head and down the back side, revealing a goofy looking widows peak, almost on the very top of his skull. Again, I tried to crack wise and failed.
Man what’s with his eyes?
What?
Well they’re open. That’s creepy.
The Boss reached down, closed my eyes manually.
There, ya fuckin’ faggot, better?
***
I was deep into Connecticut before another complete thought dared enter my seething mind. The whole way from the scene of the crime to the highway to the interstate was conducted with the deliberate efficiency of auto-pilot. Now though, with only greenway visible for miles on both sides of I-95 Southbound, I began to deal with the options. My life - I thought - was over. That much was a fact, and I made sure I damn well knew it before I moved on. The wife, the kids, the house, the cars. Over. All of it. I had our bank card on me to hit up the ATM. I had fifteen dollars to my name. I hadn’t picked up the pizza. Following all that, I thought I’d better pull off and fix all that needed fixing. I hit an ATM in the Stop and Shop of Norwich CT, and then headed for the prepared foods. I spent 84 dollars on things I thought I might need. I was underway again, looking for a gas station on my side of the road, when the Radio came with an emergency alert. They interrupted the Foreigner song “Urgent,” and I had to laugh. C’mon! Ya gotta admit that’s weird right?
Grandmother
The last thing he wanted was to reek of weed. That’s why he’d smoked before he left the house and not right before going into the building. Also, his one year old son was in the car with him. He guessed that his wife wouldn’t approve of his puffing in the same car as his infant child, or even within the supposed range of his limited, one-year-old sight, probably. Erin, as a rule, didn’t approve of much, but at the top of her “things Jeff might do to piss me off" list had to be getting high in the presence of his kids, followed, he’d assume, by smoking weed in the house. With any weed smoking at all trailing, but still very much in the race. His wife had limitless problems with him, but the most important ones always seemed to involve getting stoned. And that fact - in turn - just about guaran-damn-teed that he’d have to smoke weed four times a day just to deal with her actively not wanting him to smoke it. Her disapproval also forced him to be shady and sneaky about it, smoking at times and places that would ordinarily be considered, at best, unsuited to the task, and at worst, foolishly risky. The irony wasn’t lost on Jeff that somewhere on that same list was lying and that it was her very disapproval that forced him to lie about certain things. And so: The sneaky puffing in the basement while his son lie squirming in his crib, the vigorous scrubbing and re-scrubbing of hands, the application of fragrant hand-sanitizer, the application of Visine. All this just to get stoned enough to be mentally limber enough to spend the better part of two hours visiting with his grandmother at Autumn Pines - the uber-expensive and exclusive “Senior Citizen’s Community” to which Jeff’s mom (and her daughter) Judy had had her exiled. He breathed into his hand and quick-sniffed at it: nothing but Altoid. He was ready.
He got out of the car in a hurry, as if any hesitation at all might somehow pollute his mission. He was only half-way across the ocean of asphalt that was the A&P parking lot before he realized that he’d forgotten his son in the car. He reared up, snapped his finger’s and said, “ahhp!” and did a sort of pirouette, as if to convey his error (and it’s lack of import) to unseen, but very important observers. Along the way he started patting at his pockets looking for his keys.
Of course, the keys were in the car. He’d left them there in the ignition in the kind of frustrating casual fuck up reserved for only the most faithful daily weed smoker. Rather than guide his body through the simple steps of key-retainment, his brain had merely ignored the keys altogether, assuming that they’d be all right wherever they were. This was - sadly - not the case. As he surveyed the scene: the car, the child, the long, twilight shadows of a New England November, he became mired in a sort of profound THC-assisted stasis. He stared and stared at what he’d wrought for minute upon frozen minute. He thought about how definite it all was, how concrete and irrevocable, and how wrong. He considered various solutions: the calling of the wife, the calling of AAA, the talking-to of his son (who had fallen asleep), and finally, the smashing of a window in hopes of gaining entrance.
But which window, and how to smash it? The parking lots were oceanic in size, but surrounding each one was nothing but well-manicured lawn. Rocks and sticks were - presumably - shipped out by a grounds-crew well-suited to the work. He saw nothing anywhere that would help him. The boy, over this long period of mental trail and error, had started to stir and finally opened his eyes in what was now very much half-light.
Jeff was starting to feel desperate. His virtual freezing-up had lead to a real-life freezing and he could see the boy wasn’t layered up enough to be comfortable. In a few minutes he’d realize that he was freezing as well, and then the crying would begin. It was only after he’d made up his mind to call AAA that he realized his cell phone was sitting on the center console of the car, locked up tight. He broke for the A&P entrance-vestibule at a dead run.
He got out of the car in a hurry, as if any hesitation at all might somehow pollute his mission. He was only half-way across the ocean of asphalt that was the A&P parking lot before he realized that he’d forgotten his son in the car. He reared up, snapped his finger’s and said, “ahhp!” and did a sort of pirouette, as if to convey his error (and it’s lack of import) to unseen, but very important observers. Along the way he started patting at his pockets looking for his keys.
Of course, the keys were in the car. He’d left them there in the ignition in the kind of frustrating casual fuck up reserved for only the most faithful daily weed smoker. Rather than guide his body through the simple steps of key-retainment, his brain had merely ignored the keys altogether, assuming that they’d be all right wherever they were. This was - sadly - not the case. As he surveyed the scene: the car, the child, the long, twilight shadows of a New England November, he became mired in a sort of profound THC-assisted stasis. He stared and stared at what he’d wrought for minute upon frozen minute. He thought about how definite it all was, how concrete and irrevocable, and how wrong. He considered various solutions: the calling of the wife, the calling of AAA, the talking-to of his son (who had fallen asleep), and finally, the smashing of a window in hopes of gaining entrance.
But which window, and how to smash it? The parking lots were oceanic in size, but surrounding each one was nothing but well-manicured lawn. Rocks and sticks were - presumably - shipped out by a grounds-crew well-suited to the work. He saw nothing anywhere that would help him. The boy, over this long period of mental trail and error, had started to stir and finally opened his eyes in what was now very much half-light.
Jeff was starting to feel desperate. His virtual freezing-up had lead to a real-life freezing and he could see the boy wasn’t layered up enough to be comfortable. In a few minutes he’d realize that he was freezing as well, and then the crying would begin. It was only after he’d made up his mind to call AAA that he realized his cell phone was sitting on the center console of the car, locked up tight. He broke for the A&P entrance-vestibule at a dead run.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Arrival
When Todd woke up things were already happening. He kept his eyes at narrow slits and watched it all unfold for a little while. In addition to the nurse (Kristen, was it?) he remembered from their arrival hours before, there were at least four others. All of them to-and-fro-ing, checking the beeping, flashing instruments that surrounded his wife’s bed and offering perfunctory encouragement.
You’re doin’ fine, hon.
Almost time to push, hon.
Epidural on the way, hon.
When he heard that he almost closed his eyes again. The prospect of answering to an enraged, in-pain Susan did not thrill and delight. He would wait. Hide behind his eye lids until the man arrived with the drugs. He felt himself drifting back to the comforting oblivion of a much needed rest. He’d been dreaming of the desert.
Your husband’s awake honey, I see his eyes moving under there.
Yeah, he’s been awake for the past ten - auuuughh - minutes. TODD!
He faked it:
Uh…Huh…wh-what?
Can you wake up? Time for me to have a fuckin’ baby!
***
By the time the drugs arrived it was almost time to push. The doctor , a quick little man with a weird scar across his nose, had already been in, checking and rooting around his wife’s swollen birth-anatomy and introducing himself to the couple without looking up, or breaking from his fidgeting.
I’m Doctor Morse. You guys can call me Jamie. And WHOA! What is THAT!
Todd and Susan both snapped to and all three nurses in the room stopped. Looked, but Dr. Morse was already smiling.
Always works that one, huh? I got you good, huh? Todd? You guys were freaking out! Am I right? ‘my right? Awright.
Nobody said anything but the nurses were flashing “oh you joker” faces and getting on with their work. Todd realized the joke, but felt he was being fucked with and still felt like punching the Doctor in the face. The Doctor looked like he wanted to crawl up into Susan to get away. Another doctor, this one toting what looked to be an airline drinks-dolly, rescued him. Morse making a big circus to distract from his failed attempt at mirth.
There you are! Good! Here’s Jerry with the epidural now. Hurts a bit right now, no?
(nod) (grunt) Uhh huh…(grunt)
Alright then, I leave you in his hands, and when I come back in about (he made an exaggerated look at a phantom wrist watch) half past my sleeve!
He looked around in mock pride then confusion:
Nothin? Huh? Wow…Tough crowd.
He wandered off.
It was almost eleven o’clock. They’d been there almost nine hours. Contractions had started an hour before that, so they’d been at it for almost a half a day. Their first, four years ago, had taken only five hours from hospital drive to placental expulsion. Todd noted all this as he mock stretched and yawned. Nobody was paying attention though, cause the epidural-guy was explaining how awesome the narcotics he brought would make his wife feel. Todd listened with jealousy. Hospitals, he believed, should drug both mother and father. The experience warranted intoxication enough for two.
His wife swooned a little as an anesthetizing flood of painkiller doused her blood/brain barrier. She said:
I forgot how good that feels.
The epidural guy said nothing, displaying a confident smirk.
***
Ok, where are we?
The Doc was back, there were little flecks of blood and fluid on his white coat, and his brow was glistening. At least one baby had come into the world while he’d been away. He moved to a spot between Todd’s wife’s legs, spread wide and suspended in stirrups. He reached and put a finger into the open birth canal and said.
Wow. It’s not a whole lot more than before. Nurse, can I see you for a minute?
They walked outside. Todd caught little snatches of what they were saying out there. He caught the word “section” and heard the nurse say: “two more hours then”. He stroked his wife’s head and she looked up at him with contented epidural eyes.
I love you, honey. Please don’t leave me in here.
Never baby.
He said it and moved off to the window to check the view. Just when he did that his wife cried out.
Ooo! I think I need to push!!!
He ran back to her and assumed his cheer-leading position at the foot of the bed. Something was happening, because now it looked as if the whole bundle she’d been carrying had moved down a foot and had come to a stop just above her pelvic brim. Her vulva was all swollen and it looked like a little grey head was starting to show itself.
Push honey. Time to push now.
The Doctor came sliding in, two nurses followed close. Now it was a party. Five strangers gazing into his wife with great anticipation and concern. The doctor instructs the nurses, sending them running to get mysterious implements with weird medical names. He turned back to Todd’s wife, running fingers in and out of places people didn’t usually touch. He motioned Todd to come closer, told him:
OK, see here…
He made circular finger motion around his wife’s (now very swollen) lower abdomen.
She’s been riding low now for a few hours, and usually we like to see more movement than we’ve seen so far. We’ll give it a little while longer, maybe forty five minutes, but then we’re going to have to start talking about a c-section. For now though, let’s try to get a bit of pushing from her see if we can move it down…
It was right at that moment, that Todd noticed the bee. The bee, it was plainly a bee, yellow, and black striped and as big as a walnut, was crawling up toward them on his wife’s thigh. Todd had watched it come ducking out, making itself flat against his unborn child’s forehead and his wife vaginal wall.
The doctor didn’t see the second, and Todd now saw a much larger bee crawl out of Susan. He took a few wild swipes at the first and stumbled as the bee dodged him and broke for the door. He was just regaining his balance, turning his gaze back towards Susan when the second bee landed on the Morse’s nose. Todd said:
Whoa! Doc, it’s on your…
FUCK!!! AUGGGGGGH!
Face.
Fuckin’ motherFUCKER stung….Aughhhh!
The Doctor was pawing and dabbing at his nose but every time he touched the area he shouted and winced in pain. There were at least three more bees around but Todd couldn’t stop looking at the Doc. The scar across his nose, his entire face really, was swelling out like somebody was pumping air into it. Within scant seconds Morse’s entire face was blistering out and flushing an irritated, angry pink hue. The Doctor was looking cross eyed down his nose, but then jerked his head in the direction of his patient and let out a terrified shriek:
Horrrrry Shiughhh Looooohh…
He pointed and Todd looked back at his wife. There were bees trooping and glopping out of her like ground beef spurting from a grinder. Her cervix was yawning open as if an invisible speculum were forcing it, but Todd saw only bees. They were dropping in great gouts onto the floor and then shaking off the jet-lag, clouding into the air. His wife, doped almost to unconsciousness, couldn’t feel the creatures buzzing off her, but she saw them soon enough, flying around in the room. Then she saw Dr. Morse, curled up on the ground at the foot of her bed, groaning as more bees touched down. She saw him twitching as new stings shocked his body. Todd fell to assist the Doc, but when he got down on the floor he had a front row seat for the bee-flood, and he was held, enthralled, for precious seconds. He saw Susan's baby bump, which he had really hoped contained a son, rolling and roiling around her lower abdomen as she birthed her noisy brood. They were pouring out in a steady, thick stream now. Not even waiting to touch ground before buzzing their hateful wings into motion and attacking whatever they found.
And they found plenty. Each of the nurses had fallen, and they swatted and rolled in desperate futility. Todd saw that one of them, the one “Kristen,” who’d received them not eight hours ago, had a carpet of bees now enwrapping her head like a ski-mask. He heard her crying and moaning under the wild insects, writhing helplessly beneath them. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He’d have probably stayed there until help came if a gigantic, almost totally black, bee hadn’t landed on his hand and stung him. The pain was instant and total. He was on the ground before he knew that he’d fallen, and his whole arm felt like it was being burned in a fire. He screamed and a high-pitched, almost womanly scronk came out. He felt his hand blowing up and looked down in time to see the swelling burst and what looked to be a gallon of opaque, yellowish fluid come dripping down his arm and onto the floor. He looked up and saw that the bees were still puking out of his wife’s crotch. An awful black paste that separated and took flight upon hitting the hysterical air. Todd felt another burst of white hot pain on his shoulder and another on his lower leg. He was passing out.
The stings along his arm had all started to fill and puff out, and they stung like white-hot needles. He felt new bursts of searing pain on the back of both legs. He sat down, involuntary spasms of agony racked him and he looked about in confusion. He saw the bees, some as big as baseballs, come shooting from his wife and aggressively attach directly to whatever exposed flesh was left in the room. He saw the arms of two nurses full to exploding with vile fluid. He saw the doctor fall for the last time, and when he hit the floor the outsized blister that had been his cheek popped and ran, the fluid from inside him mixing with crushed bees and blood on the floor. He heard screams and moans from outside of the room. The bees had taken the floor.
The screams of the nurses were fading off and becoming something else. He saw a soft whit light and he felt himself falling to sleep. That’s when he heard his wife's bee-muffled scream and willed his eyes open one more time. The bees were like a thick fog in the room now. He could hear their stereo buzzing and saw them in a thick buzzing mass toward the ceiling, getting lower and lower. He tried to gaze through the cloud to see his wife. He pulled at the bed rail by her still stirrup-ed legs to try and stand up. He yanked hard and found himself in the bee-cloud. He couldn’t see Susan, but he saw a pile of bees four feet high on the bed
and saw her twitching legs poking from the squirming, droning mound. The bees quickly carpeted them. It was the last thing he saw before he toppled over. The bees were still pouring full-blast out of his wife though, and if Todd had stayed awake just a few seconds more, he’d have seen her abdomen torn open from the inside, and the two sides of her separate on almost a perfect midline that cracked and ripped all the way to her throat. The undulating mass of bees now exposed inside her took to the sky hungry for flesh to subsume. The cloud of bees in the room mobilized. Filling, one by one, the other twenty-nine birthing rooms in the small, one-floor natal wing of South Kingston Memorial. Destroying any and every living thing they found. Before his eyes closed for the last time, Todd saw a torrent-column of bees the width and breadth of the doorway go freight-training out of the room. His ears, failing and full of bees, could hear only the loudest of the screaming over the horrible, deafening buzz.
Within minutes, the entire natal wing of South County Memorial was overcome. Within twenty, the bees had all settled down, lighting on any surface available to witness a birth of another sort.
A grey thing came sliding from the table where Todd’s wife had lay and began to make its way out room. It took a few minutes to claim what it needed from the five long-dead bodies around the table, and then began to move, a bit faster now, toward the open door and the hallway beyond.
You’re doin’ fine, hon.
Almost time to push, hon.
Epidural on the way, hon.
When he heard that he almost closed his eyes again. The prospect of answering to an enraged, in-pain Susan did not thrill and delight. He would wait. Hide behind his eye lids until the man arrived with the drugs. He felt himself drifting back to the comforting oblivion of a much needed rest. He’d been dreaming of the desert.
Your husband’s awake honey, I see his eyes moving under there.
Yeah, he’s been awake for the past ten - auuuughh - minutes. TODD!
He faked it:
Uh…Huh…wh-what?
Can you wake up? Time for me to have a fuckin’ baby!
***
By the time the drugs arrived it was almost time to push. The doctor , a quick little man with a weird scar across his nose, had already been in, checking and rooting around his wife’s swollen birth-anatomy and introducing himself to the couple without looking up, or breaking from his fidgeting.
I’m Doctor Morse. You guys can call me Jamie. And WHOA! What is THAT!
Todd and Susan both snapped to and all three nurses in the room stopped. Looked, but Dr. Morse was already smiling.
Always works that one, huh? I got you good, huh? Todd? You guys were freaking out! Am I right? ‘my right? Awright.
Nobody said anything but the nurses were flashing “oh you joker” faces and getting on with their work. Todd realized the joke, but felt he was being fucked with and still felt like punching the Doctor in the face. The Doctor looked like he wanted to crawl up into Susan to get away. Another doctor, this one toting what looked to be an airline drinks-dolly, rescued him. Morse making a big circus to distract from his failed attempt at mirth.
There you are! Good! Here’s Jerry with the epidural now. Hurts a bit right now, no?
(nod) (grunt) Uhh huh…(grunt)
Alright then, I leave you in his hands, and when I come back in about (he made an exaggerated look at a phantom wrist watch) half past my sleeve!
He looked around in mock pride then confusion:
Nothin? Huh? Wow…Tough crowd.
He wandered off.
It was almost eleven o’clock. They’d been there almost nine hours. Contractions had started an hour before that, so they’d been at it for almost a half a day. Their first, four years ago, had taken only five hours from hospital drive to placental expulsion. Todd noted all this as he mock stretched and yawned. Nobody was paying attention though, cause the epidural-guy was explaining how awesome the narcotics he brought would make his wife feel. Todd listened with jealousy. Hospitals, he believed, should drug both mother and father. The experience warranted intoxication enough for two.
His wife swooned a little as an anesthetizing flood of painkiller doused her blood/brain barrier. She said:
I forgot how good that feels.
The epidural guy said nothing, displaying a confident smirk.
***
Ok, where are we?
The Doc was back, there were little flecks of blood and fluid on his white coat, and his brow was glistening. At least one baby had come into the world while he’d been away. He moved to a spot between Todd’s wife’s legs, spread wide and suspended in stirrups. He reached and put a finger into the open birth canal and said.
Wow. It’s not a whole lot more than before. Nurse, can I see you for a minute?
They walked outside. Todd caught little snatches of what they were saying out there. He caught the word “section” and heard the nurse say: “two more hours then”. He stroked his wife’s head and she looked up at him with contented epidural eyes.
I love you, honey. Please don’t leave me in here.
Never baby.
He said it and moved off to the window to check the view. Just when he did that his wife cried out.
Ooo! I think I need to push!!!
He ran back to her and assumed his cheer-leading position at the foot of the bed. Something was happening, because now it looked as if the whole bundle she’d been carrying had moved down a foot and had come to a stop just above her pelvic brim. Her vulva was all swollen and it looked like a little grey head was starting to show itself.
Push honey. Time to push now.
The Doctor came sliding in, two nurses followed close. Now it was a party. Five strangers gazing into his wife with great anticipation and concern. The doctor instructs the nurses, sending them running to get mysterious implements with weird medical names. He turned back to Todd’s wife, running fingers in and out of places people didn’t usually touch. He motioned Todd to come closer, told him:
OK, see here…
He made circular finger motion around his wife’s (now very swollen) lower abdomen.
She’s been riding low now for a few hours, and usually we like to see more movement than we’ve seen so far. We’ll give it a little while longer, maybe forty five minutes, but then we’re going to have to start talking about a c-section. For now though, let’s try to get a bit of pushing from her see if we can move it down…
It was right at that moment, that Todd noticed the bee. The bee, it was plainly a bee, yellow, and black striped and as big as a walnut, was crawling up toward them on his wife’s thigh. Todd had watched it come ducking out, making itself flat against his unborn child’s forehead and his wife vaginal wall.
The doctor didn’t see the second, and Todd now saw a much larger bee crawl out of Susan. He took a few wild swipes at the first and stumbled as the bee dodged him and broke for the door. He was just regaining his balance, turning his gaze back towards Susan when the second bee landed on the Morse’s nose. Todd said:
Whoa! Doc, it’s on your…
FUCK!!! AUGGGGGGH!
Face.
Fuckin’ motherFUCKER stung….Aughhhh!
The Doctor was pawing and dabbing at his nose but every time he touched the area he shouted and winced in pain. There were at least three more bees around but Todd couldn’t stop looking at the Doc. The scar across his nose, his entire face really, was swelling out like somebody was pumping air into it. Within scant seconds Morse’s entire face was blistering out and flushing an irritated, angry pink hue. The Doctor was looking cross eyed down his nose, but then jerked his head in the direction of his patient and let out a terrified shriek:
Horrrrry Shiughhh Looooohh…
He pointed and Todd looked back at his wife. There were bees trooping and glopping out of her like ground beef spurting from a grinder. Her cervix was yawning open as if an invisible speculum were forcing it, but Todd saw only bees. They were dropping in great gouts onto the floor and then shaking off the jet-lag, clouding into the air. His wife, doped almost to unconsciousness, couldn’t feel the creatures buzzing off her, but she saw them soon enough, flying around in the room. Then she saw Dr. Morse, curled up on the ground at the foot of her bed, groaning as more bees touched down. She saw him twitching as new stings shocked his body. Todd fell to assist the Doc, but when he got down on the floor he had a front row seat for the bee-flood, and he was held, enthralled, for precious seconds. He saw Susan's baby bump, which he had really hoped contained a son, rolling and roiling around her lower abdomen as she birthed her noisy brood. They were pouring out in a steady, thick stream now. Not even waiting to touch ground before buzzing their hateful wings into motion and attacking whatever they found.
And they found plenty. Each of the nurses had fallen, and they swatted and rolled in desperate futility. Todd saw that one of them, the one “Kristen,” who’d received them not eight hours ago, had a carpet of bees now enwrapping her head like a ski-mask. He heard her crying and moaning under the wild insects, writhing helplessly beneath them. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He’d have probably stayed there until help came if a gigantic, almost totally black, bee hadn’t landed on his hand and stung him. The pain was instant and total. He was on the ground before he knew that he’d fallen, and his whole arm felt like it was being burned in a fire. He screamed and a high-pitched, almost womanly scronk came out. He felt his hand blowing up and looked down in time to see the swelling burst and what looked to be a gallon of opaque, yellowish fluid come dripping down his arm and onto the floor. He looked up and saw that the bees were still puking out of his wife’s crotch. An awful black paste that separated and took flight upon hitting the hysterical air. Todd felt another burst of white hot pain on his shoulder and another on his lower leg. He was passing out.
The stings along his arm had all started to fill and puff out, and they stung like white-hot needles. He felt new bursts of searing pain on the back of both legs. He sat down, involuntary spasms of agony racked him and he looked about in confusion. He saw the bees, some as big as baseballs, come shooting from his wife and aggressively attach directly to whatever exposed flesh was left in the room. He saw the arms of two nurses full to exploding with vile fluid. He saw the doctor fall for the last time, and when he hit the floor the outsized blister that had been his cheek popped and ran, the fluid from inside him mixing with crushed bees and blood on the floor. He heard screams and moans from outside of the room. The bees had taken the floor.
The screams of the nurses were fading off and becoming something else. He saw a soft whit light and he felt himself falling to sleep. That’s when he heard his wife's bee-muffled scream and willed his eyes open one more time. The bees were like a thick fog in the room now. He could hear their stereo buzzing and saw them in a thick buzzing mass toward the ceiling, getting lower and lower. He tried to gaze through the cloud to see his wife. He pulled at the bed rail by her still stirrup-ed legs to try and stand up. He yanked hard and found himself in the bee-cloud. He couldn’t see Susan, but he saw a pile of bees four feet high on the bed
and saw her twitching legs poking from the squirming, droning mound. The bees quickly carpeted them. It was the last thing he saw before he toppled over. The bees were still pouring full-blast out of his wife though, and if Todd had stayed awake just a few seconds more, he’d have seen her abdomen torn open from the inside, and the two sides of her separate on almost a perfect midline that cracked and ripped all the way to her throat. The undulating mass of bees now exposed inside her took to the sky hungry for flesh to subsume. The cloud of bees in the room mobilized. Filling, one by one, the other twenty-nine birthing rooms in the small, one-floor natal wing of South Kingston Memorial. Destroying any and every living thing they found. Before his eyes closed for the last time, Todd saw a torrent-column of bees the width and breadth of the doorway go freight-training out of the room. His ears, failing and full of bees, could hear only the loudest of the screaming over the horrible, deafening buzz.
Within minutes, the entire natal wing of South County Memorial was overcome. Within twenty, the bees had all settled down, lighting on any surface available to witness a birth of another sort.
A grey thing came sliding from the table where Todd’s wife had lay and began to make its way out room. It took a few minutes to claim what it needed from the five long-dead bodies around the table, and then began to move, a bit faster now, toward the open door and the hallway beyond.
Field Trip - 5/18/11
DSL had planned a field trip to New York City, the greatest shit-show on earth, but due to awful weather our editorial staff ended up in the bastion of American consumerism and the world’s largest purveyor of shit, the Mall. Everything was going pretty well, until we were forceably removed from Bloomies.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
dogshitart
end of the day (5-18-11)Oil and Oil Pastel on Paper Palette
8 1/2" x 7"
end of the day (5-19-11)Oil and Oil Pastel on Paper Palette
7" x 8 1/2"
Excuse
Dearest Perverts,
Yes, we're slackin' like fuck over here. Rest assured though: there is movement behind the curtain. We ear-marked this week for revision, and copy-fixes on the chapters up there so far. Also, we'll be putting some of the older stuff back up case 'ya missed it, along with a suggestion or two as to the order in which they might be read. Next week we'll return with daily updates and a Random List of Things In No Particular Order. Solve the list and you can choose five tunes on the next DSL Podcast. ANY tunes. Your stupid fuckin' band, your mom's stupid fuckin' band (Ogger and Freedman: you guy's bands aren't stupid. We're talking about other peoples stupid fuckin' bands). Whatever kind of noise you'd want others to hear, that's what we'll use. We're also trying like hell to get something going tomorrow, but don't hold your breath (unless you're under water, in which case, hold your breath 'ya big silly).
Thanks for reading / tell a friend!
OK,
G
Yes, we're slackin' like fuck over here. Rest assured though: there is movement behind the curtain. We ear-marked this week for revision, and copy-fixes on the chapters up there so far. Also, we'll be putting some of the older stuff back up case 'ya missed it, along with a suggestion or two as to the order in which they might be read. Next week we'll return with daily updates and a Random List of Things In No Particular Order. Solve the list and you can choose five tunes on the next DSL Podcast. ANY tunes. Your stupid fuckin' band, your mom's stupid fuckin' band (Ogger and Freedman: you guy's bands aren't stupid. We're talking about other peoples stupid fuckin' bands). Whatever kind of noise you'd want others to hear, that's what we'll use. We're also trying like hell to get something going tomorrow, but don't hold your breath (unless you're under water, in which case, hold your breath 'ya big silly).
Thanks for reading / tell a friend!
OK,
G
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
dogshitmusic Vol. 6 - Springtime Is For Lovers
She Said, She Said – The Beatles
Baby Bitch – Ween
Broken Hearts Are For Assholes – Frank Zappa
Queen Bitch – David Bowie
Ramp of Death – Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks
Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright – Bob Dylan
You Were the Fool – Ween
Oh Babe, It Ain’t No Lie – Jerry Garcia & John Kahn
Life’s Just Bitchin’ – Jerry Joseph and the Jackmormons (12-31-02)
Monday, May 16, 2011
The Eight Universal Rules of Facebook
Facebook is a lot more like Stonehenge then a casual glance would reveal. Consider: Facebook is big, and of obvious importance. Facebook didn’t come with any instructions, although there are any number of arguable opinions regarding its optimal function. Facebook is formed of large cut stones, and most believe it’s some sort of time-keeping device, possibly left here by aliens.
OK. Just seeing if you were paying attention, cause the rest of this shit is important. There’s gonna’ be a codifyin’ and a etchin’ in stone here tonight. DSL has been asked, by the very aliens who brought you Stonehenge, to put forth the rules for the successful and enlightening use of Jesse Eisen-Zuckerberg’s billion dollar nerd-vanity optimizer. And fuck yeah, the writers and staff of the DeeEssEll were only too happy to bring the tablets down from the mountain. Nothing penultimate about this, children. The following is how we roll from here on out, and the aliens have crackhead beat-downs for any nay-say. So read. Share. Commit to memory. And don’t fuggitup. These Stonehenge aliens are not fucking around.
FACEBOOK MEGA-RULE #50 (No, there’s not fifty Facebook rules, but the aliens is cagey. They left forty-two extra slots for evolution and amendment. No more questions!) :
No Hang Up’s: Your sorry ass will not bail if somebody you don’t want to chat with says “Hello.” It’s just common courtesy people. This bullshit is the pixilated equivalent of being approached at a party by somebody you’re (at least semi) friendly with, and then when they start talking you turn around and pretend to not be standing right fucking there. C’mon dude, that’s not you. I mean, it was you who friend-ed the poor boob in the first place. At least give’em a polite pat on the tits and say “I gotta take a leak,” or something. You can’t just stand there and not talk! That’s what crazy people do. Answer motherfucker.
FBMR #49: No Locations, No Maps. We don’t need to know where you are, asshole. I’m shaking my head in disgust at the very thought of this puzzling Facebook trope. Never really a problem until the dawn of the iPhone, these days the shit’s as common as divorce and reality TV shows. Ask yourself: before Facebook, was I in the habit of calling through my contacts list to alert my friends of my daily errands? If you answer that affirmatively, well, you’re a total dick, and - I guess - good luck with that. We understand, you’re at the baseball game, at the casino, at the yanky-cranky disguised as a shoe shop on Gano Street, hey, go ahead and drop a line. Maybe we’ll join up! But if you’re stopped at the Mobil on Rt. 4 trying to choose between Twinkies and Sno-balls, leave us out of it fatty! Annoying motherfucker.
And following that:
FBMR #48: You’re Fat. That’s right. You, who just status-reported your lame, fatty-pants workout. Again it’s a question of continuity. In your pre-Facebook life was it your custom to finish running /walking 1.3 miles, and then call everyone you know, and lie, and say you ran twelve good miles and got twelve more in ya? NOBODY CARES ABOUT THIS NONSENSE, YOU EGO-CRAZED SHITHEAD. You are fat, and you are a liar, and you will continue to be those things no matter how many fantasy-miles you virtual-jog, or computer-friends you lie to. What’s that? You say I’m wrong, that you’re not a fuckin’ Plains Buffalo lined with Under-Armour ™? NO, fuck face. You are fat fat fatty fat fat fuck, if not now then later, and by later I mean SOONER. It’s a truth you cannot outrun no matter how many fuckin’ people you mislead with these arrogant, unnecessary health-bulletins. Stop it. Yes I know, Apple makes apps designed specifically for this asinine purpose. But we’ll leave #49 with the words of the great Chris Rock who said: “You could drive a car with your fuckin’ feet if you want to, but that don’t mean it’s to be DONE.”
FMBR #47: Swear early, swear often. Where was it ever put down that swearing was to be kept off the Zuckerberg-ian Bandwidth? So many %$^#*$#($ it’s like a f#*kin’ “Shoe” comic strip. Dude, who are we worried about offending? Again, did you avoid profanity in the horse-and-buggy days of email? If you did, then continue to do so and continue to miss out on the sheer immature buzz of dropping FUCK, in computer form, for an odd thousand of your friends, and your friend’s fucking friends. It’s awesome. FUCK! See there, we did it again. Added a fuckin’ exclamation point for empha-fucking-sis! This is how we talk in the brutal, violent, sub-waste of post 9/11 America. This is what Thomas Jefferson fought for at Khe Sanh! It’s what fuck-shitting George Washington died for in South mother-cunting Korea. They didn’t fight so you could hit the “shift” key, taint-master. You wanna’ play that shit, move to Russia. You can drink vodka, and speak clean little Russian sentences about perma-frost, and how Russian girls are beautiful, yet awkwardly opportunistic and un-fucking-trustworthy.
FBMR #46: Clear your inbox douchey! Self explanatory, I think, but obviously not obvious to many. If you get a message and stay off Facebook, entirely, for a month and then don’t answer well, no avoiding that. But don’t just ignore some shit you know is there. Have some class dick! You’re blogging your facial, status-noting your jury duty, wishing your stupid mom happy birthday (tell her we said “Hi!”) while blasting out chain-letters about cancer, and your retarded friends, and your retarded friends with cancer… Meanwhile, fuckin’ rube, we messaged you about the 300 bucks you owe us like a year ago. Why the avoiding? Hell, if that’s the way this shit goes down, why not just come to my house, kidnap my children, and stick a frozen banana up my wife’s ass? It’s basically the same move. Man up, man!
FMBR #45: No blanket, one-line “thank-you’s” to personal birthday wishes. Have some class jerk! We took the five seconds to cheer about your birthday which, we might add, we care NOTHING about. Now reciprocate and thank us, dummy! Not later, in another status update with everybody else. Now! In the little comment thingy, just under where I lied and claimed to give shit-one about your life-force anniversary. See, this whole thing is about lying: Lying about how I remembered your birthday. Lying about how I remember the night you bought that hooker, and it turned out to be a dude, and you still plowed away and then cried drunkenly, making us take a blood-oath not to tell. Lying about how awesome your stupid blog is, and how you’re so talented. The lies people. The fucking, fucking, god-fucking lies. Ugggh!
FMBR #44: No chain-letter status update. Chain letters, even if they are for a good cause, and in electronic-shape, are still chain letters. This is where the, “if you did it before the internet, then keep doing it” rule breaks down. Even if you are that kind of goat-fuck that perpetuates a chain letter from the actual US Mail, don’t bring that ass-water to the screen. I’m unemployed. I have, like, negative money. My wife and kids hate my fucking face, and I’m fat, and pasty like a full bag of pizza-dough from the cooler at Dave‘s ™. Every few minutes my chest flares with a mysterious, yet familiar pain-feeling. I haven’t had sex since the “Seinfeld” finale, and my parents will not willfully admit to having birthed me. Despite all of this, I stick my fat, dumb, zitty face in the wind everyday, like a fuckin’ man, and soldier. Only now I have to read that unless I send your stupid, cancer screed-mail to one hundred people that I suspect already hate me, I’ll will reap worse luck than I am already (despite massive probability to the contrary) enduring ! Well motherfuck that. I ‘aint doin’ it. Send that shit to your stupid family, and if you’re in my stupid family, then send it somewhere else. A polite society has to maintain limits.
FMBR #43: Don’t make me even more stupid. This last one is more general than the others, but it’s just as important, and maybe even more-so because now we’re really getting to the dynamic heart of the beast. We have friends who send us little “what’s your favorite…movie / TV show / means of meth-ingestion?,” status questions. We like those. We also have friends who send out music videos and interviews with cool rock stars, and we love that shit. But the things we love the most (besides DVDA and squirting vids of course) are the status updates that say “hey, we’re going to be doing this, and here’s what time it’s at, and where it is, and we want you there cause even though you’re fat and we hate you, the shit will be more fun if your corpulent, hated ass is around the area. Facebook, like the internet itself, isn’t for gazing at. It’s a miracle, don’t ever doubt it, but not so everybody can carry their entire social existence with them like some inventoried friend warehouse. It’s amazing that we converse regularly with, like, ten people we went to fuckin’ elementary school with! Seriously. That shit is fucking crazy-town. But if the extent of the relationship is an accepted friend request with no more interaction, or sharing of thoughts (and good, stinky weed), then why bother douchebag? It’s the same as not having contacted that elementary school person, only now you have one more audience member laughing when your life infrastructure gets terrorist-bombed into psyche-rubble. And who needs that shit? Go, leave the house, get drunk with people. Throw fuckin' toilet paper, take your clothes off, and shout racial epithets at police officers! (not you Todd, you’re totally cool). If you don’t, the aliens say they’re coming back, and anal probing your stupid kids while they work your nutz with a table saw and raw ethyl alcohol.
And they mean it. The aliens are not fucking around.
OK. Just seeing if you were paying attention, cause the rest of this shit is important. There’s gonna’ be a codifyin’ and a etchin’ in stone here tonight. DSL has been asked, by the very aliens who brought you Stonehenge, to put forth the rules for the successful and enlightening use of Jesse Eisen-Zuckerberg’s billion dollar nerd-vanity optimizer. And fuck yeah, the writers and staff of the DeeEssEll were only too happy to bring the tablets down from the mountain. Nothing penultimate about this, children. The following is how we roll from here on out, and the aliens have crackhead beat-downs for any nay-say. So read. Share. Commit to memory. And don’t fuggitup. These Stonehenge aliens are not fucking around.
FACEBOOK MEGA-RULE #50 (No, there’s not fifty Facebook rules, but the aliens is cagey. They left forty-two extra slots for evolution and amendment. No more questions!) :
No Hang Up’s: Your sorry ass will not bail if somebody you don’t want to chat with says “Hello.” It’s just common courtesy people. This bullshit is the pixilated equivalent of being approached at a party by somebody you’re (at least semi) friendly with, and then when they start talking you turn around and pretend to not be standing right fucking there. C’mon dude, that’s not you. I mean, it was you who friend-ed the poor boob in the first place. At least give’em a polite pat on the tits and say “I gotta take a leak,” or something. You can’t just stand there and not talk! That’s what crazy people do. Answer motherfucker.
FBMR #49: No Locations, No Maps. We don’t need to know where you are, asshole. I’m shaking my head in disgust at the very thought of this puzzling Facebook trope. Never really a problem until the dawn of the iPhone, these days the shit’s as common as divorce and reality TV shows. Ask yourself: before Facebook, was I in the habit of calling through my contacts list to alert my friends of my daily errands? If you answer that affirmatively, well, you’re a total dick, and - I guess - good luck with that. We understand, you’re at the baseball game, at the casino, at the yanky-cranky disguised as a shoe shop on Gano Street, hey, go ahead and drop a line. Maybe we’ll join up! But if you’re stopped at the Mobil on Rt. 4 trying to choose between Twinkies and Sno-balls, leave us out of it fatty! Annoying motherfucker.
And following that:
FBMR #48: You’re Fat. That’s right. You, who just status-reported your lame, fatty-pants workout. Again it’s a question of continuity. In your pre-Facebook life was it your custom to finish running /walking 1.3 miles, and then call everyone you know, and lie, and say you ran twelve good miles and got twelve more in ya? NOBODY CARES ABOUT THIS NONSENSE, YOU EGO-CRAZED SHITHEAD. You are fat, and you are a liar, and you will continue to be those things no matter how many fantasy-miles you virtual-jog, or computer-friends you lie to. What’s that? You say I’m wrong, that you’re not a fuckin’ Plains Buffalo lined with Under-Armour ™? NO, fuck face. You are fat fat fatty fat fat fuck, if not now then later, and by later I mean SOONER. It’s a truth you cannot outrun no matter how many fuckin’ people you mislead with these arrogant, unnecessary health-bulletins. Stop it. Yes I know, Apple makes apps designed specifically for this asinine purpose. But we’ll leave #49 with the words of the great Chris Rock who said: “You could drive a car with your fuckin’ feet if you want to, but that don’t mean it’s to be DONE.”
FMBR #47: Swear early, swear often. Where was it ever put down that swearing was to be kept off the Zuckerberg-ian Bandwidth? So many %$^#*$#($ it’s like a f#*kin’ “Shoe” comic strip. Dude, who are we worried about offending? Again, did you avoid profanity in the horse-and-buggy days of email? If you did, then continue to do so and continue to miss out on the sheer immature buzz of dropping FUCK, in computer form, for an odd thousand of your friends, and your friend’s fucking friends. It’s awesome. FUCK! See there, we did it again. Added a fuckin’ exclamation point for empha-fucking-sis! This is how we talk in the brutal, violent, sub-waste of post 9/11 America. This is what Thomas Jefferson fought for at Khe Sanh! It’s what fuck-shitting George Washington died for in South mother-cunting Korea. They didn’t fight so you could hit the “shift” key, taint-master. You wanna’ play that shit, move to Russia. You can drink vodka, and speak clean little Russian sentences about perma-frost, and how Russian girls are beautiful, yet awkwardly opportunistic and un-fucking-trustworthy.
FBMR #46: Clear your inbox douchey! Self explanatory, I think, but obviously not obvious to many. If you get a message and stay off Facebook, entirely, for a month and then don’t answer well, no avoiding that. But don’t just ignore some shit you know is there. Have some class dick! You’re blogging your facial, status-noting your jury duty, wishing your stupid mom happy birthday (tell her we said “Hi!”) while blasting out chain-letters about cancer, and your retarded friends, and your retarded friends with cancer… Meanwhile, fuckin’ rube, we messaged you about the 300 bucks you owe us like a year ago. Why the avoiding? Hell, if that’s the way this shit goes down, why not just come to my house, kidnap my children, and stick a frozen banana up my wife’s ass? It’s basically the same move. Man up, man!
FMBR #45: No blanket, one-line “thank-you’s” to personal birthday wishes. Have some class jerk! We took the five seconds to cheer about your birthday which, we might add, we care NOTHING about. Now reciprocate and thank us, dummy! Not later, in another status update with everybody else. Now! In the little comment thingy, just under where I lied and claimed to give shit-one about your life-force anniversary. See, this whole thing is about lying: Lying about how I remembered your birthday. Lying about how I remember the night you bought that hooker, and it turned out to be a dude, and you still plowed away and then cried drunkenly, making us take a blood-oath not to tell. Lying about how awesome your stupid blog is, and how you’re so talented. The lies people. The fucking, fucking, god-fucking lies. Ugggh!
FMBR #44: No chain-letter status update. Chain letters, even if they are for a good cause, and in electronic-shape, are still chain letters. This is where the, “if you did it before the internet, then keep doing it” rule breaks down. Even if you are that kind of goat-fuck that perpetuates a chain letter from the actual US Mail, don’t bring that ass-water to the screen. I’m unemployed. I have, like, negative money. My wife and kids hate my fucking face, and I’m fat, and pasty like a full bag of pizza-dough from the cooler at Dave‘s ™. Every few minutes my chest flares with a mysterious, yet familiar pain-feeling. I haven’t had sex since the “Seinfeld” finale, and my parents will not willfully admit to having birthed me. Despite all of this, I stick my fat, dumb, zitty face in the wind everyday, like a fuckin’ man, and soldier. Only now I have to read that unless I send your stupid, cancer screed-mail to one hundred people that I suspect already hate me, I’ll will reap worse luck than I am already (despite massive probability to the contrary) enduring ! Well motherfuck that. I ‘aint doin’ it. Send that shit to your stupid family, and if you’re in my stupid family, then send it somewhere else. A polite society has to maintain limits.
FMBR #43: Don’t make me even more stupid. This last one is more general than the others, but it’s just as important, and maybe even more-so because now we’re really getting to the dynamic heart of the beast. We have friends who send us little “what’s your favorite…movie / TV show / means of meth-ingestion?,” status questions. We like those. We also have friends who send out music videos and interviews with cool rock stars, and we love that shit. But the things we love the most (besides DVDA and squirting vids of course) are the status updates that say “hey, we’re going to be doing this, and here’s what time it’s at, and where it is, and we want you there cause even though you’re fat and we hate you, the shit will be more fun if your corpulent, hated ass is around the area. Facebook, like the internet itself, isn’t for gazing at. It’s a miracle, don’t ever doubt it, but not so everybody can carry their entire social existence with them like some inventoried friend warehouse. It’s amazing that we converse regularly with, like, ten people we went to fuckin’ elementary school with! Seriously. That shit is fucking crazy-town. But if the extent of the relationship is an accepted friend request with no more interaction, or sharing of thoughts (and good, stinky weed), then why bother douchebag? It’s the same as not having contacted that elementary school person, only now you have one more audience member laughing when your life infrastructure gets terrorist-bombed into psyche-rubble. And who needs that shit? Go, leave the house, get drunk with people. Throw fuckin' toilet paper, take your clothes off, and shout racial epithets at police officers! (not you Todd, you’re totally cool). If you don’t, the aliens say they’re coming back, and anal probing your stupid kids while they work your nutz with a table saw and raw ethyl alcohol.
And they mean it. The aliens are not fucking around.
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