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Saturday, August 18, 2001 Updates
Are Here!
The Return
Tuesday, June 12, 2001 Back and forth between websites
and the North American continent. I'm weary and not up to speed in
the brain department after my three week vacation which included
flights, extended driving into and through Canada as well as too
much beer, vodka and absinthe. Truly, not quite enough absinthe. We
would prefer more. Around a fifth a day would be lovely. And the
vacation included two weddings. One of them my own, the other a new
in-laws'. At the latter I allowed myself to pass out on a large flat
rock. At my own I wasn't permitted such a drunken luxury.
Expect
updates here until the other site is back
up and running. I'll have photos to post which I am unable to do
here without massive headaches.
Things Change
Wednesday, May 16, 2001 Yo!
Optimistic Snakes
Friday, May 11, 2001 This use to operate as my
justification for passing through another day. By "this," I mean,
"this daily exercise in bad English." Lately, it has slacked off.
It's not that I no longer need this as a marker proving that on any
given date of a given year I actually did something that will
outlast that given date of the given year, but more out of apathy. A
specific apathy growing towards writing that is increasing as I move
closer and closer to the airplane ride into Minneapolis and thus to
my subsequent marriage. The preoccupation with which clogs my brain
and makes me write things like, "the preoccupation with which." I
think you can understand. I mean, you of all fucking people,
right?
So, shit, what now? I spent Wednesday up in
Tehachapi: gallivanting about in the Mountains, peering in through
the windows of the closed Alamo-esque museum that use to be the
library from 1932 to 1981, cramming my mouth full of ostrich meat,
lazily gazing across the valley at the prison towers, throwing a
stick for the hound who chased the chickens at night (god, that
freaks the chickens out. They scream and run. I didn't exactly know
chickens could scream, but if they sustain a bawk and a cluck
simultaneously for upwards of ten seconds, then what else could it
be called if not a scream?), and marveling at the hillsides that
looked as if they were being eaten by flickering flames but were
actually overcome by Poppy growth. The air entered the lungs easier
2 hours north. 50% fewer respiratory irritating impurities is why
choosey moms choose, etc... Unfortunately, the Juggler couldn't make
the trip with Kirsten and Tony and me. It would've been some good
entertainment, there were three chickens, just perfect for
developing a new juggling act, but alas, the conspiracies and
ill-nature of others prevented his escape from L.A.
The primary
purpose of the trip north, well, strike that, the primary purpose of
any trip with friends is to spend time with friends, thus let us
say, the primary objective of the trip north was to visit the
California Poppy Reserve. The objective was met, but as the bishop
said, "We was too late." The Poppy's had made this season's final
curtain call. Many a blossom had withered and others still had shut
themselves off from the world for the day, pulling their petals
inward for the night like the shopkeeper at the Five and Dime,
cranking in the awning at close. Sad. The hills that had been
blazing in orange Poppy splendor only few days earlier was growing
barren and dry. I'm sure it made the rattlesnakes happy. Less damn
humans stomping around their hunting grounds, scaring all the little
rodents far off into the hills. There's always an upside if you look
through the eyes of the reptiles.
So Long
Tuesday, May 8, 2001 Sounds: Rites of Spring, the
songs of squawky birds, trucks building up speed, Kirsten splashing
about in the pool and, of course, my overly violent way of slamming
the letters down on the keyboard. I never used a typewriter much,
but I also may never adjust to the delicacies of the light touch
keyboard.
I'll be heading north tomorrow. On my way for an eight
to ten stretch in Tehachapi. Eight to ten hours that is. Although
many a lady and gent has found his or herself looking at eight to
ten years at the maximum security prison of the same name, but I'll
be on the opposite end of the valley from there. It'll feel good
getting out of town for a day. The air is oppressive. The smog is
laying down thick; darker and more mean spirited than I've ever seen
it out here. Makes me ask myself why I quit smoking? Early morning
harsh lungfuls of pain, black slabs of tarry bronchial build-up
hacked up into the toilet, clothing stench, Satanic breath,
jaundiced fingertips, circulatory trauma, and the big one, gross
financial burden. Ask yourself easy to answer questions, and leave
the difficult existential grappling with the nature of life and time
to the philosophers behind The Mummy Returns. It's good advice. I'm
taking it myself. I've been bogging myself down by dwelling on
inevitabilities, and it's tiring. It leaches the energy for writing.
Stagnation is evident. The sap is drained. I need a new tree to tap.
Maybe a new spigot too. It's all gummed up. Miserable. I'm in a
literary slumber. Output is weak and feeble. Just as it seemed to
picking up too. Maybe the writing will get reinvigorated after these
next 18 days go by when life will no longer be diverted into and
focused on one event, but rather back into the multitude of
directions in which it is normally diffused. I can only assume it
will. So for now, until the gamble and poise strike, farewell and
salud.
Wait, I'm not quite ready to depart yet. This was contained in
some spam I received from some domain registry service: "The new
top level domain names with extensions .BIZ, .INFO, .PRO,and .NAME
have just been approved by global internet
authorities."
Well, holy shit, ain't that exciting? Finally,
.PRO, the one the hookers have been waiting for, and, .BIZ, what
self respecting artiste de rap won't want their very own dot biz
domain? What interests me more than the new extensions are these
"global internet authorities." Who the fuck are they? Why haven't I
been notified? First the UN, then the WTO, now the GIA. Well, I'm
not happy with the job these GIA bastards are doing. Where's dot
sex? Now that'd be useful. They could get all those sex sites off
the .com, .org and .net extensions. Clean up the place a bit. And
what about dot geek? I foresee an entire online community of linux
loving wingnuts going gold rush crazy to capture Babylon5.geek and
soforth. Can't these authorities be contacted or petitioned? Were
they elected or did they ascend to the throne of global authority
through money generated from AOL's vast child porn ring? Who's in
command here?
On Not Being Me
Thursday, May 3, 2001 I don't remember the eighties. I
mean, I'm not convinced of my memories from over ten years ago. In
some cases less. It seems my memories have all been remembered and
therefore my memories of any given time is filtered through past
reminiscences or worse: media interpretations, photographs, other
recorded mediums and reminiscences of others. The mind is ultimately
untrustworthy. It fails so many people in their last days, months,
years. A man can become completely disconnected from his past,
believe his family and friends to be trained assassins, their
mission: kill him. He might believe his penny collection is in
danger. Sequence of life's events gets rearranged. The dead are
living, the living forgotten. When a man in such a condition dies,
what is being lost? Not much of a brain, and probably not too much
of a body.
Then there is me with my treacherous mind's
disintegration of memories. What will I know of this time in my life
thirty years from now? And then thirty years from then? Not that
it's likely I'll be around sixty years later. To me death seems like
a natural extension of the mind's degradation. It is something
necessary to prevent us from remembering nothing of our friends and
families in those last minutes whether the last minutes are known to
be last minutes or not.
What insanity. What a bunch of god awful
stupidity, and the only thing we can really be sure of is DNA's urge
to replicate itself and combine into new variations. I'm going to
stop that DNA. I will not allow its blind foolishness to prevail
through me. I will be contrary to the ways of nature. And why not?
What are the alternatives to being me, to doing things my way?
Nothing horrifies me more than the idea of being somebody else.
Maybe I'm a man who goes to work at 9 am five days a week, and
punches the clock and enjoys Starbuck's coffee and a Starbuck's
scone over lunch where last night's episode of Frasier is discussed
over sips. Maybe I grab a bag of McDonald's on the way home from
work to munch on while ingesting the newest episode of Survivor on
the TV, not because I necessarily want to but because I don't have
anything else I want to do and if I don't watch the Survivor then
what will I have to talk about at the water cooler the next day at
work, speaking of which, tomorrow is coming fast and tomorrow and
tomorrow and tomorrow and next year before I know it, and this first
decade of the new millennium will be in review and I'll watch the
recap on TV and talk about it at work and like a slap on the face,
it's the next century, but, whew, thankfully I won't be dealing with
that.
Unless the nanobots turn us all into ubermensch.
Time Does Not March
Wednesday, May 2, 2001 They eat up time. They scoop it
up in their hands and dispense it out like so many pellets of goat
feed. Here's a decade and here's the best that decade offered and
here's the last fifty years and here's the top bits of the last
century and the greatest hits of this past millennium. It's a splash
in a kiddy pool all this time. On a vast cosmic level it's
insignificant, a decade, a century, a millennium, a million
millenniums, but I am not on a vast level of any kind, cosmic or
otherwise. On the entirely unvast human scale, we crawl through the
minutes, trudge through hours, and slog our way drearily across day
after day into months into years into decades and into death.
"In
Bengal, a person dies of starvation every eight minutes," Malcolm
McDowell is told in the film, "If..."
He responds, "Eight minutes
is a very long time."
Eight minutes of an earthquake. Eight
minutes from now, where will you be? How about eight hours? A work
shift. Eight hours can be practically endless at the end of the
right machine in the right factory. At the end of the wrong
machine-gun in the wrong war.
You like centuries? They're nice
convenient units of time. Everyone alive today who is writing music,
literature, movies: all those people will be gone a century from
now. The guy in the BMW? The woman in the Mercedes? People
Magazine's sexiest man alive? Where will they be? Same place as you
or nowhere if there is such a thing as nowhere. So why bother with
these decades? Dissect the world up minute by awful minute. The
devil is in the details and I'm there with that little devil.
CAM
Monday, April 30, 2001 How can it be? Why would two,
completely separate, yet similarly themed (not plotted or storied)
movies both cast the same unattractive woman to play somebody who,
by all directorial, wardrobe, and written intents is supposed to be
beautiful? I don't get it. Believe it, I'm for casting women who
don't meet the media standards of beauty and attempts to alter those
standards, but in the case of Carrie-Anne Moss and Matrix and
Memento, change doesn't seem to be the goal. Somebody in casting
believes Carrie-Anne Moss is sexy, then wardrobe dresses her sexy:
ass in black leather (sing to the tune of Knights in White Satin)
and tits in a fine mesh shirt. Dress her up in dom./whore apparel
and let the cameras roll. Oh, don't forget the direction - get a few
gratuitous t&a shots.
Yet, both movies are about the nature
of reality and how we, as individuals, can alter our reality through
the applied power of the will. Neo is that individual in Matrix,
realizing his potential and ultimately becoming some sort of uber
beast, but mostly due to a prophecy and therefore he really doesn't
have a choice, there is fate and destiny and he is a pawn. Shit! It
has nothing to do with Neo's will. Neo is as much a pawn of destiny
as Keanu is a pawn of the director.
In Memento, it's Leonard. The
problem there is whether or not it's Leonard's will or conditioning.
Memento throws a lovely twist on the Cartesian buffoonery of the
Matrix by spicing it up with a little B.F.S.
So there we go. Is
Carrie-Anne Moss cast to play the sexy woman because she is a sexy
woman or is it through some sort of twisted conditioning, repetition
of parts and the will of collective Hollywood casting agents that
make her the sexy bombshell for the hero to get lusty over? Are
Matrix and Memento clues to the success of this subnormally skilled
actress? Is it evil robots or conditioning or the conditioning by
evil robots? Who is making her a star?
Extra! Extra!
Friday, April 27, 2001 They are all in show business,
all these background artists. They are in the entertainment industry
and therefore can't shut their clever fucking mouths as they attempt
to be "on" and show all the other entertainers just how special and
unique they are and how they can talk louder and faster and more
non-stop and laugh with gusto at every stupid thing that they
themselves say. What a bunch of ugly madness. Whether to feel sorry,
sad or disgusted is something I can't yet decide on. But I don't
dislike it. There's something easily likable about extra work, about
being herded here and there and only actually working for an half
hour in an eight hour shift. There's no need to think. No need to
speak. No need to be any more than an animal capable of movement and
sometimes noises, but not actually speech. It's the life I've always
wanted. Subnormal bliss. It's the opposite of meditation. You can
turn off, retract consciousness, let the world and it's jewish
pokemon horrors slide away. No drug czars. No fetus laws. Just me
and my guilt free stupidity. No disintegrating environmental laws.
No escalation towards a war with China. That's beautiful. Just me
and the performers, the banal wits, and their feeble modes of
self-expression and all their petty complaints. My only wish is for
them to all shut up. To learn the wonders of silence.
What it is,
The
Country Bears, Disney's marketing of itself, it's own amusement
park attraction come to life on the big screen. Christopher
Walken, he is the villain. He screams, "I hate choo Bayuhs!"
Well, Yogi hates you too Ranger Chrissie. What a face that Walken
has, like an evil emaciated raccoon. The perfect Disney
Villain.
Standard Update
Thursday, April 26, 2001 Back to work. Back to the
excitement of cameras, cranes, grips and gaffers. Money in motion.
The antithesis of art all night long, from dusk until dawn on the
set of "Country Bears." Another rock and roll movie to peddle out.
"Almost Famous" made money so now expect the worst from "Josie's
Pussy" to "Metal Gods." At least part of the budget ends up in my
pocket, and more, from craft services, in my stomach. That's the
whole point right there. Drink coffee. Eat donuts. Try to remain
unseen. Don't let the cameras unearth you from your hidden slumber,
run from the lights, duck out of sight, crawl on your belly under
miles of electrical wire as spot lights flash, streaking tracers,
over head. The second a.d. is on the prowl, looking to corral the
army of background artists. That's right, background artists, and
their art? It's the art of the masses, taking up space, breathing
air, and eating the bullshit. A piece of scenery, a living, heart
beating man of cardboard with his fists in the air out in the cold.
Yes, the cold. Tonight it's up in the mountains. That's how it
sounds. Dress like you're at a rock-n-roll show, bring a jacket, it
might be cold, but wear no black, red, or white. No pastels and no
neon. Do people wear neon? No logos! What kind of concert is this
supposed to be? No black? No white? No logos? Nothing gets
advertised for free. Maybe it's a concert of the future. A Logan's
Run concert where all the attendees wear one piece tye-dyed jump
suits.
I'm sure I'll have more than my share to say about this
whole affair tomorrow.
Words Like Crow Picked Corpses
Tuesday, April 24, 2001 It was over a year ago now
when the great writer, that author of Monkey Houses and
Slaughterhouses, spoke before the blindly admiring crowd. And what
did he say up there on the stage in front of all the people? Oh,
many things. I remember he said things like this, and then folded
his arms and said things like that, unfolding his arms with a broad
flourish like a gymnast making the plant. He took questions from his
admirers. He answered the questions with laughs and small anecdotes,
but the anecdotes weren't small to the smiling fans; they were
grand, deep, poetic. The great writer, penman of Breakfast of
Champions, made grand gestures and statements on the nature of
writing and the changing face of writing and did he have any advice
for up and coming writers or writers who wanted to be up and coming?
Yes, he did. Oh, you bet you he did. He was all about advice for
young struggling writers. He had a lot of that. From his place on
stage, between two captive palm trees planted right into the marble
floor like mob victims set to swim with the fishes in their special
concrete slippers, he spoke about writers by speaking first about
himself, the great writer and then what writers should do. He knows
what writers should do. They should compose a poem or short work of
fiction. They should create a little piece of word magic in private,
never show it to anybody else, read it to themselves and then tear
it up into many pieces and scatter the remnants throughout the big
city of L.A. or elsewhere if that's where you happen to be. Tear up
the composition. Shred the word play. Rip it all into confetti and
let it swarm on the wind like delirious locusts hungry without end.
That's what the aspiring hopefuls of the next generation of writers
should do and in the meantime, buy the great writer's new hardbound
collection of shorts for only $29.95, less the five percent discount
for purchasing it on the day of his wonderful and generous
appearance. There will be no signing. Time is money for a great one
like himself. He must be off. There are other lustful faces to
pontificate to in cities far away. He must be going, going, bye-bye,
baby.
I write this feeble crap everyday. Clacking away at the
weak joyless keyboard letters. No resounding, clack, clack,
clackity, clack. No mad dash of metal arms for paper, imprinting
their presence with each satisfactory bang and the carriage
returning clang and the arms never get caught in a lover's tangle of
ecstasy over the beautiful flow of glorious words and eloquent turns
of phrase. No, this off white keyboard I mirthlessly strum shares
none of the old majesty of the manual type writers used by the old
L.A. masters: the Arturo Bandinis, the Henry Chinaskis. But they
didn't have the back space key. They didn't have the cut and paste,
the insert function or a helpful RAM draining paper clip friend who
could tell them what better ways to arrange their unseemly
sentences. Poor boys, how did they do it? What was life like before
auto-formatting? How horrible, I can't imagine. But this computer,
day after day in day out, it tugs at me and I'm too stupid or lazy
to fight it so here are more useless words as I'm commanded,
compelled and committed to burn into the monitor, but not complacent
enough to take the advice of Kurt Vonnegut and bust it all into
pieces. Too bad for you.
No Lie
Monday, April 23, 2001 Breaking up is hard to do ,
especially in Mexico. She cheated on him, I heard, although I know
neither her name nor his. She cheated on him, as I said, and as is
custom with such things, he broke off with her.
"No more of that
cheating puta!" he may have cursed in his own language. His own
language which is not my language. I don't understand his language.
His culture: I don't understand that either. There's craziness in
Mexico. There's craziness in America too, but in Mexico it's
showier, more ostentatious. Police corruption rides on the surface.
They'll steal your gloves for no reason. Bribes are dogmatic,
there's rules. So he may have cursed her as he made up his mind to
throw her out of his life. It's harder for a Mexican man to forgive
a cheating woman; machismo is shot through their culture like
webbing in cheap plastics. Machismo plays its own games. Machismo
takes no shit. A land of broken and battered races eating cheap
wormy pork tacos on the hot sand, wondering what happened to the
pyramid builders and the honest rule of brutish gods; why should
they want to take anymore shit? They may have been fooled briefly by
deific white men on horseback, but they're not so prone to fall for
fairy tales like borders and laws. Because they have cousins in
America, aunts, uncles, moms, dads and nieces too.
The cheating
bitch, weeping, given the brush, knowing herself wrong. She never
thought her betrayal of the relationship would be discovered. But it
hurt because it was, and maybe the other guy hated her too. After
all, she is a cheap twist. In her painful misery, her heartache, she
cries to her brothers about how she was so mistreated, mishandled. I
wouldn't know. How would I know? Maybe she embellishes the facts
there on the second floor of an old adobe apartment complex,
blackened by exhaust and blasted smooth by hot sand laden winds. The
story unfolds and she adds (or perhaps doesn't have to add) details
about the beatings and the time he took a butane lighter to her
nipples and she had to call the federales on him once but they raped
her instead of helping. The brothers and their friends are furious.
The hatred grows. They've been beaten by the federales too. They
know what it's like, but there's nothing you can do to authority,
but there is something you can do to bastard ex-boyfriends who have
dumped your sister. They start plotting, scheming, hatching ideas
over the liters of 2 dollar tequila. Maybe not tequila, maybe they
hate their culture and instead swill quarts of angry gin. Four
Mexican boys frustrated into mad dumb rage. Gin or tequila inflaming
their impassioned sense for revenge. It's those familial ties,
they're stupid strong in Mexico. Fueled by liquor, driven by wrong
mindedness and a false concept of pride, the four run out to the
streets. They get in the pick up truck, two in the cab, two in the
back. Where does that asshole live? They know where he lives. The
brothers dropped their sister off at his place many times. Oh yes,
they know right where that bastard lives and they know just what
they're going to do with the rope coiled up in the flatbed, lifeless
unable to make tactical venomous strike on its own, and the gun,
pure potential energy in the glove box. The sand from the street is
in the air, stinging the reddened drunk eyes. The boys in the back
shield their eyes with curved hands, snorting sand particles out
from their broad old Mayan noses as they bang along the cracked
scorched tar road.
Somehow, the anger and idiocy never abates and
they reach where the damn bastard, son of a cunt, calls home. Oh,
now that fucker is going to get it. They run right up to the house
where the fucker lives. Too bad for him, he is home, watching the
news on a static tube. Telemundo reporting a big drug bust. They
show the dead bodies. He sees the dead bodies on TV, sips his coke,
bites a Dorito in half and the next thing he knows the door is
busted in, the landlord's cheap dead bolt bending and splintering up
the particle board enforced adobe walls like an ugly black beetle
pushing up dirt as it tries to free itself from the dark earth
through the crack in a sidewalk. He chokes on his Dorito and
scrambles to his feet. Three of them have blasted inside, and they
have him. Telemundo bursts into snow when the set hits the floor. He
gets thrown out the front door and into the pink paint flaked rail
dividing apartment from street. Blood cruises out from a shallow cut
on the forehead. What's going on? He knows these guys.
"You want
to dump our sister cocksucker?" they curse. Again, the cursing is
not in my language so even if I was there I couldn't be sure of what
they're actually saying. They throw him in the dirt. They throw him
in the street, and then he sees the fourth boy and what he has done.
There's that rope, unfurled, one end tied to the bumper. They tie
the other end to his arms and head. Ah, he knows the plan, and he
starts begging, but he might as well be speaking my language for how
well the others heed what he cries. I don't think they're going to
stop. Two boys jump up into the cab and two others ride in the back.
They whip into gear and down the street, around corners, dragging
the ex-boyfriend over sun baked tar. He screams in horror as his
clothes tear through and the friction of exposed flesh against rough
heavily pebbled tar roads burns and rubs skin raw and through muscle
and in other places it scrapes the bone and chips pieces of bloodied
white skeleton free. He tries to hold his head up, dirt and exhaust
kicking in his face. The two boys in the cab chuck rocks and empty
beer bottles at the sorry sight they haul behind them. I wonder how
the onlookers must feel? I wonder if the girl would feel vindicated
by the sight for being swept to the gutter like stinking dog shit by
this bleeding, abnormally bent and twisted Romeo? The driver slams
on the brakes. Now, they have come full circle, back in front of the
ex-boyfriend's place. The front door is still kicked open, but the
television has already been run off with like his girlfriend who ran
off with that other guy for a night. God, how that made him mad, but
he couldn't really remember that right now. Right now, he remembered
how much he loved her and how much he still loves her. He doesn't
understand the feelings because he wants to hate her for hurting
him. Shock has fully set in. Nothing else explains the beautiful
numbness he feels even as his foul, ugly blood runs off to the
gutter from his wounds as other wounds, packed with sand, begin to
clot. He screams the lost girl's name, the young woman's name who he
loves.
The driver reaches across and pulls all that potential
energy out of the glove box. He exits the car and another boy pulls
the ex out from underneath the pick-up where he slid from the sudden
stop. He's about to get another sudden stop. Looking up from the
ground, he can barely see the brother standing over him through the
shock and dirt. The brother looks like his sister, like that woman
he loves, like that woman who broke his poor boy's heart in two. It
is her standing over him. It's her, come to kiss the wounds and heal
and love and forgive and all will be well. Overcome by happiness and
warmth he calls her name.
Damn, how hearing this sad dumb maggot
speak his sister's name angers him, and in a flash of ginned up
wrath the gun shoots and bores a whole straight into the ass fuck's
brain. It bores and bores through until it explodes in a wash of
reds, purples and grays onto the street beneath. Quick! Cut the
rope! Get in the truck! What have we done!? The truck screeches down
the street, leaving the dead in its wake.
Hearing the commotion
and seeing the truck galloping out of sight, a body in the street,
and most horribly, her door smashed in, his mother, one of many
Mexicans with sisters in America, runs to the body, fearing the
worse. It is too much, and overcome with grief, she retrieves a
common kitchen knife and turns it on her self. She is skilled,
proficient and punctures her left ventricle. This kills her. Later,
still, and coming from I don't know where, her mother, the
ex-boyfriend's mother's mother, his grandmother, the mother of the
sister in America, she finds this awful piling of bodies and, as her
daughter before her, dies with a self-inflicted knife in her heart
on the filthy Mexican street. Right there on top of her daughter and
her grandson. The sister in America will be inconsolable, but
hopefully, for her daughter's sake, she'll make it through on more
strength than most people ever need.
In Mexico, later, the sirens
of the federales wailed and the dog's howled along. The federales
grabbed whatever money was in the pockets of the dead, and one of
them took the bag of groceries the mother threw down. Not even the
cream had gone bad in the heat.
Fairies Wear Boots
by Dick It started as opportunism, capitalizing on
another's mistake. Not the most decent way to go, but there had been
a rough go of it for the past eight months, and I was looking bad. I
weighed the day's options, my back to the wall. The options didn't
look too good. The best one was to keep leaning against the bricks
and trying to come up with better options. A passer-by dropped a
dollar bill at my feet without any other gesture or eye contact. But
it was deliberate. I saw the intent in his action. Sometimes it
happens. A dollar?
I took my new found wealth, all I had, to the
nearest convenience store. There wasn't much I could buy. A bag of
little chips, more than a dollar. Pre-made white bread sandwiches,
ten cents over my allowance. A can, one twelve ounce can of Miller
Genuine Draft, however, was only eighty-five cents plus the CA
nickel deposit, plus seven cents tax. Still under a buck. I went for
the can.
The cashier counted back change to one of two young
women. Both the women had long ashen hair and legs that reminded me
of how long since I had pressed my cheek to the inside of one. They
also made me realize how far from them I truly was, standing there
in dirty crazy tatters clutching my single can of beer and dollar.
Soon they were done and gone. A soft scent lingered around me in
their wake. I took the moment to enjoy it. The cashier, a fat Puerto
Rican kid stuffed into his tight blue corporate vest, took my beer,
bleeped it with his hand held laser, took my dollar and counted me
back my change: "three pennies, a ten, five, and four ones make
twenty. Thanks."
"Yeah," I said. For too long I stood in front of
him, dumbly stunned. He looked curiously at me. My heart began to
pound. Shit! He realizes. You idiot! Do something.
"Anything
else?" he asked. It wasn't curiosity with which he looked at me, but
annoyance. The fat boy wanted me out of his space. I wanted to
oblige.
"A sack. Paper sack," I said. He grabbed a long paper
bag, the type for a bottle of wine, from behind him and handed it to
me. "Thanks," I added and walked out with my beer in the bag, and
nineteen dollars and three cents in my pocket. My heart's rapid
hammering eased up as I turned the corner to another street. It
completely abated after I cracked open the Miller and let the first
cool splash slip down to my empty stomach. Glory be, sometimes, at a
moment like that, I could almost believe in God and all sorts of
miracles and other crazy shit. From nothing, to drink and nineteen
dollars.
"Nineteen dollars?" I wondered. What to do? I picked a
bar without any front windows or exterior markings.
"What's the cheapest?"
"Budweiser," answered the old
man behind the bar. He looked upon me gently as ash from his
cigarette fell and tumbled down his Hawaiian print shirt. "It's a
buck fifty."
"I'll have a Bud," I said pulling two singles from
my hip pocket and sliding them across the wood bartop into a little
puddle of whisky. The bartender moved youthfully for his age. He
snapped the beer up out of the ice and fluidly snapped the cap off
on a bottle opener somewhere under the bar. He set it down in front
of me. A white froth dome delicately burgeoned forth from the brown
glass neck. I sucked it off the top. When he brought the two
quarters in change back, I pushed them towards him.
"Thanks," he
said, swiping up the quarters and tapping them twice (tick, tick) on
the bartop. They got tossed into a fishbowl he had for
tips.
There were three others in the bar. It wasn't yet noon.
There was a businessman with a whisky on ice and cell phone parked
in front of him. He'd pick up the phone, put it down, pick up the
whisky, sip a tiny sip, pick up the phone then put them both back
down. Another man, black, gray thinned out hair and cauliflower rose
nose, sat alone near the television that was mounted to the wall
behind the bar. The t.v. was turned down all the way. Some drama
with Audey Murphy was unfolding aboard a ship in the
Pacific.
"What do you got there? Any Fritos?" asked the old
drunk.
"Nope," answered the barkeep, "I have one Doritos and a
whole mess of Cheetos, but no Fritos."
"Are there any behind
those bags, towards the back?"
The bartender turned the wire rack
holding the snacks around to reveal the hidden bags to the barfly.
"See? Just a bunch of Cheetos." With no further exchange they both
fixed their eyes on the black and white WWII drama.
At a table
near the back entrance sat the only woman. A disaster of a woman. I
checked the legs wrapped in nylons, and not much to see. Her skirt
hem was frayed dangling above her dirty black boots, revealing
barely an inch of calf between hem and haw. A heavy green jacket hid
her floral pattern blouse. Lipstick was smeared thickly; dry spit
formed a white crusty layer over the heavy red glossing. She smoked.
Had a gap between her lower teeth as if designed as a rest for that
Marlboro. Her eyes were deep, sunken and glassy and her skin
jaundiced. It was like a piss stained snowman's head with marble
eyes jabbed too far in, three stooges’ style. I still had the women
from my lucky convenience store in mind, and if I knew one thing,
she wasn't a day over seventy. I've never been a very good beggar,
and a bad beggar definitely doesn't want to be a chooser. In other
words, she'd have to do. I moved on her, pulling up a chair.
She
looked up from her empty glass, smoke listlessly drooling upwards
from between her cracked stained teeth. Her tongue darted out like a
bundle of sad night crawlers and sloppily moistened her lips. Tar
stained fingers pushed the glass towards me, the last ice cube
desperately melting away, she worked out a smile, winked and said,
"I'll paint your cock red for a vodka lime."
If I had hesitated
for a second, I would not have accepted such an offer. Without pause
I hopped to, taking the glass to the bartender and ordering a vodka
with Rose's lime. I also ordered a shot of Jim and another beer for
myself. Before returning I took the shot and washed it down with
half the Bud. With the bottle of beer, vodka lime and nine dollars
and three cents, I returned to the table. As I was setting the drink
down her claw of a hand came out, hooked the glass out of mine and
the whole concoction was drained before my eyes. I stood holding my
beer in front of me, unsure of what to do.
"Come on," she said,
standing and clomping out through the back door. Just before
stepping out into the alley, I heard the businessman at the other
end of the bar.
"That's no deal! You fuck! You inexcusable
jack-off!" I turned. His tiny dead face throbbed like a blinking
stop signal. He looked like he wanted to crush the phone in his
clenched fist. I went into the alley. The scent of human waste was
pungent, almost burning. She was already on her knees. "Just lean
against the wall," she croaked. Shit, I should have finished my beer
at the very least. I put my back to the wall; she placed her hands
on my hips and violently pushed me back.
"You chose me!" she
hissed. "You walked to my table of your own free will and left with
me. You chose me."
"Well, I left because you offered, but..." I
said.
"Shhh," she silenced me and started to stand. "I'm not a
normal woman."
Oh, Christ. This is great. It's bad that I was so
desperate for sexual contact as to go into a shit reeking alley with
this thing, but worse if I had to endure some form of conversation
to achieve that contact.
"I know you're no normal woman," I
reaffirmed.
"What I am is a fairy, and fairies award those who
are blind to other's imperfections." "So I get an award?"
"You
get three. Three wishes. Anything," said the fairy whore.
"I
thought genies gave wishes?"
"There's no such thing as genies,
Deary. You're down on your luck. You have been for quite some time,"
she said. I was getting irritated. I don't enjoy being called
"deary," or any other term of affection, by crack whores who perform
sexual favors for two dollar and fifty cent vodka drinks. Worse yet,
her breath. I had to get her face away from mine. The longer I
looked at her the lower the odds on erectile function. I set my
hands on her shoulders and started working her back down onto her
knees.
"Yeah, yeah. Real astute observance. Okay, first wish,
shut up. Second wish, blow me. Third, get the fuck away from me. Now
do it in that order!"
She spoke no word. She did it real well.
She even got her tongue around to my asshole. I like that. I liked
the texture of the brick wall on my ass. This bitch was expert. God,
I stared down at her head and in pleasure's intensity the dandruff
in her greasy dark hair became stars on the rim of heaven. I dangled
over the abyss of space, arched my back and shot strong until empty,
but I still felt full. This was no hollow orgasm. It was the orgasm
of true love. The crack fairy rose to her feet, smiled awkwardly at
me as she wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her threadbare
jacket.
"Damn, you really know what you're doing," I said and she
gave my balls a soft squeeze. She smiled into my eyes, and for that
moment, I saw her as beautiful, as young, as the woman she may have
been before the ravages of time and street. You gotta believe me.
Then, she turned, and walked down the alley. I zipped up.
"Hey,
if you want to go back in for another drink," I said, but she didn't
turn, instead she threw off her green jacket, letting it fall to the
garbage strewn alley. Then, the blouse came off. Then the wings
unfurled. She beat them once, twice, more times. Each consecutive
beat was stronger and stirred up more garbage until the alley was a
wind tunnel, garbage flying everywhere. The wind she generated was
throwing me off balance. Her clothes blew back at me. I was backed
up against the wall for balance. Squinting against the flying
debris, I watched her boots leave the black top. The boots turned
there, in mid-air, until the steel toes pointed at me. I glanced up
from her boots and saw she wasn't the same woman at all. She was the
beauty I saw in her smile. And then the smile came again. And then
the alley filled with heat and light in an explosive flash.
Shopkeepers came out of their stores' back doors into the alley.
They didn't see me at first. What they saw first was the bloodied
body of the crack whore. No wings. Also no coat or blouse. They saw
me second, the blouse and coat at my feet.
My fairy tale went pretty much unheeded, and, yes,
substantial traces of semen matching my own was found in her stomach
contents. The DA had me plea to some sort of undefined manslaughter
rather than first degree homicide, and I was handed a prison
sentence of three years, four months in Tehachapi Maximum.
Out in the yard, guys from different blocks checked out
the fresh meat from other blocks. I was fresh meat. My cellmate, who
didn't like me, said he was planning on pimping my ass out to the
highest bidder. He said he was in good with a guard who would make
it happen. Rather than call his bluff, I slept with a sharpened
pencil under my pillow, and would imagine its path, plunging into
the filthy rapist's eye as I drifted off to sleep, but ultimately,
it wasn't the pencil jamming into an eye, but rather... I'd rather
not recount that first time. After awhile the daily sodomizing
became routine, and I was property. My man was really starting to
like me too. I was a good observer and watched all sorts of shit go
down in the yard and mess hall. I'd inform DeSoto, my man, of plots
overheard and he'd sometimes get me chocolates, cigarettes, even
alcohol, which helped me endure his rapings. DeSoto was not gay. I
know, he fucked my ass quite regularly, but still, on the inside, it
didn't make him a homosexual. On the inside of Tehachapi Maximum,
life for the men followed the rules of Machismo. Basically it goes
like this: if you're giving, no matter what the sex you're giving it
to, it makes you more masculine, more heterosexual and
testosteronely mighty, but if you receive, you're a punk bitch, and
generally lower on the food chain. For those on the receiving end of
the field it didn't matter if you were receiving by choice or force,
you weren't considered much of a man either way, but to receive by
choice from one of the sad little faggots like myself, that would
mean social disaster.
One day it happened. DeSoto's biggest rival
was Jerry, an old half ton of man. I always tried to stay
politically neutral. It'd be stupid of me to be otherwise. Politics
in prison meant fighting. Armed with nothing more than a fly
swatter, I wouldn't attack a pitbull, mucus and bile dripping madly
from its snarling soul, because it thought my lawn would be a good
place for a rest stop on its insane trek along the heat scent trail.
Even if that pitbull was a Chihuahua, "Let it," as the smug
counter-culture preacher says, "be." I have no use for even a
swollen ankle in these jails filled with junkies, perverts and
whores. So when Jerry approached me and wanted to suck my dick as
part of a series of sweet favors to lure me away from DeSoto, I
slapped it into his mouth. Arguing can mean death. This was the
first time since the alley. The memory of which I'm starting to
disbelieve. As Jerry worked it, snorting and sniffling, I remembered
looking down into the fairy whore's dark hair and seeing the abyss
and how it felt as if I was swinging over it, dangling at the end of
my rope over dark infinity, attempting to fly to safety. As my mind
filled with infinities, fairies and prison politics, Jerry made me
come. A lot. I hosed down the big bastard’s throat and he screamed,
real mad deathly terror.
In fear, I jumped back. He clutched
psyche ward, headbanger crazy at his throat, gasping, desperate. I
didn't know what to do.
"Help! Holy mother of God someone fucking
help!" I cried out in distress. Two guards were immediately on the
scene with a few prisoners in tow. They ate up the story with their
eyes: Jerry spitting up white frothing vomit, my pants down, half
limp prick dying on the vine in the open air. Whatever was happening
to Jerry right then and there, his future as prison macho man was no
more. Nobody wanted to touch Jerry. One of the guards put me in
cuffs. More guards arrived, more than I had ever seen in one space.
Enough for riot control. They discussed what they should do as Jerry
writhed and spat up voluminous amounts of the off-white froth. He
rolled around in agony, his mad vomit slick over his face, hair and
clothes. It began to fully encase him. He was like an angry impotent
bee getting the once over from a merciless spider. The guards
corralled us back, but not away. None of them could take their eyes
off this mess that had been one of the toughest guys in all
Tehachapi Max. Jerry's thrashing ended. Small amounts of noxious
gleet still gurgled from his mouth like a too full infant spitting
milk.
Everyone stared and did nothing. Awe was felt, and then
more awe. Jerry started to rise, dazed. His body no longer seemed to
fit him, and his hands fell off. A prisoner fainted at the sight.
Then Jerry's face dropped, then his whole body sagged away like a
sandcastle in the surf. What remained was awesome. It was Jerry,
standing before us, but smooth, thin, unwasted by the world's
indecency to him. He was young. Like twenty years younger.
Since then they've been feeding my semen to animals, first
rabbits, but they died, then old monkeys who would get very young
afterwards. So far it's not too bad. I get to jerk off to Hustler or
whatever, collect it in a little clear glass tube and that's it. As
long, they say, as I can pull one off at least three times a day
then they won't resort to mechanical extraction. What they're doing
is working out dosage. This is going to be for people eventually,
and they're trying to synthetically recreate it since they can't
patent my jism. They wanted to know everything that might have had
something to do with this phenomenon. They wanted me to write it all
down, honestly. I already gave the fairy tale in my statement for
the police, but the psychiatrist told me that story was a means of
displacing guilt from myself to the victim. That's okay. The
psychiatrist needs to believe that. Most people need to believe
lies, but I'm through telling them. So here it is, the truth again,
all written out as I saw it with my own two eyes, and that's it
baby. Every sperm is sacred. I tell you no lies.
404, please!
Thursday, April 19, 2001 There is no time for
distillation. Once it's written, it's immediately blasted onto a web
page for everyone to read. It used to be, of course, that to get any
writing out there to the masses took years of struggle and then
you'd have to be lucky enough to find someone that actually thought
the writing possessed something other writing did not. Despite all
the hundreds of tuna fish caught in the net, it is that one dolphin
people are concerned with saving. The history of printing presses,
the high costs of publishing, the hard nosed editors and skittish
publishers; those were the factors that made sure that dolphin made
it out of that mess alive. The legions of mad entangled tuna fish,
eaten and forgotten. Now, with the internet, it seems the illiterate
tuna fish have finally won out,
but I'll eventually turn out to be wrong. For anyone who's serious,
they're finding the old paths, mixed with a bit of the new, still work as well as they
ever have. Talent gets singled out. The rest, they eventually go
404.
McDonaldland Tech. Support
Wednesday, April 18, 2001 I can explain this. The
"this" that that "this" links to is another account of someone
having a horrible time with a technical support agent. In the case
of that "this," it is with two technical support agents, first one
via a web chat and, secondly, over the phone. And as I said I can
explain that "this." I can explain that "this" because my job in the
past, and never again, has been to help people with their technical
difficulties. In the case of that particular "this" that I will be
explaining, the person in need of help is much more well versed on
his computer than most others who call in seeking help. This
immediately puts him at both an advantage and disadvantage. The
advantage of knowing more doesn't really need to be stated. The
disadvantage of being a smarter computer user than most is it puts
the technical support agent at a disadvantage, and the technical
support agent must stall for time as he or she stumbles through a
data base of possible causes and quick fixes of and for the
technical difficulty. The agent puts forth all of his energies into
scanning through page after page of problems and instructions for
solutions. The technical support agents don't actually know all this
stuff about your computer, its configurations, OS, e-mail client,
browser and so forth. They aren't even encouraged to know it. The
only thing the agents are encouraged to know is how to quickly flip
through the data base of fixes because the technical support
industry, like nearly all industries, yearns to catch up with the
fast food industry by churning through vast legions of unskilled,
untrained and underpaid workers in order to maintain the highest
possible profit margin for the executives, board members and stock
holders. A knowledgeable and happy technical support team and
quality customer care are secondary to those profit margins. They
offer the guise of free technical support (AOL, AT&T, Earthlink,
etc...), however, the support comes from a computer. Not directly
from a computer but lets not split hairs and wires. It takes one
semi-functioning human being capable of relatively coherent speech
to interpret the findings of the searchable data base and determine
which of the findings is most suitable for a given situation. Soon,
I'd think that they'd be able to do away with the human element, but
I'm probably wrong. They still have humans wrapping bean burritos in
the Taco Bells, and they probably always will. It seems humans like
the human touch. However, as long as the voice at the other end of
the phone sounds human, and as long as not too many of your
sentences are being rearranged and thrown
back at you as questions, it shouldn't be long before Eliza II takes care of all your
customer care needs.
HEALTH UPDATE:
I'm still a snotty snot nosed snot factory, and
I pray for release from my torment. Amen.
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