A lesson in Magick
Jul. 19th, 2005 08:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonThis was back in Ft.Lauderdale, which was really California for people who hate California. I was 17 and biding my time until the military would take me in. I was a cub in a pack of wolves then, quietly orbiting a loose alliance of Punks, Skins, Heads & Deathrockers (for anyone under 21 that was what we called 'Goths' then). But I had other friends, and, believe it or not I even had an arch-enemey as well: Darryl. Darryl used to be my best friend in highschool. We used to go and get fucked up together, skip class and hang out at each others houses playing selections from our meager vinyl collection. All was good until he met Dawn, my girlfriend, my first girlfriend mind you, and the two fell in love at first sight. We were always supposed to have some grand 'throw-down' over her but it never happened. There'd be much shit talking, threats, posturing, alliances were made and broken and in the end it just boiled down to more shit talking. The truth be known, Dawn got off on the two of us being at each others throats all time. We were both sleeping with her and she delighted in telling each other the sordid details of the other one in bed. She was what you would call a classic "HeadFuck"! She played the two of us like toys and we were too cunt starved then to think of any other option. Two years had passed. Dawn left the two of us for another guy, and Darryl & I remained enemies. I got into weight lifting, sparring with Mike & Tim, reading poetry and had begun plagarizing Kerouac already. Darryl on the other hand got into Magick. The word went around the teenage grapevine that Darryl had placed a curse on me. Death magick. Serious shit. He had a rep as lil' Al Crowley. I was warned. This flipped me out and I told my friend Steve Tildbury about it.
Steve and I's friendship defied the rules of Highschool clickdom. Our friendship, though feasible in maybe a highschool sitcom or a teen romance movie, was completely unheard of in real life. Steve had a mullet. I had a shaved head. Steve listened to Jam Pony & NWA. I listened to Ministry & Bad Religion. Steve was a jock, 220 pounds of muscle,beer,attitude & baby fat. Think Baby Huey on steroid-crack rock cocktails. Me? I was a freak, smart ass remarks and daydream trances. Class war demanded that never the twine should meet. What we had in common though, was a sincere & absolute, boredom by what the world had expected of us. I wanted more, Steve wanted less. Another thing to know about my friend was that he had serious anger management issues. I recall riding with him down Federal Highway when some IROC cut us off without warning. Steve slammed down his horn and the driver flipped him off. That's when Steve noticed the 'No-Fear' sticker on the back of the window. Steve followed the guy for a few miles and when he got the guy at a red light, hopped out of his car, grabbed his aluminum baseball bat from the backseat and proceeded to pound the shit of this assholes car, yelling the whole time, and I shit you not: "No Fear huh? Then step out fuck bitch! STEP OUT!" The guy never got out and he just floored it at the green. That was Steve all over. So we were hanging out, weight lifting and sneaking smokes, and I told him my problems with Darryl ..
"A curse huh? Like Voodoo and shit...?"
"Nah more the kinda thing Skinhead Dave & Dirty Mike get into... Feel-Ema I think they call it".
Steve nodded thoughtfully.
"You think that shit works?" he asks
I shrug a 'beats me'. He spots my bench,five clean and one assist at 180.
"Thing is i'd feel better if I was'nt the lab rat on whether this works or not"
"I feel you man" he said nodding to some inner argument I was'nt privy to. "C'mon lets go"
"Where?"
"Your gonna show me where he lives."
"What?"
"Let's go find him and kick the shit out of him."
"Why?"
"I'm telling you man this is how you handle a curse!"
"Nah-uh man, it's a lot more complicated than that..."
"How do you know?"
He had me there. Truth is I didn't know much about the subject. What little I did know was from my Mom and the occasional tarot cards she'd read for the family. She was very good actually. An oracle that demanded offerings of red wine & menthol light 100's. I liked the idea of seeing into the future. I liked the idea that the comic book world I so coveted was vague, but attainable. But what I really loved about those cards were their aesthetics, even as a kid I used to take my Mom's Waite deck and take the four Knights & their four Kings and led by the Chariot they would battle Death & the Devil for the Star & four Queens. These prime archetypes of power & scyring were nothing more than two diemensional action figures to me. So, a curse! Why not? My childhood was also filled with the wrong side of wonderful. Night terrors & demon dogs. The dead played tricks with our eyes. Ghosts wept from the stairs and something scratched at the windows wanting in. I hated it and had no intention of going back. Dawn was into that shit. A good chunk of my friends did too. I hop off the bench.
"Let's go!" I tell Steve signing some kind of secret contract.
Steve is standing outside on the lawn pounding on Darryl's window with the flat of his fist. I'm standing next to him, i've quietly voluntered for look out duty. I scan up and down the driveway for the inevitable arrival of the cops.
"Step out here and put a curse on me bitch!" Steve yells. Every dog within a square mile are barking. Lights are popping on in all the windows. It's Midnight in suburbia only the drug addicts & the insane are out.
"I know you hear me!" Steve shouts into the window, like he's whispering a death threat in the ear of the house. "Be a man! Just be a man and step out here!"
"What's going on?" The porch light clicks on. Darryl's father stands there, hands buried in his plaid robe.
"Go back inside and tell that bitch to..."
"Hold on" I tell Steve, I bury the instinct to run and walk up to Dad "Sir, your son threatened us with witchcraft."
"What...?"
"Your Son Threatened Us with Witchcraft!" I say oozing self rightousness with each sylable.
The father is looking deep in my eyes. This is what makes a good story teller. The silent bluff between the story & the audience. I believe in my outrage. I am confident in my accusation. The Father leans in. His hands draw from those bottomless pockets and point at the two of us.
"Wait here!"
Steve just looks at me, and I shoot him a wink. Dad comes back out with his son Darryl, collared by the back of the t-shirt like an a comedic sketch involving a burglar & a Bobby.
"Is this true!" The father demands. He's talking to us but Darryl answers
"Well, yeah, kinda"
"What!" Dad spins on him.
"I did'nt do anything. It was just..."
"He was threatening my sister" Steve yells all of a sudden. Hip to the game.
"What!" Dad again but now with a quick slap across the chops
Darryl starts pleading. Mid air genuflections. Mia Culpa mime job. The Dad tells him something. The two of us can't hear it but I can see Darryl wince in pain at the thought of it.
"SAY IT!" Dad screams. Dogs resume their howl. Judgment has been pronounced.
"I'm sorry Rob" He whispers
I look at Steve who just nods. We turn our backs on Darryl and say not one more word until we're well in the car. I tell Steve all about his Darryl & his uber religious parents. I tell him about how his old man figured him for a homo. All it took was a little eyeliner and listening to Depeche Mode a little too loud. Darryl was going to be doing a life sentence on the shit list in his fathers eyes. Zap! Pow! Bang!
That's Magick!
"You still worried about the curse?" He asks snickering
"Nah. What's that asshole gonna do?"
We both laughed and got drunk off of an illegally procured six pack. I shook off a lot of my superstitions that night. I no longer felt haunted. Haunted just being 'Hunted' with a 'U'. I felt clean. A sense of humilation and relief at the same time. It seems that Magick was real. It was similar to the old adage of Henry Ford: "Whether you believe you can or can't your right." One foot in the clouds and one foot on the Earth I stared into my future brightly that night. It seemed a lot wider than and a lot crazier than I originally suspected.
Steve and I's friendship defied the rules of Highschool clickdom. Our friendship, though feasible in maybe a highschool sitcom or a teen romance movie, was completely unheard of in real life. Steve had a mullet. I had a shaved head. Steve listened to Jam Pony & NWA. I listened to Ministry & Bad Religion. Steve was a jock, 220 pounds of muscle,beer,attitude & baby fat. Think Baby Huey on steroid-crack rock cocktails. Me? I was a freak, smart ass remarks and daydream trances. Class war demanded that never the twine should meet. What we had in common though, was a sincere & absolute, boredom by what the world had expected of us. I wanted more, Steve wanted less. Another thing to know about my friend was that he had serious anger management issues. I recall riding with him down Federal Highway when some IROC cut us off without warning. Steve slammed down his horn and the driver flipped him off. That's when Steve noticed the 'No-Fear' sticker on the back of the window. Steve followed the guy for a few miles and when he got the guy at a red light, hopped out of his car, grabbed his aluminum baseball bat from the backseat and proceeded to pound the shit of this assholes car, yelling the whole time, and I shit you not: "No Fear huh? Then step out fuck bitch! STEP OUT!" The guy never got out and he just floored it at the green. That was Steve all over. So we were hanging out, weight lifting and sneaking smokes, and I told him my problems with Darryl ..
"A curse huh? Like Voodoo and shit...?"
"Nah more the kinda thing Skinhead Dave & Dirty Mike get into... Feel-Ema I think they call it".
Steve nodded thoughtfully.
"You think that shit works?" he asks
I shrug a 'beats me'. He spots my bench,five clean and one assist at 180.
"Thing is i'd feel better if I was'nt the lab rat on whether this works or not"
"I feel you man" he said nodding to some inner argument I was'nt privy to. "C'mon lets go"
"Where?"
"Your gonna show me where he lives."
"What?"
"Let's go find him and kick the shit out of him."
"Why?"
"I'm telling you man this is how you handle a curse!"
"Nah-uh man, it's a lot more complicated than that..."
"How do you know?"
He had me there. Truth is I didn't know much about the subject. What little I did know was from my Mom and the occasional tarot cards she'd read for the family. She was very good actually. An oracle that demanded offerings of red wine & menthol light 100's. I liked the idea of seeing into the future. I liked the idea that the comic book world I so coveted was vague, but attainable. But what I really loved about those cards were their aesthetics, even as a kid I used to take my Mom's Waite deck and take the four Knights & their four Kings and led by the Chariot they would battle Death & the Devil for the Star & four Queens. These prime archetypes of power & scyring were nothing more than two diemensional action figures to me. So, a curse! Why not? My childhood was also filled with the wrong side of wonderful. Night terrors & demon dogs. The dead played tricks with our eyes. Ghosts wept from the stairs and something scratched at the windows wanting in. I hated it and had no intention of going back. Dawn was into that shit. A good chunk of my friends did too. I hop off the bench.
"Let's go!" I tell Steve signing some kind of secret contract.
Steve is standing outside on the lawn pounding on Darryl's window with the flat of his fist. I'm standing next to him, i've quietly voluntered for look out duty. I scan up and down the driveway for the inevitable arrival of the cops.
"Step out here and put a curse on me bitch!" Steve yells. Every dog within a square mile are barking. Lights are popping on in all the windows. It's Midnight in suburbia only the drug addicts & the insane are out.
"I know you hear me!" Steve shouts into the window, like he's whispering a death threat in the ear of the house. "Be a man! Just be a man and step out here!"
"What's going on?" The porch light clicks on. Darryl's father stands there, hands buried in his plaid robe.
"Go back inside and tell that bitch to..."
"Hold on" I tell Steve, I bury the instinct to run and walk up to Dad "Sir, your son threatened us with witchcraft."
"What...?"
"Your Son Threatened Us with Witchcraft!" I say oozing self rightousness with each sylable.
The father is looking deep in my eyes. This is what makes a good story teller. The silent bluff between the story & the audience. I believe in my outrage. I am confident in my accusation. The Father leans in. His hands draw from those bottomless pockets and point at the two of us.
"Wait here!"
Steve just looks at me, and I shoot him a wink. Dad comes back out with his son Darryl, collared by the back of the t-shirt like an a comedic sketch involving a burglar & a Bobby.
"Is this true!" The father demands. He's talking to us but Darryl answers
"Well, yeah, kinda"
"What!" Dad spins on him.
"I did'nt do anything. It was just..."
"He was threatening my sister" Steve yells all of a sudden. Hip to the game.
"What!" Dad again but now with a quick slap across the chops
Darryl starts pleading. Mid air genuflections. Mia Culpa mime job. The Dad tells him something. The two of us can't hear it but I can see Darryl wince in pain at the thought of it.
"SAY IT!" Dad screams. Dogs resume their howl. Judgment has been pronounced.
"I'm sorry Rob" He whispers
I look at Steve who just nods. We turn our backs on Darryl and say not one more word until we're well in the car. I tell Steve all about his Darryl & his uber religious parents. I tell him about how his old man figured him for a homo. All it took was a little eyeliner and listening to Depeche Mode a little too loud. Darryl was going to be doing a life sentence on the shit list in his fathers eyes. Zap! Pow! Bang!
That's Magick!
"You still worried about the curse?" He asks snickering
"Nah. What's that asshole gonna do?"
We both laughed and got drunk off of an illegally procured six pack. I shook off a lot of my superstitions that night. I no longer felt haunted. Haunted just being 'Hunted' with a 'U'. I felt clean. A sense of humilation and relief at the same time. It seems that Magick was real. It was similar to the old adage of Henry Ford: "Whether you believe you can or can't your right." One foot in the clouds and one foot on the Earth I stared into my future brightly that night. It seemed a lot wider than and a lot crazier than I originally suspected.