My Night as a Whiplash Boychild
Jun. 9th, 2015 01:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonNot sure how it happened but for some reason I remembered Murder, Inc the other day.
They were the first CD I bought when I moved to Terminus. I was with Sinn who I had moved here with. He was showing me the sights. First up Vampire Country, L5P. In the course of our wonderings we ended up in this small hole in the wall record shop next door to a secondhand clothes store. A South African Goth Girl working behind the counter caught the Ministry shirt beneath the leather jacket and recommended Murder, Inc. She called them an industrial super-group and worth checking out especially if I dug Pigface or Killing Joke. At the time I was eyeballing the used music bin - where no job and dwindling savings navigated a tin frugality. However record shop girl had that crazy Afrikanner accent going for her and film noir good looks to boot that made saying no to anything she recommended damn near impossible. At least for a 21 year old rivethead poet scrawling unreadable verses that were inevitably about how some other 21 year old he wanted to fuck reminded him of roses. Or of shadows. Or the rose of a shadow whose petals shivered in the midnight rain.
Yeah, I'd bootcheck me too back then.
Anywho, along with a Christian Death shirt with a picture of Jesus Christ mainlining in agony, a pack of gas station incense, some rolling papers, and a dinner of Little Debbies I made my way down Euclid. Back to the House of Ares - where I slept on a couch and did the roommate thing with two old navy buddies. From there I ate my snack cake supper, packed a bowl and put on the first song - "Supergrass" - and just kept playing it over and over and over again, stomping around the living room that was also my bedroom.
The song was still playing when the three of us pulled up into the parking lot at Spring 4th. Sinn did some Jedi mind trick with the doorman to weasel us in on the guest list. The club was 688, the dress code was gutter punk slut and thrift store ghoul. Illumination black-light minimal. Rancid clove smoke heavy in the epileptic strobe cascade. Red black checkerboard dance-floor cracked and slippery with spilt drinks. Back when I was a kid, I used to love watching all those low-budget post-apocalyptic films piped into the cable TV sets of suburbia to entertain Reaganomic fattened little shits such as myself. This place looked like what a bar would look like in one of those flicks.
So basically I was in heaven really.
In the course of our night there, one shipmate - Sinn - mingled with the children of the nightlife gloriously while my other shipmate - Gallant - sat there monk silent and smiling at the spectacle. That left me to fend on my own.
First I did the mating dance of angry young white men in combat boots that were so abundant in the dusk of the 20th century. Punch, punch, punch, kick, kick, kick, pause, light cigarette dramatically at slow part of song, resume with the punch, punch, punch, kick, kick, kick. This was done mainly to impress a zaftig sex-tank whose dance involved a complex mime of a sorceress invoking an angel.
Unfortunately all she summoned was me - in all my toe-stomping, blind elbow to shoulder glory, that ended with her dousing a cigarette into my drink and storming off the floor.
Then I tried drinking as much as possible hoping the alcohol could launch me out of my stoner inhibitions and take a stab at talking to someone. This resulted in two things. Me hitting on them and them hitting the other side of the bar.
Finally, I gave up, ordered another drink (Nuclear Ice Teas back then as I liked the way they glowed in the black-lights and allowed me to pretend I was drinking some Doc Jekyll concoction that would turn me into some sort of American Hentai Ape.
That's when this pretty little goblin with melted eyeliner took the stool next to mine, tapped me on the shoulder, and asked sheepishly - "Excuse me, I know this might sound stupid, but are you... *nervous giggle*... Chris Connelly?"
"You mean the lead singer for Murder, Inc.?" I asked trying not to look at her directly.
"Yeah..."
It was a sign from the Dark Gods. My LBRs and amateur invocations had finally paid off. For some reason I looked like the dude in the band of the CD I just bought and somehow this sexy goblin was a big fan of. I smiled at myself in what little of my reflection could be made out in the mirror behind the bar and turned that smile towards those Manga wide eyes floating in puddles of black mascara. "If I say 'yes', do you promise not to tell anyone?"
A few more drinks (she paid, she insisted), a few half-remembered verses of 'Stowaway' sung in tones of mock Bowie into her ear, a few dances on the floor and the next thing I knew we were making out in the Ladies Room until security kicked us out.
She gave me her number. Told me to call it while I was in 'town' (researching a new album called 'Terminus'). Got home elated. Phantom goblin kisses still warm on my lips. Smoked another bowl. Gallant smiled, Sinn too... and it grew wider when he asked what I was going to do when she figured out I was just plain old Jack Babalon and not in any form.
Knowing he was right, I stared at the number, lit it on fire in that dramatic way 21 year old poets do things that could be done much simpler otherwise, and leaned back into the couch that was my bed. My roomies exited and ashamed I couldn't even conjure an image of her to masturbate too. Couldn't sleep either. I met the dawn knowing two things.
One, today was not going to be the day I looked for a job.
Two, that if I was going to get what I wanted out of Terminus it would take more than bad poetry, good music, and a few well placed lies. It would take more than me pretending to be someone else. I would have to become something bigger, something stranger, I would have to become the man I always wanted to be.
In those morning shadows that rose across the living room where I slept, I put on the CD again and with a chuckle said goodbye to my brief life as Chris Connelly.
But the last laugh belonged to the Whiplash Boychild after all... as 21 years later, I never again saw that pretty little goblin girl from that night.
They were the first CD I bought when I moved to Terminus. I was with Sinn who I had moved here with. He was showing me the sights. First up Vampire Country, L5P. In the course of our wonderings we ended up in this small hole in the wall record shop next door to a secondhand clothes store. A South African Goth Girl working behind the counter caught the Ministry shirt beneath the leather jacket and recommended Murder, Inc. She called them an industrial super-group and worth checking out especially if I dug Pigface or Killing Joke. At the time I was eyeballing the used music bin - where no job and dwindling savings navigated a tin frugality. However record shop girl had that crazy Afrikanner accent going for her and film noir good looks to boot that made saying no to anything she recommended damn near impossible. At least for a 21 year old rivethead poet scrawling unreadable verses that were inevitably about how some other 21 year old he wanted to fuck reminded him of roses. Or of shadows. Or the rose of a shadow whose petals shivered in the midnight rain.
Yeah, I'd bootcheck me too back then.
Anywho, along with a Christian Death shirt with a picture of Jesus Christ mainlining in agony, a pack of gas station incense, some rolling papers, and a dinner of Little Debbies I made my way down Euclid. Back to the House of Ares - where I slept on a couch and did the roommate thing with two old navy buddies. From there I ate my snack cake supper, packed a bowl and put on the first song - "Supergrass" - and just kept playing it over and over and over again, stomping around the living room that was also my bedroom.
The song was still playing when the three of us pulled up into the parking lot at Spring 4th. Sinn did some Jedi mind trick with the doorman to weasel us in on the guest list. The club was 688, the dress code was gutter punk slut and thrift store ghoul. Illumination black-light minimal. Rancid clove smoke heavy in the epileptic strobe cascade. Red black checkerboard dance-floor cracked and slippery with spilt drinks. Back when I was a kid, I used to love watching all those low-budget post-apocalyptic films piped into the cable TV sets of suburbia to entertain Reaganomic fattened little shits such as myself. This place looked like what a bar would look like in one of those flicks.
So basically I was in heaven really.
In the course of our night there, one shipmate - Sinn - mingled with the children of the nightlife gloriously while my other shipmate - Gallant - sat there monk silent and smiling at the spectacle. That left me to fend on my own.
First I did the mating dance of angry young white men in combat boots that were so abundant in the dusk of the 20th century. Punch, punch, punch, kick, kick, kick, pause, light cigarette dramatically at slow part of song, resume with the punch, punch, punch, kick, kick, kick. This was done mainly to impress a zaftig sex-tank whose dance involved a complex mime of a sorceress invoking an angel.
Unfortunately all she summoned was me - in all my toe-stomping, blind elbow to shoulder glory, that ended with her dousing a cigarette into my drink and storming off the floor.
Then I tried drinking as much as possible hoping the alcohol could launch me out of my stoner inhibitions and take a stab at talking to someone. This resulted in two things. Me hitting on them and them hitting the other side of the bar.
Finally, I gave up, ordered another drink (Nuclear Ice Teas back then as I liked the way they glowed in the black-lights and allowed me to pretend I was drinking some Doc Jekyll concoction that would turn me into some sort of American Hentai Ape.
That's when this pretty little goblin with melted eyeliner took the stool next to mine, tapped me on the shoulder, and asked sheepishly - "Excuse me, I know this might sound stupid, but are you... *nervous giggle*... Chris Connelly?"
"You mean the lead singer for Murder, Inc.?" I asked trying not to look at her directly.
"Yeah..."
It was a sign from the Dark Gods. My LBRs and amateur invocations had finally paid off. For some reason I looked like the dude in the band of the CD I just bought and somehow this sexy goblin was a big fan of. I smiled at myself in what little of my reflection could be made out in the mirror behind the bar and turned that smile towards those Manga wide eyes floating in puddles of black mascara. "If I say 'yes', do you promise not to tell anyone?"
A few more drinks (she paid, she insisted), a few half-remembered verses of 'Stowaway' sung in tones of mock Bowie into her ear, a few dances on the floor and the next thing I knew we were making out in the Ladies Room until security kicked us out.
She gave me her number. Told me to call it while I was in 'town' (researching a new album called 'Terminus'). Got home elated. Phantom goblin kisses still warm on my lips. Smoked another bowl. Gallant smiled, Sinn too... and it grew wider when he asked what I was going to do when she figured out I was just plain old Jack Babalon and not in any form.
Knowing he was right, I stared at the number, lit it on fire in that dramatic way 21 year old poets do things that could be done much simpler otherwise, and leaned back into the couch that was my bed. My roomies exited and ashamed I couldn't even conjure an image of her to masturbate too. Couldn't sleep either. I met the dawn knowing two things.
One, today was not going to be the day I looked for a job.
Two, that if I was going to get what I wanted out of Terminus it would take more than bad poetry, good music, and a few well placed lies. It would take more than me pretending to be someone else. I would have to become something bigger, something stranger, I would have to become the man I always wanted to be.
In those morning shadows that rose across the living room where I slept, I put on the CD again and with a chuckle said goodbye to my brief life as Chris Connelly.
But the last laugh belonged to the Whiplash Boychild after all... as 21 years later, I never again saw that pretty little goblin girl from that night.