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Terminus Year 20
Jan. 21st, 2014 02:14 amFile it:
It's now been twenty years since I moved to Terminus and has been officially so since this weekend past. I observed this platinum anniversary by getting drunk with an old friend and War Dog on Friday, by saying goodbye to a fellow squid and brother veteran of works collective on Saturday and then spending Sunday high as Hashashins playing Talisman in celebration of a friend's birthday.
Friday night. On the bus ride down Memorial the driver, upon seeing my Misfits skull emblazoned across the chest, asked if I was a 'rock n' roller'? Sure man, I'm a rock n' roller, I'm a Mod Bebop Trip Hop Deathrock riveted up speed metal rockabilly bluegrass B Boy representing the Old School and ready to pick up whatever beats your dropping should you drop them with heart. The driver tells me he likes his rock from the 80s. He especially digs Van Halen, Billy Idol and Twisted Sister special. He asks if I'm copacetic? I tell him I've been known to have run with the devil, dance with myself frequently and make it perfectly clear that I too would not be taking it. The driver laughs. He dug the 80s. Culturally at least. Kids these days, he tells me, just have no imagination. I disagree politely, we had our thing, they have theirs. Which is when the driver begins to tell me that no, in fact it is different. Because THEY want it different and THEY have the technology to sap the imagination out of the young so they won't be able to see the chains THEY put around them. For make no mistake THEY didn't stop there. THEY have everyone too scared to do much more than consume, mate and die. THEY toppled the towers, tapped our lines and... hey, this is Moreland, US 23, my stop, THEY will have to wait I'm afraid.
Once I step off the bus onto Mile Zero my driver gives me a friendly wave and with a knowing nod tells me - "Stay awake, brother."
To which I respond with a devil horn salute and hearty "Rock N' Roll!"
The driver smiled as if he hadn't smiled in a long time, he nodded, shut the bus door as the intersection light turned green and rumbled down the rest of his route where THEY no doubt kept watch over this man who does not sleep through his nightmares.
Six hours later and our cab comes to a stop in the middle of Memorial not but three blocks away from my turn. My shipmate and I are shore leave shit-faced and cannot quite comprehend the spectacle before us. The whole street, both lanes, are walled off by a fire truck, a few squad cars, an EMT and other sundry vehicles drowned out in siren flare. They've got hoses out, they've got a stream of water running from the Shell station on one side down the side street. The driver, unimpressed as all drivers are with giddy drunkards, asks what we should do next.
At first I think THEY are on to me, the driver was a plant and all this is how they'll take me down. On a street abandoned as a movie set after the set and they'll construct an elaborate 'accident' for me and anyone else unlucky enough to be in my presence tonight.
But then through the Jameson haze I realize that's a pretty unlikely situation, so I tell the driver I'll get out here and after confirming that yes, I'm sure, I want to get out here, I make my way out. My buddy steps out with me, we hug, we laugh, we say goodbye and hope it will be sooner than another fifteen years until we say hello again.
The cab peels off behind me, walking up to one of the fireman in the middle of the street manning the hose I light up a cigarette and ask him if it's cool if pass through the situation at hand in order to get home. The fireman shrugs at me, shrugs at some cop off in one of the squad cars who shrugs back and the fireman gives me a confirmation to shrug to go on if I'm going on.
Eight strong drinks under the belt, a little high, and indifferent to the terror THEY want me to succumb to, I walk through the sirens like a true rock n' roller.
Fifteen hours later and we are gathered over Palookaville to bid farewell to the Hephaestus of Terminus theatre who somehow through the magic of imagination, table saw and patience brought to life the wildest vistas of drug induced playwrights. Pretty much everybody around me is dressed ritualistically as Pirates, Vikings and some form of Naval Bohemian. That and they're drunk in that way only my friends and acquaintances of stage can get drunk. I will put the lead singer of Til Someone Loses An Eye up against the most experienced of sailors in a drinking contest any night of week knowing only fools would bet against her. I've seen this room at the Yacht drink enough in the time between getting out of the show and before last call to stagger the entire Sixth fleet. Though I was in one of my more introspective moods due to the severity of my hangover as well as being humbled at the love everyone was there to offer. There were testimonies to the adventures shared and the singing of sea shanties. There was laughter and all these wonderful faces I only see when there's a gathering. Eventually the party shifts gears and everyone makes their way to the Yacht to continue the debauchery.
I decline to tag along with the 'moveable feast', having done my two drink minimum I make my goodbyes instead, some in long hugs as if I just stepped back from the edge of a fifty story drop, some with the only faintest bobs of the chin. The Man of the Hour himself is already grogged up on the Kraken. I give him a hug and wish him a heartfelt bon voyage on his next tour of duty - to navigate along with his family to that next port of call along the horizon.
On the way back I realize I've forgotten to tell him how much I will cherish and remember him by the two treasures he had given me. One is a candelabra he made for my 40th birthday. One made of two intersecting wooden blocks, Zen simple and Jet Set Cubist all at the same time. The thing is, and I never told them this I think, but it was too beautiful to me to mess up with melted wax. Instead I use its four cups to hold my phone, my keys, my wallet and my cigarettes. And since having done so I have never lost any of them. True story that.
The other is a memento crafted by his hand from my summer in the Invisible College. It is a sign reading "Those Who Do Not Remember the Past Are Doomed to Repeat It". It hung over my desk when I was writing High Midnight. It reminded me of the energy of those days and served to ease my fears when the book was going rough sending me to think of giving up in order to beg for my old job back.
But one of the perks of being a writer is getting to say what should have been said instead of what actually got muttered by the author.
Fourteen hours later, which was supposed to be twelve really, and I'm riding with Teddy Bear to Randy and May Florida's swank Downtown haceinda . It's Randy's birthday and he's been up all night partying with his wifey the kung-fu, belly-dancing graphic artist. Randy's a Context Provider for a local video game company. I asked him once what the difference was between a 'Context Provider' and a 'Writer'.
"See this swank fuckin' pad and my hot kung-fu, wife." He said motioning to the spacious and immaculate abode in which he dwelled.
I answered that I did indeed.
"That's the difference between a 'Context Provider' and a 'Writer'."
And schooled I was.
On the way other I asked Teddy Bear how come every time we went somewhere it was to hang out with his friends who pretend to be other people for a living or to hang out with people who pretend to be people recreationally with dice?
Teddy Bear just chuckled, he doesn't really laugh, snort or chuckle is his oeuvre or at least when I'm being funny when I'm trying to be smart.
We arrived and the RPGang had assembled the board along with the expansions for Talisman. Upon walking in the door I'm offered a drink, handed a bowl and told to pick two character cards at random then pick one to play. I decline the drink, hit the bowl and choose the Warrior over the Troll. I'm given my Fate token, my gold piece and little plastic green triangles with numbers representing my health.
I play along for about four hours, after getting robbed by a leprechaun, escaping the Grim Reaper in a chapel, being cursed with a hag, and killing a handful of the local wildlife in order to ransack the area for treasure. Then I died by some cave-elf with a goatee and I knew it was time to call it the night. Teddy Bear was still deep in the game and clearly having a blast, so having made my goodbyes I take a long walk down Marietta to the CNN Center and catch the MARTA down there.
The walk is long, coupled with my buzz and the train rumbling behind the empty brick factories, the approaching skyline with its giant neon violet Ferris Wheel and blinking lights filling me with inconceivable awe as they glittered out the milky gloom.
Lost in my rapture, sidestepping with ease the flocks of tourists and game watchers flooding out of Phillips Arena feeling all beatific with my stupid grin a shield against the human traffic, when a voice calls my name.
I turn around and it's a woman I worked with back at the Cube Farm. It's also been six years give or take a week since I quit my day job to write the Great (or as 'Great' as 200 copies sold can be 'Great') American Novel. She tells me that the Cube Farm was shut down and outsourced two years after I left. Everyone was given a two month notice and that was that. She asked me what I was up to. I tell her I'm an office manager at a small computer company right now, that I've written one novel that got published and am working on another whose audience remained beyond my speculations.
She tells me I always was the smartest guy in the office.
This takes me aback as I always delighted being the Class Clown there. I was a "Dog Collar Employee", a psychic relief valve with a soldierly with, the guy in the cell who can make you laugh and by laughing remind you that you were still human. The smartest? Fuck that, I wouldn't want to be even if such an honor and burden were mine to claim.
She tells me she recalls when I told everyone in the room I was quitting my job of a decade strong to write a book and how after I left there wasn't a soul who thought it was possible. She laughs, she says she still talks to my old supervisor and how he'll freak out when he hears the news I did otherwise.
We bid farewell at Five Points Station. On the train ride home I watch through the window the Terminus skyline flowing - with all those lights glittering with the stories they illuminate and how twenty years ago I came here to be more than just one of them, but the one who would instead give voice to the strangest and most beautiful hidden amongst their earthbound constellations.
In that moment I forget the woman I miss, I forget the fuck-ups and the nagging urge to not accept the fact that I can't impress everyone much less anyone all the time. In that moment I remember a different weekend all those twenty winters ago and telling myself that no matter how long it takes or how hard the luck, that this, this is where I'll become a writer.
10-4. Over and Out.
It's now been twenty years since I moved to Terminus and has been officially so since this weekend past. I observed this platinum anniversary by getting drunk with an old friend and War Dog on Friday, by saying goodbye to a fellow squid and brother veteran of works collective on Saturday and then spending Sunday high as Hashashins playing Talisman in celebration of a friend's birthday.
Friday night. On the bus ride down Memorial the driver, upon seeing my Misfits skull emblazoned across the chest, asked if I was a 'rock n' roller'? Sure man, I'm a rock n' roller, I'm a Mod Bebop Trip Hop Deathrock riveted up speed metal rockabilly bluegrass B Boy representing the Old School and ready to pick up whatever beats your dropping should you drop them with heart. The driver tells me he likes his rock from the 80s. He especially digs Van Halen, Billy Idol and Twisted Sister special. He asks if I'm copacetic? I tell him I've been known to have run with the devil, dance with myself frequently and make it perfectly clear that I too would not be taking it. The driver laughs. He dug the 80s. Culturally at least. Kids these days, he tells me, just have no imagination. I disagree politely, we had our thing, they have theirs. Which is when the driver begins to tell me that no, in fact it is different. Because THEY want it different and THEY have the technology to sap the imagination out of the young so they won't be able to see the chains THEY put around them. For make no mistake THEY didn't stop there. THEY have everyone too scared to do much more than consume, mate and die. THEY toppled the towers, tapped our lines and... hey, this is Moreland, US 23, my stop, THEY will have to wait I'm afraid.
Once I step off the bus onto Mile Zero my driver gives me a friendly wave and with a knowing nod tells me - "Stay awake, brother."
To which I respond with a devil horn salute and hearty "Rock N' Roll!"
The driver smiled as if he hadn't smiled in a long time, he nodded, shut the bus door as the intersection light turned green and rumbled down the rest of his route where THEY no doubt kept watch over this man who does not sleep through his nightmares.
Six hours later and our cab comes to a stop in the middle of Memorial not but three blocks away from my turn. My shipmate and I are shore leave shit-faced and cannot quite comprehend the spectacle before us. The whole street, both lanes, are walled off by a fire truck, a few squad cars, an EMT and other sundry vehicles drowned out in siren flare. They've got hoses out, they've got a stream of water running from the Shell station on one side down the side street. The driver, unimpressed as all drivers are with giddy drunkards, asks what we should do next.
At first I think THEY are on to me, the driver was a plant and all this is how they'll take me down. On a street abandoned as a movie set after the set and they'll construct an elaborate 'accident' for me and anyone else unlucky enough to be in my presence tonight.
But then through the Jameson haze I realize that's a pretty unlikely situation, so I tell the driver I'll get out here and after confirming that yes, I'm sure, I want to get out here, I make my way out. My buddy steps out with me, we hug, we laugh, we say goodbye and hope it will be sooner than another fifteen years until we say hello again.
The cab peels off behind me, walking up to one of the fireman in the middle of the street manning the hose I light up a cigarette and ask him if it's cool if pass through the situation at hand in order to get home. The fireman shrugs at me, shrugs at some cop off in one of the squad cars who shrugs back and the fireman gives me a confirmation to shrug to go on if I'm going on.
Eight strong drinks under the belt, a little high, and indifferent to the terror THEY want me to succumb to, I walk through the sirens like a true rock n' roller.
Fifteen hours later and we are gathered over Palookaville to bid farewell to the Hephaestus of Terminus theatre who somehow through the magic of imagination, table saw and patience brought to life the wildest vistas of drug induced playwrights. Pretty much everybody around me is dressed ritualistically as Pirates, Vikings and some form of Naval Bohemian. That and they're drunk in that way only my friends and acquaintances of stage can get drunk. I will put the lead singer of Til Someone Loses An Eye up against the most experienced of sailors in a drinking contest any night of week knowing only fools would bet against her. I've seen this room at the Yacht drink enough in the time between getting out of the show and before last call to stagger the entire Sixth fleet. Though I was in one of my more introspective moods due to the severity of my hangover as well as being humbled at the love everyone was there to offer. There were testimonies to the adventures shared and the singing of sea shanties. There was laughter and all these wonderful faces I only see when there's a gathering. Eventually the party shifts gears and everyone makes their way to the Yacht to continue the debauchery.
I decline to tag along with the 'moveable feast', having done my two drink minimum I make my goodbyes instead, some in long hugs as if I just stepped back from the edge of a fifty story drop, some with the only faintest bobs of the chin. The Man of the Hour himself is already grogged up on the Kraken. I give him a hug and wish him a heartfelt bon voyage on his next tour of duty - to navigate along with his family to that next port of call along the horizon.
On the way back I realize I've forgotten to tell him how much I will cherish and remember him by the two treasures he had given me. One is a candelabra he made for my 40th birthday. One made of two intersecting wooden blocks, Zen simple and Jet Set Cubist all at the same time. The thing is, and I never told them this I think, but it was too beautiful to me to mess up with melted wax. Instead I use its four cups to hold my phone, my keys, my wallet and my cigarettes. And since having done so I have never lost any of them. True story that.
The other is a memento crafted by his hand from my summer in the Invisible College. It is a sign reading "Those Who Do Not Remember the Past Are Doomed to Repeat It". It hung over my desk when I was writing High Midnight. It reminded me of the energy of those days and served to ease my fears when the book was going rough sending me to think of giving up in order to beg for my old job back.
But one of the perks of being a writer is getting to say what should have been said instead of what actually got muttered by the author.
Fourteen hours later, which was supposed to be twelve really, and I'm riding with Teddy Bear to Randy and May Florida's swank Downtown haceinda . It's Randy's birthday and he's been up all night partying with his wifey the kung-fu, belly-dancing graphic artist. Randy's a Context Provider for a local video game company. I asked him once what the difference was between a 'Context Provider' and a 'Writer'.
"See this swank fuckin' pad and my hot kung-fu, wife." He said motioning to the spacious and immaculate abode in which he dwelled.
I answered that I did indeed.
"That's the difference between a 'Context Provider' and a 'Writer'."
And schooled I was.
On the way other I asked Teddy Bear how come every time we went somewhere it was to hang out with his friends who pretend to be other people for a living or to hang out with people who pretend to be people recreationally with dice?
Teddy Bear just chuckled, he doesn't really laugh, snort or chuckle is his oeuvre or at least when I'm being funny when I'm trying to be smart.
We arrived and the RPGang had assembled the board along with the expansions for Talisman. Upon walking in the door I'm offered a drink, handed a bowl and told to pick two character cards at random then pick one to play. I decline the drink, hit the bowl and choose the Warrior over the Troll. I'm given my Fate token, my gold piece and little plastic green triangles with numbers representing my health.
I play along for about four hours, after getting robbed by a leprechaun, escaping the Grim Reaper in a chapel, being cursed with a hag, and killing a handful of the local wildlife in order to ransack the area for treasure. Then I died by some cave-elf with a goatee and I knew it was time to call it the night. Teddy Bear was still deep in the game and clearly having a blast, so having made my goodbyes I take a long walk down Marietta to the CNN Center and catch the MARTA down there.
The walk is long, coupled with my buzz and the train rumbling behind the empty brick factories, the approaching skyline with its giant neon violet Ferris Wheel and blinking lights filling me with inconceivable awe as they glittered out the milky gloom.
Lost in my rapture, sidestepping with ease the flocks of tourists and game watchers flooding out of Phillips Arena feeling all beatific with my stupid grin a shield against the human traffic, when a voice calls my name.
I turn around and it's a woman I worked with back at the Cube Farm. It's also been six years give or take a week since I quit my day job to write the Great (or as 'Great' as 200 copies sold can be 'Great') American Novel. She tells me that the Cube Farm was shut down and outsourced two years after I left. Everyone was given a two month notice and that was that. She asked me what I was up to. I tell her I'm an office manager at a small computer company right now, that I've written one novel that got published and am working on another whose audience remained beyond my speculations.
She tells me I always was the smartest guy in the office.
This takes me aback as I always delighted being the Class Clown there. I was a "Dog Collar Employee", a psychic relief valve with a soldierly with, the guy in the cell who can make you laugh and by laughing remind you that you were still human. The smartest? Fuck that, I wouldn't want to be even if such an honor and burden were mine to claim.
She tells me she recalls when I told everyone in the room I was quitting my job of a decade strong to write a book and how after I left there wasn't a soul who thought it was possible. She laughs, she says she still talks to my old supervisor and how he'll freak out when he hears the news I did otherwise.
We bid farewell at Five Points Station. On the train ride home I watch through the window the Terminus skyline flowing - with all those lights glittering with the stories they illuminate and how twenty years ago I came here to be more than just one of them, but the one who would instead give voice to the strangest and most beautiful hidden amongst their earthbound constellations.
In that moment I forget the woman I miss, I forget the fuck-ups and the nagging urge to not accept the fact that I can't impress everyone much less anyone all the time. In that moment I remember a different weekend all those twenty winters ago and telling myself that no matter how long it takes or how hard the luck, that this, this is where I'll become a writer.
10-4. Over and Out.
