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jack_babalonI wasn't there the night you tried to wrestle a gun out of a carjackers hand in the parking lot of 688. You in fact never talked about that paticular event to me. Even though your love of hyperbole (and don't think I can't hear your ghost even as I write this:"'Hyperbole' n*gga? Why doncha stop tryin' to sound fancy and just say what yer tryin' to say!") was unrivaled. But they did. Our mutual friend the Promoter, for instance, always described that night with equal amounts of disbelief and awe. He always recounted the tale as if he was remembering an especially vivid dream.
"We were just sitting there in the car, getting high right, when all of a sudden this homeless looking fuck shows up asking for a hit. Bud tells him 'no' and the next thing I know there's a pistol sticking through the window..." his gun metal eyes narrow in on the memory, "... while the rest of us were like 'wha'th'fuck!' he had already grabbed the arm and started trying to pry it out of the guys hands..."
"Mannnn like if there hadn't been another mutha-fucka, all like sticking his gun through the other window, m'Dawg would've kicked the shit of tha' n*gga" This was how one of your 'Crew' described the event and not just to me, but to anyone within shouting distance at the Fellini's in Little Five. "Tha' mutha-fucka was lucky he bought his friend along n*gga, lucky, 'cause my boy would've fucked his shit up!"
This kid, this member of your crew, wasn't there that night. But the story was too big now to be contained by simple fact. Like tales of your brother (whom I only recently learned didn't exist), like the story about the cop you hospitalized, like the gun fights of DC that made the wild west seem tame, the story became bigger and bigger, took on a life of it's own and now moves beyond mere truth into the realm of legend.
She whom you loved ( and tried so very hard not too) doesn't talk about that night much. Not with me at least. Whenever asked, she just gives a bitter-sweet smile, a small 'what-are-you-gonna-do?' shrug and her eyes light up with a glow of distant admiration. Though she is a writer ( a pretty good one to be honest), and sooner or later the writer is drawn by their need to confess. Her account of the story reads like a scene out of a crime thriller. Why shouldn't it? Your address might've been Atlanta but everyone who knew you knew you were living in the movies. The best part though, was anyone who knew you got to live in that movie by extension.
Of course i'm not without my stories, my own revisionist histories, my own contributions to not only the myth but the biography as well. You rolled with hard sons of bitches, you hung with straight up gangstas, you hung with coy playas and tweeked out dealers. You hung with Yo-boys and runaways. You held this Surrogate father authority over this ragged band of rat kids all eager to prove themselves to you. You were a punk rock version of Fabian leading a band of merry thieves across the pre-21st century bible belt. A perpetually high Peter Pan leading his army of Lost Boys from show to show, from fight to fight, from scene to scene.
You hung with me as well and I never quite knew why.
I think it was because I made you laugh. That and I stood up to you, even though I knew full well you could kick my ass with an ease that's embarassing to admit. I remember the way we'd rib each other over our heritage. I'd call you a Germaniac Barbarian, a Sour-Kraut. You'd call me a Spaghetti-Bending Wop. I loved the way your little pack of savages eyed me with a mixture of suspicion and admiration for talking shit to you were no one else dared.
I miss talking with you -period. I mean I can talk to the dead all I want man, it's just getting an answer back that's the problem. In my minds eye you're always mute. You stand perpetually over in the corner of my eye, giving me those deep puppy eyes that drove the fairer sex to some very unfair methods of earning your attentions (funny that everyone says you looked like Henry Rollins - which pissed you off more than anything - but I always thought in a movie you'd be played by a young Matt Dillon) or sometimes I catch a glimpse of that little boy smile that seemed to say: 'Hey take it easy Rob, it's gonna be alright and whatevers bothering you can be dealt with one way or the other.'
Still I miss your voice. The bark of your laugh. The thunder rattle of you shouting a rant at the top of your lungs. Screaming on the phone at three in the morn. What I hate though is that I can't remember how you sounded when you laughed. I can almost hear it but it's not quite true. That one bothers me the most and one of the reasons I write so often about you. It's like every detail I forget about you makes you less you and more a memory or a dream that thinks it is one.
Anyway...I'm missing you today. Today being the Mexian 'Day of the Dead', the Catholic day of obligation and All Saints Day amongst other things. I wonder what saint they'd give you. Is there a Saint for punk rockers? For anarchists? Is there some half forgotten patron saint of vandalism? Is there a saint behind the pearly gates working the inside job for holy criminals like you?
Then it occured to me. You don't need a saint. You were your own and by the same miracle you filled our lives with madness, adventure and chemically induced weirdness you've become our own Saint. The Saint of the Perpetual Fuck You! The Saint of the down on his luck couch surfer. The Saint of the Can-you-front-me-'til-next-week! The Saint of the Pistol Night. The Saint of the Chase Scene Drivers. The Saint of the Primal Scream and the Saint of true friends.
I once wrote weeks after your death: "He always let me know, that no matter what, I would never fall any lower than where he stood". Myth, man and all that's between - those words have never proved to be false.
I'll talk to you later man.
-Rob
"We were just sitting there in the car, getting high right, when all of a sudden this homeless looking fuck shows up asking for a hit. Bud tells him 'no' and the next thing I know there's a pistol sticking through the window..." his gun metal eyes narrow in on the memory, "... while the rest of us were like 'wha'th'fuck!' he had already grabbed the arm and started trying to pry it out of the guys hands..."
"Mannnn like if there hadn't been another mutha-fucka, all like sticking his gun through the other window, m'Dawg would've kicked the shit of tha' n*gga" This was how one of your 'Crew' described the event and not just to me, but to anyone within shouting distance at the Fellini's in Little Five. "Tha' mutha-fucka was lucky he bought his friend along n*gga, lucky, 'cause my boy would've fucked his shit up!"
This kid, this member of your crew, wasn't there that night. But the story was too big now to be contained by simple fact. Like tales of your brother (whom I only recently learned didn't exist), like the story about the cop you hospitalized, like the gun fights of DC that made the wild west seem tame, the story became bigger and bigger, took on a life of it's own and now moves beyond mere truth into the realm of legend.
She whom you loved ( and tried so very hard not too) doesn't talk about that night much. Not with me at least. Whenever asked, she just gives a bitter-sweet smile, a small 'what-are-you-gonna-do?' shrug and her eyes light up with a glow of distant admiration. Though she is a writer ( a pretty good one to be honest), and sooner or later the writer is drawn by their need to confess. Her account of the story reads like a scene out of a crime thriller. Why shouldn't it? Your address might've been Atlanta but everyone who knew you knew you were living in the movies. The best part though, was anyone who knew you got to live in that movie by extension.
Of course i'm not without my stories, my own revisionist histories, my own contributions to not only the myth but the biography as well. You rolled with hard sons of bitches, you hung with straight up gangstas, you hung with coy playas and tweeked out dealers. You hung with Yo-boys and runaways. You held this Surrogate father authority over this ragged band of rat kids all eager to prove themselves to you. You were a punk rock version of Fabian leading a band of merry thieves across the pre-21st century bible belt. A perpetually high Peter Pan leading his army of Lost Boys from show to show, from fight to fight, from scene to scene.
You hung with me as well and I never quite knew why.
I think it was because I made you laugh. That and I stood up to you, even though I knew full well you could kick my ass with an ease that's embarassing to admit. I remember the way we'd rib each other over our heritage. I'd call you a Germaniac Barbarian, a Sour-Kraut. You'd call me a Spaghetti-Bending Wop. I loved the way your little pack of savages eyed me with a mixture of suspicion and admiration for talking shit to you were no one else dared.
I miss talking with you -period. I mean I can talk to the dead all I want man, it's just getting an answer back that's the problem. In my minds eye you're always mute. You stand perpetually over in the corner of my eye, giving me those deep puppy eyes that drove the fairer sex to some very unfair methods of earning your attentions (funny that everyone says you looked like Henry Rollins - which pissed you off more than anything - but I always thought in a movie you'd be played by a young Matt Dillon) or sometimes I catch a glimpse of that little boy smile that seemed to say: 'Hey take it easy Rob, it's gonna be alright and whatevers bothering you can be dealt with one way or the other.'
Still I miss your voice. The bark of your laugh. The thunder rattle of you shouting a rant at the top of your lungs. Screaming on the phone at three in the morn. What I hate though is that I can't remember how you sounded when you laughed. I can almost hear it but it's not quite true. That one bothers me the most and one of the reasons I write so often about you. It's like every detail I forget about you makes you less you and more a memory or a dream that thinks it is one.
Anyway...I'm missing you today. Today being the Mexian 'Day of the Dead', the Catholic day of obligation and All Saints Day amongst other things. I wonder what saint they'd give you. Is there a Saint for punk rockers? For anarchists? Is there some half forgotten patron saint of vandalism? Is there a saint behind the pearly gates working the inside job for holy criminals like you?
Then it occured to me. You don't need a saint. You were your own and by the same miracle you filled our lives with madness, adventure and chemically induced weirdness you've become our own Saint. The Saint of the Perpetual Fuck You! The Saint of the down on his luck couch surfer. The Saint of the Can-you-front-me-'til-next-week! The Saint of the Pistol Night. The Saint of the Chase Scene Drivers. The Saint of the Primal Scream and the Saint of true friends.
I once wrote weeks after your death: "He always let me know, that no matter what, I would never fall any lower than where he stood". Myth, man and all that's between - those words have never proved to be false.
I'll talk to you later man.
-Rob
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I can almost hear it but it's not quite true
on 2006-11-02 03:13 pm (UTC)xxx
no subject
on 2006-11-08 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-11-08 07:46 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-11-08 07:49 pm (UTC);)
no subject
on 2006-11-08 08:12 pm (UTC)Glad phase II of the interview went alright. Good luck on III!:)