jack_babalon | Halcyon Days: 1:

Cog-Nizance
June 11th, 2006
~Rob M.

The best job I ever had was working in Purgatory.

The day often began with me sleeping through the morning, waking only to make love to The Woman before she left for work and then promptly collapsing back into sleep. When I would wake back up a few hours later, her black cat would without fail, be lying next to me on her pillow. She told me that was his job: Making sure I didn't steal her pillow when she left for the office. That and making sure I wasn't too late for my 50 cents over the then minimum wage job I had at The Masquerade Night Club. He did his job well. Whenever it would get close to One-ish he would start meowing at me impatiently while perched on my chest.

"R-rrrraooo-ob" he would meow authoriatively, "Rrrraaaao-b rrrraaooow-ake up!"

"What is it Little Man? I was having that dream about your Mommy giving Rose Macgowan a sponge bath again..."

"Time Feeerrrr Wrrraooo-eooww-ork!"

"C'mon ... jes five more minutes, huh?"

"*hisssss*"

"Alright, alright i'm up already... Jesus!"

We were living on Samson Street then. It was a large white house that had been quartered into four separate apartments. We had the bottom left. The yard outside was a fenced in kudzu jungle. The only other life form out there was a live oak which was slowly being choked to death by the kudzu. We had also tied up a teddy bear to the trunk with electrical cord for a party and had decided to leave it up there as a deterent to would be burglars.
"Howzabout dat place?"

"No way man! If they'd do that to a teddy bear what chance do we have?"

I'd stumble out of bed under close supervision. Shit, shower and not shave. Then i'd hit the kitchen for some brunch. I'd pump some iron, smoke a cigarette and step outside for my morning ritual.

Every morning (or afternoon according to anyone who wasn't some kind of depraved dopefiend mutant commie ), i'd stroll out to the front porch, perform a lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram, wave at the nervous old lady who lived next store ("Relax Grandma... i'm jes invoking angels over here!"), plop down on the beaten up old couch that we had found abandoned outside someones house (though by 'abandoned' I mean we had found it at a yard sale... trying to escape ... no really), and just sit there sipping cold, black coffee from a chipped mug which declared me "The Worlds Greatest Grandma". I'd read for a few minutes out there, sometimes comic books, sometimes literature, with the stereo blaring WREK Atlanta from inside and i'd get as toasted as humanly possible before I headed out to Ze Masquerade.

By 2:30 in the afternoon i'd join the rest of the day time clean up crew, who were usually all sitting on the stone wall just under the marquee, waiting for our boss to show up and let us in the club. More often than not he was late so we'd often be sitting there smoking cigarettes swapping bullshit stories back and forth for the better part of an hour.

There was my friend Jon, a dread locked brother who hailed from Philly. He had come down south to lay low from the law for awhile. He occasionally went by the name "Jon T'challa". This was so you knew that he was as bad a mutha-fucka as Marvel Comics Prince T'Challa... aka The Black Panther. File that one under my "I shit you not!" files.

Then there was Mouse. Mouse was this homeless kid who had tourettes syndrome. He would kind of stutter out the first vowels of a word and end his sentences in a kinda squeak. He was a scrawny gutter kid who'd been surviving on the streets for the last few years and had no regrets in doing so. He had a disarming smile and this shrug that made the shittiest jobs there seem suddenly bearable. We all came to think of him as our little brother and in time the voice of reason.

Mary was the only female member of the day time clean up crew. She always wore a baseball hat and spoke softly. She was the most important member of the crew. She was the only person willing to clean up the bathrooms behind Hell. She was also our Den Mother by default. Often she'd watch me and Jon conducting Shao-Lin Push Broom combat manuevers up on stage in Heaven and just cluck at us disapprovingly: "Boys we're never gonna get finished if you keep rough housing".

Then there was Willy. Willy was this old black guy who 'Just didn't give a fuck'. Seriously ask Willy anything - from 'Can you give me a hand with the trash?' to 'What do you think of America's stance on foriegn policy?' -and he'd just kind of hum out this 'Mannnnn I don't give a fuck!'. There was only one thing to know about Willy. If you left him alone, he in turn would do likewise. To this day I eagerly await for that paticular piece of wisdom to spread.

Finally there was Czech Mike. I never quite got his story down. From what I could gather, when the Masquerade's house band - The Impotent Seasnakes, went on one of their European tours they found 'Czechie' and sort of adopted him as their mascot or something. Czech Mike wasn't crazy, but that's only because I doubt he was ever sane to begin with. Czech Mike used to sleep in the back of the Masquerade Music Park, cook up his stash on the abandoned train bridge, would brush his teeth with left over drinks left on the tables from the night before and had apparently learned to speak English by memorizing the lyrics to every known Velvet Underground song ever made.

"Thank your God that i'm not a wimp!" he'd often answer me in that crazy accent of his ... no matter what the question was really.

Finally our boss would show up. Often he was hung over and he'd kinda squint at all of us for a long moment until he remembered that we actually worked here. He'd ask which of us was holding and we'd all look at each other then shrug at him collectively. He'd mutter something and unlock the front gates to Masquerade. We'd march up the stairs to Heaven that sat above the office in between Hell & Purgatory. Go into the kitchen. Ignore the stench. Clock in and get started.

I didn't make shit for money, I had no insurance, no dental, no future whatsoever and I couldn't have been happier. I got the Woman and I into shows for free. I got cheap drinks. I got to meet bands. I got to play up in the DJ booth (wayyyy before there was ever a Jack Babalon) and most of all I had the satisfaction of never once having had 'a bad day at the office'.

Halcyon Days: 1:

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