I know I said the last post was the last post for the weekend but...

[jack_babalon]

It's been a bitch of an August so far. 100 plus degrees at six in the afternoon. The Heat making each Monday stick, actually stick, to the Tuesday that followed and the Wednesdays crawled and the Thursdays hobbled and Fridays I got so shitfaced all I knew was when next Monday showed, last Monday was still here. Meanwhile the Witchhouse is hot as fuck. The air is thick with the stink of a dozen or so cats pissing in the hallway. A stink that nudges it way past the cockroaches trying to wiggle under the cracks in the door for somewhere to eat, shit and fuck.

Just like me. Only sans the rent check and bills.

Bastards!

Then the restless matress nights. Sheets twist. Pillows piled and collapsed. Snatches of black sleep followed by shell shock commutes.

Then the coffee. Thick and horrible and burning a hole in my gut but by God keeping me up and productive and on the go! Monster mood swings and manic confessions spilling keyboard to anyone with nothing else to do.

Until now.

It's finally raining after what feels like forever.

I got trapped at the gym. Just hauled ass across the street to the internet cafe. Outside the rush hour sits soaking under the pink neon 777 over at DUGANS. The staff at the Drunken Unicorn are getting the place ready for a show tonight. A few early stragglers are hiding from the downpour under the awning or camp out in the pizza joint between us.

You can actually smell the rain hit the pavement, the asphlat and concrete. Charged, electrified chlorine evaporating. A smell that reminds me of being a little kid at the pool down by Grandma's Trailer. There was the public pool place that opened up around noon. By one the neighborhood kids had trashed the decks, dirtied the pool and drained the life out of the staff selling little bags of potato chips.

We were all shrieking yelling and burning off our all American sugar diets under the Florida sun. There was a wall of black clouds approaching lit up by ominous flashes of lightning and accompanied by this promethean rumbling that seemed to be coming from inside us rather than from without.

And that was the first time I noticed that scent. I imagine it's what blue orgone and UFOs must smell like. Space Abduction after shave. We couldn't move. Any of us. Even the staff stood at the edge of pool speechless. Good old Grandma though. She calls me out with all three names of mine and snaps me out of the spell.

The only thing more intoxicating with a single whiff is that smoke of spent energy after a round of some wonderful carnvial sex. The kind that happens as much by those accidents that "there's no such thing as" as it does by just sheer thank you Jesus drunken luck.

Tilt-a-whirls and cotton candy lovers.

The rain falling through the last light of Friday and the weekend begins.

Anyway i'm on the clock here. Can't linger. Time to go.

Comments

[kittenspeaks.livejournal.com]

Tilt-a-whirls and cotton candy lovers.

I love that phrase...I love that idea.
I want that.
I want to be that....

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

I imagine you are already for quite a few people:)

[eve-a-licious.livejournal.com]

You have talent my friend. I can feel the words you write--my senses stimulated.

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

Thank you, I do my best.

[gaeasdaughter.livejournal.com]

Ah, now you made me go and load another album into my I-tunes

I want to find me a carnival
Outside of town
Tilt a whirl set-up
And a merry-go-round

Cotton candy fingers
And a snow-cone mouth
I want to roll you in sawdust
Til they run us both out

Melissa Ethridge

[gaeasdaughter.livejournal.com]

All nudging-little-catch-phrases that summon lyrics from one's past aside, this was good. I can picture the pool and the poolhouse, almost smell the lightning. And I can definitely hear "grandma's" voice in all three names!

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

Thanks. It just kinda comes out of the blue sometimes and I do my best to get it down before it disappears.

[efire360.livejournal.com]

I remember rainy days in Texas, Florida and NOLA.

In Texas, the Devil beat his Mistress all the time. But the strangest thing to look at were the mirages from steam rising from puddles on asphalt. I kept expecting to see a camel or a desert in them. Many days were spent watching mirages and oil slicks making rainbows in the gutters.

In Florida, the rain would come in curtains every day around 6 pm in the summer. I could hear it amplified in the pine trees across the street. I would sit and watch it cross the acre of grass from the pines to me. Oh, and I can never forget the hurricanes I drove my car through and how the rain would change direction once the eye passed. Giggles, I shouldn't forget that one night my Mustang became a slip and slide. Took me years before I got the dent out of the hood.

In NOLA the rain was always light and always warm in the summer. (Different thing in Spring altogether, but I never spent much time there wading through the rainy season.) We were usually walking around in the parks or hanging out on the Mississippi banks when it hit us. We'd turn our faces up and smile to one another as we continued on.

I guess I should say something about Georgia's rain.

In the past year, I have been caught in the nightly downpours without an umbrella more times than I can remember. Usually it's when my purse doesn't close, so I end up airing out everything in my purse, taking my shoes off and squeezing out my clothes and hair in a bar while drinking a car bomb and a pint or two. The only time it scared me was one July 5th when I woke up to find my entire torso was pink. I thought I was having an allergic reaction to something until I realized that the dye from the Chinese tie-back shirt I wore on the Fourth bled during the rainstorm. I got a good laugh weighing the odds whether the guy I was smooching on that night ever noticed.

But, my favourite part of rainstorms besides the rain, the smell, the lightning, the wind and the thunder is the rainbows. Mumz taught me how to seek the rainbow's twin. I can always, most all the time always, point out her sister while everyone else is focused on the main arc, even when it's a broken bow. One of these days I want to go to the islands of Hawaii and have my fill of rainbows and orchids.

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

That was beautifully written. You should post this (if you haven't) response as a blog. What part of Florida are you from?

[entropic-om.livejournal.com]

Love that smell of ozone and wetness leading to that Georgia smell of mud and crow-bait worms.

And, since I can hardly resist, some Cave you reminded me of:

"And thean the rain came
Everybody running for their wagons
Tying all the canvas flaps down
The mangy cats crowling in ther cages
The bird-girl flapping and squawking around
The whole valley reeking of wet beast
Wet beast and rotten hay
Freak and brute creation
Packed up and on their way"

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

"The Carnie" right? Great track with it's images of gaunt dwarves and wagon wheels stuck in the red mud. Of all his songs this one reminds me of his novel "And the ass saw the angel".

I've played with this song a few times before actually. A long while back when I was working for the Secret Room I pitched this song as an extended stage show. Alas it was not to be.

[entropic-om.livejournal.com]

Lol. The only stage show idea I ever proposed to Feeman went horribly wrong when they did it. It was pretty funny, actually.

"The Carny" is one of those songs that made me horribly uncomfortable the first time I heard it, so I was determined to listen to it until I liked it.

Oh, and I misquoted that room price ('cause they were giving me a much better deal than I realized) it's a the D*C rate of $150/night. ;p

[vesperi.livejournal.com]

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