![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Messages from the Action Man
Jun. 12th, 2015 12:23 am
Ain't no heist like a Situationist heist, because a Situationist heist don't end until the Spectacle's been smashed!
Ain't no heist like a Situationist heist, because a Situationist heist don't end until the Spectacle's been smashed!
Fucking MARTA, the train was stuck between King Memorial and Georgia State Station leaving us hovering some two stories over the highway. Jam of rush hour below. A packed car within, think Fall of Rome in a can. Post-work causalities dazed in front of hand held screens, students bopped heads to earphone beats, children squirmed, some freak muttered apocalypse jive, the lucky slept and the unlucky stood.
Me, well, I was never very lucky truth be told.
King Memorial was my stop. Theoretically at least. From there I was supposed to catch the 21 home and with any luck the insane, the desperate, the chronically fucked-up would keep all delays to a minimum. I had positioned myself by the train's doors in order to scramble out in a dash when they opened. Parkour through the crowd if need be, bolt out, pop through the clear plastic gates, scramble down the frustratingly unnecessary winding stairway and make the bus with seconds to spare.
Of course, now I've missed that 21 along with the next two according to the schedule and I'm stuck standing her looking out the windows as my phone's battery died five minutes into the stall.
Outside the rain and the thunder rumbling distant so it sounded like someone was moving furniture on top of the train. There was Terminus with the river highway flowing through her, there was Grady hospital hunkered down solid as a beige tombstone, there was that Dragon*Con skyline vanishing into the gloom, there was the graffiti tagged along the side of a warehouse - "You Ain't Gangsta - You Don't Even Know One!"
Sleep hungry, gut hollow, flesh-fatigued from back-to-back yard work gigs. My legs ached with every street-hill climbed, the souls of my feet throbbed with unknown miles yoked behind a lawnmower, an old hernia scar gnashing just under my balls. The humidity found some old broken bones to soak and a fart that started at one end of the car had finally wafted its way back to my end of the train.
Eyes closed I whispered a supplication to the universe. I kept it terse, in case a Goddess should prove the author of our common narrations, then She'd appreciate a fellow writer keeping it so.
Boiled it down to one word. The magic one your parents should have long taught you.
"Please."
Thunder and then the rain stopped.
The length of a sigh.
Then a little boy spoke.
"Mom, look, look, ... look at all the balloons."
He was standing up in his seat facing the window, palms and nose pressed against the pane.
Yet mom didn't look, nor did anyone else on the train except me.
The kid was right. There was balloons. A swarm of them, the bright toy color kind you find at childhood birthday parties. They were bundled into hundreds of individual clusters that flowed out of the downtown canyons and out over the highway. They rose slow. Something was weighing them down, keeping them from escaping into the gusts and storm clouds above. A squint confirmed something was tethered to each one of the clusters' roots. Some sort of sack.
But then as the wind shifted a couple dozen of the balloon-clusters broke off and approached us. I saw that the sacks were moving, flaying actually, and then as they began to float closer towards our train I could see that they weren't sacks but rather people.
People dangling from the balloon clusters, not by their hands in some comic flight, but from necks wrapped in a hangman's noose.
Most of them were still alive, dancing frantically with hands tied behind backs, and with mouths gagged with what a closer inspection confirmed were tiny black birds. The birds were escaping from the mouths of the hanged men and women, circling the clusters, before landing on the chest to peck and claw at the chest.
I held no doubts that they were digging for the heart of their... victims, hosts, whatever.
A few of the bodies slammed into the train and went no further.
No one looked up from their screens or from out of their private trances.
Even when the hanged flopped against the doors and windows trying to get our attention.
One was floating right outside the window I was looking at. A young woman, a college student maybe or artist type. She kept trying to say something to me but all that would come out where little birds that wiggled out from her scream and burst into flight. The birds had torn through her blouse and tearing frantically through a tattoo draped under the neck.
The whole face-to-face lasted only a few seconds but the seconds of dreams.
Finally the little boy by the window shouted - "Cool!" - and with that the young lady was dragged up into the air as the cluster armada floated out across the wilds of Terminus, vanishing back into polka-dot bundles with sacks and shrinking down into black specks.
"We apologize for the inconvenience, we had a train broken down in front of us, but we're clear now." The driver announced through the train's PA. "Please hold tight as we'll be moving along unexpectedly..."
Me, well, I was never very lucky truth be told.
King Memorial was my stop. Theoretically at least. From there I was supposed to catch the 21 home and with any luck the insane, the desperate, the chronically fucked-up would keep all delays to a minimum. I had positioned myself by the train's doors in order to scramble out in a dash when they opened. Parkour through the crowd if need be, bolt out, pop through the clear plastic gates, scramble down the frustratingly unnecessary winding stairway and make the bus with seconds to spare.
Of course, now I've missed that 21 along with the next two according to the schedule and I'm stuck standing her looking out the windows as my phone's battery died five minutes into the stall.
Outside the rain and the thunder rumbling distant so it sounded like someone was moving furniture on top of the train. There was Terminus with the river highway flowing through her, there was Grady hospital hunkered down solid as a beige tombstone, there was that Dragon*Con skyline vanishing into the gloom, there was the graffiti tagged along the side of a warehouse - "You Ain't Gangsta - You Don't Even Know One!"
Sleep hungry, gut hollow, flesh-fatigued from back-to-back yard work gigs. My legs ached with every street-hill climbed, the souls of my feet throbbed with unknown miles yoked behind a lawnmower, an old hernia scar gnashing just under my balls. The humidity found some old broken bones to soak and a fart that started at one end of the car had finally wafted its way back to my end of the train.
Eyes closed I whispered a supplication to the universe. I kept it terse, in case a Goddess should prove the author of our common narrations, then She'd appreciate a fellow writer keeping it so.
Boiled it down to one word. The magic one your parents should have long taught you.
"Please."
Thunder and then the rain stopped.
The length of a sigh.
Then a little boy spoke.
"Mom, look, look, ... look at all the balloons."
He was standing up in his seat facing the window, palms and nose pressed against the pane.
Yet mom didn't look, nor did anyone else on the train except me.
The kid was right. There was balloons. A swarm of them, the bright toy color kind you find at childhood birthday parties. They were bundled into hundreds of individual clusters that flowed out of the downtown canyons and out over the highway. They rose slow. Something was weighing them down, keeping them from escaping into the gusts and storm clouds above. A squint confirmed something was tethered to each one of the clusters' roots. Some sort of sack.
But then as the wind shifted a couple dozen of the balloon-clusters broke off and approached us. I saw that the sacks were moving, flaying actually, and then as they began to float closer towards our train I could see that they weren't sacks but rather people.
People dangling from the balloon clusters, not by their hands in some comic flight, but from necks wrapped in a hangman's noose.
Most of them were still alive, dancing frantically with hands tied behind backs, and with mouths gagged with what a closer inspection confirmed were tiny black birds. The birds were escaping from the mouths of the hanged men and women, circling the clusters, before landing on the chest to peck and claw at the chest.
I held no doubts that they were digging for the heart of their... victims, hosts, whatever.
A few of the bodies slammed into the train and went no further.
No one looked up from their screens or from out of their private trances.
Even when the hanged flopped against the doors and windows trying to get our attention.
One was floating right outside the window I was looking at. A young woman, a college student maybe or artist type. She kept trying to say something to me but all that would come out where little birds that wiggled out from her scream and burst into flight. The birds had torn through her blouse and tearing frantically through a tattoo draped under the neck.
The whole face-to-face lasted only a few seconds but the seconds of dreams.
Finally the little boy by the window shouted - "Cool!" - and with that the young lady was dragged up into the air as the cluster armada floated out across the wilds of Terminus, vanishing back into polka-dot bundles with sacks and shrinking down into black specks.
"We apologize for the inconvenience, we had a train broken down in front of us, but we're clear now." The driver announced through the train's PA. "Please hold tight as we'll be moving along unexpectedly..."
My Night as a Whiplash Boychild
Jun. 9th, 2015 01:07 amNot 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.
Game-Changing! 17 things, that according to the Internet, I've been doing completely wrong my entire life:
- Tying my shoes (I was using duct-tape the whole time – rookie mistake!)
- Talking to single parents about the importance of quarantining their children after their having been bitten by a homeless man in the park
- Marathon-ing my favorite TV Shows (‘Breaking Bad’ is so much better when not viewed through a neighbor’s window while crouched in their bushes… who knew?)
- Correctly identifying life-threatening skin rashes commonly found amongst astronauts
- Water-proofing my private subterranean art-museum
- Introducing myself to the ambassador of Nauru
- Almost all of my Henry Trollope themed cosplay outfits
- Sexting (there’s a lot more to it than shoving a mobile-device into the orifice of a willing lover apparently)
- Using Uber (Did you know that if you ask them to, that all Uber drivers are obligated to let you ride on the roof or in the trunk of their vehicles? Why didn’t someone tell me this earlier?)
- Harpoon Archery
- Recognizing the difference between attending a funeral and a circus-themed surprise party
- Faking an orgasm to get out of jury duty
- Wind Puppet boxing
- Charging my new iPhone (blood sacrifices to the Moon Goddess no longer required in the new models)
- Being aware of my full responsibilities as a passenger seated in the emergency exit row of a Explorer Class Airship
- How to properly make and when to wear a platypus skin loincloth (never before Memorial Day or after labor day)
- Giving a shit
- Tying my shoes (I was using duct-tape the whole time – rookie mistake!)
- Talking to single parents about the importance of quarantining their children after their having been bitten by a homeless man in the park
- Marathon-ing my favorite TV Shows (‘Breaking Bad’ is so much better when not viewed through a neighbor’s window while crouched in their bushes… who knew?)
- Correctly identifying life-threatening skin rashes commonly found amongst astronauts
- Water-proofing my private subterranean art-museum
- Introducing myself to the ambassador of Nauru
- Almost all of my Henry Trollope themed cosplay outfits
- Sexting (there’s a lot more to it than shoving a mobile-device into the orifice of a willing lover apparently)
- Using Uber (Did you know that if you ask them to, that all Uber drivers are obligated to let you ride on the roof or in the trunk of their vehicles? Why didn’t someone tell me this earlier?)
- Harpoon Archery
- Recognizing the difference between attending a funeral and a circus-themed surprise party
- Faking an orgasm to get out of jury duty
- Wind Puppet boxing
- Charging my new iPhone (blood sacrifices to the Moon Goddess no longer required in the new models)
- Being aware of my full responsibilities as a passenger seated in the emergency exit row of a Explorer Class Airship
- How to properly make and when to wear a platypus skin loincloth (never before Memorial Day or after labor day)
- Giving a shit
Comic Book Wednesday:
Jun. 3rd, 2015 08:29 pm"Back in my day we didn't need no special mutant powers or fancy suits of robot armor to fight criminal wrong-doings. No sir, all a man needed was a domino mask, a belt full of trained bees and a little thing my generation used to call Balls!"
Dispatch Absurdia
May. 30th, 2015 03:39 amWe get tres Elroy, my Virtue Victoria and I. Call her up drunk and deliver dispatches terse. Her half awake, half dressed, that breathless tone of voice, that remote authority indecent that drives me wow-wild-on-fire.
"So yeah, Ari came by to pick me up for Contemptula's birthday party..."
"Which one's Ari again?" She yawns morning bird of prey she is middle of the night calls are still a price of our relationship she's still working off, "He the one that looks like Riker?"
"That's Kid Hemingway."
"Oh," Her cat purrs through the phone next to her, awake now in the middle of the night, "right, Ari's the one who looks like a cross between Louie C.K. and Allen Ginsberg. So which one's Contemptula, again?"
"Magpie's long-distance bette noir."
"And you only call her that because you hit on her and got shot down."
"..."
"It's okay, I know how you imaginative you can be when vindictive." Her cat purrs by the phone, shift of sheets, strange cell phone echo. "Did you have a good time anyway?"
"Yeah, it was kind of cool. I've been cooped up working on the Halloween Burlesque the last month... Black Sabbath and Slayer diet... felt like I was 16 again."
"You know you love it..."
"I do indeed, my love... but point being I forgot how much I missed them."
"Who?" She giggles knowing damn full well who I mean.
"You know who."
"No... tell me."
Sigh. "My... allies."
"Your who?"
"My friends..." For her only I whisper.
"Aw... you love your friends so much."
"My friends are dead or far away, Babe."
"Save it for Facebook, tough guy."
Sigh.
And so it goes, this brief period after a long project is filed complete and I'm left wondering if it will just vanish into limbo (oh my Jack Parsons rock opera, oh my Lovecraftian pulp) or y'know... become something outside of me. Something real. Something someone outside of my head sees, feels - inspiration, joy or contempt - but alive in that moment when art becomes the experience rather than the backdrop. So for now, ecstatic, relieved, yet tempered by that nervousness that comes when only one shoe has dropped.
I tell her as such.
"You want so very much to be a part of something and to stand apart from everyone at the same time." She tells me as water runs in the background, bathroom cup of water, swallow of asprin, splash of water on face. "Contradiction makes for fun fiction but a sad biography."
Lighter fish, flame, cigarette drag, deep breath of nicotine and open up. "No, I want to make something bigger than any one person can make... but I don't know how to navigate other people to make that happen."
"That's not true, I've watched you out on the town. You make people laugh..."
"People often laugh at the social cue offered, not the quality of the humor presented." I remind her, wondering once again why I don't liquor at the Hace.
"Uh-huh..."
"They're just being nice, s'all."
"Uh-huh..."
"It doesn't matter..."
"Except you woke me up to talk about it."
"Except for that, my love..."
And the cat purrs in her lap some 100 and change miles away.
We talk some more. We laugh. We confess. We spill and we give until we hang up.
Now I sit here buzzed in my portable fortress of solitude.
Listening to Scotland the Brave on Youtube because talking to her makes me want to listen to bagpipes. I don't know why, either, she just has that affect on me ( or effect, Grammar Nazis Assemble).
Anyway, dispatch filed and open to the public until probably tomorrow deleted. It's a weird thing to have the Word in my hands again, especially when for my sad-drunken-secret-orgiastic-future-yearning-heart it alone serves.
Oh, how I miss being the man I never was.
"So yeah, Ari came by to pick me up for Contemptula's birthday party..."
"Which one's Ari again?" She yawns morning bird of prey she is middle of the night calls are still a price of our relationship she's still working off, "He the one that looks like Riker?"
"That's Kid Hemingway."
"Oh," Her cat purrs through the phone next to her, awake now in the middle of the night, "right, Ari's the one who looks like a cross between Louie C.K. and Allen Ginsberg. So which one's Contemptula, again?"
"Magpie's long-distance bette noir."
"And you only call her that because you hit on her and got shot down."
"..."
"It's okay, I know how you imaginative you can be when vindictive." Her cat purrs by the phone, shift of sheets, strange cell phone echo. "Did you have a good time anyway?"
"Yeah, it was kind of cool. I've been cooped up working on the Halloween Burlesque the last month... Black Sabbath and Slayer diet... felt like I was 16 again."
"You know you love it..."
"I do indeed, my love... but point being I forgot how much I missed them."
"Who?" She giggles knowing damn full well who I mean.
"You know who."
"No... tell me."
Sigh. "My... allies."
"Your who?"
"My friends..." For her only I whisper.
"Aw... you love your friends so much."
"My friends are dead or far away, Babe."
"Save it for Facebook, tough guy."
Sigh.
And so it goes, this brief period after a long project is filed complete and I'm left wondering if it will just vanish into limbo (oh my Jack Parsons rock opera, oh my Lovecraftian pulp) or y'know... become something outside of me. Something real. Something someone outside of my head sees, feels - inspiration, joy or contempt - but alive in that moment when art becomes the experience rather than the backdrop. So for now, ecstatic, relieved, yet tempered by that nervousness that comes when only one shoe has dropped.
I tell her as such.
"You want so very much to be a part of something and to stand apart from everyone at the same time." She tells me as water runs in the background, bathroom cup of water, swallow of asprin, splash of water on face. "Contradiction makes for fun fiction but a sad biography."
Lighter fish, flame, cigarette drag, deep breath of nicotine and open up. "No, I want to make something bigger than any one person can make... but I don't know how to navigate other people to make that happen."
"That's not true, I've watched you out on the town. You make people laugh..."
"People often laugh at the social cue offered, not the quality of the humor presented." I remind her, wondering once again why I don't liquor at the Hace.
"Uh-huh..."
"They're just being nice, s'all."
"Uh-huh..."
"It doesn't matter..."
"Except you woke me up to talk about it."
"Except for that, my love..."
And the cat purrs in her lap some 100 and change miles away.
We talk some more. We laugh. We confess. We spill and we give until we hang up.
Now I sit here buzzed in my portable fortress of solitude.
Listening to Scotland the Brave on Youtube because talking to her makes me want to listen to bagpipes. I don't know why, either, she just has that affect on me ( or effect, Grammar Nazis Assemble).
Anyway, dispatch filed and open to the public until probably tomorrow deleted. It's a weird thing to have the Word in my hands again, especially when for my sad-drunken-secret-orgiastic-future-yearning-heart it alone serves.
Oh, how I miss being the man I never was.
Dead the Brave
May. 25th, 2015 02:42 pmThe following is because I've gotten a text and a few messages about it from some folks I know. While I really do appreciate you guys reaching out to thank me for my brief stint in the Navy, today is really about those who fell in service to their country and not those of us who showed up for the job that were lucky enough to return.
For what it's worth if it was up to me (and I know I've mentioned this before), today would be like a cross between the 4th of July and Halloween. Little children would dress up as dead soldiers, sailor, marines, and go door to door reminding citizens in their neighborhood what the cost of war is in return for some sort of candy/treat. This would be fun for the kids (who doesn't enjoy dressing as some sort of zombie-ghost) and would remind folks what the real price of war is - dead sons and daughters, dead brothers and sisters, dead mothers and fathers.
However whenever I think of those who fell, I tend to oddly enough, think of my friend Bud. A man who was a warrior at heart, prone to the rage and the honor that comes with that disposition. Though he never served (my understanding was that he wanted to but the military wouldn't let him due to having too many prior arrests for fighting ironically enough - or at least so he explained it to me). I also think of the family I never knew on the other side of the pond, the grand-uncle who died in the RAF and the sailors that perished around my Grandfather Sailor Bill.
Mainly of late though, I think of those kids heading out to the Middle East for the murkiest of economic-political reasons and my hopes for their safe return.
For what it's worth if it was up to me (and I know I've mentioned this before), today would be like a cross between the 4th of July and Halloween. Little children would dress up as dead soldiers, sailor, marines, and go door to door reminding citizens in their neighborhood what the cost of war is in return for some sort of candy/treat. This would be fun for the kids (who doesn't enjoy dressing as some sort of zombie-ghost) and would remind folks what the real price of war is - dead sons and daughters, dead brothers and sisters, dead mothers and fathers.
However whenever I think of those who fell, I tend to oddly enough, think of my friend Bud. A man who was a warrior at heart, prone to the rage and the honor that comes with that disposition. Though he never served (my understanding was that he wanted to but the military wouldn't let him due to having too many prior arrests for fighting ironically enough - or at least so he explained it to me). I also think of the family I never knew on the other side of the pond, the grand-uncle who died in the RAF and the sailors that perished around my Grandfather Sailor Bill.
Mainly of late though, I think of those kids heading out to the Middle East for the murkiest of economic-political reasons and my hopes for their safe return.
Scenes from my Real Life
May. 23rd, 2015 02:21 amPraise Satan's G-String. 8 pages written and five re-written with me only having to scream out the window once. Well, maybe twice, but that was when a gunfight rudely broke out down the block and ruined my delicate concentration.
Anyway, guess who's earned his Scobby Snack before bed?
Anyway, guess who's earned his Scobby Snack before bed?
