Jan 6, 2012
Carl was my favorite. This is how I always described him, simply, my favorite. He was a gentle giant. I cherished him.
Jan 6, 2012
Justin was awkward, tall, limbs and feet that didn't correspond to his torso. He reminded me of one of my favorite cartoons as a child. Ichabod Crane from the Disney animated version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow "...are they shovels or are they feet, ichabod, ichabod, crane..." went the title track in the cartoon and I compulsively hummed it under my breath every time I saw Justin. Another thing that came to mind was a giraffe on roller skates fumbling about. I would switch between these two images in my mind whenever I was forced to be in his presence. All I wanted was a god damned cup of coffee. I wanted to sit and write and shoot the shit at my favorite place without having to see Justin fumbling all over himself trying to get my attention. Justin had decided that I was the person to beat, in what, I'm not sure, but he was generally a regrettable human being who let himself be ruled by a myriad of self deceptions. He invented so much fiction about me, scrutinized everything I did so much, that I started to feel famous, like he was some po-dunk paparazzi and I was his own personal Lindsay Lohan... or so he liked to make it seem. The whole situation was pathetic. Justin was not even in my galaxy in terms of personhood. I would pretend that I didn't understand what he was trying to do. He took this as an indication of his wit in comparison to mine and not his ineffectuality. It was hilarious.
Jan 4, 2012
It was a masterpiece, full of the warmth and character of human imperfection, supported by personal innovation, without once relenting in it's complex beauty. It was the best hand knit doily Edgar had ever had the honor of knowing.
Jan 4, 2012
It's the quiet of this city in winter that gets to you. It's not like other cities where at least the constant din of beeping horns and the hum of wheels speeding off into green lights compose themselves into a minimalist composition. The alien language of other people's conversations at a distance becoming clear once in auditory range and then fading back out into the extraterrestrial. No. It's just you with the rouge of winter being blown onto your face as other people glide silently by you like mollusks across the floor of the Arctic ocean. Sunlight barely penetrating the gray air so cold that it could be mistaken for deep water. The quiet grips you and begins to show you it's horrors, only letting go of it's hold for ghastly oracles, moirae, glossolalists promising more doom.
Jan 3, 2012
It infuriated Joey when Derrick referred to him as a "little brother." Firstly, Joey was several months older than Derrick. Secondly, Derrick knew Joey did not see him in this way. Thirdly, Joey pined for Derrick and he found the monogram dismissive of his feelings. Joey inspired Derrick to push boundaries, to look at things in a different way. He was brilliant and Derrick wanted him around for this reason, despite the fact that he intentionally downplayed his intelligence to others to conceal his source. He reconciled this by referring to him as a brother. Joeys self-esteem was a consistent problem and he allowed it to happen.
Jan 3, 2012
Adam hadn't had a drink in over two years, a cigarette in even longer, which is remarkable given the amount he used to drink and smoke. Almost Cold turkey, just like that, he reached his limit and was done. It wasn't Jesus, or some horribly effacing 12 step program that try's convince you of powerlessness so it can brain wash you into a miserable sobriety, he felt it better that someone happily and honestly drink themselves to death than be subjected to that nonsense. Nope, it was about figuring out what he really wanted and behaving accordingly. It worked because he was doing what he really wanted, not what society told him he should want. He wanted sobriety for himself not for social decorum.
Jan 2, 2012
Roxanne stormed by Paul with the same crap look on her face she always seemed to have for one reason or another, peering his way for a reaction. Paul smiled, comforted that her tantrums and bad attitude were no longer his problem. He felt airy and new like the world just cracked wide open for him. He almost waved hello, just to show her how much he didn't care but decided not to give her a chance to infect him with her negativity and just walked by smiling. He made his way to the grocery store and bought himself some smart dogs as a personal reward. He loved smart dogs. "What a fantastic way to start the new year!" he thought to himself.
Jan 2, 2012
Loupe Santiago's name was misleading. It conjures images of traditional Mexican costumes and pastoral scenes of women outside of adobe houses grinding corn in a mortar and pestle. This was not Loupe. Her parents immigrated to America from Mexico in the 70's and she was born just outside of Chicago in the early 80's. Loupe was practically bald. She sported a crew cut from about the time of her quinceañera. All of that traditional frill made her uncomfortable and this was her protest. She had read The bell Jar in sixth grade completely by accident, she picked it out for a book report because she thought the title was strange, it changed her forever, by highschool she had discovered riot girl music and punk. She was called freak and dyke by almost everyone she knew in spite of the fact that Loupe was striking and not gay. Nothing stopped her from being herself. Her high cheek bones and exotic eyes made her look like a petroglyph of an aztec princess come to life. She loved makeup and painted her face accordingly. Loupe was still basically the same as she was then except more refined with age. She was in college now, studying art history and fashion design. Her best friend was a boy named Tito, he too was a child of Mexican immigrants. Tito always wore the same Smiths shirt everyday that looked like it had not been washed since the band broke up in 1987. In the spring Lupe and Tito would sit in the park drinking cheap 40's. Tito gushing about a hopeless crush on a straight boy, loupe rolling her eyes and laughing while still being comforting. She would be dressed in something flawless like a distressed black leather motorcycle jacket with gold hardware she bought at the salvation army, high-water jeans and bouncing souls. They would end up at some dive bar filling the juke box with Jesus and Mary Chain and forgetting about time...
Jan 2, 2012
The morning sun effected his eyes the way it effects tulips in the spring as it shone through the slight partitions of the thick umber curtains. Nothing would shut his eyes again now no matter how badly he wanted to go back to sleep. For a moment, just before he surrendered to the radiant glow, he thought he was in his own room until the feeling of the rise and fall of a sleeping body next to him jolted his memory. "Not again" he thought to himself. He turned to see his ex's light brown hair and nude body. This always happened when they drank and he always came to regret it. He carefully, silently, crept out the bed with the mastery and agility of a praying mantis making sure Hypnos was not vanquished completely from the room. He picked up his clothing from the floor and got dressed in the hall reducing his chances of being caught. He tip-toed down the steps into the kitchen. Took a strawberry pop tart from the box on the table and left still somewhat drunk.
Jan 1, 2012
Donna came home to her one room utility. Early from her job at the library. Her hours cut again. "Everything is digital now" she lamented to herself. She popped her low fat tv dinner into the microwave, waited for the annoying beep, popped it out, poured herself some scotch and sat to watch her "shows" on her virus ridden, constantly crashing, net book. soap operas were her guilty pleasure. A nice break from Proust. Her obese long haired grey cat named "Violet" who clearly had not been groomed in months, patches of matted fur dangling from it, curls up by her side. She farts loudly and shovels another spoonful of indistinguishable low fat slop into her mouth.
Jan 1, 2012
People didn't know much about Macks origins. Two things were known for sure. He used to be a trolley driver and he always lived in the same house on Dillard since childhood. Things were different on Dillard now from when Mack was a kid in the 60's. The corner pharmacy he loved then, once a cheerful robins egg blue building from the turn of the century with ornate wooden molding in contrasting high gloss white, had become a gray filth covered bog monster that would occasionally emit noxious fumes from it's singed orifices. In the summer heat It's lumpy skin would erupt in bright rashes of pejoratives. It's ornate moldings have become ugly worts and lumpy tumors, details concealed under thick layers of paint. Mack too had changed. He was old now. Alone. A hoarder. He became just as dirty and boggy as the pharmacy but he was a good man. He would spend all of his time at rummage sales finding "treasures" filling his house and yard with them even though actual space had run out years ago. Sometimes, if he found something really nice, he would leave it somewhere people would find it... He imagined he would live on this way even if nobody knew who he was. The trace of his existence would be inseparable from the object he thought. Mack was a very deep thinker, read lots of books, but no one knew it. Illness from smoking had taken his voice years ago and he didn't like writing. The neighborhood kids laughed at the way he hissed and groaned when he got upset, when he tried to scream, talk, curse, when he cried. They would pelt him with rocks, break his windows, steal from him, beat him up and take his wallet. "Dirty old white faggot gimmie your shit!" was a common thing for him to hear, in fact it was the last thing Mack ever heard. They found him bludgeoned to death in an ally not far from his house. He had to be identified through dental records it was so bad. His treasures rotting on Dillard street.
Jan 3, 2012
Dennis lived with his parents through his college years but he didn't let this slow him down. He would sneak his "friends" into their house while they slept. He did have a boyfriend proper but not even he knew about this. These guys ran in different circles than his boyfriend. One of them was Mitchell. Mitchell knew all about Dennis but he played innocent. Mitch was kind of omniscient in certain ways. He knew lots of people and they all had stories. He quickly pieced what was going on together. Dennis would invite Mitch over. They would hang around his parents stately house while they were away. Talking, sometimes sharing a joint. The tension between them building. It was unbearable. Dennis would try and make a move but then quickly retract looking completely conflicted. Mitchell always came on too strong adding to Dennis's misgivings. Mitch always spoke too much. He ruined everything with heavy words. Its just the way he was. Dennis always spoke too little. If Mitch would have just shut up they could have both gotten at least part of what they wanted. Maybe all of it. Their hangouts always ended in frustration.
Dec 31, 2011
I slid on my cowboy boots, the way my foot and leg displaced the air in them creating a small vacuum was pleasing. I felt secure. Locked in. Cowboy boots give you a certain power, a certain invincibility that is hard to put into words. They set you apart just enough so people know you are not fucking around. I had just gotten off the phone with Tandy. Tandy was having her weekly boy related crisis who's roots she invariably traced to every crappy thing that has ever happened to her in her entire existence. It was exhausting but I agreed to meet up with her for a drink. I knew eventually the conversation would turn away from so and so and lead into something more interesting and fun. She was good in this way but you had to be a psychiatrist for the first fifteen minutes of your encounter. Pulling out all of the Jung and Freud and anti-Freud and Skinner and occult science and magic charms and horoscopes and whatever else you had ever read to bring her out of it. She wantonly puffed on her cigarettes as she repeatedly asked "do you think he likes me?" which I never really knew how to answer in a way that would not set her off but it was soon over. The drinks would flow and the night would turn into one of surrealist word games, great post-punk music, insane doodles and gleeful pandemonium.
Dec 30, 2011
The house walls seemed to be constructed of foam-core, three floors of flimsy and a basement. Sound traveled up through it like cheers through a megaphone. All kinds of sounds came from here. Loud piercing squeals and deafening base. Lamont Young's psychic offspring making machines ring like blithe spirits being cast back to hell. I would mostly hang on the second floor unless something "visual" was happening. The "visual" usually entailed someone cross-dressing and screaming bloody murder while being doused in gunk and glitter, exposing themselves, being very 70's happening with an unhinged 90's primetime tv show aesthetic. Very little of it was that intentional though... All of it was that ridiculous. This is what made it both interesting and unbearable all at once. it was kind of like the Jerry springer of the avant-garde. Fashionistas , internationals, severe looking beautiful people, freaks, drug dealers, DJ's, artists, all crowded in, swimming in filth, most likely high as kites, watching a woman in a little Bo peep costume mock strangle herself as her bandmates yelled the word shame repeatedly. Then there would be a massive dance party. Always ended in a massive dance party that extended into the morning. Sort of hellish but in the best way imaginable.
Dec 30, 2011
The art show was as I expected. A skateboard with some star wars crap on it. A work referencing personal tragedy with unabashed narcissism. Something digitized and "futuristic." one decent seeming piece of art with a title that completely negated whatever spark I had gleaned from the work. Something about video games. One of the artists stood in the far corner of the gallery surrounded by a gaggle of horrible reinventions of edie sedgwick. Lapping it up, looking in my direction and gloating as if it was something I needed to aspire too. I left soon after feeling somewhat hollow but also somewhat victorious.
Dec 30, 2011
I sat at the bar with a copy of the golden bough I had bought in the used book store earlier that day. It was a nice copy, hardback, faded red cloth pulled over cardboard with an dollop of gold on the cover, a small embossed image. I was reading about the pig as corn maiden or something arcane and comedic like that... I knew these kinds of books were highly speculative but I liked them anyway. I had taken to drinking alone and reading or at least trying to read in the din and haze of smoke. I always noticed people I would not notice otherwise when alone. Wrinkly old black men who looked like they had been soaking in formaldehyde, ill fitting but perfectly pressed suits draped on their skeletal alcoholic bodies, all in a row, as hipsters poured in around them never even noticing them. It seemed as if they had been on those bar stools for eons. Like when they closed the place down for the night they would just leave them there until the next day. Pickling. They made me uneasy. The men exuded a certain nefariousness that was palatable. They felt parasitic like barnacles or leeches stuck to the bar stool, waiting... I put it in the back of my mind and continued reading about how German peasants physically and verbally abuse each other in the name of fertility and bacon. I drank to amnesia. Woke up the next day in my bed with no recall of how I got there. It felt like magic until my senses came to me, my stomach seemed full of balsamic vinegar nauseatingly sweet and sour. Too much bourbon. My wallet empty. I pick up whatever change I could find on the floor for train fair into the center of town and sat in the park chain smoking. Thinking.
Dec 29, 2011
We entered the basement bar, ceiling painted in colorful snakes, a claustrophobics nightmare, damp with humanity. The music was decidedly retro. Disco but not in the "funky" costumey sense... This was all vintage YSL and good coke or at least it was trying to be... The obligatory post hardcore thirty-something's looming. I was ill with it that night. Fucking tired. I unbuttoned my blazer and got myself a drink. I hated every moment. I used to love things like this, knowing about "exclusive" nights like this used to make me feel special. Now I just feel like I'm watching people younger than me falling into those shiny traps so many of us have been snared by. I felt agitated. The people I was with sneaking off into the bathroom every so often. In the past I would have followed. Now it was just pissing me off. I decide to get smashed to deal. More people started cramming into the space, I felt like I could die from the heat and humidity. I decided to leave. The cold winter air enveloped me, soothed me, the night was made of camphor and diamonds. I walked long and hard, passed the bronze statue of the lion fighting the python, I imagined it was one of the snakes on the ceiling of the basement bar... I liked thinking about this as the cherry of my cigarette became a torch through a night of lonely wandering.
Dec 29, 2011
You are a phantom. A shadow who's voice is nothing but my own auditory hallucination. You are a figment of my imagination. Don't take yourself so seriously. You are mist.
Dec 29, 2011
The emotion of the days events collected in her solar plexus. The anger aching to reach up through her lungs and become words. Loud words full of rumble and sting. Her throat was now a wasps nest, the insects flowing out of her one after another in lines. They wanted to land on me and imprint me with her message but I am not a place for measly insects. They sense this and fall away from me as if they have encountered a UV light trap.
Dec 29, 2011
I saw nothing of him but a large hand pulling the door shut. Nothing else, just a hand poking out of a blue-gray 70's vintage jacket sleeve, the kind that is sort of puffy, quilted in geometric striations... But I knew it was him. No one has hands like his, perfectly formed, perfectly rounded thick fingers that somehow retained their articulation without losing any testosterone. Always seeming to emit the perfect amount of pressure. Soiled by something ridiculous like scented markers and spirit gum. Something that relinquished any notions of functional adulthood. Brutally real in my memory. That was the same hand I saw. I knew it. I could feel it from the half block away. I walk by the door as if I hadn't noticed, Fixating on the trash being blown around the street, fixating on how it let me see the shape of the air that was quietly oxidizing everything. I swallowed hard and felt strong.
