Now that I understand this right, let me take it to the mic. This revolution has just begun.

This isn’t an apology—I already told Sterling I was sorry. So many times it makes even me sick. Like Kurt, I’m just trying to figure out, “…What else can I say? Everyone is gay...”

Keep livin’, keep livin’—Remember the Past, Embrace the Future—but I can’t get this dream out of my head, a nightmare world too slick to be real life, it was an anime transit station, populated with anime people, each with a cool haircut. It’s the first time I’ve had cartoons in my dreams since back when I used to double-dip for breakfast. I think I got it from Sterling’s porno blog link that pissed me off so much. Freud says that most of what happens in our dreams is taken directly from the day’s activities. That explains the anime as a possible dream ingredient, but its actual inclusion—well, it occurred to me that the anime signified my feeling of displacement—the sense that the world belonged to a reality I couldn’t quite grasp. I remember that the anime people were trying to tell me something, motioning like crazy up at the archway over our heads. As I looked up, I heard a hiss and saw a plume of green gas unfurl against the vaulted ceiling. The color was sickeningly bright. It’s all my fault, I thought, as I watched the poor anime people hurriedly brush aside their fashionable bangs and struggle in vain to open previously invisible compartments in the wall. There must have been masks or something in there, I wanted to help them yank it open, but as usual in nightmares, I was rooted to the spot. I watched with sick fascination, as they started gasping for breath and clawing at their faces. Neatly drawn bubbles popped up on their arms as their eyes bulged and they fell to their knees. I was made to understand, by some omnipotent dream narrator—silent but all knowing, like an impulse or a god—that the people could no longer breath and would all soon be dead.

I didn’t know it was a dream. I thought I was dead too, even though I didn’t feel any effects of the gas.

Walking down the road with my little rude gun…

I couldn’t shake the feeling the dream left. I got drunk and walked up the island of Manhattan all the way from the red cage of the Williamsburg bridge pedestrian walkway to the secret laser canyons of midtown, telling myself I was getting it out of my system.

Walking down the road with my little rude gun. Top of my gun, cock it for fun…

There was a message radiating out to me, in the amber streetlights of Grand Central. I was looking for you, Sterling, thinking you might be getting out of work but it was already too late for that. The arched overpass spanning 42nd Street was identical to the one in the dream. I paused—the fireflies swirling in front of my eyes—before I shook my head and pushed against the brass handles on the doors leading into the station. I took long strides down the hall to the main concourse, where the plastic visors on the lamps at the ticket booths were the same green as the anime gas. Fat people passed dragging wheeled suitcases and slurping on Starbucks frappachinos. European teenagers stood in groups, filming the constellations on the domed ceiling with expensive digital video cameras. Just one push and a quick grab and it could be mine. The police officers and the camouflaged National Guard were too busy watching girls pass by. Anything could happen. I looked all around, at shops selling gourmet olive oil and shops selling expensive pens and shops selling golf clubs. They were mostly empty, and the Indian and Hispanic clerks leaned on their elbows against glass desktops, languishing away until the time when they were free. I took note of the glossy magazines in neat rows, the poster-sized advertisements for retro leather jackets, the actors, the actresses and models, famous people posing on beaches and in clubs and in parks—and I knew that the cinematic scene on each and every poorly bound page would someday make picturesque ruins.

The green in the circles of the 4-5-6 subway was the same, as was the new micro fiber shorts in the window of the jogging specialty shop, as were the jumpsuits worn by the cleaning crews sweeping trampled candy wrappers off the floor…train schedules, dirty tissues…leaves from outside…balls of human hair…

Exhausted from my walk, I elbowed my way onto the 5 train. The A/C was on full blast; it seemed too thin after the clammy air in the station—as though all the oxygen had been filtered out. I reeked of booze; the other passengers shot my dirty looks. I felt a tightness in my chest and concentrated on the subway map, staring at the big fat borough of Brooklyn and planning out which bars I’d hit next. This gave me some measure of calm until I realized that the band of green signifying Central Park was again the same…I peered around me, looking for someone suspicious as I gripped the bar so tightly I could smell the metal in my perspiration. My heart was banging in my chest. Not now, I told myself, not here. It wasn’t only the embarrassment of hitting the floor, but the expense. Do you have any idea how much it costs to have some EMT come on the train to slap you awake?

I don’t know how I made it—time stood still, no tick and no tock, but somehow, someway, I made it to Brooklyn. I put my hood on and went straight to my man’s place. Ringing up and banging on the metal door with an open palm while he brought his slow ass down the steps to let me in. Some neighborhood girls walked past while I waited.

“Who’s that kid,” I heard one of them ask.

“I don’t know, some thug…”

I turned their way, dipping my head in the blue streetlight.

“Oh, shit, it’s a girl,” they said, before scurrying off.

… top of my earth, tip of my birth, top of my death, tip of my breast, top of my chest, tip of my guess…

Sticks and stones break bones, but the gat'll kill you quicker
Especially when I'm drunk off the liquor
Smokin funk by the boxes, packin glocks is
natural to eat you niggaz like chocolates
The funk baby

Dedicated to the fat fuck Fitz.

Where are you, Sterling? I've been looking for you since yesterday. I need to talk. I've got those fireflies in front of my eyes again, and you know what that means. I've gone back and forth on the L, checking out all the usual cafes and front stoops on Grand Street. Nothing. Those pierced girls in the out-of-style UFO pants hadn't seen you 'since forever'. Smelling their grape soda breath made me thirsty for a beer--an overpriced one, so I headed back up the L to Bedford Ave.

The lights on the train played tricks with me--I swore I saw you on the crowded stairways leading out of the station. But when I got up above ground you were no where to be seen. Nevertheless, I had a sudden sense of purpose as I stood looking for you in front of the busted, tagged-up public phones. Mirage or not, I savored my bit of hope. I hooked my thumbs in my belt loops as I peered this way and that, my hair and the trash and the dangling lines with the receivers torn off all blowing in the same direction. I glanced around the heavy curtains that insulated the front door of the L Café. Inside, the olive skinned Italian girl who reminded me of my first girl fuck was playing Nirvana for her two tables. I gave her my hey, okay look. On one side of the room there was a sleepy straight couple in hooded college sweatshirts and on the other a serious looking fat guy sketching a beautiful blonde with long veiny arms. She looked like a heroin addict or a modern dancer. All four people were completely absorbed in each other and didn’t notice me craning through the curtains like the head coming through the barn door on Picasso’s Guernica. I closed my eyes and saw an afterimage of blue veins: following that I saw the Nevermind baby in the pool, forever swimming after a dollar. Suddenly I didn’t feel like checking out the heated garden behind the kitchen, as was originally my plan. Maybe you were there, Sterling, reading “Savage Love” in a dingy, left over copy of The Voice and feeling avant-garde, but I couldn‘t be bothered with maneuvering past all those empty, lopsided little tables. Truth be told I was a little out of sorts. My breathing felt mechanical and my head felt woozy. The fireflies had grown in number. I stepped back outside and breathed deeply but silently until I recovered enough to walk the couple of blocks down to the shiny hall of the renovated girdle factory. Now it’s got a plastic sign over it that says “Mini-Mall”. I passed the bookstore with the cats and the plastic covered art and design tomes. I took a whiff of the peony and patchouli scented air inside the Tokyo style frock-shop and paused, unbearably light with Klonopin dulled regret beside the now vacant and locked store that used to sell Hip-hop toys, Belgian comics, and expensive Taschen gag books. There was some Japanese porn in there if you knew where to look, but what am I telling you that for--you probably bought the last of it, ya big... I went around the corner and ducked into other shops, where yeasty smelling boys and girls with meticulous bed-head wrapped $100 silkscreen t-shirts, antique lunchboxes, ironically designed patent leather change purses and other necessities in non-corporate, handmade paper. They carefully tied their parcels together with pashmina yarn and decorated them with twigs, glitter and brightly colored Himalayan beads. I ruffled through the neatly folded piles of extra small clothes and dug my fingernails into the twenty-dollar scented candles. Everything was sweet and casual and pleasantly pricey, but the crack in the dressing room mirror and the dead bug corpses gathered in the retro ceiling light fixtures seemed to belie the possibility of something swift and Godlike and deadly happening in the next second.

I looked for you on streets draped over with slanting afternoon sunlight. The air was crisp and cold--some early-late Fall shit. I put my hood on and leaned the crown of my head forward, like a boxer. I don’t know what I wanted from you, I just need to talk, or sleep or something. I went into another cafe and wrote on the bathroom walls with my pink pantone pen. I’m so excited, I can’t wait, to see you there went in a slight arch over the toilet paper dispenser. I’m so horny, but that’s o.k., my will is good…went to the left of the lime spotted sink.

Call me, OK? Ain't no love in the city.

What the fuck, Sterling? I guess in cyberspace you can fully live out your lifelong dream of being a 13 year old skater boy.

Hey, well I have cartoons, too, you guys. I've got cred as a web loser without a life. I like this guy, he fakes on the David Rhees "Get Your War On" shit. He fakes it so real, he's beyond fake. There's no ownership on the web--no more pretending for us!

BTW it's funnier when you're high. (And what do you know about Stoner Rock anyway, Sterling, ya big physically fit self idolizing weekend wifebeater wearing--oh, sorry, you call it a boybeater--9-5 wage slave. I wish I had a doll made in your image--I'd use that shit as a pincushion, ya big making the blog all slimey and stupid and what not.)

My people are you with me, where you at?

The blog is back, I am not. No homeward bound for me. I've got my titantium infared laptop powered by the sun itself. It's featherweight, like my flow. It's skinny like Fitz is fat. OK, so it's not really mine. That's what those Brooklyn kids get for sporting the retro rides--an Oldsmobile with pop-up locks, easy-peasy japanesy. There was Krispy Kum on the back seat in the shape of an exclamation--fuckin impatient trust-fund baby. So watcha got for me? I’m in the bar, with my head on the bar. I feel a cold one comin on, sittin here watchin the door swing open and shut. My high hasn’t kicked in yet. The licorice taste of the pill is on the back of my tongue. My legs still feel like mine.

I can smell you from here, Fitz, you drunk ass. I just went through and corrected the thousands of typos in your post. Let me guess, Chimay Bleu and two packs of Rothmans? Sounds like that kind of night. Do us all a favor and take that nappy white linen suit that you passed out in to the dry cleaners, you sweat stained mother fucker.

Re: How Lame Does It Get? and the Andrew Sullivan 'meta-blog'--I'm not a talking head, chillymost, I only listen to them. Fear of Music, baby! Now if you'll excuse me I've got some tags to put up.

Freak Like A Mutiny

I came in the do
I said it before
I'll never let the mic magnetize me no mo

Hey, man it's not like that. I ride the trains, and the city buses, and the funicular, and whatever other modes of public transportation strike my fancy. TRUEBOY is of the people. With or without panic attacks. I pop two Klonopin and I'm good to go. The sedative effect of the Klonopin is such that I enjoy the stream of my thoughts completely untethered from any system of moral checks and balances. There isn’t that cramping in the gut--the irrational, yet deeply ingrained fear of Instant Karma. With my arms folded and my eyes low--I look not at people, but through them. There's something Ancient Greek and slightly murderous about the primacy I give to sensations. They are real: raw and fleeting, like the other day I got lost in the yellow lights flashing outside the train car and the air blasting on the back of my calves and the Cds spinning on the plaid uniform covered laps of the school girls across from me. A red plastic bag from Virgin was hooked around an idiot yuppie's fat thumb. I'd been watching him for awhile and wondering about what was inside. After teasing me with a casual peek, he decided to fully unsheath the CD, gently edging it out of the bag as though it was something alive, but delicate enough to die at any second. His eyes turned glassy with pleasure as he held his purchase out before him. I strained to make out the cover and eventually saw that it was the Strokes, Is This It? He tore off the shrink wrap in slow motion, like an ant tearing apart a bug. He picked and ripped, dropping the plastic shards back into the red bag, rocking back and forth on his heels. I closed my eyes and pictured the waves above me as the train hurtled beneath the East River. I imagined all sorts of evil things about him, just for fun. Meanwhile, in my headphones Belle and Sebastian sang “There is misery, in everything I see, and all the people on t.v. after tea when life begins again, they’ll be happier than me…”

LOSING IN FRONT OF YOUR HOMECROWD

Early this morning...Far above the Earth: “The Day Shift” goes to work. It made me sick to my stomach to feel those angels watching over me. I was on my cell, trying to find a car to take my ass to Jersey, where I could disappear into the graffiti adorned Palisades. I was sick of looking at myself from the outside. In one moment I was laid out neat and clean like a snapshot and in the next I was as mysterious as a black hole. Lately, I feel two distinct personalities in my head--as though someone ran a red-hot wire down my brain, severing certain important connections.

Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends, and watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame. I've got a secret for you, I cut your angel in two--I left her bleeding and soaked it with a dry sponge.

Run a carbon black test on my jaw, and you will find its all been said before.

I had the driver pull over on a winding suburban street that was utterly without distinction, an aluminum sided domicile depot--one of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of tree-lined wastelands in this country today. I took a snapshot of a 25 mph Speed Limit sign. It was white with the usual authoritative black lettering, and was affixed to a green metal post. Behind it was a wooden telephone pole and behind that was a hunched Cypress tree. I tried to capture the progression from the man-made to the natural. Nearby there was a fence threaded with shiny green vinyl that grabbed my attention. Little girls in jean shorts were riding scooters and talking to one another on walkie-talkies. "What the fuck? What the fuck?" they said when they saw me taking pictures. They wore outfits of meticulously matched off the shoulder blouses, jeans and Capri pants from Old Navy, Gap and Abercrombie and Finch. It was clear though, from the signals radiating off their pouting little asses and super-glossy hair that what they really wanted was Prada and Gucci. I ducked back into my ride as they ran over to report me to the naïve and blissfully spaced out thirty-something mother keeping watch on a porch. Folded arms, no history of pain upon her face. I think it’s safe to say she doesn't know anyone who died from a gun shot or drugs.

…don't bring that stuff to bed…you've got to fall with a clear head…

I wanted to take pictures, lots of instant pictures. Of everything and nothing…the morning was very clear.

A change of speed, a change of style. In the back seat I carefully unfolded the crisp copy of today’s news and read my review: “Everything’s still in the red, it’s a very violent mix. …wood, switchblade knives, and tangled cords—they’re tough, chic and fabulously prescient.”