vicious

jamie

I kept a diary before I started BRANDTRUEBOY. I chronicled everything that was going on, paying particular attention to the friendship between Sterling Fassbinder, Fitzcarraldo and myself. We had a lot of fun and the time went by quickly. The diary entries started in Belgium, quickly filling one black notebook after another. I’ve lugged them around the world, decorating them with stickers and little bits of art. They’re my prized possessions.

I feel compelled, almost obligated to write down everything that happens. The drugs, the endless self-pity, the psychoanalytic discussions…I want to save it all for later.

I’ve had a vision that when everything is said and done, I’ll be holding the last piece of candy.

The two most important things in this world are candy and bacon.

The world is a stage, the world is a sponge.

The world is an everlasting gobstopper that makes my eyes water.


September 10, 2001

11: 30pm

what the fuck, money. Shit was on this evening—it was like old school silver stoned sterling and me up in that piece. Fitz came too. He was the driver.

I was blitzed up in shotgun with a tube sock full of quarters.

Yo money, bet. Here’s what happened: around 4PM I was walking home beneath the BQE, turning onto graham and heading for bayard when suddenly it started to pour. I had to run back into the shadow of the underpass, where it was cold as hell. I got a little soaked and my cigarette got soggy.

I stood there, practicing a couple of rhymes, trying to think about what I wanted from the day. The rained tapered a bit and all at once it stopped, as quickly as it had started. I waited a few seconds before continuing on my way.

I heard footsteps as I lit another cigarette.

“Hey, can I bum a smoke?”

A good looking, teenage guy with shoulder length dark brown hair came up from behind me. I-tailian, I guessed, from the neighborhood.

“Sure, why not?” I thought, digging one out of my pack.

“Can I get a light, too,” he asked. I made eye contact with him. He seemed happy and harmless. Young.

I came to a complete stop and started rummaging in my bag, where I had just dropped my lighter. It was at that moment that he leaned over and ran a finger over my right tit. I was wet so everything was super-defined. He had no trouble finding the nipple and pressing down on it. I looked up and saw that his face was stupid and lustful.

He felt me looking at him and looked up. His eyes narrowed upon meeting mine.

There was that fucked up dream feeling as he pushed me back against the black metal fence and fully felt me up. His face was close to mine. There was a mole beneath his right eye, dark and pronounced.

I heard him make sounds, “mmmm, mmmmm,” like he was eating something.

Right there in broad daylight, with cars passing by on McGuinness.

Suddenly, I felt myself taking a step away.

“What the fuck?” I gurgled.

His eyes turned wide and he bolted.

“I’m sorry,” he called back to me. Deep Williamsburg accent.

“What the fuck!” I shouted back.

“I’m sorry,” he shouted again, before turning and breaking into a full run, sneakers slapping against the sidewalk.

I wondered if I could catch up but he already had a pretty good start.

I focused instead on memorizing what he looked like. Then I went home to call up my peeps.

(I’m the judge and the jury)

First I stopped at the bodega for some beer.

My body was twitching, money. I was fucking suped up.

Fitz used one of his dad’s cards to get us a black Escalade.

I was disappointed that the trim was factory, but whatever.

It had the size and it had the height.

It also had the system.

The right sound is essential on quiet nights like these, money.

Although I love Escalades, tall-ass Fitz was the logical choice behind the wheel. Motherfucker pulled up to the manhattan corner meeting spot in a black Armani suit, and light violet silk shirt, smoking on a phillie stub. Dapper in the Ballys moccasins. No socks—he’d worked on his tan all summer.

“I do believe it’s acceptable not to wear socks in early September.”

“I don’t know,” I said, feeling my body viciously shake as I leaned back into the cream-colored leather seat. My brain was tuned into the high pitch whine of the air ionizer.

“Is the 10th still early September?”

“Certainly, anything up until the 15th.”

“What are you planning to use to cover your face?”

“Nothing,” he said, and tapped a fat phillie ash into the brilliantly clean silver ashtray.

“I’ve realized that my face is completely unremarkable. Don’t look so shocked, darling. I’ve come to terms with it. I’m over it.”

“Give me a break,” I said.

He winked and nodded his head, cigar clamped firmly between his teeth.

“Don’t worry darling, I’m the invisible man. And I’ve got a pair of Ray Bans for the magic moment. Put in a CD.”

“I made a mix.”

“Of course you did. Let’s pick-up the dyke.”

We got Sterling in Times Square, where she materialized out of the crowd like Moses.

I leaned back to look her in the eye. She looked tired out from her temp gig downtown.

“It’s fucking on,” I told her.

She nodded and stared out the window. She had on her black Steelers skully.

My homegirl’s got the most to loose but she’s always down for the cause. I can’t go wrong with a kid like that on my team.

First song on the CD was “Crackity Jones,” by the Pixies:

(Please excuse me, Jose Jones,
You need these walls, for your own
I’m moving out of this hospa de hate
I’m afraid you’ll cut me, boy!)

We drove across the ornate as hell 59th Street bridge and turned onto McGuiness Blvd. I took sips out of a forty and watched mazes of brightly painted, single story manufacturing buildings fly by.

“How are we going to know where he is?” Sterling asked.

“I’ve got a psychic hold on him,” I said.

“C’mon with that shit, TRUE.”

“C’mon with what?” I shouted. Every emotion was right there on the surface. I was angry, elated, sick and confident, all at the same time. I pulled the black nylon doo-rag over my eyes and readjusted my black on black Yankees cap.

“She’s got inner vision, like Stevie Wonder,” Fitz called out, laughing with that stoned laugh of his.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I heard Sterling say, disparagingly.

“Just drive,” I told Fitz, running my hands over the dashboard until I felt the volume control.

It was the WU:

(killer bees, we’re on a swarm)

“Go straight until I tell you to turn.”

“Whatever,” Fitz said, and gunned it.

I felt us jumping up and over bumps, crashing over potholes.

“When do I turn?” Fitz said.

“Wait,” I called out. Yo, money I had that shit over my eyes, I couldn’t see. I was just trying to feel.

“Guns Blazing (Drums of Death), that UNKLE, Kool G Rap song came on.

It always gets me hyped.

I nodded my head back and forth.

*see lyrics on folded note paper



“Next right!” I heard myself call out.

“Feel the fury!”

I pulled the nylon off my eyes.

“Up there, to the left!”

We turned and immediately came upon a crowd of kids.

Some were wearing hoods, some were smoking cigarettes. A skateboard and a girl or two.

My eyes were on the look out for dark hair and white skin.

“Is he here?” Sterling asked.

“Do you see the fuck?”

“No,” I said, tying up the sock and feeling its weight. I readied my finger on the window button.

“But I will.”

(we allow some violence,
...to prove us rebaptizable.)


palace