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Just Smell Your Invisible Hand...

by sterling

I agree with Fitz about giving Angry White Girl the boot. We have enough angsty crap on this site--why link to some more?

The best link we have is to jsassociate's blog. Linguistic spice that isn't a bare nanometer away from mallrat. And it's actually funny, too. The title of this post comes from the "Essay on Keanu Reeves". The jsassociate blog is an offshoot of a just as odd website. It's like an online version of the dead letter office for a Dadaist corporate headquarters. Under the heading "Department of Research Simulations" there's an interesting proposition that reads like a job ad: "Help create the true life story of someone who never existed." The Dept. of Research Simulations links to another offbeat article, this one on chronic amnesia which ostensibly relates to the creation of "the true life story" of someone who never existed.

Word, there are a lot of invisible hands and nippleless zombies running around without any memory--my kind of place. I just drank a Starbucks DoubleShot and had a waking dream of a room full of yellow legal ledger pads. Everything was written out in fine ball point and buffered with wide margins. Go to the site and see what I mean.

Now that I spent an entire post suping it up...think I'll get any artsy kickbacks from this ATLien? TRUE, find more like this wacko to link us to. Like my mother always told me, "You are the company you keep, as well as the clothes you wear."

But seriously now, when are you coming home? Isn't it fucking cold out there? It's fucking cold here. Why are you hating on me and not calling? And don't give me any of that neurosis crapola.

Later. --SF

by fitzcarraldo

I only have one kind of ring to give and it's not for a finger, Sweets, so I guess you won't be wearing it anytime soon.

When will a good fag learn? Girls aren't for me--all that post-gay bullshit aside. See where all of BRANDTRUEBOY's postie toastie subliminal suggestions have gotten me? I slipped and my dick landed in girl twat. There are fences in this world, Darlings. One of them divides the breeders from the interior designers. I'm made to lunch with Ladies, not eat them out. Even half a girl like TRUEBOY is one half too much--just like side one of Christine Aguilera's new album. God Save The Queen.

And while I'm on my box, can we get rid of that goddamn Angry White Girl Link? Bitch gets on my last lilliputian nerve. So self righteous about her better informed, more conscious anger. I love the way she posts her hatemail, like it's a badge of honor. And her callous remarks about the DC Sniper--because she's beyond our pedestrian morality, don't you like, get it, man?

Hey you little holier than thou privileged putang. Wake up and smell your hypocrisy--it's later than you think.

Here's the only good thing about her site. There. Now we can get rid of it.

Hope that skinny midwest dick doesn't get lost in your mouth, TRUEBOY. Remember, that bloodclot was made for munching carpet, not polishing poles.

Night-night,

Fitzcarraldo

REPRESENT

by TRUE

In case you guys thought I wasn't down for the cause--I was in Kinkos late last night and I'm tagging this city up...

...what's with all the non-believing, anyway? Can't a girl take a vacation (that's "holiday" to you, Fitz). There's no ring on my finger, so stop sweating. Damn.



by TRUE

Will lives in uptown Minneapolis, where the streets wind beneath ancient, sheltering trees. It's a far cry from the empty glass office buildings of downtown, where skyways reach across the streets and connect second and third floor malls. They've got everything arranged so you can avoid the icy Northern winds. When I arrived I wandered aimlessly, too ashamed to call the main line of Will's company. Better to explain myself in person, I thought, and so I bought a "Cold Killer" frozen juice and transversed miles of brown carpeting, adorned from time to time with brass sun and moon icons. I stared down at a tiny eye shadow applicator brush that had fallen on the black and white tiles in the deserted Sam Greedy's, utterly transfixed, until an employee in one of those ill-fitting red polos came over and asked if I needed help. There were rings under her eyes and her brown skin was ashen, but her voice was full of concern. "I'm fine," I said, and gravitated over to the sale bin, as though I had a purpose, before walking casually out the door, back to the skyway, where I looked down at the line of buses idling white smoke, until they filled up and drove off, one by one.

I managed to dial information and find Will's address. I could have taken a bus but I sprang for a cab instead, as again I was too embarassed to ask for help deciphering the routes. The cab driver was an old white guy, an anomoly back in NYC. I wanted to ask if it was here as well, but thought better of it. He was uncertain about the address. "You sure there's a house there?" I told him yes, and that it was a company. "There are no companies out there," he insisted. "Well, it's a software company, so it looks different." That seemed to shut him up, although as we got closer I heard him muttering to himself about burnt out shacks. When we arrived at the address, he gave me a receipt with his number on the back--just in case.

The house looked like a haunted mansion from a children's novel: vaulted roof, terraces with twisting vegetation abounding, arched windows. There are rumors of ghosts flitting about the grounds in the surrounding Somali and Indian neighborhoods. Up the road, the Art Institute leads tours of the city's architectural wonders and always makes Will's house the first stop.

Inside there are huge fireplaces and stone mantles. There's a dome of stained glass in the ceiling over the master stairwell. As the word master implies there's also a servants' stairwell, so that the maids could come and go without anyone being disturbed by their presence. There are plenty of nooks and crannies and peepholes and amazing woodwork. On the lower levels, the wood is its natural reddish brown. Upstairs, its painted pleasant greens and yellows in the style of old time Lutherans, who had a real talent for dividing the public from the private in a house. Apparently, they would have painted their living quarters (the above floors) in pastels that were even more vibrant than those Will choose. Like a neon Easter, Will said.

After greeting me enthusiastically at the door, Will took me into the kitchen for tea. He pointed out the original "Condemned" notice framed above the kitchen counter. I liked how he got a real kick from standing on the clay floor and reading aloud the words, "Unfit for Human Habitation". He bought the place when he was 24. The city made him show multiple IDs, he thinks because they thought he was crazy for buying such a disaster. I think it's because he looked like Huckleberry Finn with blond hair. Still does--and he must be over 40. Same teeth and cheekbones that I always imagined. I think one of the reasons I came all the way out here was to see his bare feet. I've had this thing about them--how they'll be the all-American standing on a wooden raft clean white feet. I'm still waiting for the chance. Unfortunately, he's fond of socks.

Will stares into my eyes so intently that I have to look away. I don't like it when the tables are turned, and I usually don't stand for an inquisiveness that isn't mine, but with him something makes me stick around. I like the feeling of being on a string. He asks me question after question, and I answer them all. He knows about all the shit that's gone on. Meanwhile, his life is a blank slate to me. I can't even be sure about whether he likes to fuck boys or girls. Maybe I don't want to know. I like the vague, asexual aura about him. His never naked feet. He's like a lean robot--an android in a silver sports car.

Midnight on the autobahn--the purple clouds reflected in his white blue eyes.

It's not about a Nazi thing. It's not even a Kinski thing--not really. It's about control--a cold veneer and an outright lack of lust that seems to equal control.

Sometimes I get the vibe that he thinks of me as a problematic bit of code--a glitched out app that he can't quite set straight. I humored him as he tried to parse me with a set of generic psych questions. Like the Myers-Briggs or Jung personality tests that AT&T hands out to its new hires.

--If a friend asks you to a dinner starting immediately, how are you likely to answer?

--Do you prefer starting or ending projects?

--When you're feeling tired, do you get more energy reading quietly to yourself or going out to a party?

I answered as honestly as possible:

As I don't generally answer my phone these days, the friend in the first question would have to be already in my company in order to ask me to dinner--in which case why not? (I nudged him in the ribs, to let him know I was hungry).

I prefer no projects--just propositions.

When I'm feeling tired I always figure, "what's the point in pretending?" and I promptly get high.

Will threw his hands in the air and laughed--a boisterous free sound that was over as soon as it began.

"You should really go jogging with me in the morning," he said.



by sterling

Hey Fitz, I thought that one of the rules "our faithful leader" put forward about this blog was that we shouldn't refer to conversations that take place outside the posts unless they are accompanied by sufficient explanation. You took the comments I made last night at Ari's totally out of context. I was with that Japanese girl by the window, pointing out TRUE's tag on the watertower. The smiley face sperm is fading a little, but it still looks good. I remember when she climbed that metal ladder, drunk and talking about how she did pull-ups everyday to make sure she had the upper body strength for stunts like this. I don't know what I was more scared of--the empty jug of Carlo Rossi or those beat-up Converse All-Stars she was wearing. The soles were worn thin and smooth as a waxed floor.

I was feeding the Japanese girl dates and blowing in her ear at the same time. She sucked each of the wrinkled brown fruits into her mouth and with barely any movement spit out a perfectly clean seed into my waiting palm. I told her how we were a crew once, making renegade art and movies. TRUEBOY was, and for all intents and purposes, still is our leader. Only she's fucked up--yes, I did say that, because it's true! I don't mess around with the kind of shit she messes with. I quit drinking--and no, I wasn't high last night. What the fuck, I'm tired--you know I've been working my ass off with Young and Hungry--putting down some tracks for the album. The debut album by Sterling Fassbinder, "Liebling Farbe", which means, "Favorite color." I can already imagine the cover art--a pink ballerina, bending forward in a curtsy.

The latest track is a cover of "Cactus" by The Pixies. The vocals, however, owe more to David Bowie's recent cover of the same song (on Heathen). So it's an hommage to an hommage. But there's nothing Postie-Toastie about it. Not with the way I sing the lyrics, "Sitting here waiting on a cement floor, wishing that I had just something you wore." Man, it's hot. It's celebrating my lust for women, but I have to admit that half the motor behind the horniness is my persistent, raging hard-on for my boss, M. It faded out for a little while but it's back again. That's another story, though.

I'm not "grandstanding." I don't think TRUE's pathetic, but sometimes I do feel badly for her, as I'm sure she might have felt for me at some point. I wasn't putting her down to the girl. OK, maybe I was a little disparaging--but do you think I'm happy that she left? Don't you think I miss her too--especially when the only communication we have from her hardly mentions us at all.

Will--whatever, he's just her latest distraction...

But I'll tell you one thing, Fitz. Don't front with talking about my missing fingers, and the way I do or do not choose to mention it. For all you know I'm not really that reformed. That's why I have to try so hard to be good. From a the therepeutic standpoint that you so love to take, I think it's pretty clear that I don't have the insatiable need to cut out of my system. Who knows, maybe your itsy-bitsy...pinky...will be next.

--SF

by fitzcarraldo

Goodness. A love triangle with the edges not connecting--or only occasionally connecting, like some rapidly changing 3-D screensaver. We (Fitz and Sterling) love TRUE and TRUE loves no one. OK, scratch that--she loves Klaus Kinski, and anyone who looks vaguely like him, which on certain days includes Yours Truly.

Who do you think gave me the name, "Fitzcarraldo" after all?

The dreaming builider of the opera house in the jungle. That's what she wants me to be. Well, love, the closest I come is the white linen suit. And it's too cold to wear that now.

Love all your talk about no longer messing with shit, Sterling. First of all, on a literal level, you sounded high as a kite, so I'd watch the grandstanding, love. Second, on a the level of the mathematics of the graphs of desire, I can't think of anyone who's trying harder to stuff her "product" back up her lily white bootie hole than you. And that added bit about your poor lost fingers. You're so proud to be disenchanted by your dismemberment until it's time to rake in the sympathy vote. God, you really make me sick sometimes.

Hey TRUE, I hope you have fun with your little buddy, Will. Oh, our faithful leader! We'll sit tight and await with bated breath the next installation of your most excellant adventure. Give me a break. So you and your German drug dealer pals ran over the poor idiot's bike and you've been indebted to him ever since. And he runs his own software company out of the second floor of some grand renovated mansion in the middle of Minneapolis. Great. Wonderful. I hope you figure out your life skating on one of those god damn lakes. Isn't that what everyone needs every once and a while? A lake to skate a figure eight upon? I know that's worth the last of my poor dead grandmother's money.

--f


9th and Hennepin

by TRUE

Hey y’all,

I’m still alive and currently laying my head in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I’m trying to formulate some clear thoughts out of mixed feelings. That’s the essence of great art, according to Dr. Johnson. Incidentally, it’s also the essence of a long afternoon spent sober and pressed up against the window in a city where you’re a stranger, with a book open but unread and a second cup of peppermint tea steaming on the sill as the washed out trees in the front yard get slowly shook free of their leaves.

I didn’t want you guys to worry, although in the back of my mind I knew you probably would. But you know how it is when I just can’t explain myself. When I can’t deal with picking up the fucking phone, or opening an envelope or turning on the switch that will throw on the light. I felt a binge coming on and I couldn’t stand it. It’s that relentless tug—the invisible current that sucks at my thoughts and turns my thirst into a force like gravity. I needed a change of scene, a change of style. So I took out the old Vans shoebox and felt around for the last of my Grandmother’s bonds. At first I couldn’t find it—my hand flapped around frantically like a fish before I located it stuck against the cardboard wall; I peeled it off and shuddered at the memory of my Grandmother, short and white but with that dark brown hair that might have been a wig, standing in the doorframe of the kitchen in her long since sold house, shouting at me about not sneaking any of her god-damned vanilla bon-bons. Her face was blurry. I started to imagine all the drugs that would fill the shoebox but then I made myself stop. I went online and saw what cheap flights were available, excluding Florida, of course. Northwest had a deal to Minneapolis. I must have scrolled over it ten times before I thought of Will. That’s it, I thought. Perfect.

I could have taken a Greyhound but I wanted to make sure the money would be gone. Solid gone--not sitting in a wad in my pocket like a rainy day ready to happen. I’ve made a real decision: this is my last trip, my last free ride. Everything’s changing after this. I’m going to make my own money again instead of rocking on everyone else’s dime.

I first met Will seven years ago in Ireland, in the village of Kinvara at the head of Kinvara Bay. I was with those two Germans, M. and H. unloading our stockpile of bad E pills across the UK. I remember it was a beautiful day; we started at daybreak in the Mercedes and sped up the coast in time to watch the late morning sun burn the blue mist off the fat green hills. What can I say about those hills? The ocean sparkled and churned beneath them as a green smelling air perspired from out of the soft soil. M. stuck his face out the window and said, “Breathe in deep, this fecundity. It makes you want to shoot a load.”

“Are you creaming in your pants, yet?” H. asked me. His face was glistening like an oil slick.

“Man, you need to lose that English. You’ve watched too many American movies,” I said, dismissing him with a wave of the hand.

“I learned the best English from Pulp Fiction. But I’ll never have that super-cool accent. C’mon, say the part about the Royale with cheese. Like Samuel Jackson. Bitte.”

“Forget it.”

Bitte, ein bischen Pulp Fiction.”

Nein, Arschloch.”

We checked in at a neat white, innocuous looking guest house with a wide gravel driveway called the Villa Maria, where we did another count and divided our stash. There were the pills that were mostly LSD, the one that were mostly speed and the ones that were mostly straight up bunk. Each of them had a little E thrown in, which somehow made me feel better, as it meant we weren’t total liars. We’d bought them off a Dutch dealer, who couldn’t sell them in the Netherlands, on account of the club testing. In Belgium and parts of France these mixed pills were sold legitimately at a lower price. Apparently some folks like the half and half. In the UK, however, we were only mentioning the E part and making a nice price—12 quid a pop, to be sold upwards from 25. The plan was to sell them to a select group of dealers in big heaps and jet on back to the continent. Fuck and run. It was strange, up until that point I never had to boogie out of a country. I walked around Ireland with eyes wide open, trying to burn the images into my mind, singing, “We may never pass this way again,” to myself. So far it’s proven to be correct.

Sometime around dusk our connect called and we drove out to meet him by the sea. I remember that he was so impossibly local that my mind was immediately put at ease. Usually I’m wound-up like a clock until everything’s done, but his overalls and homemade scarf made me want to take a nap. He thanked us profusely, even as he handed over a thick wad of bills. I shared the last of my American Camels with M. and the guy while H. went behind some rocks to take a crap and count the money. After we watched the Klein lad (as M. & H. called him) disappear between the barnacle-covered piers, M. had the bright idea to trip and go for a drive by the coast. None of us had taken acid since high school, but among those hills and crystal sky it seemed the perfect way to celebrate.

“Fuck beer! Fuck wine! I never want to drink again,” I remember M. shouting, his face stuck out the window just as it had been in the morning, only the skin was different, it looked pressed down, smoothed of all rough bits, and covered in moving shadows. These patches were the undulating darkness rolling slowly over the hills like glaciers.

I understood the shadows the same way I understood the glistening asphalt, lit-up like a snake’s skin. I was curled up in a ball with understanding—the sea, the earth, the sky—the brightly lit boxes that were corner pubs, the speed bumps that sent the Mercedes briefly into flight…All of it made a deeply resonating, heartbreaking sense. Like the organ in “When A Man Loves A Woman”, or the logic of a finely written eulogy.

H. insisted on playing the Trainspotting soundtrack, over and over. Especially the Blur song, “Sing.” He drove along, banging his palm against the wheel in time to the beat.

“Ja, ja, ja, ja, ja, ja, ja, ja…,” he said, over and over, in response to Damon Albarn’s fugue of falsetto ‘ahhyahaahhhhahhhhhhs,’. I liked that I could hear his British accent. The cadence built to Hayden like proportions. Meanwhile, I looked through the car window at the nighttime sky far above, and in my drug induced clarity I realized that the stars didn’t care about us. Whereas before, the stars were mythic gods looking down at us in the form of constellations, now they were just something to gaze up at as you were about to hook-up (if the yellow lights and gasses radiating from the surrounding megalopolis allowed you to see them at all). Science and novels and the primacy of the individual had have made the stars dead to us. Now they mock us as we put on our best science and fly above the clouds, enjoying the subtle tug of the death drive as it sucks at the drink cart from thousands of feet below. As Damon Albarn started again, quietly yet resolutely, to begin the upward climb armed only with his, “ahyahaahhhhahhhhhhhs,” I understood that we would never be free from the Earth.

It’s that feeling just before you hit the ground, when you can see the airplane’s shadow racing beside you, darkening the green-brown hills and rows of houses and reservoirs and parking lots--momentarily wiping out entire neighborhoods. Here I come, the bubonic plague, a freak of nature, speciman of some monster that slouched towards Kitty Hawk, not waiting to be born. Suddenly the plane passes over a highway, close enough for you to be able to pick a car and discern its year and make. At the last second you can see shadows behind the windshield in the shape of human heads.

We came back sometime around ten. Because the pills were only halves, we’d already peaked and were exhausted. H. tore up the driveway and jerked to a stop at the garage door. I got out and dutifully unlocked the little brass lock and swung open the door. Anybody could get in here. “Lust For Life” was playing, “No more beating my brains, with the liquor and drugs…”,I heard H. laughing like a hyena and M. admonishing him in German before the car flew forward into the garage. There seemed to be a lag of several seconds before I heard a crash. The Mercedes red taillights glowed at me from inside the cluttered wooden garage. It wasn’t as loud as it could have been—it must not have been something too big, I immediately rationalized. I fell forward and found myself walking into the garage.

“What the fuck was that?” I whispered to H through the window. He’d been driving with it down with the hope that it would sober up. Instead it had put him in a trance that he’d only come out of now.

“What happened,” he asked, dazedly.

“You fucking hit something,” I said, trying to keep a straight face.

“What? A person!”

“No, something metal-ly. Go look—c’mon, get out of the car,” I said, still whispering like a maniac.

H. stumbled out and looked up front.

“A bicycle,” he said.

“A bike?”

“Yes, it’s flattened now. Ruined.”

“A nice one?”

“Yes, a Peugeot, I think. A little bit of money.”

“A little bit of money. Fuck.”

We didn’t know what else to do so we went inside. I tried to be ready in case someone had heard the crash and was waiting at the door to interrogate us. Maybe it would be the grey haired guy with the round belly who let us into the place. He had a firm voice and the stout, thick-necked frame of a one-time streetfighter. Even at his age he could ensure that no shit went down at the house. However, there was something essentially nonchalant about him. That natty striped and stained polo shirt of his and the droopy bifocals were perhaps signs that he was beyond caring, as long as the bill got paid. Either way he wasn’t there when we came in—nor was anyone else. Then it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen other cars or bikes outside except the one we had crashed into.

“I think there’s only one other person here,” I said. M. nodded and pointed down the hall, to the blue-white TV light that flashed across the wall.

“Ok, just keep quiet.”

“The match is on, that’s where everyone is.”

“With any luck they’ll come home lit. We’ll bust out of here in the morning before they realize what you did. Now Stille.”

I planned on walking through the common room like it was no big deal, non- confrontational until confronted. Maybe the person was asleep on the couch.

The first thing I saw when I came in the room was the finely clipped back of someone’s head. A drugstore blonde, like a colorized Turner flick from the 40s. He was wearing a pair of grey Seinhauser headphones. The football game was on the TV, but he was looking down at his lap, where it appeared he was writing a letter on cream-colored stationary.

The stiff, plaid color around his neck made me think of Huckleberry Finn.

I knew he felt us came in, but he waited until M. and H. passed single file across the room and up the darkened stairway.

He pulled off the headphones.

“Want to watch TV?” he said. By this time I was standing right in front of him, half-blocking the screen.

Klaus Kinski, I thought, and gasped. This was at least a year before I met you, Fitzcarraldo, so you can see how deep and long my obsession has been there. His blue eyes went right through me.

“No, I’m OK,” I answered. I found myself smiling, and it was only half because of the drug. Will looked at me with a mixture of warmth and perplex ion. Something immediate and indescribable had been exchanged between us.

…Have to run…interrupted and posting the day after death of Paul Wellstone. Populace in shock. More later…on Will…why I’m here…

Peace.

by fitzcarraldo

Baby, where are you? Call me, or call Sterling. This is not cool. I won't kid around anymore. Just come back, please.

It's dark in the City. I walk the streets, morning to night, with my hands in my pockets and a parrot on my shoulder.

Long shadows without you.

Listen.


--F.

One time, too many...so far, to go...

by TRUE

I didn't come home last night. That wasn't the plan, it just happened. I'm sorry Fitz, if you worried. But last night opened my eyes...

I met some real bad people. We ended up in Harlem, 7AM with the curtains drawn. Everyone sat around the living room, doing drugs, while the host talked about his chemical regimen. He's a grad student, and it's important for him that he "keeps just the right mix" of pills, coke, booze and grass. I retreated to a room down the hall with bunk beds. I climbed up to the top one and scrawled the following on a paper bag.

"My goal is to stay human. Once you are a vampire you can never turn back. You leave your family and friends. You stay out all night and sleep all day. You stop eating, except for Cap N' Crunch, Royal Ginseng Jelly, black coffee, Diet Coke, blood, Scotch and aspirin.

One of the first symptoms is that cocaine doesn't work anymore. Your hair becomes coarser…

…I ain't got no money,
And I ain't got no head
I'm hoping to quit but this planet is LOW.

It’s important to love yourself in a real way. You can’t be weak and you have to stick up for yourself. You’ve got to have your own favorite bands and be able to back it up. If you know your spot and go out and prove it, you can sometimes last for a while with a crowd of vampires--but sooner or later you get tired."

The titanium's running out of juice. I'm in the lobby of the Hyatt, next to Grand Central. They've got big plush chairs and free newspapers. I'm going to take a nap now. Manifesto's on its way--I just need to sleep this off.

by fitzcarraldo

Check it out! I was at Pieces last night (just getting some air) when I saw the best bad show I've seen in a while--Stalked, on E!.

"Someone like goldilocks was sleeping in my bed…when the cops came in she broke a piece of glass and slashed her wrists right there in front of them. She ruined my Belgian sheets. I was in shock; that was the first thing I thought of…

…when they got her out of her blood soaked clothes she was wearing my Bay Watch bathing suit underneath…"

We love you, Pamela. Even more now that Crazy French 'ho bitch broke into your house. If I thought some of your coolness would rub off on me, I might also hide out in your sheets. Only the Ubermensch herself is deep enough to list a broken nail among the physical injuries and damages that she suffered at the hands of her abusive husband, heavy metal ghetto eyeliner whore, Tommy Lee.

Rock on Sweetheart!

While we're waiting...

by fitzcarraldo

TRUE, where's the manifesto? You're the one feeling dubious about our desire to take over the world. We need a manifesto, love. Out with it. Now that you won't stay at my place for fear of death (poor thing is convinced she heard the Grim Reaper himself going up and down the stairs last night, apparently stretching his legs before blowing the gaskets on my landlady and leading her to the next world) I'm going to put my foot down and refuse to make the trek all the way to your abode until you post our manifesto. After all, we're nothing until we have something to sign and ammend, just like the founding fathers. If you want we can print it on hemp paper. No presents from Daddy until you comply with your leadership duties, you precious George Washington type, you.

In the meantime, I found an illuminating deathrow database, which (by default) backs up the old adage, Meat is Murder--in more ways than one. After a quick scan, I could only find two meal that are 100% vegetarian. The pot of coffee at the top and #253--bag of assorted Jolly Ranchers.

I feel like chicken tonight!
-F

by fitzcarraldo

A roller coaster weekend.

As you can see from her last post, TRUE isn't sure if we're doing the right thing by being "more than friends." God, if ever there was a hackneyed phrase that pays. She ran away on Saturday only to return on Sunday, full of life and full of love. This morning was unfortunate, as we awoke and went outside to find the landlady's son waiting by the road with one of his wiseguy friends. We said good morning and he said it back and then, upon giving it some thought, said to us, "I just want you to know that my mother passed way last night." What the hell! We were completely flabbergasted. Poor guy was waiting for the ambulance--he'd just found her in her bed. His friend had raced over and parked his jeep haphazardly in front of the house. I figure she was about 50. We saw her the night before, getting out of her car. She was overweight and a nervous wreck, nosey and constantly irritated. Must have been a heart attack.

Truth be told she was generally a total pain in the ass, although she'd simmered down a bit of late. She actually seemed like she meant it when she returned my Good Evenings. The perma-scowl had loosened on her face. I think her son had convinced her to start going to the gym.

This loosening, this letting go...sometimes it's the end.

Anyway, I wanted to take TRUE to breakfast--a good ol fry-up, where we'd sit across from each other with greasy lips and revel in the cosmic insignificance of a fag and dyke getting it on. We should take a cue from the deceased and worry less and do more. Unfortunately, upon finding out about the landlady, TRUE was in no mood to eat, so I went without her. Perhaps I should have stayed and made her tea. I'm not used to sustained emotions, however, if a sense of stability is lacking, than I'll make a proclamation. I love pussy! How's that? Especially punk rock pussy. Now and forever, baby!
Smoochies...

I might be right...

by TRUE

...I might be wrong. This morning I walked out to the park in the rain, wearing my hoodie and a pair of beat-up loafers with no socks. At the track I found a bench under an old London Plane elm. I sat there for an hour, watching the joggers make their way around and around. They wore shorts and sweatshirts and windbreakers, but nothing could protect them when the wicked wind blew the water around. I got pelted with hard drops; I watched them dry and fade away on my jeans.

The pigeons swirled in crazy circles over the playing fields. The school stood like a yellow prison in the background. Why this? Why now? I put my palms to my face and inhaled deeply. I could smell him--the Kiehl's he uses on his skin, the Dolce and Gabanna perfume (woman's of course.)

What's going to happen? I sat on that bench and tried to come to a decision--but about what I didn't know. I feel like I lost something but I don't know what it is. Perhaps that's the price of the blessedness--the blessed joy of waking up, and breathing in the sheets...hello to you, by the window, hello to you!

The return is emptiness. A row of glass bottles filling up with rain.

by fitzcarraldo

Darling Bull Dyke Sterling,
In the immortal words of Lacan: You don't want a dick, what you really want is a master.
I'll be the first to admit, that sometimes a dick is just a dick, but when it's your boss' khaki sheathed member--especially M., who's from the same part of Newark as your father and even shares the same initials, as you told me the other week at Beige--then I'm tempted to think that there's something more to it.
But thanks much for the horned-out details. I nearly choked on my Triscuits! Darling, you aren't having sexuality issues. None of us are, sad to say. Our problems are much deeper than any of that! For instance, your desire to get on your knees and say "yes, Sir may I have another" and my desire to sink into a lifetime of hor d'eourves and malaise in an upstate suburb along the Hudson.
Let's do brunch--the three of us. TRUE's having a holiday from the bars this weekend (speaking of problems!). She'll be at my place, at least as far as I know.
And now...for something we all REALLY need. Bjork Russian dolls! I've already entered the three of us! And I'm playing to win!
Cheers, My Lovely Queer Dears!

Make Me Tonight

by sterling

Yesterday I came home feeling good. I had the phrase, “That Evening Sun”, in my head as I walked from the Graham Ave subway with a spring in my step. “That Evening Sun” is a short story by Faulkner, one of the few things I was able to read and digest during my second, and longest, stay in the ward, back when I was twelve. Sometimes, when I'm feeling especially confident and/or elated, I get an image of a black woman bending under a fence with a basket full of laundry immaculately balanced on her head. It must be a residual from the drugs they fed me. Suffice to say, I felt good. The sky over Brooklyn was grey: long, low-lying shadows abounded. I took a picture of a plastic fork all by itself on the sidewalk, and then one of a small wooden pencil—the kind used to mark bowling scores and fill out racing sheets—also all by itself, on the freshly painted concrete base of the tire air pump at the Mobil station. The world was full of objects like these—things in and of themselves, composed and ready for an artist to discover them. Anxious questions about whether or not I was really that artist didn’t cross my mind.

I think my lightheartedness was a direct result of coming out of the closet about my hetero crush. I went home and ate a small bag of Pirate’s Booty and wiped my hands on the futon. Leaning back I considered taking a jog and got as far as taking off my pants, before I engaged in a full hour of furious, unrelenting masturbation. I kept bringing myself to the edge of coming and then bringing myself back down again. I wanted to make it last—I played the same fantasies over and over. Ridiculous office scenarios that got me insanely hot.

Maybe the three of us caught some weird breeder germ…my pussy aches so badly my entire abdomen feels clenched around an unbearable hollowness. Is this a sign that I’m ready to conceive—hence the dick dreams? Da horror! Da horror! Perhaps this is some kind of chemical aberration, comparable to a serotonin imbalance? Or is the old disposed witch of nature rearing up her ugly, metaphysical crown? “Thought you could forget about me, didn’t you, my dearies!!!” My boss has four kids, all boys. He oozes with virility—not the muscle bound kind, but the real deal—like the vibe you get when you know the cup of coffee being poured comes from a fresh brewed pot. I can’t explain it. It’s in his hands—in the just right amount of hair poking out from under his sleeve cuffs and the way that his neatly clipped (but not buffed) nails are naturally super-white. It’s in the way he slurps at his glass of water but never dribbles on his shirt. It’s in the fact that he has a slight gut but doesn’t feel the need to suck it in. It’s sexy, but I can’t explain it.

Perhaps I’m sick of always explaining. Everything has a neatly tied bow on it, even my most disgusting truths. This is something that doesn’t make any sense.

…Except that we’re two beings in the woods, smelling each other and liking what we smell. Simple fucking enough—maybe the most simple thing in the world. When he comes by to look at a problem we’re careful to give each other enough room to move around and type on the keyboard and reach for the mouse or the notebook or the pen or the volume on the speakers. We’re too careful. But then not careful enough because I swear there’s some kind of magnetic attraction, pulling us close and repulsing at the same time. I know he feels it as well. There are practically blue-white sparks in the air between us. And if we do touch—even the slightest brush—I jump, he jumps, both with alarm that’s barely perceptible, all covered up by the never-ending flow of idiot words spilling out of both of our mouths. Nervous chatter that I’ve only ever had before with supermodel types. Unbearably beautiful, otherworldly tall women, with miles of legs and alien bone structure. I talk my head off when I’m around them, anything to take the attention away from the fact that I exist. I feel if they were too concentrate on me for more than a second they’d laugh in my puny round face.

But this guy…he’s a guy…he wears work suitable trousers and doesn't swing his hips when he walks. And all I can think about is falling against him, and feeling him get hard. Right there, in the office, or in the elevator, stalled between floors just after the next disaster has struck.

He thinks I’m a sweet girl…that must be part of it. He doesn’t know who I really am. With someone like him I get the chance to go from sweet to debased all over again. Like a virgin, or close enough.

by sterling

Hey Fitz, you thought you were sending me a wake up call, but I was totally onto you. Even before the two of you hopped between the sheets (again). You see, I don’t have any trouble staying awake. I’m not like you guys, on drugs and fast asleep in each other’s arms. I get my warmth from exercise. The burn in my gut and the ache in my triceps keeps me company. I leave my sports bra on from the time I get home in the evening until I go to bed, so whenever I feel like it I can jump right into an activity. It’s important for me to have something that fights the urges. You two should try it sometime.

Used to be I couldn’t even walk to the corner store without striking a lascivious pose. Fucked up, hopped up—my mind bucked and jacked up, as TRUE would rap. Now I let the girls pass, keeping my eyes on the sidewalk. Once at the store, I buy a Balance bar and a black tea and I’m good to go. OK, sometimes I still follow a little Polish girl for a few blocks, hands in pockets, keeping my distance on the other side of the street. But rarely do I case her all the way back to her home anymore. And I never stand out on the street looking up at some little peach fuzz baby’s window.

You guys avoided me all weekend, but I was knew what was going on nonetheless. I guess you think I’m too righteous to deal with my queer friends fucking each other. But I don’t care what you guys do anymore or who you do it with, I really don’t. I’m over it. For all I know maybe you’re not even queer: just because TRUE licked pussy a couple a times doesn’t make her a career diver. Same for her Highness, Fitz. Faggy as he wants to be, that’s for sure, but he can’t seem to stop riding the Snatch Brothers Express. You two let the gin lead you there before, so I guess it was only a matter of time before it happened again.

I’m not going to freak out, I’m not going to lose it like last time. I’ve grown up a bit—I’ve had a few hetero urges of my own, believe it or not. I don’t think it makes me any less hardcore. That’s not to say that a few days ago I wasn’t blaming this hetero crush on the loss of my drop top. Sad to say how ingrained that car was in my psyche. Life was good when I woke up, yanked on a pair of jeans, threw on the first wife beater I could find, threw on the shades and hopped into the front seat. When I needed an accessory I hung my dirty panties on the rear view mirror, in a move I got from Bruce LaBruce. Ride, Queer, Ride. Pump the Serge with the bass box cranked up in the trunk. What woman could resist me?

Now I’m riding the train…working in an office…nearly reformed.

I’m in midtown right now, as a matter of fact. Suffering my usual hot and cold flashes in the climate control. My hands smell like bananas, which is odd because I haven’t had one today. Maybe it was that Fresh Samantha for lunch. The fucked up cartoons on the label are mocking me from their upside down position on top of my trash. My body’s still learning what to do with vitamins—healthy things tend to have a hard time permeating my system. They form oil on my skin and a film on my hair. Every afternoon I get gas. Meanwhile, the florescent light bores a hole between my eyes and the sounds from neighboring cubes of sick people coughing up phlegm and fat people stuffing their faces with trans fatty acids makes me want to gag. Success in an office environment depends on learning how to fill the interminably long hours in which you’re paid to look presentable and have the right, old school answers. It’s no good to have the right, new school answers unless you’re gunning for management, in which case you have other, more pressing problems you should be dealing with. All of this and more has been said before in haughty tones spiced with a GenX ironical wit that I don’t have the energy to feign. So I won’t go on about the office at this moment. Suffice to say, I want to fuck the shit out of my male, married late 30-something boss.

Oh, the tinge of rebellion, sweet as ever, even in an antiseptic environment such as this! To write such things about M., whose office is right across the hall? I imagine him sneaking up behind me—in which case he’d have to leave his pile of jingling keys (you’re jingling baby) on his desk—and reading what I’ve written. It’s right here right now—sprayed across the monitor. How would he react? What would happen next? Or what if someone else came by and I couldn’t minimize fast enough? The only thing that would save me at that point is my out and proud gayness. “Fiction,” I’d say, hoping against hope. I’ve never written a word of fiction in my life.

Wait—more later. M. just buzzed me. He wants me to check on something. My pussy throbs at even the slightest request—he never gives me anything that could be construed as an order, but I’m waiting on the day. “Could you check in the spare office, W. is looking for a Dictaphone.” Jesus, I guess I am too?

Coffee with sugar...

by fitzcarraldo

It's been a strange couple of days in the big "BK", as you two ladies are fond of calling our borough. As I can see from the silence in blogspace, no one wants to be the first to breech the silence. It's good to know that certain turns of events can leave even the tongue "twistas" tongue-tied.

TRUE and I have already talked, extensively, so I'll leave the ball in her court for now. We don't see ourselves recapitulating--we're just two old friends taking temporary comfort in each other's arms. End of story.

Prior to the hoopla of this weekend, I'd been planning a response to TRUE's last post, taking exception with her indignant tone when it comes to the "correctness" of our communal blog. Propriety and rules be damned--I say! If Sterling wants to map out her web-based delusions for all to read, then I'm all for it. I spoke to TRUE about my feelings on Sunday, when we were stuffed with sweet plum pancakes and wired on espresso. Our tete-a-tete mutated into a full blown session--pens out and furiously writing while the CD of my new fave band--"Read Music, Speak Spanish", by Desaparecidos--played on repeat in the background. The result was a manifesto, a Raison de Blog. TRUE's dotting the i's and crossing the T's as I write this.

We've got pictures of grafitti and even pictures of us taking pictures of grafitti and now for christsakes it's time to make some grafitti of our own. Will November spawn a monster, slouching towards Manhattan, waiting to be born? With any luck...
--F

by TRUE

Great.

So not only is Sterling plagued by ghost cramps in her missing fingers, (which truly is tragic, word is bond) but she's also hallucinating having fucked random girls she finds in her cyberspace wanderings. (While she's sniffing for porn, hungry for stink, no doubt.) We met up yesterday outside the studio. For some reason, Phoebe's was closed so no coffee with a vague hint of playdoh flavor for us. So we walked and talked, like the old broke, homeless days in Europa. Among other things, she confided that one of her posts received an email response of mistaken identity. It was this one--where she waxes butch poetic about an online diary--Katherinhand, a pretty good one, I might add, that I actually added to our paltry links list to the left. At any rate, the girl was completely noble about the whole thing and although Sterling offerred to remove the post (that is to say, beg my administrator ass to take it down) the girl said, no it was fine in a very polite way. Maybe it's because she's from San Francisco. I don't know if I'd be so happy if someone linked to me and went on about a fling we had in which I liked to fuck outside and listen to Philip Glass, of all things. I reread the post this morning and noticed that Sterling even makes reference to me knowing this girl. Yeah right, like I can tell all your pieces apart.

Sterling wants to give the girl our P.O. box address, so we can trade some art. She seems like a total, Morrissey loving sweetheart but is this embarassing or what? She must think we're total clowns, which, upon a nanosecond of reflection, I realize that yes, that's exactly what we are.

World domination has never seemed so far away. Just give me the light and pass the joint...

ferris wheel

by TRUE

Wait, I found some more good times!

Everyone and everything is bathed in a supernatural light. The old drunk with his beer by the mailbox, the Polish mother with the swollen eyes and transparent vinyl babushka tied tightly around her head. Her flaxen haired son runs ahead into a crowd of pigeons. His arms wave and the pigeons flap their wings. He is an angel and the sky is a bell; I want to blast a bullet through the top, just like in that U2 song. I feel everything coming together and falling apart, like the magic number itself, splitting and dividing in the sky.

Ghost Ache and Tiny Daggers

by sterling

It's true what they say about amputated body parts still tingling. It's been ten years gone and sometimes I still get the ghost buzz where the pinky and ring finger of my right hand should be. Actually, it's not so much a buzz but an ache--a perceived stiffness. It seems to happen on clear, sunny days like this. The opposite of arthritis. I was out on the corporate espalande at lunchtime, taking a series of photographs. I was documenting the different people who walked in front of a particularly bright, but otherwise non-descript yellow van. There were black construction workers and white ladies in tight silk skirts. Kids with smoothies and beer-bellied managers with white paper bags. No smiles. Lots of cell phones.

I was checking out my light meter when suddenly I felt it--the discomfort of a tight cramping at the place where my fingers should be. I let the camera fall into my lap and instinctively (even after ten years! imagine that!) set about cracking my knuckles. When I realized my mistake I sat stunned and frozen, looking up in time to see a priest hurry past the van wearing flip-up sunglasses and smoking a huge cigar. The expression on his face was one of raw determination, for who or what I don't know. It was the best shot of the day and I missed it.

I was always one of the cleaner kids. To me having no dirt under your fingernails was a sign of cleanliness so I used to scrape the inside of my nails bloody. I played with the boys in the dirt hills behind our development, so my nails often became blackened giving me cause to scrape every day. I sat happily on the green park bench with all ten fingers and my nail file poised like a little dagger.

by TRUE

I’m feeling relatively good today. Sober and nervous, but good. The day is shiny like a new dime. No ginger ale on the brain yet.

The cut on my tummy is healing up nicely—thx for asking. It’s a little sticky and there are a few fuzzy blue threads stuck in it from the Paul Frank t-shirt that Sterling loaned me. I was changing the bandage and I fell asleep on the couch. Damn percostat. Well, actually I shouldn’t curse them because there aren’t anymore left. Gone, deceased, and you know you can’t talk bad about the dead. It’s bad enough to take drugs and not be any good at it, but it’s somehow even worse when the drugs are all gone. Then the only thing you can do to make yourself feel better is read about others in the same boat. Or better yet others who are in an even dingier floating poop scoop. Like folks who are addicted to club drugs. Har-de-har.

Sometimes I think about the other half, those who have their shit together and get high and still get PAID. It must really be something, to be lit all the time and then get recognized as "the best at something." What a secret, golden triumph! Not only were you the best at something but you did it with half your brain tied behind your back.

Sterling asked me about posting the address to our brand new P.O. Box. I'll think about it. Originally I was going to only include it on the back of our paper zine. My goal is a legit mailing list, through which folks can trade art with us and receive our newest offerings. My fear is we'll have to deal with a ton of bullshit if I post the address online. I think the blog should lead people to the zine and the zine will lead people to the mailing list. That way, only the hardcore will get invited to our parties, hair cut sessions, porno shoots, etc.

But I want at least the pretense of democracy--so whuddy'all think?


logo2.jpg

by sterling

It's sad and funny at the same time, TRUE, that you left out the best part of your adventure from the post below. My dear friend, the drunken heathen, thought it would be appropriate to carve the words "Life Is Pain" into her stomach. Of course it would have been beside the point to use something that could be easily gripped and handled. She used a scrap piece of copper and huddled in one of Henrietta's Ladies' Rooms. She didn't so much as carve into her flesh as shave slivers of it off, apparently squeezing together a roll of skin and pressing into the fat. She only got as far as "Life", before passing out.

What do you say, TRUE, can we get a picture? I can try and convince this wounds website that it was an accident, which, considering the fact that you wanted to spell out an entire phrase, I guess it qualifies!











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