i'm so cool

Sometimes I get so lonely that I lose the ability to speak or go outside and instead I’ll just sit here clicking back and forth from my sitemeter to my site to my email checking, waiting like a bitch for comments for some fucking action for someone to say I’ve got you I understand I know how it feels, and you know what? they do say it and it shocks and embarrasses me like the feeling the morning after when I discover that the empty bottles I drunkenly placed on the window sill are filled with rain.

follow me on this one

dudley perkins is on some next level

I like going for a walk late at night with a notebook and a fresh pack of cigarettes. I like to witness the steady stream of new blood pouring into the City. They come from all over: little princesses, each and every one. Even the boys. Especially the boys. Especially if they try not to show it. They come for the thrill of being eaten alive and spit up pie-high in the sky. They want the drama of watching themselves fall in slow motion.

They want split screen all region high contrast forty different shades of black fade out recordable DVD mulit-cast, multi-player, perspectival, cute, introspective, a good bartender and an even better friend…

They want their stomach to be tight when their shirt blows up and they want the irrefutable fact of concrete when they land.

(But man are you getting down, party people?)

You got me cold fussin.

Hola, cherry cola.

Vividblurry. What I said.

Some people have an irrational fear of it, and for others it gets on their nerves, but I quite like walking beneath construction scaffolding, especially when it’s midmorning and overcast and gusty. I like the feeling of being in a makeshift shelter, with shadows and dripping water and yellow bulbs hanging crookedly overhead. I like the way the air changes and the blue and green backlights kick in on LCD displays and the suits and office bitches seem to huddle closer together as if for added protection. It’s lovely to feel the closeness, the stupid concern of bumping into someone that makes me hold my cardboard takeout coffee cup with two hands. It reminds me of when I was little and sat in the back of our Volvo wagon, imagining with all my powers of rendering a sudden cataclysm erupting on the road we’d only just driven over. An explosion, a tidal wave crashing down, a black hole opening up to another dimension…fucking Godzilla appearing over the horizon of a city…whatever it was I’d have front row seats but be safe, safe, safe, speeding away in the little world of the backseat, my face pressed up against the glass.

It’s like that scene in Terminator 2, when the evil cyborg is attacking the heroes’ pick-up truck. He turns his morphing silver arm into a giant needle, punching holes in the roof and when that doesn’t work he reaches around to shoot through the window with his glock. Or sawed-off, I don't remember. Anyway, after a special effects enhanced tussle, they manage to knock him off and the drama abates, but then Eddie Furlong sees a little piece of silver metal quivering on the broken back window--a cyborg remainder! He nervously flicks it off before it gets a chance to grow into the full size thing. He watches it clink-clank-clink on the street, bouncing a couple of times before disappearing in the darkness of the highway. I like the expression on his face: he’s still the loner with his Public Enemy t-shirt and bitching bangs, the future leader of the revolution to save the human race, but in that moment he’s also the scared little boy racing away from the monster with his family.

I wanted to fuck him, whatever.

The German girl and I talked long distance. I was lying on my futon in my underwear, leafing through an issue of People magazine. The room was bright and there was a breeze. It was nighttime where she was.

I waited while she sniffed and stuttered as she came out of a crying fit. It was only the second time I’d ever heard her do this. The first was when she got the news that her ex-boyfriend had died in a car accident in the Austrian alps.

“I don’t understand why you’re so upset,” I said. “You’re the one who met someone else.”

“Yes, but I lied about it, because I didn’t want it to be true.”

“Why not? If you’re happy?”

“Because I wanted so badly to be happy with you.”

“Maybe you were also thinking it was just a summer thing, and you wanted to keep me for the fall. And you’re telling me now because you know for certain that it’s more than just a summer thing.”

“Oh, c’mon! That’s not nice!”

There was a rustling as she moved the phone. I could tell from her voice that she was lying down.

“Are you in bed?” I asked.

“Oh, let’s not start with any of that!” she said.

“What are you talking about?” I said, laughing and touching my stomach. It reminded me of the first time she invited me back to her place. We had a hard time making the move to the bedroom. That’s what happens, now that I’m sober. I make stupid moves sometimes—blunders. I plopped down across the couch and waited while she stood in the middle of the floor, furiously peeling the skin off an apple.

“These are nice pillows,” I had remarked, referring to the flat orange pillows I leaned my head against. Pottery Barn, I’d find out later.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she’d said, in an accusatory tone. I watched as she kept cutting the apple, faster and faster, until she was down to the pits.

I was going to miss the way she jumped to conclusions.

“So just take everything that’s yours. Don’t leave anything. Not even in the kitchen. Clean out what’s yours in the fridge as well if you don’t mind.”

“OK.”

“Sterling?”

“Yes?”

“Did you just turn the page of a magazine?”

“A what?”

“I heard you.”

“What did you hear?”

“The sound of a magazine page turning. Did you just do that? Turn the page of a magazine?”

“I did not.”

“You did.”

“Hey.”

“You were reading a magazine while we broke up.”

“Not really. It was just on the bed. I moved it.”

There was silence. The breeze blew across my face.

If you do enough drugs and think enough fucked up shit, then one day out of the clear blue you might find your mind slip sliding away over a wall that you never knew was there. That’s what happened to me. It wasn’t the drugs or the booze in and of themselves; it was how I let them crack me wide open. It takes awhile to recover from something like that. You learn that nothing’s permanent. Raymi might get this now. I don't know her so I don't know. But it seems like she cracked up a little and if she did then that's going to be something that leaves its mark. It's going to be something she's forced to reconcile with every day.

I know I do. Every morning; every night. And it's fine, whatever.

You’ve got to run across the pasture until you get to the end.

The End's made out of white medieval boulders and hovers off in the distance like a ghost.

A ghost of a wall…

And I was thinking about how she was never going to really know me inside, my bleeding, fluttering heart would remain undiscovered.

I flipped the magazine closed and immediately snapped it open again.

She was still on the line.



detox

There’s some bad weed going through the City; I can see it in the eyes, they look like mine.
Also, they’ve got the brown fingernails.

(rain down!)

I’m talking too loud, I’m touching my head too often I’ve got broccoli in my teeth.

I’m dancing with my left shoulder. Just my left shoulder.

Twilight: the purple flowers glow. I turned on the path and looked at your face.

You were trying to tell me something.

I dropped the toothpick when I tried to take it out of its wrapper.

It disappeared in the darkness that was starting from the ground and working its way up.

Do you know the way to my home?

i'm lost and i'm all alone

i'm lost and i'm all alone

live @ 5

This is the guy I was talking about, Jamie. Who ya gonna call?

Yo.

Jamie’s Known Universe and BTB

Go together like

The Beastie Boys and Biz Markie

Like

Birds of a feather when it’s time to flock

Like

Two turntables when it’s time to rock

Like

Fitz’s backdoor and a big ass…

Knock

Knock.

(Who’s there?)

Freeda.

Freeda who?

Freeda you, yards of priceless flow that's all TRUE


(now go out and be naughty, i motherfuckin dare you...)

You’re not the only one who doesn’t wanna anymore.

You’re not the only one who wakes up feeling like shit every morning.

You’re not the only one who feels sick in the subway A/C, wasn’t it Kerouac who said this country was an air conditioned nightmare? The Europeans don’t do that shit, they don’t try to scare the sweat off of people, they let the stink hang out. I’m hungry for stink, party people, I’m feelin all sorts of strange emotions coming over me as I look down at some chumps fucked-up toes hanging out of his fucked-up sandals while a numbness creeps across the right side of my body. It’s a stroke, it’s a joke, these ads for night school, I’ll sign up, get my check rubber stamped, become a secretary and take it up the ass like my mother.

You’re not the only one who wants to make it big, who’s sick of sitting around waiting for something to happen, feeling achy-breaky every time after sex, like a little girl only when you were a little girl you fucked and sucked like a champ, like it was your job. Now, DVDs are more fun, eating a piece of real pie or getting a deal on cigarettes, getting scared in the park by a tree branch waving behind you, going skinny dipping and discovering the inside of your shoes smell like ass. You drink two giant iced lattes in a row and take a long, uninterrupted shit with the paper and a joint, what we used to call a poor man’s vacation.

You’re not the only one saying it’s now or never.

You’re not the only one with one turntable, wishing for two so you can remix the soundtrack to the sequel of the story of your life, throwing on a second, no third rate Pavement album with sound effects culled from a Belgian beach holiday. Your body’s in the board room but your mind’s stepping like a giant crane between the bumpers in the traffic jam outside, the hot bus exhaust killing your pretensions. There’s the smell of salsa and roasted nuts, there are white undersides on the raised hands of the tourist tour group leaders, maple leaves on the backpacks, bobble heads in the shopping bags of the pretend homeboys from ohio.

…waiting for the city bus a woman beside you talks loudly into a phone about how this is the best day of my life, I don’t know about Sara, and you look down and eleven or twelve year old Sara is looking in the other direction, towards the spinning corporate glow of Times Square, her eyes full of a complicated hate.


kate brings it

Joints are OK. Only thing is they're never strong enough...

ms dynamite


We left for the Hamptons on Friday morning. It took us too long to get there, and I got claustrophobic in the back seat of Fitz’s Gulf. Who knew all those bitches would also be taking the day off? And who knew they’d be jamming up the Northern State, which we took thinking it was a secret slick way to avoid the most congested stretches of the L.I.E.

Fitz tried to make up for the traffic by driving like a maniac when it cleared, passing in and out of lanes with the speedometer hovering in the nineties. The Gulf hugged the road like a dream, I’ll give it that. German engineering.

“Sashay, chante,” Fitz sang as he sped past a long line of cars.

TRUE was asleep in shotgun. She was wearing a black denim skirt and a stylish black tank top. It looked like old Helmut Lang, before he started using asymmetrical patterns and slashing up all his fabrics. Her hair was combed neatly to the side.

“I had a breakfast meeting,” was all she said when I asked. As she got out to let me in, she informed me that she was going to have to stay in the front, “Because I really fucking need to sleep and I don’t want the two of you staring at my ass the whole trip.”

“Keep dreaming,” I said, as I slid in the back beside her black canvas bag. It smelled like weed.

“You should really wash your shit,” I called out. Later on I’d think, how prophetic.

The faster and wilder that Fitz drove, the more and more relaxed I became. The muscles in my shoulders let go, and a weight was taken off my neck. It’s the same eye of the storm calm I used to get just as the needle pricked my skin, when I finally exhaled and turned off the incessant chattering in my head. (Would this be it? Was this my one time too many? Would this finally be the moment I got a bad dose or pushed too hard and shot an air bubble into the center of my heart and it was all over?)

The air rushed out and I gave in to the inevitable flow of events and accepted my destiny the way you accept the dinner that someone you love makes for you, even if the roast is burnt to a crisp.

Is there a sweeter phrase in all the English language than, “It was out of my control”?

Maybe, “I couldn’t help it.” Or the perennial fave “I had no choice.”

The car knocked into its highest gear as we strained up a steep hill. I closed my eyes and felt myself being pulled forwards and backwards at the same time, while a strange certainty pressed itself against my eyelids like two icy fingertips. Miss Dynamite was on the stereo, sing-songing over hypnotic, half-baked british beats that captured the movie glow of council flats and chip shops, Jamaican girls in braids with rings under their eyes…

(...I stay blowin' up ur stereo everybody gotta hear me though)

Pink barrettes, dangling pink barrettes…

I think I saw the cop car first, because a part of me was already looking for him. The cruiser was like a fat shark, waiting with its mouth open on the other side of the hill.

Ridiculously, I told myself, it’s OK, because he’s facing the wrong way.

“Shit,” I heard Fitz mutter. I felt him take his foot off the gas, but it didn’t matter. We passed the
pig going fast, too fast.

I looked back in time to see him backing up and pulling out.

“His lights aren’t on,” TRUE said, who was suddenly awake.

“Now they are,” Fitz said.

“Here we go.” He glided across the lanes and pulled over on the side of the road. It began to rain. Fitz turned off the engine and suddenly everything was quiet, save for the abstract highway buzz and the smack of heavy drops hitting the windshield.

We didn’t look at each other. I wasn’t sure what to think. You find yourself in a certain scenario more than a couple of times and you lose any sense of expectation. My mind climbed up the rungs of the very real, very awful possibilities but at no point did they cease being far fetched, something that could happen to someone else, but not me. I took a certain amount of solace in knowing that my defense mechanisms were working as well as ever. It had been awhile since they had to kick in. I put my hands flat on my lap and fought the urge to turn around when I heard the sound of tires crunching across gravel.

I looked across the seat at TRUE’s canvas bag lying innocently on its side. I took a deep whiff but I couldn’t tell if I was really smelling weed or just imagining it.

I wanted to put it on the floor but I didn’t dare touch it.

“Can you open your window a bit, TRUE?”

“Sure thing…getting a little warm in here, huh?”

“You could say that.”

Fitz rifled through the glove compartment until he found his registration card and sighed with relief.

Now, the two crucial things were that:

1) the pig didn’t smell anything
2) and he didn’t ask for TRUE or my IDs.

Fitz rolled down his window as the pig sauntered up. He was local, which was a good sign. As a general rule, getting pulled over by state troopers sucks, (and—just so you know--getting pulled over by Dirty Jersey state troopers sucks double).

“Hello,” Fitz said, cheerily, (but not too cheerily). His long fingers were draped loosely over the steering wheel.

“License and registration, please.”

“Sure. Excuse me dear,” he said to TRUE, as he reached across her lap and flicked open the glove compartment. I watched intently as he pulled out the registration card. The cop’s eyes were on me, I could feel them taking in my details and the details of the car, zooming in and out like camera lenses.

I tried to see us as we looked to him: three well dressed young people in a clean, almost new car packed with bags for a weekend trip.

“I’ll take that insurance card too,” he said.

“Just a moment.”

He walked back to his cruiser and got inside.

“He’s calling us in,” I said, stating the obvious.

“Shit’s in your name, right Fitz?” TRUE asked.

“Yes.”

“What does he want, then?”

“My cock? I don’t know. He won’t find anything on me.”

Sure enough, the cop came back and handed Fitz his cards.

“The reason I stopped you is I lasered you going 81 MPH. The speed limit is 55. Here’s a summons with directions on how to pay on the back.”

With that, he handed Fitz a thin pink slip, took a final look at me in the back and was gone.

“Thank-you!” I found myself calling out after him.

“What!” Fitz hissed. “90 bucks and you’re saying ‘thank-you’?”

“Fuck yeah.”

Fitz crumpled up the ticket and tossed it on TRUE’s lap.

“That’s for you,” he said, as he turned the key and started the car. Miss Dynamite picked up where she left off.

(...Hear me bussin' on da radio
Now feel my flow u get me though)


“Me?” TRUE screeched, lighting a cigarette. “What did I do?”

“Your beauty distracted me from following the speed limit.”

“Oh, OK,” she said, her cheeks turning red.

“Sterling, could you hand me my bag?” I passed her the canvas tote and watched as she reached around inside.

“I know I’ve got it here somewhere,” she muttered, before triumphantly pulling out an enormous joint. The words “Good Year” were written along its side.

“The thing about lightening striking is that it won’t strike twice,” she said, smiling, jubilant, as she used her cigarette to spark it.

“Give me some of that,” I said, suddenly.

“What!” Fitz screeched.

“OK,” TRUE said, and passed it over.

“Sterling!”

Without pausing to think I put the joint to my lips and inhaled as deeply as I could.

(...I'm Ms. Dy-na-mi-tee
See me bouncin' in da video
And I come to rock the show
I'm just Ms. Dy-na-mi-tee
Everybody loose control
Let my vibe touch your soul)


bing

CIP

...midnight, on the Cross Island Expressway...your eyes turned into digitized pools in the moonlight...

This weekend was all about pop song choruses and suburban psychedelic fantasies coming together on one lawn, for a limited time offer only, we fixed picnic plates and frequencies on cell phones and hashed it out by the lake. We made graphics and recorded tapes of our conversations. We scrambled eggs and turned on cable and admired perfect flower arrangements, pearly white teeth and finely cut mod trouser crotches.

A video camera came Fed Ex. I signed for it in the doorway, ripped open the envelope and let it slide out onto my palm.

I want to film a dark empty theater in which a film is being shown. The film is of a dark empty theater, identical to the first one except thatthere are people projected upon the chairs. The projections are in black and white. They flicker like Princess Leia in her hologram message.

They’re the audience, looking up at a blank screen and seeing something play on it.

Although it is impossible to know exactly what they are watching, one can get a feeling for the point the drama is at by the expressions and movements of the faces.

(When I finally make my film and play it, I’ll have it timed so it breaks off in the middle, the screen turning white just as things were getting good.)

I can feel my cells dividing—I can feel them piling up inside of me, one atop the other at breakneck pace.

I rapped a little the other day, by myself at the ocean, standing in the surf and facing the waves with the dark-eyed windows of the beach mansions behind me, flat roofed and ominous, like set pieces for a David Lynch flick.

we agree to forget the previous evening and focus solemnly upon the Sunday drive to the Sunday obligations…

(reproduction=doubling the bill of memories)

Your son your daughter your fuck your marriage.

Your pink barrettes.

Sterling, sterling, Sterling…I want to take it.

I know.

I feel like we can pull something out of the hat.

Yes. When we’re together. I mean, when we’re on the same team.

I know what you mean. I got you. Sterling, you’ve got to start realizing that I’ve got you.

Yes.

And Fitz too.

And Fitz too. Absolutely.

He’s kind of like the origin.

What do you mean?

Of both of us. He hatched me in Oxford and then I hatched you.

OK.

You feelin me?

There’s only one problem with any of that.

Whuh baby?

Everything that you do—I happen to have already done.

Sterling’s been clean for almost two and a half years. I don’t know about you but I find that shockingly impressive. At dinner last night this monster of a girl asked her outright if she was in AA. She noticed that Sterling was the only one not having a Corona Extra. Except for me, of course. I was having a vodka and tonic. Light on the tonic. These were children of my mother’s friends, after all. A handful of truly horrendous individuals I was forced to entertain every couple of months.

Trust fund kids, like myself.

I looked the bitch up and down and clucked, sadly. A floral print summer dress that might have been lovely on someone else looked like kitchen drapes on her rotund frame. No wonder her husband was giving me the eye.

Sterling didn’t miss a beat. She rested her chin gently on her gloved hand and focused the full attention of her beautiful, bright eyes on the fat tard.

“I was in AA. For about two months. I found it very helpful.”

“But you don’t go anymore?”

“That’s correct.”

“I thought the whole point was to keep going, all the time.”

At that point I sighed, loudly. Sterling straightened in her seat and shot me a reassuring look.

“I used to be a born-again Christian,” she said, her normally singsong voice turning low and serious. “It wasn’t entirely my choice. My father beat me every night with a pipe until I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ. It does some funny things to you, getting beat every night.” She twirled the stem of her water glass, her two fake fingers jutting out stiffly.

“At any rate, I ascertained pretty quickly that AA was based on the whole Christian thing. So I merely applied the same principles of getting so-called saved and managed to simply coast through the entire twelve steps in just a matter of hours! Hours, I tell ya!”

The moose had a peculiar invigorated look on her face. She was enjoying being shocked in the way only a rich bitch who believes everyone in the world is at her disposal can.

“But you stayed on for several months, regardless?”

“Well, yeah,” Sterling said. She abruptly stopped twirling her glass and shot back what was left of her water.

“The judge made me.”




good advice...


...better advice?

comments are great but i've gotta say i'm kinda glad they're down right now. i'm raising a beer to all of you...



most needed, most cheated, most weeded.

I met Jamie. Sometimes I still can't believe it: I met the guy I saw. After all that time. Actually it isn't so much time to meet a stranger you saw on the street, if you think about it.

He was just someone walking in front of me, early in the morning, a year and 10 months ago.

Now I go to his site everyday, to find out what he's up to.

With his jeep and his fly ass loft.

And his cameras and typewriters.

Paint and patience.

i hope you don't think i'm some kind of asshole, jamie.

i hope i was a little bit like you thought i'd be.

p.s. don't tell anyone my real name.

TRUE’s been crashing at Fitz’s place for the last couple of nights. I’m not sure how long this arrangement will last. Maybe forever, who knows? I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me uneasy. The more they’re around each other the more they meld personalities, and the more I get pushed to the curb. They get high and sit on Fitz’s couch and go on forever, name dropping philosophers and trading witticisms from their Oxford days.

Meanwhile, I’m the sober lump on a log with barely a GED to my name.

Last night I stopped by for the latest of Fitz’s Julia Childs experiments:Confit de Canard

“I’ve had this baby coalescing in the fridge for a week—you should really be able to taste the thyme.”

“Because it’s thyme, thyme, thyme, that we love,” TRUE sang. For some reason she was wearing a Statue of Liberty souvenir crown on her head.

“Thyme is on our side,” Fitz chimed in.

“This is really delicious,” was all I could think of to say. “What’s in the sauce?”

“There’s no sauce on this bird. That would be lard that you’re savoring, darling. ” Fitz said. “Hence, the name confit.”

“Oh.”

After having our coffee in gold rimmed china, we adjourned to the couch. TRUE stuck a toothpick in her mouth and pulled out a thick pile of crumpled bills from under the cushion. She gave half of them to Fitz.

“You wanna help, Sterling?”

I took the bills and separated them by denomination, glancing up at TRUE from time to time as I did. The crown had slipped to the side of her head, drunken prom queen style.

“There sure are a lot of fives and singles,” I said.

“Yeah. Strippers and waiters, you know how they do.”

“I thought Fitz was hooking you up with a classy clientele.”

“They’re it, baby. Sucks I know.”

“Patience, patience. We’re getting closer to a big fish,” Fitz said.

“We?” I asked.

“My rolodex…her snow.”

“A winning combination,” TRUE said, sarcastically. “Oh, well. Can’t stop the hustle.”

“I don’t know,” I said, watching as she switched the toothpick from one side of her mouth to the other and then back again. “Doesn’t dealing with these small, wrinkled bills make you ashamed?”

She paused for half a second, a ten dollar bill in mid air, before she slapped it onto its pile and peeled off the next one.

“The only thing that makes me ashamed is poverty,” she said, without looking up. The toothpick switched sides again.


diepunyhumans

white caps and lucky cuts

I was all set to quit smoking until I read TRUE’s last post…oh well...







I used to say: let’s get wasted, let’s put it in us and sex our brains and get lost in the world.

I used to buy the shit, cook the shit and shoot the shit in my veins over and over until it was coming out of my eyeballs.

I used to stand around banging out a lunatic beat on a mailbox, my pants sliding off my waist and my head tuned into the Satellite Heart.

I thought everything was beautiful, the birds in the treetops, the crisply folded newspapers piled neatly on their stands. I liked to sit on the steps between the lions at the Public Library, simultaneously freaked out and transfixed by the people and the cabs and the giant, hissing white busses.

New York was a music video lit up green and purple.

I let the city under my skin, spending whole weeks blazing my brain away. I flew across the sea (we ride the big jets, we have lots of sick sex) and tried but failed miserably to turn Europe into my playground.

Not like TRUE…she was able to do it. She could lean back in a café with her hat pulled over her eye, and disappear into the smoke like the regulars.

Meanwhile I just sat there shaking and sputtering, an obvious mess.



It all comes from outside.

Everything—the good, the bad, and the ugly.

I don’t believe in that inner world shit.

That so-called “place deep inside” is a mirage

A fable, a pop song…

It’s a trick of language—it comes from saying “I” all the time.

Try this:

Sit still and be quiet.

Close your eyes but don’t fall sleep.

Listen to the sounds closest to you—the beating of your heart, the ticking of the coffee maker on the counter.

Then move out a little further, to the curtains rustling on the other end of the room.

The Grandfather Clock in the hallway.

The wind on the doorstep.

(Another level further)

The neighbor’s neurotic Doberman

The traffic on the street

A scooter screeching at the intersection

Four blocks south

(Keep going)

The melancholic train whistle in the next town

The silver jets criss-crossing overhead

Engines gunning

Instruments spinning authoritatively

But you better believe they’re following a flock of long winged birds

Straight into the slipstream.



bobby should be mass produced

make me over; make me out

bemezine


Nighttime’s the right time. You know what I mean. When the fairies come out. And the wolves and vampires and disco dan-cers. Nighttime’s the right time to be on the prowl. To get shit looks on the bus and to give them back, to undress someone with your eyes.

Fitz asked me so did Jules really have a big dick and I said yes she really had a big dick.

And did her titties look real?

Yes they looked real, except in the hot tub, then they were too shiny and round.

Did you always pretend to be a boy or did you get to be a girl too?

Get to be? What the fuck you make it sound like I was her slave or something.

Well, weren’t you, in a sense? I mean, I know that’s how you liked it in the past.

Oh, I liked it all right. I liked it in Amsterdam, doing a couple of hits and going out to the garage, shaking uncontrollably as I took off my clothes and lied down across the hood of the old Saab that was just beginning to rust, my tits spilling out from the loosened ace bandage wrap, a winter draft blowing between my legs, nipping at the warm dampness that only got worse as I waited, biting the inside of my mouth and listening intently for footsteps or the jingle jangle of keys, becoming distracted by the hum of the Amstel river only a few feet away, certain that the scurrying in the wall was a rat, certain that the gleaming, hollow car could secretly feel my body and was somehow mocking it.

Finally she came, throwing open the door and belching loudly.

“Hmmm, ahhh. I can smell you from here.”

“Ok,” I said, wondering if she meant my pussy or my feet, both of which I’d scrubbed with peppermint soap.

“Shut up!” she hissed. I closed my eyes as I heard her lock the door and walk slowly down the steep Dutch stairs in her stilettos.

Beneath the click-clank of heel striking wood, there was another, more subtle sound that could be made out: the soft rustle of the heel of her hand rubbing her crotch through her silk slip.

Oh, I liked it all right. I like waiting for her to tell me off, I liked waiting to be punished and put in my place, chosen as an extra and left on the sidelines, alone in the bar, holding a glass of melted ice while I watched her run her hands through some boy’s soft, floppy hair. It was a sick and twisted happiness, but I felt it nonetheless and it was all mine.

(Nighttime’s the right time…)

In case you’ve never had it, gingria is just like sangria but with a healthy dose of Tanqueray thrown in for kicks. You all know how I need kicks, party people. The key is to stick that shit in the freezer—after one gulp you can feel the numbness start at the top of your neck and move its way up your skull. It’s like huffing gas.


art is for losers

Fitz and I were supposed to go to Black Betty’s for some Lebanese lamb but now that TRUE was with us, we scrapped that idea and pulled up to a Jewish bakery instead. We knew the score: TRUE would have accompanied us, ordered randomly from the menu and proceeded to push the food around her plate until we were finished, at which point she would have insisted on putting her meal in a to-go container to leave atop a payphone or bus stop bench.

“The food looks nice. It smells nice. But all I really want is toast with butter and honey.”

So we skipped the restaurant. I could certainly care less—speeding through Brooklyn with all the windows down was enough for me.

Well, almost enough.

It was cool and dark inside the bakery. It smelled of rolls and burnt coffee. The woman behind the counter in the wig and plastic apron eyed us suspiciously.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

TRUE flipped her hat around and leaned against the glass counter.

“I’d like some plain white bread, please. Toasted. With butter and honey, please.”

I stood beside her, close enough to see the spray of freckles across her nose, the ones she used to try to cover up with white MAC powder.

Fitz stood on the other side of me, drooling over the cookies.

“Help, I have a raging food-on!” he said to the lady, who narrowed her eyes at him.

“Let’s see, I’ll take one of those, and one of those and four of the cream filled ones…no not those, the ones next to them, with the chocolate icing…” Fitz pointed a long, tan finger at each of his selections. I watched the woman as she followed his hand. I noticed that her eyes looked funny—they were pointed in the wrong direction, like zoned-out zombie eyes. It took me a minute to realize that she was following the reflection of Fitz’s hand in the frosted mirrored wall behind us. I turned and saw an image of the three of us looking like high school kids in our summer clothes.

There was another mirror behind the counter, so I was able to see my own eyes looking distant and strange as I stared at the length of my back. There was something about the double mirror perspective that made my stomach hurt.

(My God, is that how I always look? Short and crooked and ashen?)

We ate our bakery treats on the street, walking around aimlessly, window shopping and sharing cigarettes. As a sign of good will, I ran into a bodega and bought TRUE a six pack of Sam Adams.

“See, I still know how to buy ‘em, at least.”

“Thanks, man.”

I passed her the bag, getting a little shock as our fingers touched beneath the plastic handle.

“I thought you were against her drinking,” Fitz whispered to me later, as he took my hand and helped me out of the car.

“I am,” I said, looking over his shoulder at TRUE sauntering up the stairs to his place.

I lit a cigarette, closed my eyes, and enjoyed the breeze upon my sweaty temples.

“I just wanted to give her something she wanted.”



funkmeister cory

I saw TRUE and we made up. At least I think we did.

Fitz picked me up for dinner. He buzzed my phone and was standing in front of the passenger side of his Gulf when I came out.

“Madam,” he said, an unnaturally wide grin across his face.

“Or should I say, Mademoiselle?”

“I can see her sitting there, Fitz.”

“Right, so perhaps it would be better if you got in on the driver’s side.”

“Why does she get shotgun?”

“Because I picked her up first, Darling. Now, please. My nerves are already shot to hell.”

I followed him around to the driver’s side. He was smoking a thin joint. I tried but couldn’t see his eyes behind his shades.

“You’re not slick,” I muttered, as I slid into the back.

“Hey,” I said to TRUE, who was staring straight ahead with her arms folded.

“Hey,” she said, without looking at me. It was the first time I could remember seeing her dressed all in white: white on white Yankees cap, plain white T-shirt, shiny, oversized, silvery-white basketball shorts, and a pair of those old school high top Nikes they’re selling everywhere for 40 bucks.

The car shifted to one side as Fitz leaned against the hood, puffing on his pinner.

I pulled at the Velcro strap on my batting glove and racked my brain, but I couldn’t think of anything remotely sharp or witty to say.

TRUE leaned forward and cranked up the volume on what I recognized as the new Radiohead CD.

“You’ve been listening to this?” I asked.

“No,” she said, still not looking at me. I noticed that eyes were swollen, like they get when she’s been crying.

The music was so loud I could feel it vibrating inside my teeth.

Fitz got in and immediately snapped it off.

“Hey!” TRUE said.

“First things first, ladies,” he said, the stupid-ass grin still flitting about the corners of his mouth. “TRUE, give Sterling her money.”

TRUE sighed and pulled a tightly folded wad of bills out from under the waistband of her shorts. She thrust it in my face, still without turning around.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Now, TRUE, apologize to Sterling for what you did.”

“C’mon, man.”

“TRUE…”

“Why should I apologize for her being such a pussy?”

“Hey!” I said, sitting up.

“Now, now,” Fitz said.

“Listen, TRUE. It might not have seemed like such a big thing to you, but taking Sterling with you into the back of a cab where unbeknownst to her that flakey old fag C. was waiting to sell you a couple of 8 balls is one thing, hitting up her stunned ass on the spot for the two c-notes you’d just seen her take out of the ATM smacks of some down-low deviousness. Since when do you bite off more drugs than you can pay for? And on Gay Pride Day, of all days. How dare you disturb the fabulous fascist festivities?!”

TRUE made a face and rubbed her nose. That was all she had to say.

“There was a lot of coke in that cab,” I said. “You know I have two strikes…”

“Yes, of course I know! It was fucking C. for fuck’s sake. You weren’t in danger, I’d never put you in danger…how could you possibly think…” she trailed off.

We were quiet. I had a flashback of sitting in the car with my parents. My father always made us bow our heads and ask Jesus to keep us safe before he’d go anywhere.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I’m sorry too, for getting so upset.”

“And I’m sorry, too,” Fitz, said, as he put the car in drive. “I’m sorry you’re both such flaming idiots. Why don’t you just munch each other’s carpets and get it over with? Buy some cats and some babies, knit something, whatever.”

He turned the stereo on. Thom Yorke wailed, “We are accidents, waiting to happen…” I leaned back as we shot forward.


jennyeah, i wanna know ya

"Fassbinder"

One of Fassbinder's most unusual and daring films, In a Year of Thirteen Moons stars Erwin Spengler as a man desperately in love with his business partner. He decides to have a sex change operation, becomes Elvira, but this fails to attract the love of his beloved. Instead, the new "she" finds a series of damaging relationships and betrayals. Fassbinder uses harsh color, asymmetrical sets, a dissonant sound track and alternating narrative techniques to evoke the pain of Erwin/Elvira in a film that stretches the boundaries of conventional storytelling.
(In a Year of Thirteen Moons)


Do you remember the afternoon when we first saw it, four summers back? You were just “Sterling” before I put the tape in, before I put it down and laid it out. The whole sick mess. You were barely more than a ghost. You had white hair, a white face and swollen red lips. You were the shook one with your hand in your pocket.

We watched the movie and shot dope. We used the same works and the same toilet. The Do Not Disturb sign was duck taped to the door. U2’s “One” played on repeat in the background.

When it was over you sat transfixed watching the different shades of black pass across the screen before it turned into static. You didn’t want to believe it was really over.

“What happens next,” you asked, your voice as flat as a pancake.

“The movie leaked out of the TV,” I said. “It’s my movie now, and you’re the star.”

You trudged over to the window and leaned your head against the sill.

“Where are the cameras?”

“Hidden. Everywhere. Can’t you feel their harsh glare burning up the room?”

You lit a cigarette and ran your good hand through your hair.

“When does the shooting start?”

“It already has, Sterling Fassbinder. Everything has already been changed forever.”


jg

oh, dear.

fuck you i want my money

Fuckit. You want a fight, you fuckin got one. i’m not going to sit here staring at this migraine inducing monitor, obsessively going back and forth between the site and my email until enough’s enough and I open up word and watch the cursor going blink blink inanely, insistently, trying to come up with something “pretty” to write, something that’s nice and normal and not about the shit you pulled and continue to pull, that two-faced shit of yours that’s so twisted it’s a fucking shit pretzel, stanking up my area with your vaguely hostile, avoidance tactics which include forwarding the messages I send you to other people (fitz and y&h I know for a fact) without actually answering them, which BTW is just fucking rude not everything is for you to put on display, not everything is art for the taking my life is not just filler for this bullshit site this so-called creative outlet that’s really just a three ring circus of dirty laundry and half-assed metaphors. Pulled punches and spiked punch, blah, blah BLAH

Speaking of which this afternoon on my lunch break for the first time in a long time I wanted a drink, I wanted one so bad I could not only taste it but could feel it already coursing through my blood, a little suction in and out like a heavy glass door swinging slowly shut upon a climate controlled interior.

The nearest bar was houlihans (shut up). I stood outside the door like a statue, just like they taught me in rehab. When the shit comes down and you’re about to fall off, try freezing in place. Just stop, shit--it seems so simple. Fuck what anyone thinks, as they drag their fat asses around the corner, clucking like chickens. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do I stayed that way for 35 minutes, getting a sunburn, sweat running down my back…but I didn’t go in, I didn’t have a drink and I didn’t care, I don’t care. Not about you and what you think, what anyone thinks, you have to remember it’s your life, your life, your life…

My life, my life, my life…


i'm feelin stereolabrat

can you see the skull?



I leaned my head on my arm and stared at the German girl’s throat in the fading light. My eyes ran over her skin until they landed on the site of her fluttering pulse.

There it is! I thought, experiencing the single, isolated instant of joy that occurs whenever I rediscover that spot of frantically beating skin.

(Aside from this pulse, the German girl was little more than a fuck robot to me. I imagined her body as a great touch board, coursing with circuitry that lit-up between strategic groupings of nerve and muscle.)

I blew on the spot, just to feel her squirm.

“Are you happy?” I asked as she cuddled closer to me. It wasn’t a romantic question: suddenly, I was curious.

“What do you mean?” she whispered. I could hear her smiling in the shadows of my chest.

“I mean, are you happy—do you feel OK most of the time?”

“Yeah. When I’m not nervous. I get those awful stomach aches.”

“Right—but other than that things are good for you?”

“Yeah, for the most part. I try to mind my own business and not expect too much. Once in awhile I still get the hysterisch feeling I told you about.”

“The one where you think you’re going blind?”

“You laugh but it’s a real thing. Freud mentioned it. Thank God it doesn’t happen that often anymore. Only when I’m in a crowd and everyone’s standing very close and not moving. You know…when you can feel big fat people exhaling on your back… Anyway. It used to happen at camp when I was a kid.”

“What’s it like?”

“You asked me this before and I didn’t know how to describe it. It’s a nightmare. It’s as though the different perspectives of my eyes, which my brain usually melds seamlessly together, are separating from one another. I see everything double. Two TV screens of the world instead of one. They start move further and further apart. I have to contort my face and dig my hands into my head, trying to push them back together.”

She said this all very matter-of-factly as she lay coolly curled against me. A tallish, hard body yuppie. Perfect size six. Strong enough to lift me up and sit me on her face while we were fucking.

Suddenly, she got up and reached towards the bedside table. Without warning, she flicked on her lollipop red, twisty plastic IKEA reading lamp. The twin bulbs shone directly into my eyes.

“Fuck!” I said, unable to help myself.

“Oops! Did that get your eyes? Sorry!” the German girl said, giggling and smoothing my bangs.

“It’s OK,” I rolled away to escape the light.

“And we were just talking about not being able to see!” she said, still laughing.

“Funny, that,” I said. I tried opening my eyes. Gigantic blue clouds hovered in front of the world. I stretched my right arm over my head, and squinted to make out the outline of my hand.

“What are you doing?” the German girl asked, no longer laughing.

“Nothing,” I said. “The prosthetics look more lifelike with blurred vision, that’s all.”


jockohomo

Where I end and you begin

i wanna get sweet valley high with you.


That’s right, sometimes I walk the street with the last two fingers on my right hand curled into my palm, pretending I’m Sterling Fassbinder. I’ll start swinging my arms in my usual style, but then I remember how she keeps the hand in question jammed in her pocket, and I do the same. Immediately, my gait changes into her lurching stagger.

The hackneyed, hunched James Dean wounded animal thing that gets her all that LES pussy.

Sometimes, late at night, when the sky turns nuclear pollutant purple and the puddles spin with stars, I hold my hand over my face and imagine how it would look if two of the five fingers were missing.

I remember when I visited her in the hospital on her sixteenth birthday.

She avoided looking at her bandaged hand draped lifelessly across the pea green sheets.

“That’s not my hand,” she said.

“I know,” I said. I remember the hysterical chirping of birds in the trees outside. A plane cut a high arc above our heads. Somewhere a sprinkler was spurting jaggedly.

My eyes zoomed out like a camera. As always I was desperately trying to take in the whole thing, to memorize the details and stash them away for future use. There was her bleached blonde hair. At that time it was cut and gelled down in a Caesar. She shifted to one side and stared at the blinds. Her face was pale against the sheets. There was blue pen ink smeared on her cheek.

Everyone thought she was crazy, that the nuttiness of her bible thumping parents had finally cooked her noodle. They thought that explained why she took drugs and dressed like a boy and cut her own fingers off on a classroom paper cutter.

“It’s the acid,” they whispered, “It’s her father who beats her ass with a pipe.”

She’d been let down, beat-up, lied-to, hated on and now she was going to be kicked out and locked-up in a mental hospital.

I was sixteen myself. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do but sit around with my hands folded. By way of saying a prayer (something I’ve tried but can never actually bring myself to do) I instead wished for sudden, supernatural powers. Wing’d feet, laser shooting fingertips, bullet reflecting wristbands—that sort of thing. Or I would have been fine with a gang of berretta toting goodfellas. We’d line up shades on and guns blazing. I’d free Sterling and leave them all in a sea of blood.

surrender, surrender, but don’t give yourself away

If I could have had only one power it would have been the ability to go back in time. That way I could switch places with her as a little kid so that she could be me and I could be her.

This would make a cool tattoo or hardcore album cover if it wasn't already used by something else.

Meanwhile, in Australia...

...the good people have put on their winter sparkle


Tell the story, Sterling.

Tell all the stories; go for it.

I know I’m through with holding things back.

Kick out the jams, motherfucker!

I give you full permission, in fact I encourage it.

I’m the bad guy, the villain.

(there’ll be times)

The tranniechaser fag hag.

(when my crimes)

I give myself up to it; I grasp the smooth bone handle of my authority.

(will seem almost unforgiveable)

Okokokokokokok?

Yes, I’m the leader of this crew.

Yes, I’m the administrator with the passwords.

(I give in to sin)

I wear the brightly colored shirts in the outlandish style.

I leave my notebooks open on your bed

So that you may read and judge

(because you have to make this life liveable)

You can’t quantify me

Contest me, deter me

Tonite, I’m in the hands of fate…

I walked the block with a bop

Smoked blunts by the water

Fell into a dream at the bar

Woke up with some fag’s tongue in my mouth

I gripped his glitter-covered shoulders

Muscles rising and falling beneath my fingertips

“I always fall asleep during the best part,” I told him

as I tried to take a step back and ended up doing a half-curtsy instead

He was holding my face in his hands

Looking down at me sweetly

drunkenly

“…and by the way, sir,” I said, regaining my balance

(I give in to sin)

I’m not a boy,

just a blue toy.”

(because I like to practice what I preach)

here's a little number called "blues for narcing"

I know I promised or at least implied that I wasn’t going to go on about PRIDE but god damn it I can’t just be summertime silly and languorous and waltz forward, Martha Stewart glass of iced tea in hand, as if the shit you pulled was nothing.

For instance,

the scene on west fourth with the cab

for instance,

the cigarettes you put out on my CDs

and the cracked face on my swatch.

For instance,

The way you kept repeating, “I was only playing,” by way of an explanation, over and over, until I thought I was going to puke.

For instance,

when am I going to get my money back?

I don’t want to hear about the long journey of your mind through the high blue hills,

The way you were able to slip in sideways between the floors and move around the house like a ghost

I don’t care you ’ve got some nerve celebrating yourself like that. Not everything gets washed away simply by saying “best friends till the end”

The blood

The image of you maniacally chomping down on your own tongue

The way you wanted me to reprimand you.

You were right, flesh changes everything.

Proximity…the need for an ethical code:

Face to face,

Got to face the face.

I can’t write the way I used to, when you were in Europe and invisible.

I pictured you behind an ornate partition, listening to every word That I spoke in the dark

I couldn’t see it

but I could feel it

signals in the air

whitecaps on the waves

In my mind's eye I saw your head bowed forward like a priest in prayer.




jonno

i'm up in the clouds

ryan mcguinnis

Don't let anyone who does drugs all the time try and tell you they're not running away from something.

After a certain point you're taken over the top, over the precipice.

Your fuckin nerves are shot

Low eyes, heavy lids

The shadows of tree branches shake against the blue and yellow windshield.

In protestation,

In proclamation...

I have yet to discover a harsh truth for which I can’t find an antidote.


From: "jenny ." [Save Address] [Block Sender]
To: trueboy@graffiti.net
Cc:
Subject: real bitches do real things.
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 20:18:07 +0000

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yo.

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>From: "TRUEBOY *"

>To: "jenny ."

>Subject: Re: real bitches do real things.
>Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2003 02:43:46 +0800
>
>like what, yo?


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