hey, man. i need your help.

hook me up with a plot for the film i'm doing today. i was supposed to come up with something but in the midst of the complete collapse of my personal life i totally forgot. my boy y&h and i are going to front like terrence malick and shoot during the "magic hour", that shimmering oasis of time, also known as twilight, in which the sun and the stars share a sky and light falls in fat, heavy beams across the hair and shoulders of the afterwork crowd.

terrence malick directed badlands, which is one of the best movies ever. can you imagine the production values needed if you're only going to film for one hour out of the day? jesus.

fuck it, folks. i know you've got the goods. porno is fine, but keep in mind i won't have someone to fuck, as i'm the only actor. y&h will be minding the camera and besides we tried sleeping together years ago and it didn't work.

hurry please it's already 3pm here in neu yuk.

remember the magic hour is only one hour long.

if y&h and i pick yr plot we'll give you mad credit and when i get famous you'll probably get rich.

i'll be sending the DVD out with the mix to all you lucky people who gave me your address.

oh and when i said to check your mail next week you knew i really meant the week after next, right?

right.

TOASTEDBOY, here, getting the biggest high possible...

these motherfuckers won't leave. fitz is pissed, he said he's going out for coffee and when he gets back...man, you could see the dot dot dot hanging in the air. pregnant punctuation. whatever. i'm rolling joints and sending them across the room, not caring if one of these motherfuckers has herpes, not caring if the little fatties come back to me at all.

i've got money in the bank i can still get high...

OK, maybe not, but i've got infinite drug karma, party people.

like, i've done some skeezy things, but i never skimmed off a bag i was holding, and i only cut with a low-grade bag from my fag at dick's, which itself might be buffed up, but that's on someone else.

baby powder is some evil, abrasive shit when you put it up your nose.

anyway, go check out a real blog--seen

It’s always the same reliable disappointments: I wanted quiet I wanted it so bad and when I finally get it of course I can’t stand it.

The important thing is not to lose perspective and keep in mind how the whole mess started. It was such a stupid thing. Some movers had put a wooden plank across the doorway. It flipped up when I walked across and nailed TRUE--who was behind me--in the shin.

She squeaked with pain and doubled over. She hobbled out onto the sidewalk and limped in front of me.

I felt something drop in my stomach—my fingertips went into my mouth.

“Are you OK?” I whispered, too low for her to hear.

“Fuck this shit, maaaaan.” She gave up trying to walk and collapsed onto the sidewalk, gripping her shin. People glanced down and stepped gingerly around her. I stood where I was and tried to look over her shoulder to see if it was bleeding.

“What the fuck, you’re just going to hang back like that?” she hissed.

“I’m right here,” I said, stepping forward. She was cupping the injured spot with both hands, as if to shield it from view.

“Let me see,” I said.

“Fuck you,” she shouted. I was surprised and scared to see tears running down her face.

“C’mon…are you bleeding?”

“You’re fucking embarrassed, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“You are, you fucking bougie asshole…you just stood back there like that…”

“TRUE, I’m sorry—I’m here.”

“No you aren’t,” she was sobbing uncontrollably, shaking and gripping her shin.

“Let me see it.”

“No!”

“TRUE!”

I glanced over my shoulder and saw that a small crowd of onlookers had gathered in front of the building. I tried to come up with the magic words that would make her snap out of it.

“Let’s go back upstairs,” I said, thinking back to our happy, slightly bored selves of five minutes ago.

“I’m such a goddamn klutz!” she whimpered. Her hands had fallen from her leg, revealing a dark purple line across her shin.

“Let’s put some ice on that,” I said, offering her my hand.

“Don’t,” she said, pushing it away.

“You weren’t there for me,” she said, mournfully.

“TRUE, c’mon.”

“You weren’t.”

“You know how I am! I can’t handle it if something happens to you.”

“What the fuck?” she moaned.

“Everything slows down…it’s like I can’t move…”

“You’re supposed to be my friend; you’re supposed to be able to handle it…”

“I can,” I pleaded. “I am. Give me a chance.”

“I’m sick of it, Sterling. Sick, sick, sick.”

“TRUE, please.”

She sniffled and rubbed her nose and turned to watch the traffic. I called her by her real name and told her that I was sorry but she refused to budge. People hurried past us smelling like cigarettes and sleep and department store perfume.

They had their shadows fastened to their sensible shoes…they held their future in both hands along with their breakfast.

I’d never been so jealous in all my life.

fake blues

when you need it sometimes.

you know the blow is almost gone when you're arguing over ten dollars and you hear your cell phone ringing even when it's not.

everywhere i look it's spotlight silver

my gaze so over-bright, it burns a hole straight through the night

(rain come down)

i'm so horny and fed-up, i swear.

this is the song she lit the flag on fire to.

cat's blues
by will oldham
(from Viva Last Blues)

i'm gonna turn my back for awhile, down
while nothing bad can or will befall
the lights welcome me all by myself
and the fires only bronze they do not burn

well do you understand girls where its going
i'll fuck girls, if there's violence to come
why, happiness, ohhhh happiness
they're crying, and their night has come

See them in the theatre, they're very, very real
Scold them when they come home, dirty, crying
Well, love, is forbidden outwardly
but inside there is no denying, oh

so, ???? boys, bury their hats
and they suffer while they waste and hurt
they are men who bow before us now
and i do not trust them, no
How many children are there like this?
Yeah, and how many will I serve?
o if i could have a clue what justice is
it would be more than i deserve, oh

o time is passing, come into my house
loot the pantries and muss the sheets
Have you found it useful, thinkin' here?
Your host will be ten miles, on back.

hey sterling,

the last time i heard this song we were in your room in the house in belgium, drunk and pissed off. remember the gnats that flew in your face? things had taken a turn for the worse, not unlike now. there were tons of people, standing around and drinking. (no one ever seemed to do anything in europe and i'm not talking about the fact that europe is filled with a lot of parties and a lot of drugs--so is everywhere else, i guess. what i mean is you never catch anyone in action--literally moving around...doing something...)

i remember staring at you, trying to figure it all out.

i'm tired of trying to explain, you said.

you flung open your closet, revealing a huge american flag hanging along the inside of the door.

"justice!" you growled, to no one in particular, as you knocked open your zippo and torched the entire bottom of our national symbol.

the crowd sterling and i ran with was mixed: europeans, american, africans. there were always a lot of arguments, political and otherwise, but in that drunken moment there was a unanimous cheer and stomping of feet as the flames jumped higher. i threw my stella bottle against the wall where it exploded into millions of pieces of cheap brown glass.

there were a few screams but then everyone cheered again.

the flames licked the ceiling and turned it brown. i looked across the room and saw that everyone's eyes were yellow and prehistoric.

and you, by the mostly empty closet, lighting a cigarette off the display...your conversation piece contribution to the party...

(you were james dean you were the acid zar the teenage criminal you weren't going down easy you would be put a stop to...)

we were wooping it up, you and i

then someone woke up and grabbed the fire extinguisher from the hall

then the days turned into years

my phaser eyes...phaser eyes...

you won't be frightened by the real thing after the show.


IDEA

Like a virgin?

This morning I was so tired I put in two tampons. I just went to the toilet and it was like a clown car up in that piece...

Re: ass kicking:

It's a well known fact that I could kick both of their drunken asses, even with one arm tied behind my back with Kotex string.

I much prefer the verbal whip, however.

The pain runs deeper.


destroy

Everything is completly out of control. I should admit straight away that I've been drinking, loves.

The two of them are making me crazy. They aren't speaking. But that's better than the verbal smackdown they had going before. Sterling was actually screaming. At one point she put her hands on the side of her face and let loose a real holler. A rebel yell--only no one chanted, more, more, more. I haven't seen her do something like that since she used to party. It was fine form, let me tell you.

TRUE, meanwhile, is on a real bender. A three day party, just like in that Pixies song. She sat on the floor shielding her eyes from the ceiling light that Sterling insisted be left on.

"What, are you scared of the dark," TRUE slurred. There was a red wine stain all over the white Polo shirt that she wore, which happened to be mine.

She pulled up her jeans and picked at a scab on her knee until it was an open sore and her nails were a mess.

"Fuck me," she muttered.

"Fuck, fuck, fuuuuhhhck."

Listen, I don't know. Something gave way between them. It started on Sunday afternoon, when TRUE banged her shin and accused Sterling of not giving a fuck. Or something else equally assinine.

I can't spell that right now.

I've told them both that something like this was destined to happen. I've especially tried to impress upon Sterling the urgent need for her to get over her "thing" for TRUE. It isn't going to happen, I've told her. You are not what she's looking for.

I told her that if she kept on pining away, she risked TRUE's patience wearing thin and her own desire growing overripe and over-insistant.

You've got to know when to give it up, I told her.

TRUE's allowed you the opportunity to save face.

Enigmatic to the hilt, the stalward Sterling declared that she had no face to save, to which I can't remember how I responded.

Everything's a blur. My laptop almost got jacked. And I was in Stonewall that night the woman got shot! Earlier. I wish I stayed.

Drama, of any sort, sends TRUE out to the bars. Often, at the end of the night, the bar comes home with her. A steady stream of fags has been stomping through the apartment at all hours, which you might think would make me happy, but does not. I have to watch these coke queens like a hawk, lest they run off with my rack system, or one of my Tiffany vases, or my vintage Stroke magazines in the wicker basket I made myself, back in junior high.

I sit with my rum and coke or my cranberry apple tea or my mineral water and smoke my Dunhill menthols and watch, kind of like I'm doing now. They are all drunk and eager for something to happen. They laugh at her jokes, they look to her for cues.

She runs her hands through her hair, carelessly, like a boy.

Her aura is all confidence, as she gets up to flip the record. She says stupid things, and acts interested in people she despises. They gather round, eager and willing to buy it all--too drunk or stupid to know that she's selling herself short. They don't seem to notice the nervous glances she keeps throwing back to me.

They don't notice the chinks in the armor.

They haven't seen her they way I have.

Maybe no one has.

this site illustrates one of my central graffiti tenets: it doesn't have to be complicated to be effective.



this inspires me to rinse off the old stencils and get out there and deface...

stickers are great, too. it's what the fifth tray on a copy machine was made for. i don't need to tell you to have your hustle on. send some wrinkled scrap paper through and then bitch and whine when it jams, saying, that's my master copy for art class, oh, man, look at it now, what the fuck am i going to do...blah, blah, blah...fake tears if it's necessary until they give you that shit for free.

fuck kinkos.

the windmills of the google of my mind

yo. these days, when i think of l.a. i think of tony pierce. it just fucking happened: i thought about really tall white platform shoes which made me think of really retarded white poodles which made me think of l.a. which made me think of tony. the pony. isn't that just wild? the guy's managed to insinuate himself into my terms of reference. he's a part of my fucking umwelt. damn, that's deep! i mean, it's true that i'm so high right now that i'm not sure if it's l.a. or L.A. or LA, but still.

This morning the keyboard was covered in an avalanche of sticky blank CDs and twisted, empty sheets of rolling paper doused in whiskey. I don’t know what happened to the mix, it’s not on the hard drive, which really sucks because baby, that shit was golden. It was the soundtrack to the French movie in my mind, in which all the characters lounge around an empty, scarred swimming pool wearing autumn sweaters and chain-smoking and nothing much happens but everything changes.

It’s a citywide, cinema scope—an invisible mix for an invisible age.

I’ve got the music video but I’m missing the music.

Not to worry, party people. It’s upstairs somewhere, bubbling with the cannabis infused proteins just under the surface.

I’m gonna work it on out.

Those of you who sent me your addresses so long ago start checking your mail next week.

Gimme your address if I don’t have it and you want something from me.

(sorry Stacey, no tennis balls)

G.E.T. L.I.V.E.

Aiiight?



my hero

mixtape


radiorockstars


i'm deep into this mixtape. and by mixtape i mean mixCD, obviously. we live in the digital age. information moves fast. pro-liferating like nuclear radiation. laser shit lights up individual air molecules in specific patterns--giving objects you see and hear that special shimmer.

samsung, you don't stop.

sure the technology's great and all but c'mon already the beats on CDs sound like shit. they disintegrate at the end--the tops of their heads blowing off like dandelion fuzz. it makes me feel kinda sick, party people. sick in my ears--the inner canals vibrating with distortion. i've got to yank off my headphones and take a walk, clear my head a little. maybe even say that's all for now, but then, the next time it rains or i feel like dancing alone in my head, you best believe i'll be back with my case logics, feelin for the next track.

i think im going to end up dividing the mix into several cds.

i'll send out different parts of the whole to you all.

the party people


sub\ver\sion

i’m tired and emotional, it’s true.

For all my bitching about that woman, I wouldn’t mind some breakfast right now.

There’s something so wonderfully American about places that serve breakfast all day long.

Like blue jeans that get better the more you wash them,

Or take-out coffee in cardboard cups.

I want to flip this script

I want a hand-picked fate

I want one of those NYU girls who are new to college and new to the city

A ‘bisexual’ with a shiny backpack and a fading farmer’s tan

Notes from Mom filling up her inbox…

I want to while away the afternoon and watch

As she takes herself too seriously.

yes, it's that time of the month...

Ok, so if the woman on the other side of the cube partition does that half-cough, clearing her mucus lined throat thing one more time I might be forced to stand up, lean over and beat her with the receiver of my phone until she face plants in the wax paper, balled-up napkin detritus of her mcdonald’s breakfast, the same one she has every day, fucking rain or shine, chewing each bite of that egg mcmuffin at least a thousand times until I can hear the liquefied trans fatty acids squirting back and forth between her swollen, pock-marked cheeks.

Fifteen years and a hundred pounds ago she was a ballet dancer. She has a picture of a pair of slippers on her desk. They are well worn and blackened at the toes and hanging from their laces in such a way that they manage to look exhausted--making you wonder what shape the dancer must be in.

Underneath the slippers there’s a single word: “Determination”.

On the other side of her desk, next to folders labeled “Expense Reports” and “Faxes” and “Letters to be Signed” that are overflowing with the paperwork produced by the horribly condescending woman she works for, there’s an equally hackneyed shot of two fuzzy faced kittens, snuggling together the way grown cats never do.


briar

I like hanging out with Jamie. I like how he’s funny without being sarcastic. I like how when I’m around him I’m that way too.

I wish I had the patience to take real pictures. Then I’d be like him, capturing halos of light blossoming off the corners of skyscrapers, or glowing butterflies alighting on the heavy heads of springtime flowers or funny signs or eclectic trash or whatever happened to capture my fancy, wherever I followed my feet.

I’d pull my camera out on friends sitting hip and pretty in bar booths because if I was like Jamie I’d have plenty of hip and pretty friends waiting for me in dark and comfortable bar booths.

He knows my real name.

He knows how this whole thing started—he knows how important Sterling and Fitz are to me.

Every time I see him I tell him a little more and it feels like nothing, not a big deal in the least. When we say goodbye, I get on the train and ride it for a long time with my eyes closed.

history repeats as ciphers become complete...

(word to the drum beat)

The wind sounds just like we remembered, just like we had hoped…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 rush of airborne newspaper. His arms wave and the paper birds flap their wings. He is an angel and the sky is a bell; it knocks back and forth, ringing relentlessly. 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.

Dreamt of the sea again…

This time I stood with my back to the waves, close enough to feel the spray as they crashed. I stared into the filthy, salt encrusted window of a small black bungalow that sat alone on the flat, foggy beach. The window ran the height of the bungalow—it must have doubled as a door because I couldn’t see another opening to the structure. Someone was there, looking back at me. I lifted my gaze, slowly taking in legs, waist and chest. It was a man wearing a dark jacket and tie—he wiped at the window from his side of the glass, revealing his face. I was surprised to see that it was Fitz, smiling unabashedly. Now that I had made him out, he took up the entire window. His head must have skimmed the ceiling. Everything was as it always was except his hair, which was cut in a stringy bob that was the complete opposite of his usual neatly cropped GQ ‘do. What the fuck, I thought, What the fuck happened to his hair? I woke up and immediately remembered having read NME earlier that evening in a freezing Barnes and Ignoble café. With the exception of an article on the demise of Limp Biskit, every other page was about The Strokes or some other greasy retro rip-off band. It was depressing as hell.

That’s where I got the shitty wannabe hair from, I thought. I looked down and saw that I’d fallen asleep in my clothes again. The right sleeve of my sweater was rolled all the way up as far as it would go. I sighed and yanked it down. Once, I woke up with the corner of the sheet tied around my bicep—the knot wasn’t perfect or anywhere near tight enough, but the idea was there.

(the idea is always there)



wisdomgoof

TRUE paced back and forth across Fitz’s kitchen, where she’d set up shop on a wooden table we found out on the street, with a sign in both English and Polish, imploring someone to take it. It was highly likely they didn’t know what they had—an authentic Queen Anne piece with the tell-tale curved legs ending in petite lion feet. There was nothing wrong with it—all it needed was a new finish. The legs where lying separate from the table—tied together with twine and propped up against the garbage can. I helped TRUE screw them in after we carried the table over our heads and up the steep steps to Fitz’s place.

The table was her desk and dining room table, her pulpit and drafting board.

“I wanna have a good time, I want to break shit and wear ripped jeans and take lots of pictures and just, I don’t’ know, keep recording—get it all on tape.”

She took a thoughtful hit off the water pipe.

“I still really want to print the zine. It’s all about riding on trains in Europe with Jules.”

“I know,” I said, opening a long yellow envelope addressed to her, “you told me.”

“You’ve really got to read your mail,” I said, tossing out yet another credit card application. I’ve noticed that they’ve started sending them in anonymous envelopes, with only a P.O. Box in Colorado or New Mexico listed for the return address.

“I want it on newsprint—but not that gray, high school art class bullshit. I want it on the real thing. Some New York Times, Herald Tribune stylo. Or maybe the pink paper the Financial Times is printed on.”

“So why don’t you do it? You’ve got the text.”

“I know; I should.”

“What’s stopping you?”

“Nothing,” she said, taking a sip of tea. Her voice had dropped. She managed somehow to spill a drop on her new, green sweater.

“I don’t know. It’s all so much work.”

I felt her glancing over at me, waiting perhaps for a reassuring signal, a look that said, yeah, I know what you mean, but I didn’t give it to her.

“Fuck it,” she said, standing up.

“Let’s go shopping.”

The new artist works on several art projects at once. The different works are usually united by a shared aesthetic that bounces back and forth between mediums. It’s like a game of hot potato with one player. Maybe the aesthetic was derived from a love of skateboards—or the way the chorus of a really good pop song makes he or she feel when it’s over.

Par Example, in Raymi’s case there’s her blog, “raymi the minx” and her love of karaoke—two completely separate, but (we venture to say) highly related forms of expression.

The new artist works in fits, staying up for three days straight like a crystal meth head.

The new artist passes out in a perfumed heap on a stranger’s bed, only to proclaim, loudly, “I wasn’t sleeping,” upon waking two hours later from a deep slumber.

The new artist is a counterfeiter—a simulacrum, The Matrix® itself.

The new artist grew up surrounded by a wealth of contradictions, i.e., the overflowing bounty of the suburban wasteland.

The new artist believes ordering-in is a lifestyle choice, best exemplified by answering the door wearing only socks.

The new artist is not a hippie. He/she does not like to share drugs

The new artist is not a talk show host, but they might have been a radio shock jock—secretly, in high school.



The new artist is sick of lip service, professionalism and contracts.

The new artist doesn’t know for sure who is real.

The new artist understands that all art is always already business art, but that one must be in a constant rebellion against this state of affairs. The best, most effective way to rebel is by making art.

The new artist wakes up every morning butch and bruised.

The new artist is trying to create a place to replace the one they never had. It’s a site in-transit. The address is in the TV Guide, on the coffee table. You have to surf to get there.

The new artist has: profiles, tags, resumes, transcripts, domain names, business cards, cell phone clips, subscriptions, file folders, passwords, I.D. cards, vocoders, clarinets, headlights, trick candles, and swollen eyes.

Purple brake lights
Cry me a river
Purple rain, purple rain

The new artist is making music videos without the music.

The new artist checks his or her Shakespeare swatch and sees that yes indeed, the time is out of joint.

The new artist heads south from the metropolis to get some shooting done.

The new artist sits at the kitchen table under the bright lights, just before the rain. The air is very still and flat. Everything stands out—especially sounds. An ordinary dinnertime conversation between a young mother and her child ripples up the air duct and through the open window. The new artist can hear them speak to each other in exquisite, gut-wrenching clarity—each kind word from the mother, each little giggle from the child is as pronounced as a fresh welt on tight, unblemished skin.

The new artist doesn’t take what’s given. He/she is happy to live in a city without a country.



In London, and Tokyo and New Yawk and the sewers of Paris…

(the time is out of joint)

La Haine! BRAND TRUEBOY!

(fuck the police, f-f-f-fuck the police)

It doesn’t matter where you are—it’s always about having enough money and having enough drugs and looking good in the right pair of jeans and making music where the music needs to be made…

The new artist takes drugs to write posts to take drugs to.

(five to four, just can’t take it no more)

The new artist thinks to him/herself: “yeah, yeah, yeah…star, star, star.”

AND

“are you ready? Cuz here we go…”

The new artist smokes weed and holds a three-hundred dollar Italian pen like a cigarette.

The new artist complains about these dark times:

“I wait, I wait, I wait for something to happen, I’m pacing, station to station, snapping my fingers, changing my style…

(smackmybitchup, changemypitchup)

…I’ve seen it all, I’ve seen it all from the yellow windows of the evening train…”

The new artist has a little song that grows.

The new artist has many nicknames but often signs paper things with an “x”.

The new artist understands that first principles apply equally to the production that is the thing in itself as well as to the production of the production.

Then new artist knows that flashbacks are a real thing, precipitated by a sudden blue flash and a vision of a long-dead friend eating a tuna sandwich.

(“Yo, money. Smell this—does this smell bad to you?”)

Your old faithful shoes so casually tossed off just a few hours earlier have turned into rats scurrying around the corners of your eyes…

Go with it…breathe…accept…

The new artist has learned that big, bad anxiety comes when one doesn’t give in to the nausea…to the pain…

(just by giving in, we open up a whole new way of being)



party people

the pleasure whips
the hollow tips.


virtual institute of crappy arts

new age

Nothing is true except for the foot notes.

Nothing is finished except for the blue prints.

Nothing is perfect except for the on-screen kiss between the famous, dying celebrities.


miss piggy

worldnewyork

4th September After Mix

He was still a teenager when we met, new to the life and new to the City. He was obsessed with Nazis, epilepsy, and accident victims--all the things he wasn't--an All-American boy from Twig, Minnesota.

He thought I was beautiful because I acted spontaneously. Poor thing didn’t realize that it was my only talent—a cultivated ruse that required hours of preparation. It took most of my energy to be able to bat my eyelashes like I didn’t give a damn.

What was left, I gave to him…of course it wasn’t enough.

I didn’t blame him. How could I? I’d been exactly the same, once—straining at the bit, eager to try everything and everyone.

(For every season, turn, turn, turn…)

I saw him again when I got back from Europe. He was positive and on the streets. He lifted his shirt to show me the scar from where they removed part of his liver. He had a novel’s worth of medical reports printed on green paper and shoved into the bottom of his bag.

“You have to read these,” I said, smoothing the sheets out on the table. “You have to stop partying and you have to call your parents.”

He recoiled at these suggestions. Drinking kept him sane and calling his folks was a no-go. They’d kicked him out because he was gay—finding out he was positive would confirm all their fucked-up notions about the disgusting, disease ridden life that he led.

“Please don’t make me, please!” he begged, but I did just that. I told him he couldn’t stay with me unless he called. I let him float for a few days, but then (after I’d put back a few myself) I became insistent. I threw the rest of his Scotch in his lap and dialed the numbers I found in his little black book.

“What difference does any of it make?” he said, “What does any of it matter in the end?”

I’ll never forget his face when I pressed the phone against his ear--the way the perfect arches of his eyebrows slumped to the sides and the tendons in his neck stood out like guitar strings.

“Mommy?” he said, timidly.

She hung up on him when he told her. He tried to call back but no one answered. A few days later he went to the pharmacy and was told that he was no longer insured.

I saw him once more—slumped against a bus stop on 7th Ave. His lips were white and his hair was twisted into funny little braids.

“Please,” I begged, as though this was all a game that he could stop playing at any time. “It’s late and cold out.”

He’d like to but he couldn’t, he said, polite as always. He was due to meet up with a good friend.

“I’m going to stay at the Chelsea!” he squealed, high out of his mind and filled with a childish delight that broke my heart.

They pulled him out of the river two days later. Apparently he had left a note rolled into a Starbucks thermos, but the police gave this to his parents, who sued me for harassment when I showed up at his funeral and demanded to see it. The judge dropped the case, but unfortunately, he couldn’t make them tell me what it said.


RIP, Baby B


ultrasparky

She said I could:



We were at Fitz’s place, waiting out the rain. Sterling showed off with some headstands. She brought her legs up easily, with two neat kicks. Fitz and I watched as her shirt became untucked. I had the same passing curiosity as when she got into her bikini at South Hampton and Puerto Rico. I stared at the muscles running up and down her small body, my gaze flitting from this to that until it ended up at the site of her missing fingers. I noticed how that hand was turned to the side, the remaining three fingers spread far apart in order to compensate, balance-wise.

Nice bra, Fitz said, referring to her torn and twisted sports thingy.

She came down immediately.

“Thanks”, she said as she stuffed her shirt back into her jeans. Her face was red from being upside down.

“Sterling, what the fuck. Why don’t you put your picture on the goddamn site?” I said.

“What?” Sterling asked. She was back on all fours with her head on the floor and her ass in the air, ready to kick up.

“I mean, you’re so fucking good looking.”

“It’s absolutely true,” Fitz chimed in. “You’re very pretty, darling.”

“Give me a break,” she said, dismissively. She never accepted compliments, especially if they were about her appearance. We watched as she kicked up again.

“They're dying to see what you look like,” I said, pulling at a frayed bit of upholstery on the armrest of my easy chair.

"Especially the ladies."

“Yes. They’d like to have an image to refer to when they use their vibrators,” Fitz said, crossing his leg and snapping his lighter in front of his cigar.

Sterling laughed and came out of the headstand. She sat on her heels and pushed her bleached bangs out of her face.

“They know what I look like. I took that picture of the Homie to show them.”

“C’mon, you don’t really think you look like some 25 cent toy figurine?”

“Of course I do--you even said it yourself. I got it out of the machine on Grahm and you said, Oh, shit, it’s a mini Sterling even before I took it out of the plastic bubble.”

“Yes, but I didn’t really mean that it looked like you.”

“I think what Sterling is saying is that she showed the people a picture of her plastic homie soul,”Fitz explained.

“Yeah,” Sterling said, emphatically. “And my hand was in it, too.”

I rolled my eyes.

“It’s your other hand that the people want to see, Sterling.”

“Oh, what the hell?” she said, standing up. She walked across the room and stood before me with her arms folded.

“Give me another cigarette.”

“Not until you let me take a picture of you.”

“C’mon, give me a cigarette first.” She leaned over and pinched my upper thigh, trying to feel for the pack.

I grabbed her by the wrist and held her off.

“Please? Why can’t I take a picture of you?” I said, in my best “good girl” voice.

“No!” she said, trying the same thing on the other side with her other hand, which I also grabbed and successfully held back.

“I’m still stronger than you,” I said.

That pissed her off. She grunted and heaved herself forward with her legs. After struggling for several minutes, she exhaled loudly and fell against me.

“Ha!” I said, pushing her off.

“OK,” she said, staring at me wickedly.

“You win.”

Fitz grabbed the camera from the bookshelf.

“I think right now would be great,” he said, fiddling with the buttons on the side of the camera. “With your face flushed and your hair tousled.”

“No,” Sterling said, staring deeply into my eyes.

“Not the face.”

“Why not, darling?” Fitz whined.

“I’m not ready. None of us are.”

“What are you talking about?” I said. “My picture’s there everyday!”

“Well, it’s not going to be my face instead,” Fitz said.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Sterling said, her eyes still pointed fixedly at mine, as though she were trying to hypnotize me.

“The picture will still be of me.”

She smiled and reached down and pulled off her shirt. I jumped and moved back in my seat.

(only a true friend knows how to turn the tables so quickly...)

She leaned over me--smiling, her eyes shining.

“It just won’t be of my face.”

oh man, just when I think, that’s it, fuck this super sized TV and its snotty-ass credit card thin remote, I flip to the nuttiest shit: thousands of pink and orange crabs wobbling down a steep cliff on their spindly, prehistoric legs. They looked like an invading alien army—I found them sickly fascinating, especially when the narrator pointed out the zillions of eggs hanging from each of their bellies. The pregnancies looked like gigantic wads of ear wax caked with sand, ready to fall off at any second in an unsightly clump. These lady crabs were sick and dehydrated from their long, dangerous journey. There were a couple of shots of them pausing on the cliff to dip their claws into puddles and thirstily suck the rainwater off the tips. Just beyond the cliff roared the ocean, where they needed to lay their eggs. Although they were land crabs, and couldn’t swim, they were bound by a cruel evolutionary trick to lay their eggs in the ocean.

(See man, you're not the only one who's shit was fucked from the get-go)

Anyway, the goal for these crabs was to get as close as possible to the breaking waves without getting dragged in by the tide. Needless to say, it was pretty dramatic. The camera showed the winners scurrying back towards the cliff, weighing less, free from instinct’s heavy hand. The losers were stuck in the surf, their beady little eyes (which were nauseatingly human, btw) flashed in pain, their ragged claws flailed about uselessly.

I was simultaneously thrilled and disgusted. I wanted the crabs to make it and lay their eggs and at the same time I wanted a great chemical blast to come and extinguish their repulsive, cockroachness from this earth forever.

Way up high in my la-z-boy I felt like the god of those crabs. I checked my omnipotent disposition in my reflection on the TV screen. I practiced looks of benevolance and scorn.

I flipped the channels and landed on a grainy black and white home video of a high school talent show. The caption on the bottom flashed “EMINEM”, followed by “1990”. There he was, sauntering up and down the stage wearing a plain, non-designer hoodie (the kind that collects those little dingleberries every time you wash it) and a black ski mask over his face. That was a fucking genius touch, let me tell you. Black face without the black face. His eyes were bulging out of his head. Spit rained out of his mouth. He looked like somebody you’d have to take an aluminum bat to. Or shoot with a silver bullet. Although the sound was piss-poor, you could still hear that he was dope.

I don’t care what your feelings are regarding The Great White Hope, party people. It’s beside the point whether you think he’s nice or not (personally, I think he is)-- the lesson for this Friday afternoon is that you’ve got to be more than hungry if you want to make it. You’ve got to be fucking RABID.

mmmmmmk?


flagrant drips silver foam when she writes.

The Line

Ten minutes ago, on the L TRAIN:

I stared, fascinated, at the red Virgin bag hooked around the yuppie’s fat thumb. After teasing me with a quick peek inside, he pulled out the CD, gently edging it out of the bag as though it was something alive and horribly delicate. His eyes turned glassy with pleasure as he held his purchase out before him. I strained and eventually made out the title, The Best of Johnny Cash. He removed the shrink-wrap in slow motion, like an ant tearing apart a bug. He picked and ripped, dropping the plastic shards back into the red bag, rocking back and forth on his Hush Puppy heels. I closed my eyes and pictured the waves above me as the train hurtled beneath the East River. I imagined all sorts of evil things about him, just for fun, but it didn’t give me my usual kicks. Meanwhile, in my headphones Belle and Sebastian sang “There is misery, in everything I see, and all the people on t.v… After tea when life begins again, they’ll be happier than me…”


mist web

The whole sick mess started when I used my Swiss army knife to carve “TRUEBOY” into the window of a Belgian commuter train.

I had never done anything like it before. The safety glass offered a gritty resistance—it was like cutting into the outer skin of a raw onion.

That was during the time in my life when I was off on the sidelines.

I was in school, where the horny old crustaceans thought I was so great. They wrote letters on my behalf and sent them off to other crustaceans.

Every door is opening for you, my father said, at some ridiculous holiday dinner. I remember that his expression was stupidly wistful—I snorted back a laugh, right in front of his face.

I couldn’t believe that this was the sort of thing that was supposed to make me happy.

There was something else—something gnawing at my insides.

It wasn’t writing but it wasn’t not writing.

It was like I was thinking up poems that would be the advertising for products that didn’t exist. But I still wasn’t exactly sure how they should go.

(I’ll take you down the only road I’ve ever been down)

It clicked into place when I finished the name on the window. There it was, a jagged rendering of something that was deep inside of me, yet somehow outside as well. The name seemed to float over the moving backdrop of yellow skies and telephone wires, the flat, single story factories, orange roofed suburbs and bilingual billboards. I don’t know where it came from, I don’t know how I thought of it, what chemical, contextual combination scored the bull’s eye…

…I’d had a single Chimay, I was listening to Belle and Sebastian, I was smoking a Gaulouise, it was a little after five, my shoes were untied…

TRUEBOY: It was the name of the person I wanted to be, yet at the same time feared. It was the name of a lazy rebel, the ultimate tomboy, the sweet-as-hell MC…

…the sweet-as-hell MC…

That was the moment when everything changed forever.



mott cromby

A lot of people were high on the train this morning. They wore wraparounds and had the visors of their caps pulled low, but they couldn’t fool me. I’ve got the knack. I guess that means I’d make a good mom, wtf.

It’s a perfect day, a perfect day for whateverfish…

Go ahead...be good to yourself...eat an extra lunch, eat an extra dinner...fill your iced coffee with real cream.

one love, NYC...

maybe you could use a laugh?

"Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened."--Thomas Hardy

everyone thinks that when they die, you'll be there to let them in

The Last

Pulling away from the 22nd Bay Parkway station

First there’s the cemetery—haphazard, endless

This is followed by the curving white monolith of an apartment building

That sticks out like bone over the exposed green of the playing fields.

Everything’s dulled by a deep set soot.

The river’s long since silted-up—the land around it bucked and wrinkled.

The Dutch were right to call it “broken”.

Brooklyn

The odor of food takes a long time to pass you by

Television antennas on thin silver rods

Are tilted towards Mars

While down below at the edge of the continent

There are cigarettes to soothe the weak.

Anything can happen. It’s funny that you mention vampires…the difference now is that I don’t go out hunting. I hold myself back, but they come to me nevertheless.

I saw this girl I used to shoot up with yesterday afternoon, on the L train. She got on at Bedford and got off at Union Square. She had the same dark hair and white skin— the same pretty hands. Only now they were clean. The nails were polished a bright red that I found jarring—her style used to be so indie rock. When it comes to fashion, eight years equals a thousand. The last time I saw her she was wearing a thin gray tank top stained with drops of the orange juice she’d vomited a few hours earlier. The force of her retching had popped a vessel in her left eye, causing the white parts to fill with blood.

She had been so skinny—her skin was tight junkie plastic that glistened with sickness. Her tits hung like sad sacks. You could see all her ribs. It was completely concave beneath her shoulders. A thin coat of anorexic fuzz covered her body.

The image I have is of her backing up flat against her bedroom wall, trying to get as far away as possible from the EMS guys as they struggled to lift her dead boyfriend’s body on to a creaking, clumsy gurney.

I remember thinking, “It’s just like in the movies,” as she closed her eyes and turned her head. All that was left was a scream—I could imagine it in my head and would have given anything to hear it out loud. I waited on the bed, high and patient with my arms wrapped around my head—all set to hide away from the blast of sound--but it never happened.

Her boyfriend’s name was Sean. Besides artsy movies and heroin, the main thing he liked to talk about was how much he wanted to die. He was the kind of guy who would come to with the bed covered in blood from inch long shards of glass shoved into his palms and have no memory of how they got there.

He’d been drinking all day when we scored. He fell asleep and threw up and didn’t sputter awake the following morning like the rest of us.

Death is as simple as that, sometimes.

Yesterday, on the train, I was pleased to see that the girl was plump and healthy—and although her face and arms were covered with scars, her skin was still china white. I think deep down, I always knew she’d be OK. She was a chameleon—she bought her ticket for the H train at TRUE's college, where she’d arrived as a blank slate from the Long Island suburbs. It wasn’t long before she traded in her V-neck sweater and Tiffany tennis bracelet for smoked-out, 2AM lit crit discussions. She borrowed the haughty tones of the pseudo intellectual, floppy haired boys who had their way with her in quick succession. Like many drug abusers she was terrible at taking drugs. The way she got so out of control made her the butt of our jokes. We pretended to put up with her and her silly stoned prattle, when the reality was that she had a lot of money and anyone with a lot of money had automatic membership into our little club.

After Sean died I took myself and my habit to Europe. I didn’t keep in touch. The girl transformed into something otherworldly in my mind. She was a character in a book—a plastic idol on the dashboard, a weeping mother Mary with melted blue tears. When she got up to get off the train I saw that her fitted black t-shirt said “Genesis” across the front in an iridescent, retro font. She had one of those expensive bottled juices in her hand and she was looking at the display on her phone. I stared into her face but she never felt the downward tug of my gaze.


asecretsmile

my soul in my hand

poor little me

party people are you with me where you at?

i'm telling you it's always the ones who annoy me, the ones who get under my skin...

challenges--they're the ones i feel like fucking.

(if i feel like fucking anyone)

sex is a game, it's all so tiring

i wish life could be a dirty dream

(sh-boom)

If I could open your eyes to the truth in the mud

If you would tell me I'm the only one that you fuck

Life could be a dream, sweetheart

(sh-boom)

(sh-boom)

on quiet nights like this...

i'd kill for a small sense of certainty

there's an ache in my lower gut that won't go away

maybe i'm dying

it would make sense--

my mind is filled with fantasies...

green smoke and blue fantasies.




i really like theartpepper's use of bold. i'm all about emphasis. when i wrote my thesis on heidegger i ended up using italics to differentiate between different uses of being that i was using in the same sentence. my flemish promoter flipped: whaaaht! he bellowed, you theeink that just by adding some i-talicks here and there like rose i-cing that you can make a valid phil-lew-sophical point? give me a break! i don't theeink i've ever seeeen something so LA-zy.

it's because i'm american, i told him, enjoying the comical effect of his eyes remaining bulged out like that. i helped myself to one of his belgas, lit-up and leaned back.

i'm always looking for the quick way out.

(there was a point to this story--something integral that i wanted to tell you, but it seems to have slipped from the no stick pan and exploded into egg white batter abstract expressionism all over the counter. sorry.)




izzlepfaff!

Last week in Puerto Rico...

The guy with the waxed head finally got out of the water and climbed gingerly upon the rocks. He picked up his blue hotel towel and wrapped it around his waist.

“Night,” he called out to us, his eyes bright with regret.

“Peace,” TRUE said. Then she muttered “idiot” under her breath. She held her cigarette over her head as she eased lower into the boiling, bubbling water. She watched eagle-eyed as Baldy made his way through the green and red tropical leaves that hung like a curtain around the hot tub. I heard the wet slap of his bare feet as he trotted down the steps to the wooden walkway below. Suddenly, I was struck by a profound sense of isolation. Time stopped; the water froze in place. It’s a feeling of loneliness that I only get when it’s the three of us—never when I’m all alone.

“So,” TRUE, said, and cleared her throat. Her demeanor had changed from friendly and chilled-out to cold and driven.

“I want us to pick up the pace,” she said, looking directly into my eyes. She blew a silvery gust of smoke over the top of the water.

‘You’ve wanted that for awhile,” Fitz said.

“Yeah, but it hasn’t happened.”

“That’s because you never follow you own rules,” I said.

“They’re not my rules, they’re Antonio’s. I learned by studying him.”

“Yes, yes. What are we going to do about Antonio?” Fitz asked. He yanked at his wet bangs until they came together in a perfect point over his head.

“Nothing,” TRUE said. “It’s not like that.”

“He’s a loser frat-boy magnet," I said, my voice shaking. "He’s got all those sycophants who are constantly sucking his dick in his comments…we can’t learn anything from him.”

“I agree,” Fitz said. “After all, we’re certainly not in the same league as celebrity Google searches.”

“That’s not his whole story and you know it,” TRUE said. She gave a resolute flick to her cigarette butt that shot it into the air like a rocket. The churning water left tiny blue and gold bubbles on her naked shoulders. I watched them pop, one by one.

“Antonio gets so many readers because he offers them a reliable product an average of three times a day. He’s got people constantly coming back for new shit. And he’s only one person! Folks come back to our site later in the day and most they’ll get is a new snide comment. We’d be fuckin top of the pops if the three of us posted as much as he does.”

“I don’t care how often he posts,” I said, dabbing my forehead with a towel. “Most of it’s pedestrian crap. He’s like some bad MTV show on endless repeat. Maybe it would be better if he did slow down and take more time with his writing.”

“He gives the people what they want.”

“But we were never about that. You’re the one who always emphasized quality over quantity.”

“Got to give us what we want,” Fitz sang, “Gotta give us what we need.”

“I think we can do both.”

“Our freedom of speech is freedom or death, we got to fight the powers that be…”

“Hey. C’mon, TRUE. You know how long it takes me to write something…Jesus Christ…”

“Well, it’s time to go faster.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“It is. All you have to do is stop worrying. You worry too much, Sterling.”

“Don’t take that condescending tone with me, sweetheart.”

“What? Hey…” she started coughing. Fitz passed her his Perrier.

“Fuck,” she said, after taking a long swig. Then she burped.

“Listen. All I’m going to say is shorter posts. Double-spaced. That’s the way to win. Treat it like newspaper copy.”

She pulled herself out of the water and perched on the edge. From where I was sitting it seemed like she was staring at her crotch.

“What the fuck?” she said, pulling at her bathing suit.

“What is it?” I asked.

“My goddamn pubes are already coming back. What’s up with that?”

“Everything grows faster in the tropics,” Fitz said, wisely.


simplySEX

I'm moving. Uptown, to a sprawling pad way beyond my meager means. It's all about posh isolation. I need to be good to myself: I'm wound-up tight like a cheap watch.


the visual feast that is quarlo

Everything in here is TRUE.

Further to what I said about what i'm looking for in a lover:

they should know how to act like a baby. i like a man who pouts and throws conniption fits.

as long as they're not about me.

it's good to be a baby during sex too.

slobbering and begging and wetting your pants.





garbage thoughts

i want to go to the roof

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eeerrrr

it's like autumn

--- Original Message -----
From: Jamie
Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2003 13:29:17 -0400
To: trueboy@graffiti.net
Subject: where are you?

> are you in New York?
> were you ever really in Puerto Rico?
> are you still?
>
> -Jamie
>



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I like to go fast.



I like cocaine and coffee, even though they make me sick.



I imagine myself going for a drive with you, out there, where you live.



Where you know the highways and all the little late night stores.



The places where you can disappear...

Rock Me Amadeus

The good thing about short term memory loss is that you'll remember whatever it is, eventually.


I like people who are distracted.

I like it if you have something else going on.

If you're oddly attractive, a creature of habit with perfect skin.

Noble in your darkness...

Quiet and lascivious and hollow.


verdancy

yeah motherfucker

and TRUE!

do us a favor, everyone (that sounds like it was said by some right cunt in a thick cockney accent). write an email about something interesting and send it to bobby at skullbolt@yahoo.com. i don't care if you don't know him. i don't know him. none of us do but that's hardly going to stop us.

(in case you weren't sure the three of us are like four star generals. every once in awhile we're invincible.)

i want him to take all these accounts of interesting things and do something with them. turn them into a movie or a blog or print them out and put them in a scrapbook or hang them on all the streetlights in town. maybe he can make a chain letter out of them, or maybe string bits of code in between the different emails and send the next killer virus out into the world. who knows, who knows. maybe the accounts themselves will prove to be what's interesting--the words, and not the thing they're trying to describe.

There's only a few bloggers I know who could pull that off. This is TRUE, now, btw. Fitz suddenly got up and is pacing in front of the door, I don't know whyy.

Hey write Bobby. I am. But you go first. Do it now. Don't fuckin put it off you lazy motherfucker.

skullbolt

food-on

this is one white boy who's had enough. we had to get inside. the heat was killing me. i lost my floppy rich bitch sunhat so my delicate scalp was completely exposed all afternoon. as a result there's not a thought in my head, bless me. occasionally there'll be the intimation of a thought, flickering like the sunlight on the surf for a few seconds before it's gone.

solid gone.

when i get back to NYC i'll fit right in with those musclehead chelsea boys who sit hunched over a copy of HX at The Big Cup, tracing beneath the words with a meaty finger as they struggle to sound aloud the syllables to the personals ads.

in related news, my diet is fucked to hell, loves. besides the mind-numbing, belly stretching quantities of booze i managed to guzzle, this trip's been about pasta, swiss chocolate and all the fried food i can stuff my face with. today, as a punishment, the poolside fries that i guiltily nibbled upon were slowly recooked in my gut as i napped at the shore like a beached whale. i kid you not. when i woke up my tummy was so bloated that for a second i thought i was wearing one of those rubber innertubes. after writhing about for an hour in god forsaken, toe-curling pain, i managed to take a shit that was the exact texture and consistency of mashed potatoes. except it was black, of course.

ahhh! the perils of the tropics!



speaking of food and death...

The basketball players are like me: they don't leave the hotel. Everything we need is right here. Things come in and out on shiny carts pushed by porters. If need be they also come through the back door but in the end it's the same thing. In and out. Consumption and creation. A big hotel is like a biosphere or some other kind of autonomous environment experiment. You get to watch things grow, flourish, exist flatly and fall apart--eventually or all at once.

6AM, Sunday Morning: I was having a drunken breakfast on the terrace in front of the "fantasy" pool. A famous basketball player covered with tatoos and glistening with coco butter went on about his evening's exploits to a table which included myself and a pair of idiot twin italian brothers.

"So bitch wanted to suck my cock, she got on her knees and was like, please, please, please let me suck your cock, and i said, bitch no way you're suckin my cock. You're dome piece is just too damn ugly to look upon! I was like, maybe I'll fuck you up the ass though. A little back door delivery. And you know I'm like fuck that condom shit, y'all. I like that shit raw. Bitch gets pregnant, it's like, too bad bitch."

He spit into his coffee and knocked over what was left of his cristal. Meanwhile, the italian brothers gasped, 'yeah yeah yeah' and laughed like monkees. I looked at them looking up at him in love and admiration and I realized this was one of those times when I'm just one of the guys and not thought of as something to be fucked, at least not at the moment.

i'm the boy, who's learned to enjoy, invisibility...

I leaned back, scratched my left tit and watched a scrawny pigeon with no feathers on its neck poke around behind the basketball player's chair. Talk about liberation.

maybe if i shut my eyes, the trouble will be split between us...

oh, how we love pretending--the three of us, banged up and cashed out after a five day party, having lived out our dirty dreams with a cast of sly eyed cabana boys in crisp polo shirts and bowling hats, brown skinned beauties covered with blue-white droplets of shimmering pool water, high rolling NBA players down for the Pan Am games, broad shouldered mafiosas from staten island...everyone, anyone, the entire hotel knows us, we give pounds on the back under the chandeliers, fitz buys bottles of don perrion three at a time at 250 a pop, he hits up the cab drivers for drugs and plays thousand dollar hands of blackjack until the casino closes.

proximity brings out the differences between us: as soon as we got into the room fitz and TRUE unlocked the mini bar, while i stood there with the laminated card, exclaiming over the prices...

my daddy would have beat the shit out of me if i ever even THOUGHT of doing that, i remarked as they twisted off the plastic latch.

too wired to sleep, i spent last night in the marble lobby, sipping tea and listening to the white noise rush of the manmade waterfall just outside the door. the tree frogs chirped mournfully while a moustached security guard shifted his weight and checked his watch. suddenly, i heard a familiar laugh. TRUE came caraousing through with two lean black guys. she walked between them-- her arms thrown around their shoulders in a familiar, flirtatious manner. they were on their way to the tacky club with the blue neon doors, the one TRUE dissed all day long but kept ending up at every night nonetheless. i watched her tan face light up with laughter as she turned from side to side to listen to the two men. beneath the eager ring of their voices was the unmistakeable low buzz of lust. they were natives, she was a tourist--everything was scripted under the grand old title "having fun". i gave a pitiful little wave but she didn' t see me. i thought about calling out to her but decided against it. in a second she was gone and the lobby was quiet. the security guard checked his watch again.

i had that empty, anxious feeling, like at the end of a pivotal scene in a play, when the dramatic bolt has been tightened as far as it will go and everything and everyone is strained and creaking under the pressure.

there was no curtain--the endless banner of time kept unrolling in plain view, even though there was nothing to look at save for the glistening shine of the spotless floor.

...the world is a stage and the stage is a world...

...at first light i sank like a lead anchor into the powdery volcanic sand... i stared up at the parasailers hovering like angels in the green blue sky and found myself cursing the sea, and then myself, both for no real reason other than the fact that i could.