acid zar

I dreamt I had a Cadillac,

I had a blue pen that wrote in red ink.

My bones were eaten full of holes and I carried a pound of flesh around the house in my Nike bag.

In other words, it was a sloppy ass double dip trip.

Please excuse me today because my brain is filled with hay.

I’m sitting here staring at my lighter like it’s a work of art.

Here’s a tip—Vanilla Sky is NOT an acid friendly flick.

Shit had me under the bed like Brian Wilson.

I am not the walrus.

I am not the lizard king.

That’s from another time, pancake.

A long hair, tight leather pants time with pop bliss and cars made out of real metal

Those tear-drop dreams are dried up for good.

Welcome to the Twin Peaks afterworld.

Barf in a bottle and toss it out on the endless green sea.

I was never the Acid Zar.

That was Sterling’s name, a long time ago.

Way back in 8th grade, before blogs and BRANDTRUEBOY.

Before Belgium and Brooklyn and beer bellies.

My girl used to do a hit for breakfast. Then she did her hair, moussing the hell out of it to get it standing straight up.

On the days she actually made it to school, she’d wander aimlessly, holding onto the lockers and laughing her head off.

She’d show up for tests and get zeros.

She wore unlaced combat boots with no socks. She was the first to sag her jeans super low, showing off her men’s underwear.

She muttered things like ‘mashed potatoes’ and ‘I got the fever’ over and over under her breath.

She’d sneak up on girls doing their hair and hiss, “The better you look, the more you see.”

Years later I saw that shit in a book. No lie, Honeypie.

She spray painted ‘Acid Zar’ all over town. There was that big pink one on the back of the A&P that we passed everyday in the bus. One day she showed up at my place with a can of white spray enamel and tagged the cinderblock wall in my basement. I held back from screaming “Stop! My parents are going to kill me!” because I wanted to be cool, and I thought that if the school acidhead told people I was cool then maybe that would start a chain reaction.

When she was finished with her tag she hung her head upside down and sprayed the enamel on her hair.

girlsarepretty

there's so much more i want to tell you, about all the things Jules and I said that night when we rode the orange train. about boccacio and the decameron and boys and girls who do girls who do boyfucks. the dreams i've had where everything is filed away and compartmentalized and i love to hide, but not to deal. not to steal.

i want to talk about goethe and how this walkman looks like an egg. this keyoard might be dush.

i'm nearly reformed so don't say that you weren't warned.

a little thing makes such a difference

yoferrealman

This morning I was restless, so I decided to snoop around the house. I like finding shit. The owner is in Spain, on the set of a movie. She's an assistant to a movie producer. Assistant Producer, I think is her title. She and I go back. She made us a set of keys and even scribbled down some names on a piece of paper. We should call so and so for a gig on a set.

"Or better yet, just show up at this office looking smart," she said, copying an address from her Palm.

Real work, legit work.

I'm chewing up the paper she wrote that shit on as we speak.

The nicer people are, the less I can accept it.

Fuck it. When my earnings are gone, Jules will probably be gone with it.

I'm not moving shit and I don't plan on it. Hear me Mr. Officer?

I know you're out there.

Anyway Jules is already getting gigs at all the clubs.

It's only a matter of seconds before she signs up on a fat payroll, so I don't worry about her.

As for myself, I'm not too ambitious.

I'll hide out in this attic. Live off of hob-nobs.

I'll call out loud, "what's the frequency, kenneth?" as I read Auden and make collage art with shit I find lying around.

there's a lot of shit lying around

that brings me back to what I started out saying

about how this morning i was poking around the place

jules wasn't home, it was must me and the bbc

I was wearing a silk purple smoking jacket that i found in a hallway closet.

I smelled like death

like i'm so sarry

not funny i know

i went through all the shelves and cabinets and found nothing interesting

there was a lot of space with nothing in it

like she'd only half moved in

just for the hell of it, I started going through one of Jules still unpacked suitcases.

This one was all winter clothes on top.

On bottom were papers, magazines.

Photocopied philosophical texts.

Gadamer, Heidegger, Kant. In German.

What looked like a fax copy of a Tennessee Williams' play.

Folded-up maps of Holland. Little wooden boxes from Africa, wrapped partially in newspaper.

I pulled at a corner of the paper--to rip off a piece for my collection--when a tiny square of paper fluttered out of the fold and onto the floor.

From it's fall I could tell that it was colored green on one side and white on the other.

It landed green side up. A small tab of acid.

The design was a simple green oval.

green monster, i thought to myself, knowing that was probably not what it was called.

not here, not for years

Jules wasn't really into acid, she probably packed this by mistake.

fuck it i'm not really into it either but this seemed like fate

i took it upstairs and thought about it

acid can go either way

and i was too sick to get naked and run around in the woods

which is my preferred tripping scenario.

also i'm alone

who knows when Jules would be back?

I stood by the window listening to cars pass by.

fuck it i thought.

that was almost an hour ago

now these tiny blue windows are popping up over the keyboard while I type

an illuminated manuscript

awesome and bright

Almost Sober

caughtwithweed


Jules is taking care of me while I’m sick. I’ve had fevers and a river of thick snot running through my head. I maintain that the infection began in my bladder, after holding it so long that night with the border police. Up until yesterday my piss was still coming out brown. I brought Jules in to look, as she didn’t believe there was anything seriously wrong with me.

“Not brown—I’d say the color is more of a monkey shit orange,” she said, peering down into the toilet before pulling the cord to flush it. The expression on her face was of an exaggerated boredom.

“Look, sweetheart, it’s just the drug residue coming out.”

For some reason this caused me to flinch. I held onto the sink for support. She clucked and wrapped her long arms around me.

“You’re my little crystal ashtray, getting rinsed out in the sink.”

“I’m rattled by the rush,” I sang, running a hand through my hair. It stuck up wildly after days of being slept on.

Shit’s been bone dry since we got to the UK. The cops got our number; I don’t want to take the risk. Therefore, no coke, no speed, no weed (OK, well a little of that). For strictly medicinal purposes, we’ve got bourbon (cuts through the phlegm), muscle relaxers (my arthritis has got my shoulder muscles pulled like a trigger) and Demerol (I have a hard time sleeping in England).

I stay rolled up in the covers, spending my days sweating it out on the big metal bed in the attic. Jules brings me green tea, DVDs and my papers. She calls me her little pancake and tells me to be good. Then she heads out for the pub.

Goddamn these fucking crooked ass rafters. Goddamn these fucking flip-up windows. Actually, I kind of like the way they open, I just wish they weren’t streaked with bird shit.

I don’t know why I’m here. I keep waking up thinking I’m in Amsterdam. South London feels like a dream to me. Patches of bright green grass wink up at me when I look down out the window, instead of the deep, blue glistening Amstel that I’m used to. Everything appears wet, even the concrete. I hear children playing in the streets and while I understand what they’re saying, their accent makes them strange. In England, nothing is what it seems, everything that should be familiar and warm is tilted slightly in a way I don’t understand. The people are cold, I find there’s something grimly purposeful about them. Just before I got sick, I took a walk down Portobello Road. It was sunset, vibrant patterns of early spring light fell all around me. This city is so old I thought, becoming somehow emotional at the sight of a satellite dish sitting fat and awkward on a rooftop. In the next moment a wave of loneliness threatened to knock me down. I pulled up my collar against the damp and the cold. I looked people in the eye as I passed, but very few looked back.

At least on the continent they showed a little curiosity.

It’s funny because all my life I’ve tried so hard to blend in and when I finally do I want to be noticed.

The last time I was here there weren’t these Starbucks all over the place. That’s how long it’s been since I dare come back.

When we pulled in at Victoria, I lit a cigarette and spoke enigmatically to Jules:

“Well, here we are, the so-called scene of the crime.”

“Which one?” Jules shot back, snatching my cigarette to light her own off it. Those were the last smokes we’d have before getting pulled aside at immigration.

835

There are so many things I'd like to say: I just can't get them together

I'm a star beaten

by heavy beats,

Garage Label

i made a blue and white sticker, smack my bitch

shoot the pitcher

fucking Mets, Navy dress

Your face is a mess (tremble, tremble)

no one has a clue...

...BRANDTRUE!



It's a lie that I have the letters "B R O O" tattooed onto the knuckles of one hand and "K L Y N" on the other.

I don't have any tattoos;

I don't have anything pierced except my ears.

Your own hall of fame--closed on weekdays, shut for good

raymi,

is that me with the cigarette?

trying simultaneously to look and shield my eyes

from the lit-up krakatoa of your return

(blow the lid off this mountain)

or maybe i'm the gaze of the camera eye itself

steady on the action

an unblinking

device

(and yr thoughts they start a-turnin'
lessons that yr learnin')

no one has a clue



while i've got the chance I'd like to say thank-you,

quentin tarantino

a white boy using the n-word,

first cinematographer of how a high really feels

thank-you, moby

we love the innovator failures

I'm feeling so real

thank-you, andy kaufman

for mighty mouse

and thank-you, the rock band pavement

for everything

especially your glass house.

Fuck it.

It occurred to me today, somewhat randomly.

“Fuck it, we can still make it.”



BRANDTRUEBOY can still take this shit.

We can have a good time with large crowds.

I could go back to NYC

And pick up where I left off with the graffiti.

I stood topless in front of the mirror while I thought this.

The ace bandage was off

My tits were out

I had Jules crying on my shoulder,

Pulling on me, prostrating herself.

“I need my money,” I told her. I put on my new yellow meshback baseball cap, purposely cocking it at a ridiculous angle.

The light in the room changed. My reflection darkened.

An Aphex Twin remix of St. Etienne was on the stereo in the other room. I felt hidden cameras filming me for the summerblockbuster.

(oh, blockbuster. Oh, block)

“I’m not going to give it back,” Jules said, teary eyed but defiant. “You won’t leave without your money.”

She was right, of course.

anti

raymi

jamie

Ben Gay

I think I fucked up my bladder by holding my piss for the nine hours they had us captive at border control. I was freaking out that if I let a drop go, they'd send it straight from the toilet to a test tube, where god knows what they'd find.

Towards the end my abdomen was like a little balloon over my pants. I lifted my shirt so Jules could take a peak.

"It's those cheddar crisps from last night," she whispered. "All that salt makes you retain water."

"Don't say that word!"

"What word?" she teased, as she pressed a long manicured finger against my belly.

I slapped her hand away. A guard turned in our direction with a raised eyebrow.

"Don't get angry at me," she hissed. "You have so much poison in your pipes I bet you haven't had a proper leak in years."

A.R.E. Weapons

I want to apologize to everyone who was checking for me last night

Sorry Sterling. Sorry Fitz. Sorry World.

I was up and ready to do that chat shit, but I thought I’d have a little somethin’ somethin’ right before and that turned out to be a mistake.

You ever have a smoke and the second it fills your lungs your mouth gets this chemical taste in it and a signal goes off (quick, the yellow phone!) and you’re like, “oh, I shouldn’t have smoked that, I really really really shouldn’t have smoked that…”

I had to lie down. My legs twitched uncontrollably, like those of a beetle stuck on a pin. I kept wringing my hands, pulling the hell out of them as though that would get the evil out.

And there is evil, party people. We all doubt it, because the very nature of this evil is to make us believe that all we have to worry about is the passing of time, (if I do everything right, I’ll be safe) the petty obligations and stupid preoccupations of one day flowing into the next. The evil makes us dutifully fill out entire calendars of days with the promise that we’ll be magically flushed forward into some vague thing called the future.

Party people, open your eyes and get out of your head.

There is no future. There’s only this breath.

There’s only this accidental heartbeat.

Ask yourself, is this the life I want—right now, in this moment?

Ask yourself before your thoughts are hopelessly scattered,

Like white pebbles shot out from under spinning wheels

On one of these majestic English driveways.

i'm on the run the cops got my gun and right about now it's time to have some...

The invite said fags and queens only. No natural girls, no excuses. What bullshit. Jules greased back my hair with French coconut pomade and helped me glue on a goatee. She put a little liner under my eyes and took some Polaroids. The pictures seemed to inspire her, she inhaled deeply with her eyes closed, holding the air for at least ten seconds before exhaling grandly. She opened her eyes and cast a disparaging look around the dingy room, as though she’d expected to find herself somewhere else. Her critical gaze ended up in my crotch. I crossed and uncrossed my legs.

“Honey, you’re going to need to pack with something a little bigger if you want to get past the door.”

Just then there was a knock on the door. I got that sinking feeling, as though there were angels watching over me.

“Politie! Toegankelijk Naar de Portier!

“Jules,” I whispered.

Jules rammed her cigarette in her mouth and walked calmly across the room. She summoned up that man strength from way down deep and pulled the immense mahogany bookshelf away from the wall, revealing a gap between the floorboards and the wall.

“Go get the shit.”

I ran to the bedroom and grabbed my duffel bag. I grabbed the three remaining tennis balls stuffed with coke baggies.

“Hello!” I heard the cop call out as he rattled the door handle.

I ran back into the living room and dropped the balls in the hole. They bounced around like crazy down there in the dark before coming to a stop. Jules braced herself to push the shelf back.

“Hold on,” I said.

I took the iced-out TRUE medallion off my neck and let it fall. It winked back up at me from where it landed on the dusty black floor of the boiler room. I grabbed an overstuffed ashtray and dumped it in after it. The butts and ash rained down and snuffed out the sparkle.

“I’m some boy you picked up. Name’s Jamie. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he won’t ask for ID.”

Jules nodded. “Jamie,” she said. She was all business.

“OK. I’m ready,” I said, and helped her push.

myshitdontstink

i hope i die before i get old

fuck this shit, fuck you all. i'm not even gonna tell you where i am, maybe i'm in l.a.yme (r) maybe i'm right across the room from you in phoebes, in brooklyn, drinking a fucking soy chai. maybe i'm smoking shit in the boogie down (south bronx, south south bronx). i could be cruising 8 mile, the fuckin pimp slappin female eminem (nah, i don't think so) or i could be sleeping in a puddle in the center of baghdad, my hearing blown out, saying raps under my breath and imagining other worlds far away from the army, posting made-up stories on blogger. (you're jingling baby. go 'head baby)

fuck everyone tryin to be a big shot, tryin to act like they know what time it is. fuck those vice boys. mama said canuck you out. fuck the pundit blogs, those close-to-being-middle-aged fucks with flabby arms and bushy facial hair who sound like they're typing with their dick, blessing us with a few milky pearls dripping from their superior consciousness. fuck you i already went to college.

it's afrika bambaataa's b-day.

he and his friends were so smart, they invented a new form of art.

hip-hop was born in parks by the river.

it was born out of love

in community centers and on cardboard boxes

under the neon lights of Times Square

What have you and you're friends created? What the fuck have you come up with?

Are you out there protesting the war, getting in everyone's face

and then driving off in your car?

You think everything's so fucking black and white, what the fuck do you know about violence?

What the fuck do you know about running towards the grey cloud,

the disaster scene

fucking ground zero

everyone running the other way

i get on the back of some kid's BMX

all of us looking up

eyes wide open not getting it

a feeling of unreality made us strangely nonchalant

the boy made figure eights on the bike

i didn't say anything

he was zoning out, unsure whether to go backwards or forward

it looked like the end of the world up there

a guy behind me muttered "get em get em" under his breath

when a row of fighter jets screeched over our heads

it was the only sign of emotion

that strange dust washed everything out of us

for me all that was left was a never ending tickertape in my mind

the same thing repeated

over and over

it read:

"sterling's somewhere in there i've got to find her

my best friend's in there i've got to find her"

i think war is when you stop thinking

your mind is shackled by the gravity of the situation

something else takes over

like during my blackouts

i live through hours

sometimes days

and i don't remember a thing

(i was central, i lost control)

i swear i don't remember a thing.

whatever that means.



sumo pop

We're the renegades of the atomic age.

And it's the atomic age of the renegades.


TRUEBOY never softens it.

I don't make it easy on you.

That's because I want to build something here.

Maybe with your help

Mr. Only Fierce

Hold off on that car

and buy a kingdom instead

a blog enterprise

for us by us

(rub your titties if you love hip-hop)

fuck selling out

fuck the 9 to 5s

i can't work for someone else

The future is upon me. Several years of partying have steeled me. Fuck all of you out there who don't know what drugs really are about. The fucking night vision that they give you. You need to have been around the block more than once or twice to start getting that kind of high.

I'm a black tailed rat, racing on all fours across the tracks of the evening train.

(and we'll kiss, as though nothing can fall)

Totally disconnected from reality, air born, laced-up. Fuck it, we're ready. Let's travel six heads deep down this highway. Let's leave the centuries and customers behind us. I want to return to year one, to an untold wealth of wisdom, the playground of the inner shining idiots.

listen to "new age" by the velvet underground

the live version if you can

then some public enemy

(beat is for sonny bono)

(beat is for yoko ono)


(beat is forever)


kidgod

Tonite the Stars Reduce Us Back (BRANDTRUEBOY=Murder)

Gun in the corner

Gun in the store

Steal me that gun, baby

Cuz we got to SCORE

At the gay bar

gay bar

Late nights I spend at the gay bar, with Jules and her posse.

I’m the only American and the only one who claims to be straight. Sterling gave me shit about it, because I’m dating a drag queen, but I’m like, what the fuck she still has a dick and she likes to use it.

Americans always get suspicious when a person doesn’t exactly fit their expectations. Europeans are much more likely to go with the flow. Jules’ posse sees me dressed like a boy and they don’t bat an eye. They ask me where I got my black on black Yankees cap, or my vintage Levis. They call me TRUEBOY and don’t dare disrespect me with the hated question.

“So, what’s your real name?”

“C’mon, you can tell me…your name can’t really be…”

Listen up, party people…I am who I am. I’m who I’ve decided to be.

(I’m the boy, who’s learned to enjoy, invisibility…)

I like the gay bar. I like walking in with Jules’ fabulous posse and I like all the stiff drinks I get for free. I like the commotion and cacophony of Dutch and German being spoken around me. I sit hunched over with my notebook, puffing on a spliff and trying to remember not to take my pulse every five minutes. Meanwhile Jules makes her rounds.

Recently, I’d been catching looks from a delicate looking baby dyke with a crew cut and brand new black and white Converse All-Stars. She was American, it was written all over her blank, well-meaning face, just as I’m sure it’s written all over mine. She had that art school vibe--straight out of RISD or Coopers Union or some shit like that. She’d come to Europe to be an artist, like thousands before her. I hated her for that--the sickeningly sweet brand of optimism that brought her here. I hated her gadgety brightly colored American jacket and her chirpy, “Yeahs?” and “Oh, reallys?”, as she sat at a table with students from the University.

I hated her so much I couldn’t help myself from constantly shooting looks back at her, just to see how reprehensible she really was with her American Camels and her Asian style tattoos.

Last night, she finally came over. Jules’ crowd could barely suppress their mocking, throaty laughs as they sat up tall in their stools and squinted through the smoke to watch. Jules herself was on the other side of the bar, keeping track of every movement I made.

“Hey,” the girl said. “I’m blah blah.”

Her voice was bright and clear like a bell.

When I didn’t respond, she gamely continued, “Watcha writing?” an inevitable question given the presence of the notebook. I shifted in my stool and bit down on my bottom lip.

“Don’t bother, I’ve already sized you up,” I muttered, without raising my head.

“Excuse me?” the girl said.

I was silent for an uncomfortable minute, before responding, “How do you want this to go—what’s your plan--your weapon of choice? I can already tell you that if it’s anything other than alcohol you’re barking up the wrong goddamn tree, chillymost.”

The girl was taken aback. “You want a drink?” she asked. “I was just about to offer…”

“Yeah-yeah, that’s the ticket. We’ll sit right here, have a few drinks and you can oohh and ahhh over me being an MC. If they’re the right drinks I might even drop a rhyme or two for you. They can be some of mine, from this here notebook,” I flipped rapidly through the pages, “Or they can be someone else’s—a verse from a hit fucking song, I doubt you’ll know the difference. Even if you do actually own a few hip-hop albums you’re probably a total lightweight who will be so drunk that you won’t even try to understand what I’m saying. Not that it really matters--the cadence of the waterfalling words will seal the deal nonetheless, and you’ll hurry me back to your place to fuck.”

The girl stood there, too astonished to move. I heard someone rapidly translating my words into Dutch behind me.

“We’ll go to your student digs to be among the ironical hanging hippy tapestries, the retro shag throw rugs and the second hand coffee table coated with layers of candle wax. We’ll get high on your cheap ass grass with Ani Difranco playing on the 3 Cd Aiwa, staring at each other and trying hard not to think and to just let go and give in—two things we should have done a long time ago. Inevitably you will have a lot of books, incense, artsy black and white photographs in metal frames, and the requisite black t-shirt or shirts strewn over a chair. Maybe there will be posters of Rosie the Riveter and Gay Activism slogans from the eighties on the wall. The three Queer M’s: Mapplethorpe, Madonna, Morrissey. Or torn argyle socks and baby blue boxer shorts rolled in a ball in the corner, from your last fuck. Stale donuts on the counter, high-end shopping bags in the corner…whatever…there might be a crack pipe still smoking on the yellow linoleum. Anything, there can be anything up in your apartment but I’ll tell you already that I’ve seen it all before and you’ll have to do better than that.”

The girl didn’t know what to say. Her eyes were wide and her forehead lined. She took a step back, frowned, and looked around her. The giggling, chattering cliental immediately turned inward, like a row of shutter panels pulled closed.

“So,” she said, her voice trembling with a mixture of fear and anger. “This is how you get your kicks—putting down a nice girl like me for the amusement of all your friends, here.”

I leaned forward and grabbed her wrist.

“Oh, no,” I hissed, just loud enough for her to hear. “These aren’t my friends, love. I care two shits about any one of these losers. I was merely fast-forwarding through the painfully predictable future hours you were proposing we spend together.”

“I didn’t propose shit to you, you fucking asshole,” she spat, wrenching her hand free.

“Really, my favorites are the ones who want to take a picture of me,” I went on, my heart pounding. “The stiff and the bored—they need evidence. They need something to put in a scrapbook for when they’re married and their twats are dried up and big as Hefty bags from all the puppies they squeezed out.”

“Fuck off,” the girl said and walked away.

“I love it when they say, ‘I think it’s so great that you’re breaking down these boundaries, that you’ve chosen this as the way to express yourself.’ Well let me tell you something about rapping, I didn’t chose it, baby—it chose me,” I called out. By now the girl was already on her way out the door. The bar buzzed and clucked in her wake. I caught Jules’ gaze from across the room: steady, unimpressed as always.

For a few seconds the girl was framed in the doorway, cast in half-silhouette by the streetlights outside. I watched as she ran her hand over her nearly bald head— for just a second, I found myself imagining how that soft baby hair would feel against my inner thighs. She had an ass on her too. A glare shot off a passing truck and reflected directly into my eyes, forcing me to turn away. When I looked back the doorway was empty.

pepsi lover

foundmagazine

Jules woke up from a nightmare, gasping for air.

"I was frozen--I looked down and my body had turned to stone. I was a sculpture in somebody's fucking garden. I screamed out, 'Somebody save me, I'm not real! I'm already dead!' "

I didn't know what to say so I ran to the kitchen and poured a glass of water. When I came back, Jules was sitting up and smoking a cigarette.

"What's that?" she said.

"It's water," I said, holding out the glass.

"Water! You know I never drink any of that. It comes out of the sky."

She ashed in the glazed ceramic ashtray on the nightstand, the one with the mountain of white butts piled-up like lies.

"Sweetheart," she said. "What I really need is a Pepsi."

Let me tell you these muscle relaxers are working some magic shit on me. The invisible vise is loosening its hold on my skull and I can look all the way over my shoulder for the first time in years. It makes me wonder—how many of my problems that I assume are psychological are actually physical? It’s my fucking faulty genetics, man. I've always suspected that it's my bad blood and brittle, weak ass bones that are holding me back from true happiness.

Thank god for drugs. Of course there are side effects to popping over 2 grams of this shit a day. My pee has turned an unnatural fluorescent yellow. It smells like crab apples taste. Also, there are permanent pins and needles tingling up and down the right side of my body. I can’t feel my pinky and ring finger unless I rub the hell out of them. I play a game on the tram in which I stare and stare at my hand in my lap until I convince myself that it’s not mine. I look objectively at the fingers, the curves of the nails and the shape of the knuckles, thinking, what a weird ass looking hand that is.

Another effect of the pills is a feeling of temporal displacement. I’m out at sea, lost in the past and the future, while real life plays out in real time on the distant beach. I grip my icy elbow and close my eyes.

(I see the shoreline, I see those whitecaps)

When the floating is really deep I find myself thinking about Fitzcarraldo. Not so much about our recent fight, when he hacked into my system and snooped around my files and fucked around with my blog shit. Rather, I’ve been thinking back, way back to seven years ago when we met at Oxford. It was October, the day of the fog. Fitz and I happened to be standing next to each other on Magdalen bridge when it descended from the sky. It was a thick-ass cloud, threatening as hell, unfurling in banners glowing yellow and gray in the hot pink light of the setting sun. We watched, dumbfounded, as the fog tendrils uncurled around steeples and spires and fell across building facades like locks of hair loosened from a bun. The bridge emptied out as people scurried this way and that. I was rocking an old school Jets varsity jacket--I remember looking down and seeing that the white leather of the arms were completely soaked. The busses and the cars slowed down to a stop as the traffic lights blinked a faint turquoise through the haze. People stumbled down the narrow streets, holding one arm out for balance and swatting at the air with the other.

At one point I took a few steps to the side, not seeing that a person was still standing there, and stopped just short of crashing into him. I looked up and saw a shock of white blonde hair. Hands pressed on my shoulders.

“Hello there,” the apparition said. His accent was American with a hint of something else.

I tried to say hello but to my embarrassment I ended up sneezing instead. Not once or twice but five or six times in a row, quick and hard.

“Goodness! Poor Dear!” he exclaimed, and pulled a monogrammed handkerchief from his suit pocket. I noticed a large ruby ring on his pinky finger. His nails were impeccably manicured. His wide forehead was furrowed with concern.

“Let’s get you inside,” he said. “There’s a small boite just around the corner. I was just headed there for a pint.” He motioned to the other side of the bridge, already obscured by a wall of white.

“What’s that smell?” I managed, as I fought the urge to sneeze. “The fog smells like some kind of chemical. Something familiar,” I said, and then I sneezed again as I allowed him to put his arm around me and steer me through the nothingness.

“It’s a sort of acidic humidity,” I said, pressing the handkerchief over my face.

“Yes, I was just thinking the same thing,” he said. I looked up and saw a mischievous, knowing look in his eye.

He gave me a half-smile, the first of thousands that I’d receive over the years.

“It smells like men’s cum--the same smell concrete gives off just before it’s going to rain.”


groovy-apple

post-atomic

Last night, Jules announced that we should leave Amsterdam with a bang. “We need to get on the tear it up trail,” she declared. We were in a secret café called Luckymothers. I slumped in the seat like a rag doll. It was eight o’clock and I’d already taken my entire ration of drugs for the evening. Jules squeezed open the top of the stiff, lime green German envelope and saw that all of the pills were gone.

“You’ll have to learn how to save, my darling,” she scolded gently, as she tapped the envelope and sprinkled the remaining pill dust into her koffie verkeerd.

“The world’s cookie jar doesn’t have a bottomless pit.”

“Fuck the world,” I said, slobbering on my new nylon jacket.

audblog audio post

junkiebikes

Party People,

I need to get fucked up when I want to write some of this shit for you guys because it’s too fucked up to think about for that long otherwise. Deep down I’m a slow, thoughtful person; I’d be a little Buddha if not for all the shit that leaves me shaky shake like a beetle pierced through on a silver pin.

A flurry of emails from Sterling. Here’s a piece of one:

“Hey TRUE, remember the epiphanies of last summer? Remember all those things you decided? What happened to not getting drunk anymore? To getting yourself onto a schedule? I thought you were going to start by doing 45 minutes of rigorous reading a day. Remember, we were in the garage and you had The Phenomenology of Spirit under your arm, and you were saying, ‘I finally feel old enough for this.’ We went upstairs and listened to Young and Hungry lay down some Tricky vocals over that looped Neptune snippet he was obsessed with—the one that was like the satisfying click of a car door closing. Over and over, images of luxury cars, shiny, shiny, shine-on. I was messing around by the window with the bandanna on my head, being thuggish, rapping in Spanish--and shouting ‘Colors! Colors!’ like Ice T...”

Last summer was a thousand years ago, old girl. All the cells in my body were different then.

Here in Europe I don’t have time to “do rigorous reading” or “concentrate on a text”.

This is the New Age, Sterling, just like you wanted…

A new age in which I wake up and there’s work to do, straight away. I’ve got to wolf down a runny egg and toast and maybe a sip or two of Pernod before stripping naked and ensconcing myself in the bathroom with the scale and the baggies. Then it’s time for the car to pick me up and take me to Oosterpark to sell some {“that’s that shit”}, then I come back via tram, checking on the women in the sunlight with their shopping bags and purses. I push play on a mix and stand in the bathroom door for hours while Jules puts on her makeup, then I have to go around taking my pulse because I think I’m having a heart attack, then I’ve got to stumble around making a t-shirt and getting dirt and tea stains all over it in the process (sorry, whoever that ends up going to!) not to mention the cookie crumbs on the hardwood floor, the one I keep sweeping in a maniacal act of complete futility. Gingerbread cookies and toast with cream cheese—that’s my diet these days. That which escapes the garbage is eventually ground down into a fine layer of dust, like the bits and pieces of skin we shed all over, invisible except to dogs, who can see it through their noses.

Thesedaysthesedays.


anti

i'm disgusting when i drink

For a short while there, in England, Fitzcarraldo and I were best friends. He was gay but we started fucking anyway. This was right before he got his name, but I’ll refer to him as Fitz, to make things easier. Our first fuck was on December 5th 1995, in Oxford. Sterling was still in the States. She knows about this but not everything. She knows something's missing, she's been knowing that. Anyway, the student house where we lived threw one of its impromptu parties. We blasted Orbital and Annie Lennox remixes and got plastered on Victory Gin. I was so drunk that I came up with a theory that gin was originally a secret weapon developed by British spies. It went down as easy as water: you could drink an entire liter and it wouldn’t hit you until three hours later, at which point you unceremoniously said everything that came to mind before the lights went out. The last thing I remember I was sitting on the flat red carpet of my little room upstairs having a terrible argument with Fitz over the meaning of the Monkees’ “Daydream Believer”. When I woke up he was in my bed lying next to me. We were both naked beneath the comforter. I’ll never know how we got there. The shade hadn’t been drawn: gray light streamed through the window. There were at least thirty condoms scattered across the floor, none of them opened. The shiny wrappers made streaks across my vision. My eyes were burning; the lids were puffed and sickly smooth as they get after I’ve been sobbing. I made out an overturned CD in the corner, its silver surface covered with cigarette butts. Outside the morning bell began its flat, melancholic whine. What happened? I wondered, absurdly recalling the last scene of Kids, when Casper faces the camera, bleary eyed and hung over, and asks the same question. My hangover hadn’t hit yet but I knew it wouldn’t be long. I started to wiggle over to the edge of the bed when I felt a warm arm drape around my waist, gently tugging me back. Fitz muttered hello and pressed himself against me. I waited, stunned and frozen, until I felt him getting hard, then I said something about needing to get up and the bubble was broken. The morning bell ended its whine. I dragged my underwear and t-shirt into the bed and pulled them on under the comforter while Fitz rolled over and searched for a cigarette on the pile of plastic crates that served as a bedside table. I realized that in all the time I’d stayed in the room I’d never before woken up without the shade drawn, and the overwhelming brilliance of the gray light turned the place bleak and foreign. It gave everything I looked at the appearance of being forced out and exposed.

"What happened?" I whispered to the mirror over the dresser, which must have seen it all.

A Bred Buy Torn

Importance : normalhighlow
To: Address Book
CC : Address Book
BCC : Address Book
Subject:
Save copy in SENT folder

Fuck this shit, Sterling:

I miss you

I keep listening to “Letter to Memphis” by the Pixies:

“I’m sending a letter, I’ll send it right to you. I’ll send it to Memphis. I know that someday everything I needed, and I wanted—used to be that my head was haunted.

And all these sorrows, they make me mad. And all this violence, it brings me down.

I feel strong; I feel lucky.

(Trying to get to you, said I’m gonna get to you…)”

I stand on a bridge in this little city and imagine you somewhere way out there beyond the clouds on my horizon. Sterling, oh, where are you when I can’t lift my aching head, when the room is spinning and the color of the air is deepening. Demons fill the space all around me. I feel like I’ve lost my true north, I don’t know if I’m making the right choices anymore. I don’t know if I should be where I am, getting ready to go to London with a person like Jules. I’ve never met a more focused individual. Maybe this won’t make sense, but she manages to be completely single-minded about a wide variety of things. That is to say that her energy is like a light saber—she’s got concentrated laser powers, slashing through anything in her way.

It’s possible that she’s on crystal. I never see her eat anything except an occasional protein bar, and she only sleeps (at most) for two hours at a time. And then it’s not like she ever “goes to bed.” Rather, she passes out for a little while in the middle of doing something.

When awakens, she sits straight up and immediately announces to whoever’s around that she wasn’t sleeping.

We’ve never seen each other completely naked. That’s OK by me, it leaves something to the imagination, and you know how important the right fantasy is during sex. She tends to fuck me doggy-style. I’m on all fours with my underwear wrapped around my ankles. She keeps my t-shirt draped over my ass. I think that what’s even more pertinent than seeing as little of my “girl parts” as possible is that she’s also prevented from seeing the thick ass cock sprung from her hips.

She calls me dirty names.

Our act of fucking seems to be in contradiction to everything she’s trying so hard to be, but I guess that’s what adds the sweetness to it, the slight tinge of desperation that comes out. She starts moaning pretty soon into it, like she’s been waiting for it, dreaming about it. You know how it goes—it’s always the ones who make a big display about being in charge that need it the most.

I was thinking about it the other night when I was smoking and the funny thing is, when her dick is rammed up inside of me, it’s as good as disappeared. That’s probably the most opportune moment for her to picture herself without one.

(yeah, I know, not the first one I’ve castrated, hahahaha)

it kind of thrills me to see how much effort she puts into tucking her dick away, out of sight to the world, and yet she won’t get it cut off. Here in the city of sliced off dick, too.

She’ll let me touch it with her hand, but not suck it, which is fine by me.

(we get her friend’s car and find places to park, by the factories and buildings)

and since I know you’d want to know, I’ll mention that I like undoing the tuck and watching her erection spring out against her dress. I get hot I don’t know. You’re going to say it makes me gay, but fuck you. I like how big her hands are, how the tips of her fingers feel. I like when she grabs my wrists

(restaurants and bars, for later in the evening)

she’s like Shakespeare, she so fucking smart. A big crowd forms around her when ever we go out. She peers over their heads to keep an eye on me, standing all wallflower-ish in the corner. Everyone loves how she’s so together but at the same time falling apart.

The Black, Dutch, tranny Raymi.

Brand trueboy acronym? (check the site)http://www.wordsmith.org/anagram/index.html That's where I got the subject for this email. we could use it to send secret messages, or set up sites that are acroym's of BRANDTRUEBOY but having nothing to do with us.

galaxies of sites.

Should we do a post called btb presents tbt. BRANDTRUEBOY presents TRUEBOYS TITS. Jules took these pics that I think might work. I could cover my face. What do you think? I guess you have to see them first.

I feel like it’s all going to end badly, whether I do or do not go to London. The same as how it’s all going to end badly whether or not I come back to New York. Everything’s fuck, shit, death, ghetto of the mind. We’re all going to be dirt in the ground, no matter what decisions we come up with.

The thing is, it does matter. It matters how far away from you I roam. Fuck, I’m mostly sober and I still can’t say it. How at the same time I love and hate the idea of going home and seeing you again.

(I can feel it in my bones.)

I don’t need you to validate me.

I don’t want to be your slave.

I don’t want the going up and going down. The Elevator baby, maybe baby maybe shit

I don’t want you to give your dirt to me, all the broken things you think you are.

It’s not about America or Europe.

Countryside or cityscape.

It’s about having a place to call home.

I’ll have to settle down sooner or later. I can’t drive on this road forever, so to speak.

The truth is, Sterling, that I feel so evil when I’m near you. No, not evil. I don’t know. Lascivious. Like I’m posing for an ancient king on his throne. You lord it over me. You watch me with eagle eyes. You make me self-conscious. Everything rushes to the surface. I turn red, like blood to a wound.

I don’t know if I can take it right now; I’m so tired you have no idea

In the doorway I hear you sing.

(you can fix me up, girl, we’ll go a long way)

I play for you. I’ve written books for you. I’m your Dog on Wheels, like Belle and Sebastian.

(it took time that I found you)

You and I are like rock stars without the music.

I need to get over my phone phobia.

TRUE






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so punk

commandosolo

Hey man, thanks for the war.




It's really going to influence my art.

disastersofwar

saying goodbye to amsterdam.

jules and i arm and arm under harbor lights.

satellites.

You Don't Watch It and You'll Turn Out Just Like Her

hardcutpublishing

What up Party People,

Time to set it straight, this Watergate: I don’t’ sleep around. Try as I might, I don’t have flings, I have partners. I went out of my way the other week to have a random, one night stand with a drugged out tranny who I was certain I’d never see again and here I am, helping her pack up the contents of her orange Dutch apartment. We’re blowing the ‘dam. London’s calling. My horoscope (I'm a Leo, don't ya know?)says I’m ready for the big time, baby. Bright lights, big titties. Jules—my tranny fuck-- is a tremendous editor. She’s helping me finish my film. We chopped up that shit into little pieces of sushi noir. Raw and dark. I’ve been using her Vaio to create psychedelic montage sequences.

Being with Jules is a little like going back in time. I dress and act like a boy for her. I sit perched atop the brown Formica of her kitchen counter, in shorts, my unshaven, hairy legs swinging like the kid she wants me to be. Meanwhile, she tries her hardest to play the part of the forward thinking girl...a budding analyst, spouting Freud and collecting matchbooks. She needs someone elusive in her life. A Don Quixote, someone to hammer down his point without hammering into her.

We try our hardest to have sex without touching. I think we’re both afraid of getting to know each other. Instead, we put our energy into imaginary scenarios: like the one where we dim all the lights in her living room and pretend we’re at the ball, and I’m the boy with a taste for blood, scarves and pinched countenances.

I gaze at her seriously from afar, until finally I get up the nerve to offer her a banged up Silk Cut that it takes two tries to light because her hands are shaking.

My hands are shaking too.

I wear a tuxedo jacket and my worn out blue jeans. There’s a formidable brass buckle hanging over my stuffed crotch.

I’ve written all over my right thigh with purple ink. It’s mostly illegible, except for the following:

“I’m the boy, who’s learned to enjoy, invisibility…”