Irish Coffee and Prayers to Crom

A good friend of mine has a way with cards.

As such, he’s managed to rack up a considerable amount of comp points from time spent at the tables.  And so, he invited me to help him celebrate his birthday at Harrah’s in Lake Tahoe, Nevada.  We churned through his limited CD collection, mocked the Aussie accent of his GPS and braved a snowy mountain pass during the three-hour drive in his old pick up truck.  These are my notes from being in a casino for pretty much the first time.

Step out of the elevators and there it is, the promise of the American Dream we’ve all read about.  This is the killing floor, make no mistake of it.  The bright carpet designed to disorientate, the jarring lights and the free booze.  The wild flash from an army of Japanese-seizure machines hammers away at my senses, strobe lights promising a payout so big you’d have to be crazy to believe.

The seniors manning the slots are caricatures of beings who should be playing slots; satin jackets with the sleeves pushed up, an over-sized visor, once-fit bodies gone all pear-shaped with time and skin like luggage, one hand making the rounds; a non-stop triangle between the drink, the half-smoked Pall Mall and the PLAY button.  This one’s up $250.  I peered too closely and received an eye scolding for my troubles.

The fairway of betting tables runs along the center of the room in opposition to the jingle-jangle of the penny slots, with the pit enjoying a protected spot in the very center.  The comforting green felt of the poker table, the mechanical dance of the dealer’s hands, all actions are decisive, clean and clear.  No room for mistrust here.  Everything is on the up and up.  Real money is at stake.  Each gesture by the dealer is like secret sign language transmitted to the black blisters lining the roof of the casino; everything is under the close watch of cameras.

Periodically, the occasional outbursts of a five-dollar win, a whoop-and-hands-up victory against the big machine.  The whiskey is free as long as you’re playing, so why not feel good about it?

Hours into it.  The tickle of cigarette smoke burns my eyes; the weight and click of the chips in my hand spooks me somewhat.  This isn’t real money.  None of this is real. Speaking of, the world is supposed to end Friday.

I have grown numb to the lights.  While I’m having a good time, I’m also pleased to see I don’t have a true gambling bone in my body.  Can’t imagine being a prisoner here, chained to the lure of the “Super Diamond” promise, a nickel and penny death sentence.  Pensioners pitted against the odds for survival.  Hairnets and dog food.

The feeling of emptiness prevails.  I won for a little while, but stopped caring after my first $100 went south.  After that, I was hesitant to stick my fingers in the lion’s mouth.  This is not my scene.  Craps is over my head where numbers are concerned.  The room is too loud, and I’m struck dumb.  I need silence, now more than ever.

There is a generally amicable spirit among the strangers, each evoking similar body language while engaged in the choke of small talk; hands to heads, deep exhales, fingers on tumblers full of ice and amber-colored hammers.  Watch the game.  “Go!  Go!”

Each tick of the second hand is an eternity mingled with the stench of cigarettes and the tired hope that one lucky hand will turn the tide.  The big break.  Too bad fortune favors the house.

I sip my Wild Turkey and summon Harrah’s history on my phone:  First established in Lake Tahoe when William F. Harrah purchased George’s Gateway Club in January 1955 for $500,000 and opened Harrah’s Lake Club on June 20, 1955… In 1963 Barry Keenan, Joseph Amsler and John Irwin abducted Frank Sinatra, Jr., the 19-year-old son of singer Frank Sinatra, after his performance at the South Shore Room opening for George Jessel… Harrah’s Lake Tahoe earned the first five-star diamond rating in casino history for a $25-million renovation… On December 3, 2005, a shootout occurred in a private booth near the casino floor.  One person was killed, and two Douglas County Sheriff’s Deputies were injured… Past performers have included Burt Bacharach, Blue Oyster Cult, Moody Blues, Night Ranger, Rick Springfield, Cold War Kids, Lawrence Welk, David Lee Roth and everyone’s favorite red-haired stranger, Willie Nelson, to name just a few…

Linden Place, the Short North, Columbus, Ohio, just around the corner from the Busy Bee Auto Shop staffed by the Last of The True Greasers, relics with names like Goose and Duck stenciled onto their work shirts.  Slicker smiles and more carefully combed coifs you’re not likely to find on a bunch of guys who spend their day crushing Budweiser cans underfoot in the dusty gravel parking lot as they tell you precisely why the ‘51 Mercury was such a superior ride, and what a hot piece of ass they were allegedly fingering not twenty years ago.  “Out to here!”  Exaggerated gestures.

Follow this flashback further in to the house on the corner lot, and through the open window to an oval dining room table overlooking a dog-shit battleground of a back yard and what could have been a nice patio in another neighborhood.  This is the place my poker education should have begun; in a room with a framed mirror of Bruce Lee on the wall, country and western albums playing on the hi-fi and a liquor cabinet full of Jim and Jack and Jose.  The devil lives in the details and I remember clearly my stepbrother’s black leather Zippo case that lived on his belt as he strutted and rasped and grumbled, doling out his wisdom.

Everybody wears the Yoda hat come last call, but nobody had more to offer on the subject of cowboys and ladies, deuces and pistols and miners than my stepbrother (also named Mike), with a head full of pepper and the voice of Sam Elliot on morphine. The slow miles I spent riding shotgun in an 18-wheeler with Mike behind the wheel as the white lines rolled along were my early education in arcane greaser knowledge.  I was subjected to decades worth of dubious stories with, conveniently, no one left alive to confirm or deny the specifics.  (Exaggerated gestures:  “Out to here!”)  It was as if he knew, somehow, that I wasn’t from this world.  Like maybe he was hoping I’d take this secret information and run away with it, preserve it while there was still time. He could sense my thirst for knowledge. There was some take away in all of this; I learned to clean up nice and walk tall, and I learned to keep shut when I had nothing useful to add.  I’m not sure what he thought was going to happen to me in my lifetime, but he was the first person to tell me to always pay attention to the exits and never sit with my back to the door.

Sadly, I only retained enough about poker to be dangerous to exactly no one, and for the life of me I’ll never understand Euchre.  I think it’s actually a requirement to be a resident of the state of Ohio at this point.

It’s early.  It’s late.  It doesn’t really matter.  But it’s true that dealers are harder to reach than strippers.  Tipping the dealer is an awkward maneuver and feels not unlike offering a stripper a sincere compliment or a bouquet of flowers.  Friendly banter bounces off an invisible wall.  The three-card dealer on the late shift has the sharp glacial, facial features common to Eastern European women.  She is cold, Polish and therefore beautiful.  She doesn’t laugh easily, have a favorite sports team or think highly of chitchat.  She isn’t paid to.  I look down at the green felt surface at the faded and repeated image of a tall pine tree, nearly mistaking these imperfections for a series of identical drink spills across the silent sanctity of the felt, like oopsy-daisy fractal patterns.

“You have such expressive hands.”  I don’t know why I said it.  I might as well have told her I was admiring the shape of her skull, but that’s been done too…

“Oh?”  The voice replies, the face does not.  Shuffle, slide, and deal.  Every cards lands perfectly, as if flown in on miniature guide wires.  Dealers must have cast iron hearts.  I wonder if they get beaten with bamboo poles or something equally disturbing to harden them against the song and dance routines they hear every day, akin to those who’ve given up on giving money to the homeless.

“Are you in or out, sir?”  Some smile and nod, but not many.

Music: “One more / silver dollar…” Here and now: Mike wins $250 on a single hand.  Earlier tonight, he won a royal flush on a poker machine with three to one odds.  It doesn’t seem to faze him much.  No ripples in his lake, zero emotion.  Lights another Parliament.  This windfall was more or less expected.  He makes a swipe on the table with the cards in his left hand held face down.  He goes, and goes, and he goes.

Sleep deprivation makes every thing really neat, and as coherent thought begins to leave me I finally know what bugs me about this place.  This whole thing is right out of an episode of the original Battlestar Galactica series: Starbuck and Boomer discover paradise, a vast underground network of entertainment and gambling venues packed with humans from the Colonies, some of who’ve been there for months, years even.  Meanwhile, Apollo thinks he’s found the Tylium that the Galactica needs for fuel. Bonus! But then he’s surrounded by a horde of insectizoid aliens known as Ovions.  Foreshadowing!  Long story short, several drunks take elevators to their hotel rooms in order to get space busy with some space ladies but wind up in the deep bowels of the planet where they’re seized by Ovions and paralyzed for use as food for Ovion hatchlings.  So I’m going to be real careful when I go to my room, because fuck flies…

And I’m gonna go soon because I ache in all parts of my body from need of substance and emptiness of heart.  My body is numb and my brain hurts.  Yet waves of disjointed rock lyrics continue to attach themselves to the soft tissue walls of my thoughts, digging in, taking root like a seed to a tree, ivy to a brick wall.

The music is the sort of sound that reminds me of brushed-aluminum front stereos, giant volume knobs, backlit dials and giant cloth-covered speakers from those early days when people still gave a flying fuck about hi-fi systems.  See also: the era of the state fair, before that shit went completely over to the meth heads.  Hearken back to a simpler time… stoner chicks named Roxanne or maybe Carla, probably wearing a Panama hat with a Pink Floyd band, definitely red-eyed winners of Led Zeppelin mirrors.

Music: “Sitting in a smoky room/ the smell of wine and cheap per-fuuume…” Every three minutes, a girl in a white vest and glasses in the center of the room lets out a whoop of joy.  The rest of the casino rolls their eyes, visible to me as millimeter wave bands of exhaustion rippling here and there throughout the room.  I can see how tired I am.

A waitress shuffles in from the late shift.  She’s visibly tired.  With a heavy sigh, she takes a seat, waves for a drink and neatly fans three Benjamin’s onto the felt.  “Change out $300,” intones the dealer.  Pop the clutch on the night, shift gears and reshuffle the small talk.  Move the music dial along to Rush and Neil Young.

The girl in white gives another shout.  Again the ripples, the rolling eyes.

The guy at the next table gives his girlfriend’s near-perfect ass a subtle but affectionate squeeze under the roulette table.  Once, twice, and thrice for luck.  There’s every possibility that her soft sighs and moans will be captured in the fabric of the hotel room curtains later tonight, ensnared in the bedspread, trapped in the fibers of the rug and preserved as ghost passion like leftover human radio signals.

The fog lifts.  I’m up $60 on poker and $100 on Clue.  And that’s as good as I’ll do here.  But let me tell you this: never lay a $50 bill on the blackjack table.  Old timers will glare at you as they slink away, like maybe you got a weird thing for horses.

Ad in a magazine offering over-the-phone plastic surgery consultation from the comfort and convenience of your room: “Yeah, it sounds like you’re pretty ugly. We’ve got a suitcase ready, we’ll be right up.  Don’t worry, we’ll make things good again.”

(From my Twitter feed) @TWM71: They’re playing Steely Dan at the bar.  I mention offhandedly that the name comes from a sex torture device in a Burroughs novel. #MoodKiller

(Reply fm @myauralfixation) @TWM71, Urban Dictionary says: Proper name of a steam powered dildo from the novel “Naked Lunch” by William S. Burroughs.

(From a letter to a friend I drafted on my phone during this time) “Hullo some more from Harrah’s.  It is now 3 a.m.  We’re closing down the bars one at a time.  Into ginger and Crown, beer is no good on long nights.  I usually drink Guinness.  Devil gin isn’t right for tonight and Wild Turkey is only for certain occasions.  (“It’s over too quick if I use the nun chucks.”)  But G&C is a long haul drink, likewise Bloody Mary’s.  Vitamins or some such, I’m told.  They’re playing Led Zep on the game floor.  There’s a quiet crowd tonight, small clutches of conversation grouped around the brightest lights like moths bleeding clots of tens and twenties.”

No serious betting taking place anywhere now.  We, the species, in order to tell more perfect stories, gather such events in the window-boxes of our experience, like common garden spices.  These become our credentials when we grow old.

Later, drinking too much Irish coffee and shooting craps.  I can’t make a lick of fucking sense of this game.  I’m starting to hear music that isn’t playing over the PA system.  “I’M GOING OFF THE RAILS ON A CRAZY TRAIN!”  (Guitar solo.)  Seriously, this game is more confusing than watching bees fuck in the center of a Chinese traffic jam.  Maybe it’s all this devil booze.  Probably.  There is no point looking at my watch now.

“Peace be with you / and also with you.”  Now where the hell did that come from?  I’m not fucking Catholic.  (I’m not fucking anyone, truth be told…)

How long can we keep this machine in the air?  A great and powerful form of exhaustion is settling into my body.  No more extra lives, no more levels, no more coins.  Mario doesn’t live here anymore.

MT @M_Lutzey: I’ve been playing poker since 2 am #BIRTHDAY<-I passed out @ 0530. Wake up; he’s got the whole casino eating out of his hand.

Music: “Come on and take a free riiiiide!”  The snow has stopped.  It’s the next morning.  Tickets to Hoth are paid for, the Padawan has his presents.  Everything else in the care of the Great Magnet and these people won’t stop with the drinks or the Irish coffee.  Ever.

An older man with a balding mullet and a paunch wanders through the kill zone in ill-fitting khakis, white marshmallows on his feet, stumbling slightly.  I am moved to prayer:

“Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, or why we died. All that matters is that two stood against many. That’s what’s important! Valor pleases you, Crom… so grant me one request. Grant me the dignity of not dying in starched Wranglers, a Christmas sweater and New Balance sneakers when time finally catches up with me and I begin to show my age.  And if you do not listen, then to HELL with you!”

Asian girls with straight black hair and Ugg boots storm the floor invasion style.  It is 8 a.m.  Theirs is the modified evolution of the “rawk grrl” look of the late 80s, minus the denim jackets, the teased bangs, the fingerless gloves, Mötley Crüe pins and a ceaseless, senseless dedication to a nowhere-bound deadbeat boyfriend named Donny who drives a Nova, fucks way below his age and hits her up for money more often than he ought.

So long, Harrah’s. I’ll never drink another Irish coffee as long as I live.

TWM

Once Upon a Then

One day in 1999.  Can’t tell weeks apart from one another at this point.  I’m working the evening shift at the magazine store where I spend much of my time.  I like this place when it’s empty; I’ve got time and space to myself, if only for a little while.  No one’s coming through the door to inquire after the latest craft magazines; no housewives on the make for that all-important back issue of O or Martha Stewart’s Toilet Cozy Annual, and no one scrambling after a glossy fashion magazine to compare his or her strange life against.

Oops, I spoke too fast.  Enter the grown man in search of Disneymania.  An enormous, gasping escape pod of a man; holes in his shirt, rheumy eyes, preceded by the stale choking dust of bad body odor that makes me whip my head to one side the moment his poisonous cloud crosses my outer marker.  Collectors.  These sad, smelly bastards are my least favorite of our clientele; chatting eagerly about… magazines and paying for their Precious with rumpled, grimy bills as they brandish laminated (and probably forged) collector’s ID badges, demanding tax-exempt prices with all the authority of Serpico waving a badge.  Hey, whatever gets you through the night, I guess?

In other news, I found my next job.  I start Tuesday working for Gardner, Inc., a lawn care parts company.  I’ll be on the receiving end of customer complaints.  Placing orders, then jumping in and taking calls for eight bones an hour with my own desk, Internet access and e-mail and full benefits.  This makes what, sixteen jobs in the last five years?  And I biked to all of them.  My blown sinuses are ticking like a Geiger counter.  I’m off to consume as much hot tea as I can tolerate.

12AUG00 – Warm wet sandbag of depression suspended by an old hemp line creaks gently at the bottom of a dark well.  It’s silent here.  The air is heavy.  The bag swings gently.  No need to speak.  No need for sound.  Silence is accepted here.  Somewhere far above me, the tops of trees are visible.  The warm promise of sunlight flickers in the wind.  Interaction seems pointless, heavy handed and rehearsed.  Quit.  Give up.  Go on.  They won.  You’re just a story now.

I make a conscious decision to run toward a light in the distance, but it seems to diminish the closer I get to it.  It’s like chasing a monkey up a tree; as you leave, the monkey gets his nerve back and climbs back down.  But he’s got one eye trained on you.  And if you turn around and come back, up into the tree he goes, always the same distance from you.  An invisible, flexible pushrod exists between you and this fucking monkey.  You have to give up your thoughts, ignore the monkey.  Make the monkey forget all about you.  Will the blind spot into being.  Kick your way to the surface.  Breathe deep.  Fight this terrible feeling.

Close call.

After we reach a certain age, our fears of the dark are supposed to vanish like car exhaust on a cold morning.  For me, it happened when I was about 10.  Suddenly, the night wasn’t really “the night” anymore and staying up late wasn’t such a big deal.  Just a few years later, I realized I’d started partying with the same monsters that once lived under my bed.  Staying ‘pure’ was out of the question.

Blink.  Now I’m on a starship, moving through the universe.  It’s like an open-air cruise liner.  We pass slowly through a mockup of the Horsehead Nebula as though it were some roadside attraction meant for photo ops and postcards.  They’re serving themed drinks.  Some nice people are playing shuffleboard.  

Smile.  Wave.

Jalapeño Cornbread and The Train of Thought

FOG CITY DINER, San Francisco – The chef here makes an amazing thing called jalapeño cornbread; golden, moist and served with a delicious red chipotle jam.  So yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.  But that’s not what I want to write about.

As I sat in a booth on a recent Sunday enjoying my meal (after the cornbread came a grilled Mahi sandwich with bacon and avocado and a cup of black coffee), I became aware of a conversation at the next table.

Group dynamic: three males and four females, their ages approximately 15 – 40.

Topic of discussion: the books they were reading at present. Most of them admitted to the Twilight series while some preferred fantasy novels — you know, “like Harry Potter.”

Hey, at least they were reading… 

There was a brunette girl seated at the table, 15-years-old if she was a day, and she was sinking lower and lower in her chair as the moments passed; not really participating in the conversation and clearly embarrassed. It was in her eyes.

Visiting Uncle: (previously dominating the conversation with travel/tech talk) leveled his gaze at Embarrassed Girl and asked, “So, what subjects do you like in school?” Not the more liberating: “What subjects are you interested in?”  This was more of a subtle nudge: in school.

Embarrassed Girl: “I –.”

Younger Brother: (immediately to her left, interrupting) “Yeah, I’m in a band! I play the trombone!”  He crowed, chewing with his mouth open as a dog might catch a biscuit balanced on its nose. His face was beet red.

Female Relative: (sitting opposite him, appearing somewhat confused. Her speech was faltering) “Oh!  Now, is that a… band where you… play an instrument, or is this a group of your little… friends?” Her voice trailed off. Breathing while speaking was out of the question for her; it had been a difficult enough thing for her to choose her salad dressing. Clearly spent for the day, she fell silent once again.

Other Girl A and Other Girl B: (producing a champagne stream of conversation, silvery bubbles that tickled the ceiling, propelled upward by their concerted nodding of agreement) “And then Facebook? And then I was like?  And then she was like?  And I was like?  And then she was like? And then Facebook? So cute!” The world for them, it seemed, was only so large.

Remaining Male: (dead ringer for Tony Soprano): Silent, chewing his bloody red rabbit quite slowly in the manner of a silverback gorilla, the alpha male. He stared evenly at each speaker in turn with bloodshot shark eyes.  Not a reader nor a traveler nor a social media user?

It was then that I stopped short. Once upon a time, I was the embarrassed teenager at the table; horrified by the banality of my white trash family but unable to articulate my own opinions due to a lack of world experience. I didn’t know what I liked, but I was pretty sure it went well beyond the family trifecta of Hank Williams Jr., Jack Daniels and the General Lee. I had a burgeoning interest in science fiction but according to one nobel laureate in the family, Star Trek was “faggy”. I had had meager enough beginnings, so at what point did I become such a judgmental quasi-elitist fuck? And it’s not even like I’m a good elitist! (I am, however, an okay fuck. Punchline!)

But elitist? Me? Hardly. My music tastes are dated, my palate uneducated. Country music doesn’t exist beyond the complete works of Johnny Cash and two songs by Hank Williams. I was never angry enough for punk, but I would find myself pissed off at Green Day, et al, for years of painfully cliche high school anthems. (“That was our song!” said every spotty-faced fuck under the age of 21 that I met during the end of the grunge era. “You just don’t even know!“) The only jazz I can and will tolerate is Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew and Sketches of Spain. I haven’t owned a shred of vinyl since my first (and only) purchase of KISS Rock and Roll Over, purchased for a quarter at a garage sale sometime in the late 70s. I’ve been to maybe 11 concerts in my whole life. I’ve never camped out at a music festival. I’ve never even been to a rave.

I am so not cool.

I don’t read popular books. I read banned books, but what the fuck are popular books? I read comic books and own several shelves worth of graphic novels and yeah, maybe a lot of unusual reference books. Yes, I dress like an REI commercial or a retired federal agent on vacation in Thailand, circa 1987. But I won’t wear t-shirts promoting comic books whose heroes and story lines I am not familiar with. It’s just not fair to do so. I am a fan of Spider-Man, but prefer the cold black ideology of the Venom suit to the familiar red and blue. I like Green Lantern, but I don’t know that much about the Green Lantern Corps. Besides, wearing a Green Lantern shirt today sends a mixed message, if you happen to prefer the ladies. Which I do. For the record, I also used to be into the Flash. Superman, however, was too perfect. Too easy.

I like weird movies. Big deal, who doesn’t?

When I was 15, I thought that the most important thing in life — next to owning a land speeder — would be having a job that would let me buy all the books, movies and music I could ever hope to devour. Media falls freely from the trees these days; we are now stories eating stories.

I had a point. Oh, yes. Clarity!

I had once had a boss who, without intending to do so, got me thinking obsessively about “directionless direction” and “absolute precision of meaning.”  Maybe he really did intend to get me thinking about these things, he won’t say. I know he was a fan of abstract thought. But what he did impress upon me deliberately was the importance of clarity. Each and every word must count toward the end result. (Is this too much? Is that an accurate thing to say? Is it more appropriate to say it this way? Are those facts confirmed?) But as hard as I wrote, as much effort as I put into each draft, he always shot me down. My pages would come back raped in red ink. One day, dejected, I mumbled my thanks and slumped back to my desk to revise, accepting that I was never going to get it absolutely right. That’s when the bell rang. I wasn’t going to because I wasn’t supposed to.

In those years, he, through the telling and re-telling of a lengthy and amusing nautical anecdote involving anchor chain, taught me to be wary of the following phrases: “I think so… it should be… probably… maybe?” Well, do you know or don’t you?

Sidebar!

I’ve never been good with numbers. They simply do not stay put. I can’t multiply 12 x 7 in my head because I’ll forget immediately what numbers I was meant to be multiplying. Goodbye childhood dreams of being an astronaut, or an NSA codebreaker. The hard fact of the matter is that I never got beyond 6^th grade algebra, not even in college where I took the course twice, eventually stalemating myself right out of a higher education. I couldn’t advance without first completing that class. Tutors didn’t work because as soon as I left the classroom I forgot what it was that I’d learned. Doing extra problems was a useless concept; I could barely solve one problem, let alone pages of them. For me, the nugget of mathematical comprehension was built from sheer smoke and not a thing I could hold in my hand. And so one day, toward the end of the quarter, after failing yet another exam, I quietly packed my bag and walked away from college. “Yeah, you’re a fucking genius…”

Flashback!

I had attended summer school every year from the 6^th grade until I graduated high school; always for the same subject and usually with the same tutor who, after awhile, stopped looking me in the eye or calling on me when I raised my hand, or even noticing when I stopped doing that much. We had both given up.

Twice a week during my senior year, I attended “special education” classes in a tiny room lined with posters of smiling children eating apples reminding me to mind my manners. My tutor was a middle-aged woman named Ms. Merrick who wore low cut blouses and tried everything shy of sexual favors to get me to understand the basic concept of algebra. Where once I been hailed as a wunderkind for my early grasp of reading comprehension and creative writing, I was becoming increasingly frustrated by the realization that my peer group was leaving me behind. It didn’t matter that these peers were essentially strangers; they provided a necessary smoke screen. I was not yet prepared to be left alone and exposed with my faults, embarrassed and ashamed as I was of the “special ed” label.

But wait! I’ve always been able to find the pony hidden among the horse shit. It’s my lame superpower…

I’d been working on a novel since the 8^th grade about a bounty hunter involved in a global lottery alternative to thermonuclear warfare, and so I asked Ms. Merrick to look it over.  Looking back, I’m sure it was cat piss awful; I don’t even have a copy of it left to criticize anymore. At that stage of the game I hadn’t read enough to be able to write properly. The next day, she handed it back to me and posed one simple question (“Like a diamond bullet… right through my forehead…”) that would stick in my brain for the rest of my life.

She asked: “Is your meaning clear?” She didn’t tell me the story sucked, or that the characters were one dimensional. She just gave me some of the best writing advice I would ever receive and she did it Yoda style.

Digging upward, get on the phone to bullshit…

“Worship the clarity of thought.” I used to be into that.  Where did the idea go? Not enough room to run Halo on my Pong-sized hard drive these days; I got bills to pay, failed relationships to agonize over and baggage to lug around. Meditation? Sounds great! I’ll look into that someday. Too many people in my address book right now, too many voices competing for time and attention, each one factory fresh with their own objectives. Not enough time left over, it seems, for self-contemplation.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

What could I accomplish if I could quiet my mind and let the noise of the world whistle out into space like escaped oxygen, or the televised broadcast of the first Olympics?

This is my happy place: Lock me away for a year in a woodland retreat somewhere in the densely forested mountains of Northern California. I’ll start off each day at 5:30 with yoga, an hour of weights and a long bike ride. In the afternoons I’ll take courses in bicycle repair and creative writing, rack up some range time with a variety of small arms and study to be a Mac Genius. In the evenings, I will churn out novels the likes of which the world has never seen. At night, I will look at the stars through a powerful telescope or sit by a fire. Here’s my grocery list. Hold my calls. No internet access, please.

No one has all the answers let alone all the questions, so how will I know when I know what I want to know? Life is short; I want to say what should be said and keep quiet about the rest, but that would make me boring. I’ve watched you, Earthlings. After all, I was sent here to gather intel. In order to fit in at awkward parties, I need to weigh in with a startlingly fresh opinion about social media, a carefully crafted Fantasy Football team, witty repartee about Adam Sandler movies and three thousand other things I simply do not give a shit about.

What?!

Electrons, people. We are electrons and swarms of molecules; marching, mobile landmasses for much smaller forms of life. Between you and me and the next object over exists infinite space and matter, things that would take you a lifetime to sort out with a razor blade. Swing the sharpest axe, pull the hardest trigger, climb the smallest mountain. It all comes down to this:

( X )  //user define (void) awakeFrom {

It is this that I should be focused upon instead of making judgements on the books and brunches of strangers. If I had any balls, I’d make my happy place a reality. If I was brave enough, I’d repair my own damage. If I had the courage, I’d forgive them, forget them and move on.

At the end of the day, what’s really important? What’s taking place just beneath the surface? What’s happening behind you — right now — just around the corner? What are you missing out on by being here?  Are you in the right place at the right time to be who you were meant to be? (Am I too serious, too full of shit, or do you just not understand where I’m coming from?)

And when did I start channeling Dianetics commercials?

Jalapeño cornbread, yo.

 

Exit Stage West

…in which I am decidedly drunk and forgivably foul-mouthed.

NEW YORK – Last stand at The Patriot, the night of the Big Party.  My work is done here.  My locker is empty and my bags are packed, waiting patiently for me back at the office in Battery Park.  It’s not my office anymore.  “Not my chair, not my problem,” said the lizard.

I’ll be in California this time Friday night.  I timed my arrival to coincide with the Apollo 11 moon landing because that’s how I roll, but tonight I’m free in the city with very few obligations, a savage thirst for Wild Turkey and a vague disdain for anything beyond this moment.  Anything else is “out there”.  I want to enjoy this sweep of the second hand, this measure of simple entropy.

The Patriot is a special place.  It’s the only bar I’ve ever been in where I refuse to drink Guinness on tap.  Witness the paint-splattered walls, the filthy neon signs covered in years of grime, the overall sensation of stickiness that permeates the building, the creaking floors and the frightening DIY painting of a roaring lion that dominates an entire wall over the toilet in the men’s room.  The taps here are dirtier than the dreams of a high school gym teacher, which explains why I’m talking to the Turkey tonight; turning my concentration inward, tearing away chunks of self-loathing like feeding time at a pig farm.  “I won at New York.”  That’s the phrase Robin used.  Seems partially appropriate here.  I try it on for size.  What did I win?  Maybe I didn’t win, but I didn’t exactly lose.  Sometimes it felt like everyone else scratched on the 8-ball when it counted most, leaving me with a hollow victory.

The downstairs crowd is eighty-five percent co-workers and colleagues, the best and brightest in our field gathered to NYC from the four corners to celebrate the end of an era, the retirement of a wild heavy.  One of us, to be sure.  The ceremony was bittersweet, the reception doubly so.  There was plenty of praise and well-wishers told age-appropriate stories.  This, then, is the after party — but without the groupies and zero concern for the red M&Ms.  And, in some small way, it represents the end of Good Stories.

The laws have changed.  Rules are in place now, things are respectable.  Life is on lockdown.  Fun for our crowd is on a tight ration.  Think of this era moving forward as the straight-to-DVD sequel to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, in which a button-down dentist and his little league coach sidekick wear their seat belts on their way to a safety conference at the Sheraton, pointedly avoiding the minibar and taking time out to call their wives twice daily.  I really can’t share any specific examples, but to those of us left behind, a “good time” might as well refer to a refreshing can of Coca-Cola® and a 7 p.m. curfew.  Remember to floss, kids.

It’s a great party, but I can never stay in character for long.  The third time I suffered through The Doors “L.A Woman” I knew it was time to hide, if even for a little while.  Just then I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.  On the landing leading to the second floor stood a pair of ridiculously long legs clad in a pair of incredibly short shorts.  They belonged to an Amazon of a woman with long curly brown hair, bent deep at the waist as she scrawled something on a chalkboard.  When she stepped aside, I read the words YOU CAN HIDE UP HERE written in an unsteady hand.  There was an arrow pointing left, further up.  Had she read my mind?  She turned, caught my eye and winked.  Yeah, I know.  She’s supposed to do that.  It’s a bar.  She wants me to drink copious amounts of alcohol and tip her generously.  Still, it seemed like a good idea…

The louder the Led Zepplin gets, the further back in time I go.  The music is definitely better upstairs.  Memories of my youth swirl up at me, cheap summers spent in Cowtown’s Short North before it grew canker sores and turned all artsy.  I was just a young peyote button then, stunted and struggling to grow up tall in the cigarette-littered soil of a white trash landfill. Gangly, tall, big glasses and a Warhol mop of hair.  Yes, a true nerd long before it became a knee-jerk claim to fame on Internet dating sites.  Honestly, I thought I was going to die in that town.

Enough of that talk.  I have a craving for red meat, real sustenance and possibly more whiskey.  How far can I push this?  I have no real obligations tonight.  It. Is. Done.  My calendar is a roller coaster aimed up and out into the night, a gun barrel jammed under the startled face of the clouds.  Let us plant a flag in this fragile moment: Radio back to Houston, tell them that everything is fine.  There are no monsters here.

The candle flame at my elbow flickers rapidly like a Geiger counter somehow wired to detect alcohol.  I feel propelled, if not by the honky-tonk car wreck of the jukebox downstairs, then certainly by this terrific yearning to write an entire fucking novel with my thumbs while hanging onto this barstool.  I am a man in a star-spangled helmet, a faceless Japanese business man on his morning train crammed like canned fish among his commuting countrymen, buffeted by the jostle of the train as he repacks ancient tales of honor and bravery into something Round Eye can fully understand, one keystroke at a time.

Jesus, I think the barmaid is gonna be my next ex-wife, she of the Amazon build, the long curly brown hair, the shock white smile, the She-Devil who lured me up here with her siren’s chalkboard.  Chinese Fucking Jesus!  Just when I get to that peaceful place on the mountaintop where the flesh fire fades… when I again arrive at the basic understanding — successful relationships and I will always fish in different ponds… where it becomes glaringly apparent that we are all just anxious ageing flesh circuits in a dirt machine, the untold purpose of which is to compute the final answer… when I can finally relax my guard and live and let live and let… BOOM! My ape heart betrays me.  I come tumbling back to earth.  There is no escape.  No one gets out of here alive.  (Remember, when it comes your time, when the last bell is rung, you will go into the ground alone.)  I’ve had two more glasses of Turkey while I sat here typing this, two too much perhaps.  Certainly, I have crossed the line…

Focus, man!  Say nothing.  Just smile your poisonous grin with whatever charms you think you’ve got left as you watch the bartender bump and grind to Kashmir.  Thin, elegant fingers describing the flight paths of fireflies, her muscled thighs rippling like the hindquarters of a racehorse.  Her smile is warm like a campfire and her eyes sparkle like the stars you can’t see from the city.  Some part of me desperately wants to ride her across the finish line and claim a large wreath of flowers for my very own, but no!  This is not that kind of night.  Not now, and maybe never again.  I’ve learned my lesson.  If I am at all successful, I will sneak out of here like Ghost Dog…

This is the time and this is the record of the time, when the charade of Final Wisdom is dropped to the floor like car keys and your limited peasant’s understanding of the real world is revealed.  Nine, ten glasses of this stuff and you’re still obsessing over grammar and punctuation?  Clearly you’ve been chosen, selected somehow to make sense of the No Thing, whatever that may be.  This is what you do.  You drink and you write.  No one said you had to be good at it.  Write drunk, edit sober.  But wherever you go, don’t dare come back empty-handed.  The room is spinning like a turntable.  This is the time, and this is the record of the time.  And it’s time to go.  Say your goodbyes, pay your respects, shake the hands, kiss the babies and make for the subway by way of a halal cart…

16JUL2012 – The movers are here.

The stammered shriek of packing tape still sets my nerves on edge, as does the hiss of crisp cardboard boxes being folded into load-bearing cubes.  I can almost taste the tape.  I remember picking bits of it out from between my teeth.  I’ve worn a knife on my belt since I was 21 but the work went faster when you simply bit the tape.  I moved furniture for one summer after high school and again, out of sheer desperation, for a few long months in ’99.  It’s not a glamorous job, by any stretch.  I stage and group the boxes, knowing what goes where.  I open the cupboards and leave the closets ajar.  When the truck was parked and the foreman walked in, I give the him walk through. What goes, what stays. He nodded, sending his guys out to the truck for paper and boxes.  And an olive drab six-pack of tape.

Moving your own stuff sucks.  Moving other people’s stuff is far worse.  At the end of the day, you can feel every joint, bone and muscle in your body.  You feel your fingers hardening into robot claws, twisted by wardrobe boxes, and stretched by mirror cartons.  You know what it means to be truly exhausted, spent and ejected as though fired from the Gun of Tired.  Not from a long day at the shopping mall sucking down Slurpees and trying on jeans, or forwarding humorous emails in an air-conditioned office, but the kind of depressed effort that comes from packing and carting around other people’s worldly possessions.  Sometimes you’ve got one job for the day.  If God hates you — and he does — you’ve got two.  It’s not a job that earns you a lot of respect.  People tend to look down their nose at you.  They speak slowly when they explain things, as though your title dictated your behavior.  Like maybe your GED brain wasn’t up to the task.  It didn’t matter that I’d graduated from Willy Wonka school, or served my country and lived in Europe for four years.  I joke that movers prefer to be called ‘relocation specialists’ but I always felt like a fucking box monkey.

I’ll never forget how humiliating the experience was.  The warehouse apes typically started their day with a menthol cigarette and a can of Mr. Pibb.  Most of them were three rotten teeth shy of being able to give each other gum jobs in the bathroom, the walls of which were covered in crude depictions of curvaceous women in the Ready Position, framed by jagged arrows describing the path to glory.  For a good time call this number, or that number.  “For a good time?”  What the fuck did that even mean?  Were we gonna load up on quarters and hit the arcades?  The guy calling the shots in the office drove a red Camaro and wore a beeper on his belt.  Most of the drivers rocked cowboy boots and thin gold chains.  They shuffled when they walked and spent their breaks trying to one-up each other with improbable stories of who could drink more Jack Daniels.  Dick jokes qualified as the word of the day calendars.  There is nothing so defeating as working a dead end job for people who are dumber than you, all the while wondering if you’ve already passed your mountaintop…

There were some up moments, but what I remember most is the pain.

People tend to move in the summer, so I spent sweltering days getting deeply dirty.  The pads of my hands would develop a tiny neighborhood of dull yellow callouses, like hardened fallout shelter for incredibly small people.  Rivers of stupid fucking precious bodily fluids raced down my back, soaking the stupid fucking company t-shirt with the stupid fucking company logo on it.  I had a lot of time to think about this, that and the other thing while I was humping mountains of book cartons up a jangling metal load ramp, handing them off to the mastermind responsible for packing the truck as tightly as possible before running back to the basement for another load.  Sometimes I was critical of the shipper’s taste in books, but mostly I just went to my happy place.

The customers, or shippers as we called them, always seemed to move into or out of enormous pristine homes with stark white carpet and freshly painted white walls.  One afternoon, on my three-thousand and thirty-third trip into the basement for Christmas decorations, the foreman pulled me aside.  “Hey, shipper toll me ta tell ya not to bump up against his walls.  Says you’re gettin’ the place all dirty.  You’ll have to paint it if it’s bad.”  I looked.  I looked closer.  Yeah, there was a tiny smudge of manual labor on the wall.  Kinda put my whole day into perspective.

Another time we were loading an estimated 23,000 lbs. out of a house in Chicago.  It had been a long day; a pack and load for a massive farmhouse at the end of a gravel road flanked by drainage ditches.  The road was so narrow the driver couldn’t get the truck backed close to the house so we had to shuttle everything out the main road by hand.  We finished the job, but just barely…  Darkness had settled in about two hours ago and the mosquitoes were practically fucking holes in my skin.  I was looking forward to the jet-propelled air-conditioned comfort of the truck cab, a gallon of cold water and possibly a victory smoke as we hit the highway home.  Just then the shipper’s blonde bombshell of a wife came to the door.  For the record, she’d changed out of her jeans and t-shirt and into skin-tight shorts and a tank top just after the job had started — and after her husband had left for the day.  We’d all been eyeing her, but the foreman had been muttering smack to us about her in the truck during breaks.  Nothing serious, just playground trash.  Wait for it…

Karma!  “Guys?  I’m really sorry, but I forgot to tell you about the gun safe in the basement!  That needs to come up, too.”  I watched five bone-spent and completely exhausted men strain and struggle to heave a fucking chunk of pig iron up a narrow grade of steps.  “And please be careful of the molding on the doors!  It’s original.”

There were always last-minute tool sheds to be emptied, picnic tables lashed to the doors of a 40-foot trailer already bursting with household goods, meddlesome shippers who’d follow us out to the truck with each and every item we carried, standing pissant-style (hands reversed on hips, a curiously popular stance among men in the South) as they directed the physics warlord in the truck where he was to stack each item.  “Now, I don’t think that’s gonna fit, do you?  Now, that box has my mother’s good china, I’d prefer if it went on last…”  I will never forget the woman – the wife of an Air Force colonel – who offered us warm cans of Diet Rite as a “tip” but balked at our thirty-minute lunch break.  She came out to the truck twice, and even ventured up The Ramp:  “Aren’t ya’ll done yet?  I want all this stuff loaded!” As she pointed toward the house with one pale chicken wing, I saw the fat beneath her arm swing like a barbershop sign in an Old West town.  Five pairs of murderer’s eyes stared at her over flat Wendy’s cheeseburgers and half-empty French fry boxes.  She blinked back, incredulous.

What finally did me in was a waterbed mattress.  Second floor, somewhere in Chicago. I ran a hose out of the window to begin draining it while I packed the rest of the bedroom.  Wardrobe box for the clothes, book cartons for the desk, lamp box for the computer.  Piece of piss. When the mattress was completely empty, I would roll it up and manhandle it onto the floor.  It needed to be drained before I boxed it, but this thing was a fucking monster.  The foreman stuck his head in twice. “Hey, don’t let that thing kick your ass!  I need you to pack the garage next.”  The mattress was a two-man job and he knew it.  Long story short, it rolled off the frame and came down on my knees.  Not with any impact but with a cold, suffocating weight.  It felt like being crushed by a plastic sea.  I was able to slide it into a box and close the room, but I was tapped.  Dragged ass the rest of the day, dirty looks from the rest of the guys, all that.  The next day I couldn’t move.  I woke up with my arms drawn to my chest like a preying mantis and my knees ached something fierce.

I decided to call in a sick day: “Don’t bother coming back.  You can send someone for your check.”

In the end, I think this is what drove me be such a chronic discarder.  If I don’t need, don’t want it, haven’t worn it, never watched it, never used it — fuck it, get rid of it.  I don’t own anything I can’t carry by myself.

“But don’t you want to keep –?”

No, I don’t.

“But–”

Zip!

“Well, you should get a big-screen–”

These guys did fine.  I gave them each twenty bucks.

Later, in the back of the cab, headed to The Jane.  I swept the floors of my place and turned in the keys.  The dispatcher’s voice crackles out of the radio all robotic and monotone.  He’s saying something like, “Parrot Jones, Parrot Jones, Parrot Jones…” Over and over.  I don’t know who Parrot Jones is, but I like the way this old Lincoln Town Car rides, hugging the turns as we make our way to the Brooklyn Bridge.  I bid a silent goodbye to tags and artfully-done pieces of graffiti on the walls, to the corner bodegas, to the body shops listing window tint and stereo installation in giant orange letters, to the enormous black women hobbling along like Mondoshawans in Crocs as they push wireframe laundry carts before them down the cracked and crippled sidewalks.  Funny what you consider your home after awhile. We cross the Brooklyn Bridge.  The voice on the radio continues his airstrike: “Nikee.  Nikee.  Nikee…”

TO BE CONTINUED

I’m Fairly Certain Nick Cave Never Wore Cargo Shorts

11JUN2012 – Early Monday morning finds me just this side of introducing the contents of my stomach to an oxygen-rich environment.  The room is spinning like a goddamned centrifuge.  One minute I was unknotting my clenched social soul over nerd karaoke at the Waystation and the next I find myself reeling from the effects of devil rum, storm-trooping my way through the narrow aisles of a bodega at the top of my block and trading hard credits for a king-hell cylinder of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee.  Somehow I made it home.  Figured out the microwave.  Put food into a bowl.

The cats seem pleased by my arrival.  One of them sidles up close to me and, after bathing my arm with his hairbrush tongue, proceeds to snort the salt from my skin with a tiny straw while reporting enthusiastically on the status of his investment portfolio.  He swears Tim Horton’s is a gold mine.  I nod, pretending to be interested.  Bland agreement is often the best way to handle a drug fiend.  I just want the room to stop spinning…

As the universe inhales, cracks will begin to form.  Close your eyes, cross your arms and fall backwards into the opening between matter, allowing everything to close tight around you, comforting, like arms.  Hidden from view, safe, somewhere else.  When the next breath is taken, you will find yourself exhaled at the entrance to a dollar store along the outer rim of the Milky Way.  You are a long way from home.  This is what you want, this is what you get.

There is almost no point to my writing anymore.  It’s like playing mumblety-peg with a fogbank, sword fighting with a forest fire, or aiming myself at a half-formed phantom in the darkness and leaping for it with arms outstretched, already too late. Trip the shutter a second an instant after you should and you’ve missed the action.  Anyone who knows anything knows that.

Days later.  Now at Breuklyn, attempting to decipher ‘The Ticket That Exploded’ and drinking iced coffee.  June has been a pig-fucker for rain, but I don’t mind.  I prefer to dress like a hiker anyway.  As I stood in line to pay the cashier, I watched a skateboarder flow his way against the river of traffic.  I imagined a camera that could show me a close up of his fingertips as they grazed the aerodynamic surface of each parked car, blasting aside droplets in slow motion macro-explosions, as though clearing the way for a tiny four-lane highway.  Raindrops collide with the sidewalk creating bubbles no one gives a shit about.

I love this back room.  It reminds me of a construction site with lipstick.  The courtyard to my far left is a storm of leftover building materials and dirt-packed wine bottles.  The doorway looks as thought it was kicked into place and the floor under my feet is splattered with dirty paint and a lone area rug, which really ties the room together.  There are two faux-leather chairs and a couch here, and a coffee table with a hinged surface under which books on art and a deck of playing cards can be seen.

More pondering on the nature of relationships:  Take the couple across from me, sharing a joke and a giggle at the song playing over the radio.  They appear to be at that point in their relationship where Questions will be posed.  Or maybe they’ve passed that marker.

Maybe they’re at the point in the relationship where they’ve met each other’s parents.  Maybe they’ve already made that “late night drive home from the Petersons’ dinner party” and they’re still completely gob-smacked at the news that the Petersons are getting a divorce — or getting married, or adopting an emu, or, possibly, the Petersons have decided to undergo a series of costly operations and swap genders but stay married anyway.  Presently, talk falls to the floor mats and silence descends over the couple.  He’s got one hand on the wheel, mesmerized by the dotted lines disappearing up the nose of the car as he finds himself wondering how he arrived at this moment.  Maybe he’s thinking back to the first time he met the woman to his right.  He liked the way her young ass looked in a pair of stretch pants, like a lost baby bird that needed to be tenderly scooped up and placed back in the nest.  Presently he realizes she’s staring back at him, grinning like an idiot and thinking how lucky she is to have him and maybe they’ll be okay.

Or maybe she’s turned to the right, shoulders hunched as she stares out the passenger window watching the miles roll away, thinking back to a night not so long ago when his best friend fucked her so hard she saw stars and she lied about the reason she changed the sheets mid-week.  Maybe she’s trying to find a way to tell him that their paths will be diverging soon.

But for now they seem happy, dressed like stereotypes and smiling like there’s no tomorrow.

Life is sitting in a radio shack hammering out dots and dashes, wondering if anyone can hear you,

Matter of Fact

07MAY2012 – Humidity plus cat hair equals crazy. Fighting off a sinus infection for many days now; some sentient slime has taken up residence somewhere in my skull.  It communicates with me in a series of high-pitched squeals and clicks.  Possibly related to Delphinidae Delphis?  Must research this…

09MAY2012 – Older me to younger me one night in the half-light:

“I don’t have much time, so listen closely.  Open this book once a day.”  I hand it to him without breaking eye contact.  The cover is nondescript, the pages filled with hand-written instructions. He — me — blinks sleepily, dressed in his Star Wars pajamas.  He accepts it slowly without cracking the cover.  I can just make out the colic on the top of his head that didn’t go away until I was much older…

“This will be your point of reverence, your ceremony and your only religion.  The fact that I stand before you here and now, thirty years in my past and but for these three minutes, defies all laws of physics.  Obey these instructions to the letter and hide the results to the best of your ability. Live where this book tells you, eat what this book tells you to and adhere to the laws laid forth within.  This is not a drill.  This book contains lottery numbers and specific opportunities, ideas for novels, songs and inventions stolen from the future.  This will ensure our income for the rest of our lifespan, and save us the need to succumb to soul-sucking employment.

“You MUST live in the shadows for our plan to succeed.  I know you understand; we have that in common.  Use your first lottery  winnings to buy a small home in a nice neighborhood.  Take welding classes, carpentry classes and learn to ride a motorcycle.  Learn to rely upon yourself. Learn to handle firearms.  Learn first-aid.  Think like a spy; blend in wherever you go. Speak to no one about this.  Enlist in the military in order to broaden your knowledge base.  Stay off the grid and beneath the radar as much as possible.  Avoid relationships.  Save your money. Don’t drink to excess.  Exercise regularly and discuss our plans with no one. Be alone, stay alone.  Remember: you are the eternal sleeper, lying in wait.”

(A good spy is at all times pregnant with a redundant copy of himself.  In the event of System Failure, the back up copy will burst forth and complete the mission.)

26MAY2012 – A muggy afternoon, waiting for the rains to come. Waiting for one of two phones to ring.  Listening to the ancient dust of The Mars Volta.  Barefoot hipsters on a faux leather couch in this Brooklyn coffee house scribble higher math equations in battered notebooks, conversing like a pair of jabbering Binars.  The streets are alive with sundress girls on fixed gear bikes, pronounced thigh muscles, bountiful breasts, auburn bangs and reading glasses.  I am a cat on a windowsill, watching intently.

I feel that much of my creativity has rotted away; all that I imagined in my youth has come to pass.  The only hope left to me now comes in clots of possibility, finding the place where the past collides with the present tense collides with alien life forms and other dimensions: Aztecs on the subway, financial stability based on individual character actions, space travel as a matter of fact.  All of history is colliding like fat children at the bottom of the playground slide.  Our cage becomes ever gilded with each passing day.

Note from the GhettoGround: Western Union is located always at the epicenter of gritty hopelessness. The future isn’t frosted glass, brand-name drinking water, self-mowing lawns or free-floating graphic display.  That shit’s for the rich and the untroubled.  Real technology happens in the trenches; the run-down shit-show shanty shops where middle-aged African-American women with etched faces and an ironmonger’s breasts will test and weigh your gold jewelry in exchange for low-grade cell phones, knock-off cologne and pirated DVDs purchased from the bulletproof stall near the exit covered in Spanish warnings. (For some reason, she had the word ‘Scorpio’ tattooed on her wrist.  Talk about wearing your heart on your sleeve…)  Shallow luxuries sell first and fast.

The following commercial loops on the big screen TV: Carefully-cast actors apply for a new credit card – no background check and pre-paid, of course – and suddenly they’re catapulted into a life of unspecific wealth; stepping forth from limousines to the fantastic thunderstorm of flashbulbs, slipping behind velvet ropes with the ease of the manor born, spontaneous noblesse oblige attending A-list parties where EVERYONE looks simply AMAZING and they’re all having THE. BEST. TIME. EVER.  Lots of dental work, new suits, designer shoes and artisanal tits. Everything is a goddamn giddy delight here; luxury is haughtily expected.

Not so for the skinny crackhead girl I pass on the corner; she forcefully expels what appears to be a half pint of sherbet ice cream onto the filthy pavement at my feet, glaring as I move away.  There is no champagne for her.  Her name is absent from the guest list.

What a fantastic fucking lie…

//

Accept transport to Pier 90.  Enter the Manhattan Cruise Ship Terminal.  It will be zombie-empty. Three separate but equally fresh-faced teenagers carrying approximately $1500 worth of automatic weapons will check your credentials as you pass, eyeing you suspiciously.  Take the cargo elevator to the ground floor.  Show your credentials to the minimum-wage security guard, he’ll usher you ahead of the waiting line.  Board a three-masted sailing vessel moored just ahead of a naval warship.  Politely decline all food and drink.  Remember, you have a job to do.  Smile and nod your way through the gathering crowd.  You have nothing of interest to offer this gentle mob; there are no rings of significance on your fingers, no gold on your shoulders.  Stow your gear, assemble your camera and find a vantage point to wait. Wrap the camera strap casually around your right wrist and don’t look at your watch or your phone.  Avoid appearing anxious.

In exactly thirty-three minutes, seven high-ranking naval officers from three different countries will board the vessel.  Photograph each of them as they arrive, ensuring best light and resolution.  Next, photograph four men dressed in woolen garb dating from the War of 1812.  When the time comes to depart, stow your gear and shake hands with the ship’s captain.  It’s only polite.  It will begin to rain immediately after.  Unfold a raincoat from your camera bag.  Exit the vessel and walk quickly to 51^st street.  Hail the first cab you see.  Return to base.  Forward your imagery to November Yankee and await approval to disseminate to local media.

You’re done.  Go home.  Speak to no one about this.

//

Later: The girl behind the counter at the salad bar told me that I changed her life last night.  All I did was open my mouth and speak briefly about universal connection, the necessity for heartbreak in personal evolution and love at the sub-atomic level. Words came out of my mouth and I watched her eyes begin to tear up.  I don’t remember exactly what I said.

BT
NNNN

Speak to no one about this.

15APR2012 – Part of this is my job description, part of this is a dream. There are moments in the light of day when I cannot tell them apart. Sometimes, I travel from place to place at the direction of (a certain government agency) and perform tasks — which began as uncomfortable and tedious but have grown progressively more rewarding.

“Head south, drive for twenty miles. Pull over at (a certain gas station) just outside (a certain town). The station will be abandoned. Open the envelope located under the passenger seat. You will find a pair of gloves. Put them on and pocket both the lighter and the box containing paraffin-soaked cotton. You will break into the office at the back of the building without being observed. Force the lock on the top left-hand desk drawer. There will be a large square package wrapped in plain brown paper. Do NOT open it. Instead, carry it with you to the lot behind the gas station and look for an old rusted drum. Place the package in the drum and set fire to the package using the lighter and paraffin, making certain to scatter the ashes thoroughly and bury the fire. Once you’ve finished, return home. Speak to no one about this.”

Next. “Catch the first flight to (a certain place). Rent a car and drive to (a certain pier) and wait there for six hours. Purchase a sandwich from a food cart at the end of the pier if you get hungry. When (a certain vessel) moors to the pier, board and ask to speak to the captain. When you meet him, hand him a one-dollar bill and take his picture. He’ll know what it means. Once you have his photograph, return to the airport and fly home. Speak to no one about this.”

Next. “Travel by train to New London, Connecticut. Be at (a specific address) by 0800 Wednesday. Someone there will give you a large green bag containing a knife, a compass, a space blanket, a warm coat and a whistle. Purchase sufficient food and water. Then, drive to an old airfield at the edge of town. There you will board the large white military aircraft with an orange stripe on the side. They’re expecting you. It will take you to Newfoundland. When you arrive, walk to the end of the runway and board another white plane. This one will have the word ‘surveillance’ painted along the side in big red letters. They’ll be expecting you. They will fly approximately 375 SE to position 41° 46′ North, 50° 14′ West. When you arrive, there will be a boat waiting. Photograph the boat and any activity you observe. The aircraft mechanic will jettison an object through a drop tube located in the rear of the aircraft. Photograph this event and anything you think might be of interest. Return home. Speak to no one about this.”

There’s never a definite end to the tasks. Sometimes they come in the middle of the night. Sometimes they come very early in the morning. “Tomorrow at 0400, you will don this dress uniform complete with colorful ribbons, insignia and a fancy hat. You will travel to attend (a certain function) at (a certain place). You will be introduced to (a certain person). When you meet him, take his picture. Wait twenty minutes. When he is introduced to (a certain person), you will photograph them together. The photograph should appear natural. It must NOT appear posed. After this, you are free to go. Speak to no one about this.”

Next: “Catch the first flight to New Orleans. Rent a car, drive to (a certain place) and wait for instructions. After two weeks, you will drive to an airfield on the edge of town and board a helicopter. They will be expecting you. It will take you to an oilrig located in the Gulf of Mexico. Upon arriving, you will photograph the drilling equipment, the interior of the control room and anything you think might be of interest. Once you have these photographs, board the helicopter and return to (a certain place). Speak to no one about this.”

Sometimes I receive these instructions in the middle of the task I’m completing ordering me to drop what I’m doing and begin another task, or walk from it away entirely. The standard guidance is simple: “Travel light. Pack a duffel bag of clothes, a laptop, a camera and your passport. Use this card for expenses, and present this piece of paper when challenged. Speak to no one about this…”

TWM

The Phone Call of Cthulhu

Deployment of World Ocean Circulation Experiment buoy, one each.

27JAN2012 – I’m in an office on the second floor of a shoebox-shaped building on the southern tip of Manhattan. It’s raining; the background hiss is partially clouding my thinking. I can’t help but wonder if the static-based sound of falling water impacting like gentle ordinance on filthy concrete might have the same effect on the human brain as noise-cancelling headphones; impeding one’s overall ability to think or act clearly.

I wonder about a lot of things. I’m not saying any of the questions I ask are valid, or even that important in the greater scheme. In this day and age you can ask all the questions you want; the answers are probably out there somewhere. But what you do with the result is up to you.

There’s no one else here at the moment, so I’m listening to Pigface (rather loudly) and packing for my trip. I’ll catch a train to New London, Conn., and then a military C-130J south to Elizabeth City, N.C., before heading north again to St. John’s, Newfoundland, where I’ll be flying further still out over the North Atlantic with a crew whose job is to spot icebergs orphaned from Mother Greenland and translate this information into assorted charts and helpful warnings. I’ll be taking photos, handling the media who’ve signed up to fly with us, re-reading Neal Stephenson’s fucking awes*me work of maximum geekery, Cryptonomicon, and fighting to stay awake whilst the vibrating tremors from mighty engines work themselves under my skin.

Camera bodies, batteries, cables, lenses, chargers and a MacBook Pro are shoved into my camera bag with all the enthusiasm of the “gear-up” scene from a Rambo movie. All that’s missing is a fuck-off big hunting knife in the sheath at my hip, a red headband made fast around my brow and some heavy-lidded mumbling about war, weapons and drawing first blood. I’ve got enough equipment in this bag to document a revolution and I’ve planned my trip to the nth degree. Nothing to it but to do it, and hope my planning reveals no signs of potroasticus cerebellum.

29JAN2012 – Amtrak 160 headed northeast, easy like Sunday morning. The shifting perspective of the countryside as viewed through the horizontal arrow slit of this shiny metal worm reveals a large-scale zoetrope of naked trees and pulsing bursts of sunlight. It’s giving me a fucking Japanese seizure is what’s it doing. That, and allowing me the rare opportunity to experience e-ink properties in my actually-analog book which I can’t seem to concentrate on, so I close my eyes.

Blood-red shockwaves inspired by the flashing sunlight pulse violently against my lowered eyelids, which keeps perfect time with the dated sounds of Ministry’s ‘Jesus Built My Hotrod’. My ear goggles are flooded with the warm honey of crashing bass. Turns out I can’t sleep either, so I open my eyes and look around; first at the slumbering Asian girl with the British accent and gentle overbite sitting across the aisle from me, then back out the window again, and finally down to the much-abused notebook on my lap. The rocking motion of the train has transmogrified my commonly-careful cuneiform into a document prophesying the coming of what appears to be multiple earthquakes.

The landscape rolls and yaws like a fighter jet alongside our forward surging inchworm, affording the passengers on the right side of the car with fleeting glimpses of backyard wealth and modest prosperity; seasonally-stranded fishing boats, multiple modes of muddied transportation and sprawling houses with oversized windows, each overlooking bodies of water — no matter how insignificant. These are the outward symptoms of a fortunate soul in an uncertain economy. And where there is stability such as this, there is typically found the Bounty of Favor and the unspoken Marital Return On Investment.

What I’m trying to say here is that the MILF of a rich man probably fucks like she owns the place. She knows from whence her bread is buttered. With her primal needs and American dreams of food, shelter and matching drapes fully realized, her nesting instincts rev right into the red faster than a NASCAR Napoleon on nuptial night. She’s met a man she can depend upon; a steadfast sumbitch who can help to unclench her ovaries, change her flat tire, slap her up a spice rack from leftover floor shims and drive her to the hospital with one calloused hand tied behind his L.L. Bean red plaid shirt…

–

Where the passing riverbeds are revealed, the smoothed earth echo of mental mud is exposed as the individual folds of a great brain. This section of the Earthbrain’s purpose is to do x. A few miles over, that dry winter lakebed’s folds are designed to execute function y. The Earth is alive, its cognitive abilities spread out over its entire body like skin. (If someone cuts off your hand, you can’t think clearly. Follow?) People still wave at passing trains, swaying their limbs overhead like friendly flags of surrender, a gesture one doesn’t see much of inside the 11216 zip code.

30JAN2012 – I haven’t flown aboard a C-130 since my days in Alaska, but the sensation comes flooding back; I’m buckled into a row of surplus theater seats (my luggage is strapped to the deck about where the orchestra pit would be) and I’m facing a wall of tool chests that would make the eyes of any self-respecting hillbilly gearhead turn green with envy. The seats are bolted to a large slab of aluminum locked partway between a series of rollers, further attached to the floor of what appears to be an immaculate but highly complicated basement workshop during a long and gentle earthquake. You’d need a plane this big just to cart around the instruction manuals that go with it. There’s likely to be a jargon-rich chapter for each and every screw, bolt and wingnut aboard.

Warm wind blowing across my face from an overhead vent makes my eyes heavy for a time, and I remember nothing until our overfed tires punch the earth in the face and I am jolted from my slumber. Presently the engines wind down; the rear ramp of the plane performs a complex raising and lowering procedure and fresh North Carolina night air boards the aircraft, chasing away the sand of sleep. I blink myself awake and assist with the offload process inasmuch as it involves helping the other personnel with their luggage before jumping down to the tarmac for a look-see. The tail of the aircraft towers above me, lit in false moonlight generated by the white lights from the hangar. I can see the stars and you have no idea how happy this makes me… I gather my bags and we head for the gate, we head for the hotel, we head for dinner. Later, I head for a bed.

–

01FEB2012 – We stop off at a Food Lion for sandwiches and lunch supplies enroute to the airfield. The store is full of nourishing foodstuffs but my needs are specific, bordering on demanding.

The item must be small in size, marginally ruggedized and reinforced against accidental mashing. It must require minimal preparation (i.e. unwrap it), and offer maximum protein output when weighed against the aforementioned size and weight guidelines. After a considerable amount of clinical analysis, I select a turkey and cheese sub from the deli, although somewhat wary of biting into moist bread later…

Now for the important stuff. I carefully select my fuel cells; a pair of 355ml aluminum cylinders containing a highly-caffeinated and sugar-free substance, the packaging of which features a duel of blood-red bovine engaged in violent conniptions at the center of a burning star. (Red Bull doesn’t give me wings so much as it allows me to vibrate my way into other dimensions.) Just tell them, “I wanted to go higher.”

I score a Skor bar and a pack of gum while waiting in line. The man ahead of me is buying a case of Coors and a generous supply of Sparks. It is not quite 8:30 a.m. Shine on, you crazy diamond…

–

One hour later, our baggage and equipment is aboard and we’re at last preparing for our departure to St. John’s, Newfoundland. I’m seated closest to the door. It’s not by choice. It was the only pair of seats left available, and my camera bag requires a crush-free zone of its own. My legs are longer than Beowulf so I have to sit sidesaddle in order to keep my giraffe knees clear of the narrow aisle as the air crew rush back and forth shining their lights into overhead spaces and checking things off their lists. That’s what aviators do.

The engines kick in and the lonely patch of tarmac still visible outside the open hatch begins to flicker and blur as the props gain speed, turning faster and faster until their shadows fall away, dissolving to nothingness, evaporating in the sunlight. Suddenly the ground becomes crystal clear again. Wheels up at 1007. Time to read.

Welcome to Gander. Abandon warmth ye who enter here.

1700: Welcome to Gander, Canada. We’re here for a quick “how-do-you-do” with the local aviation authorities and a perfunctory conversation with customs officials, who give us the once-over for cash, knives and guns. (Fuck! I left my passport on the plane. I really wanted a new stamp…) We’re waved through regardless. The airport is deserted – and I mean literally. It feels like the setting for a video game. I pretend we’re being watched. It helps pass the time.

I ducked away from the group to use the restroom and as I stood there, imminently vulnerable, ejecting five degrees of my core temperature into a ready-made sculpture, the following thought crossed my mind: “This is it – this is the scene where the Red Shirt wanders away from the landing party and gets his face chewed open by a toilet-squatting zombie.” Figures it’d be the photographer who gets it first. The others will no doubt pilfer my supplies and reach the objective without me.

The waiting lounge, however, was sumptuous; a full-sized pool table, a full-sized coffee maker, a big screen TeeVee and a generous selection of video games, none of which we had time to enjoy–

“Say, how much time do we have?” One person answered five minutes; another replied with half an hour. Weighing the difference, I plopped down in a leather chair by the window and called AT&T to request a Canadian phone plan. (Or maybe it was a firing plan. Sometimes I have these unfortunate moments where I black out and ask Santa for what I really want:

“Come on, lady. The code is Almighty, coordinates 090264712. It’s all in here!”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t do that! I’m going to need to speak to my supervisor…”

The air traffic control center was a bit more populated; grizzled old men in tucked shirts with carefully trimmed beards and the look of church about them sat in glad adoration of enormous monitors bursting with crisscrossing neon lines. They spoke strings of alphanumeric incantations into headsets, pronouncing the magic spells necessary to guide multiple aircraft safely toward their destinations: “Alpha Charlie one Tango, I have you at two-six-seven, request you two-seven-five northwest at five-thousand…”

We were wheels up an hour later.

–

The runway at St. John’s, Newfoundland, was under attack by a squadron of tiny tornadoes of dry white snow reminiscent of hourglass sand, and the wind gnashed blindly at our props. Once we’d come to a complete stop and the hatches were open, I grabbed my camera and hustled to the hangar hoping to catch some shots of the plane being towed to shelter.

“This is the worst part of the trip,” said the pilot. He’d appeared behind me undetected while I was framing images in my viewfinder.

“Oh? Because you’re not in control?” I asked, turning to face him, realizing this might have been a presumptuous thing to say, and regretting it immediately. Sometimes I clear leather before I check the safety on my mouth.

“Exactly.” He either didn’t hear me or he ignored it. Or I was right about something for a change. “Last time we were here, a jet blew past us on the runway and the wash almost knocked an empty box into the side of the plane. The nose cone is where all the radar equipment lives and it’s worth at least $500,000. I love to fly, but this is really the only part that makes me nervous.”

St. John’s appears mostly deserted. Minimal traffic, fewer lights. A skewed yellow trapezoid announcing the Best place to Buy electronics burns bright like molten gold against the swirling mass of starry ice. Apparently Bryan Adams is playing a show here this week. Somehow this makes sense.

Once I’d checked into my room and changed into clean clothes, I headed for the hotel bar for a salad and a pint. I was tired and stretched a little thin but genuinely happy to be on the move again.

The waitress was wicked cute as waitresses go, but I think she hates Americans. (Hates. Present tense. Pay attention. She’s still out there… waiting.) I say this because I was the only person in the room she didn’t smile at. She smiled at the dopey guy with matching hair, a gold chain and no chin who was drinking white wine and reading a book at the next table. She smiled at the old codgers in ball caps talking about tractor parts. She smiled at the two older ladies in — I mean, she literally stopped smiling when she saw me! If she remembered me from a past life, I had no idea what I might have done to piss her off.

“Hello! I’d like a beer, please.” I placed my hands palms down on the table where she could see them. No sudden movements. She could probably smell fear.

“Well, we have sixteen of them on tap.” Her voice was frosty, her body language clear: Take your pick, fuckstick. I’ll personally pee in whichever pint you choose. Hesitantly, I glanced over at the bar. There’s no way I could read the labels from here and she didn’t appear to be forthcoming with name brands, so…

“Okay, I guess I’ll just wander over and pick one out…?” I was preparing to slide out the booth and review the selection myself if only it meant we could end this uncomfortable standoff. I was hungry and my brain was being unusual.

She repeated her previous statement but slower this time, as though she were addressing a partially-deaf dog rapist who suffered from a terrible learning disorder, and she couldn’t decide between abject hate, or burning pity. How could the number of beers on tap possibly apply to my inability to visually discern between the labels? On a whim, I asked for Guinness. The fates smiled upon me.

Presently my food and drink arrived. I sipped at my (pee-free) stout and devoured my salad, jotting impressions in my notebook and humming quietly along to The Clash’s “London Calling” when it came up on the jukebox.

–

02FEB2012 – Next Bat-night, same hotel Bat-bar. Today was all about gym, pale, and laundry. Clean clothes, quick workout. Read a lot, wrote more.

Somewhere to my left, the synthetic blue thunderbolt of a camera flash erupts in the brown wood darkness of the room. Morrissey howls piteously from the stereo. Just doesn’t fit the vibe of the room.

Spent all day alone. It felt good, like when your doctor and your priest and your boss and everyone else tells you the next drink is going to kill you, but you drink it anyway because what the fuck do they know? Solitude only hates you when you’re new to the game.

You know what’s weird? Accepting that a place like St. John’s is populated. It’s the edge of the world. I mean, sure it’s the year 2012 — people have to be born somewhere and I bet it’s drop dead gorgeous in the summer — but it feels small in a way I can’t properly describe. And it’s back-dated somehow, like maybe the city was founded by visiting aliens who’d gleaned all they could about Western Civilization from television signals they’d intercepted on the way here and thought it’d be a hoot to build their own ant farm, so they placed a sizable credit card order with some sort of aliens-only, Wile E. Coyote-based Acme City Store in order to bring their creation into lockstep with the 21^st century:

“Oh, look! It’s finally here! Let’s open it!”
“Wait — do you think we should maybe do this outside?”
“Good idea!”

These far-born city planners eased their giant wooden baby onto a dolly and together they cart it to a nearby clearing, eventually dropping the handles with a joint huff of exertion. One of them slits opens a document pouch on the side of the crate with a trusty penknife, dons a pair of reading glasses, licks a thumb and begins reading the first page of instructions:

“Congratulations on your new future, it will bring you years of enjoyment… all new, lifetime guarantee… let’s see here… yeah, it says here we get a Best Buy, 2-for-1 pitchers of Budweiser and something called… Sirius XM radio?” He peers over the top of his reading glasses and licks his bottom lip, eyes full of question. “Does that mean it’s big?”

“No, dear. You’re thinking of XL.”
“Huh.” Reads some more, rubs hands together. “Well, here goes nothing!”

On the count of three, they tug hard on the bright red handle marked PULL ME and take a few careful steps back as the gossamer gold balloon begins to expand at a terrific rate… highway off-ramps, strip malls, strip joints, breakfast shops, lunch specials, fine dining, small businesses and hotel chains—all of it begins somersaulting its way free of the confines of the box and sliding into position, clicking and whirring and turning this way and that with a terrific amount of rushing wind and noise, finally locking into place with the imperfect click of casual Chinese craftsmanship, bristling mazes of big screen TeeVees, and clone-grown actors destined to run screaming for New York City just as soon as their legs finish cooling—

“Did you want to order something, sir?” I’m jolted from my reverie by the earnest expression of the winner of the 2012 Cutest High-School Senior competition (Runner-up: Best Rack). I have no idea how long she’s been standing there and I’m taken aback by her display of sudden ninja trickery, but I manage to stammer out something that sounds an awful lot like ‘chicken garden salad with no dressing and black coffee with one sugar, please,’ but it could have been – well, it could have been anything, really…

I glance up at the TeeVee screen while I await my repast: a sporting team consisting of giant people from the newer city of York are scheduled to engage in a mock land war across a mighty lawn with a group of patriots in the name of lucrative contracts. The winner of this contest shall be eligible to have their likeness displayed on cereal boxes across the land. Apparently these contests take place annually…

Huh.

–

03FEB2012 – Flew today. Somewhere along the line the plane became 250-plus-pounds lighter; minus the weight of a current-tracking WOCE buoy; minus the weight of foodstuffs and sandwiches purchased from the local Sobe needed to feed thirteen people; minus the amount of fuel burned; minus the amount of engine heat and carbon dioxide lost to the *fuck-you-cold of the North Atlantic (*that’s metric, by the way), but plus the infinitesimal weight gained across three flash drives by taking photos and videos of the aircraft. In another lifetime, I’d kick the shit out of pure math. Not this one. Next time, maybe.

So. Today. What a weird state of affairs. Three or so hours into the flight, the tail of the plane yawned awake with a high-pitched whine. One section raised, the other lowered and between them the cold air of the North Atlantic bum-rushed our show. I was about six feet back behind the buoy crate, one arm wrapped through a loop of cargo net, crouched low and braced for stability whilst trying not to fall against the leg of the CBC cameraman I’d positioned front and center of the action.

Seconds later, two members of the aircrew shoved the box into the wild blue yonder. A peppermint parachute snapped open and the box disappeared into the frigid waters below. A successful launch.

An estimated eighty percent of an iceberg is below the water line and, much like a sailboat, they are pushed along by ocean currents. These buoys, part of the World Ocean Current Experiment, will allow scientists to track said currents in the areas where icebergs are typically found, giving them a better idea of where to look and thereby keep mariners safe. But you probably knew that already.

–

04FEB2012 – There are no flights today. In fact, nothing is happening today. St. John’s is being audited by a blizzard. Or maybe it’s more of a snow transfusion; out with the old, in with more of the same shit. Knowing in advance that this was going to happen, I stayed awake till 5 a.m., writing and consuming Red Bull like it was my job. This morning, as I sat in the hotel restaurant, someone brought me a Denver omelet and a pot of black coffee.

Minus 24-hour access to the pool and an unlimited supply of fresh Alaskan halibut, brown rice and steamed spinach, this, my friends, is my American dream!

There’s a young boy sitting at a table across the restaurant with two older men. I can remember what it was like to be that kid; I’d rather have been outside playing tag until dark, riding my bike, reading a book or dreaming up reasons why a salt shaker would make an awesome spaceship (figure out the propulsion system, locate the bridge, decide upon a classification and determine if it was built on Earth or in orbit), versus wasting a perfectly good snow day being held captive to the natural ebb and flow of boring adult conversation. The nearer of the men appears to be the boy’s father, as he is looking down at the child with an unmistakable love and pride. The shortest member of the three is busy sipping different liquids through his straw, oblivious to the gaze of admiration.

I watch as a young girl loads a spearful of prostrated chicken bodies into Hell’s Ferris wheel. She performs a last rite of sprinkled herbs and spices before sealing the door of the inferno. Immediately, the tiny cube is filled with hot light and every aspect of the birds’ bodies is revealed. The slow orbit begins. In ten minutes time, the tender pink of their skin will turn a lazy golden brown, like the tan of a college girl with time on her hands and too much rum in her system…

To Be Continued…

In The Future We Will All Have A Chance…

12JUN2011 – The last of the great mindships had sailed from sight and his shoulders were sore from waving goodbye when he noticed the blank sheet of paper lying on the patch of sunlit grass at his feet.  Reality gathered like a cold grapefruit in his gut; the visitors were gone, but the page was still there.  One was a dream.  The other was very much a fact.  Days after the incident, he still couldn’t write.  Nothing made sense anymore and the ideas he’d birthed a decade ago were useless children to him now.  Meatland technology had caught up to his imagination rendering him null, if not void…

2004 – That late night December flight to Dutch Harbor really did it for me.  In the weeks preceding the wreck of the Selendang Ayu, I’d been reading a Ray Kurzweil book, one I own but cannot remember the name of.  It prophesied the impending Singularity and spoke of a fantastic host of futuristic possibilities that set my hungry brain spinning in more directions than I could count.  It was the right tool at the right time.

During that skeleton era I was writing for pure escapism; my boss wanted me dead and I was experiencing my first Alaskan winter on the poor.  The credit wolves were sniffing constantly around our door, although the use of the word ‘our’ in this sentence is questionable.  My already-troubled union was falling further and faster apart and, adding insult to injury, the fridge was always empty.  I was down to my high school weight.  (There was always milk and peanut butter for the young John Connor but Sarah and Reese were left to fend for themselves.  Once close friends, they now hid behind library books, reading an odd or amusing passage aloud now and again from opposite ends of the room.   There was no Internet, no television and nothing resembling a social life to distract them from the awful glare of silence.)

I looked forward to Friday nights; I’d put the Padawan to bed, fix myself a cup of heavy fuel and descend into the dusty black of the basement to a red-lined writing room in the bowels of the House That Drunk Built, armed with a stack of burned CDs, a piece of shit IBM ThinkPad and what was left of my imagination and I wouldn’t leave my desk until the morning sun insisted upon it.

It was during this time that KnoWare Man was born.  I genuinely believe that book saved me.  I put everything I had left into it and it made for a good read.  It began as a short story in 2001; the dialog took a few years to focus and the plot was streamlined over the course of a hard winter or two or three.  Or four.  I finally released it in November of 2010 while working a case in Grand Isle, La.  There were no trumpet calls or angelic choirs when I hit the ‘send’ button.  Instead, I watched this video and took a moment to imagine I’d be rich someday.  Then I took a healthy slug from a box of wine, made myself a bologna and mustard sandwich and began writing cutlines for work photos I’d taken earlier that day during a trip upriver in an aluminum boat.  I’d already outlined my next novel so I thought I could just “whip another bottle into fire” while the crowd was still laughing, shocked by the explosion of breaking glass.

Not so fast.  It turns out I’m too comfortable to write now.  I live in a nice apartment on a nice street in a nice neighborhood in Brooklyn and my bills are paid in full each month.  My boss is only half kidding when he says he wants to kill me, and my credit score is good.  Really good.  I drink coconut water like it’s my fucking job and when I get antsy I do chin-ups on the bar above my bedroom door. (Sarah and John are taken care of to the best of my ability.  She wisely decided we should part ways for the continued preservation of our little tribe…)

“Caterpillar to Agent Monday.” – A man spoke those words into the cuff of his jacket one afternoon last month during my subway ride home.  He was standing about five feet away from me and just to my right.  Maybe he was crazy, or maybe I misunderstood what he’d said.  I misunderstand a lot of what I see, hear or read.  That’s not a flaw.  It’s a goddamn gift…

//

The sign on the truck said Green Renovations:  An old man with wild eyebrows wearing a painters cap and a work shirt that’d seen better days stepped down from the cab of the truck and blinked for awhile, double-checking the address.  After a smoke break, he supervised the offload of a cumbersome grey box and an industrial-strength tripod from the back of the truck  as it was carried up two flights of stairs to a room at the back.  The gear took a little time to set up; measurements were taken and calculations were made, switches were flicked and dials were turned.  The warming machine reeked of hot ozone.  Goggles were donned.  When all was ready, the tech took a remote in his hand and depressed a single button with a gnarled thumb.  A pointed apparatus at the business end of the device flashed once, twice, three times before a bright red line leapt horizontally across the top of the wall, leaving a hint of shadow across the paint.  More adjustments were made and more dials were turned.  Another trilogy of flashes filled the room before a second vertical line was scored across the left edge of the wall at a right angle, intersecting with the first.  This careful procedure would be repeated for the baseboards, ceiling and remaining edges of every wall in each of the empty rooms, wrapping around doorframes, windows and outlets. 

Across this burn line, the nanites would not venture.  This was important.  Once they were let loose, they’d eat everything up to the line and down to the treated plaster — nails, scraps and all, smooth as good whiskey.  Renovation without the fuss, dust or noise.  Care must be taken, however.  If the box of lines weren’t properly closed off — if the lines didn’t intersect, if they didn’t go deep enough – well, there’d be almost no stopping a swarm of nanites.  Accidents were common in the beginning.  An inexperienced tech was responsible for an entire block being consumed by nanites thanks to a tiny gap, a simple miscalculation.  Fortunately, the lifespan of a nanite is less than twelve hours so the other side of the street was spared.  There are very few businesses in this city permitted to practice Green Renovation but their reputations are gold…

In an apartment down the block, a child strokes and plays with her seedCat in the triangle of sunlight pouring in through the open window of her bedroom.  As the animal purrs and arches contentedly beneath her hand, small puffs of dander are released on the breeze, clinging to the splinters on the windowsill and the burrs of the brick wall beyond but not taking root.  Not here.  It isn’t safe.  The stronger seeds will drift out to the buildings and rooftops below where they’ll begin to germinate.  In just five months, a squat thorn bush with dazzling green flowers will produce five small pods the size of walnuts.  Two months later, those pods will erupt with a slight pop and a crop of seedCats will tumble to the ground, blinking, mewling and ravenous for flies, leaves and twigs…

Sign on the walk: “Grand Ma Seizure’s Chicken Shack.”  A line of ambulances as far as the eye can see….

Ben-wa Albuquerque, the exquisitely spoiled teenage daughter of a mega-wealthy businessman saunters down Fifth Avenue wearing little more than a smile, led along by a pair of Bengal tigers adorned in matching diamond collars.  She rents them by the hour from the estate of the deposed Queen of England, who packed her bags and boarded a fast freighter for Brazil in the dark of night with nothing more than the clothes on her back and the Royal Pool Boy in tow when the shit got too real.

Ben-wa gestures and points at every object she desires in a dreamlike, languid manner, every detail of her experience having been addressed to the nth degree.  Ben-wa doesn’t look at price tags, she doesn’t speak to a sales-anyone and she damn sure doesn’t want to damage her two-thousand-dollar manicure by carrying fucking parcels.

This week’s hot item: sex slaves built from salvaged vagabonds and rehabilitated paste junkies.  Hose ‘em down, clean ‘em up, give ‘em their shots, get ‘em to a gym and feed ‘em a steak now and again.  They’ll gladly withstand the excruciating pain of the gold-leafing sessions on a steady diet of Betty Ford’s Ashes.  Frequent use turns the pupils of the user a soft, milky white.

Ben-wa’s purchases will be airlifted by silk dirigible to the roof of her enormous handcrafted Manhattan loft and arranged to perfection by temperamental interior decorators with one-word names; prepubescent protégé’s who panic and flail like windmills in a hurricane if they’re not served a brand of Swiss mineral water so exclusive it doesn’t even have a fucking name.  Each portion is filtered through Natalie Portman’s twat and served in a one-of-a-kind crystal decanter made by a blind French designer whose name is far too A-list to be listed here, and chilled with icy blue shavings from an endangered Alaskan glacier…

It’s raining outside.  I’m waiting for a friend in an oxygen and blood boutique on the Upper East Side.  The room is populated by three scowling androgynous bicycle messengers, two Greek housewives and one trans-gendered DJ with LED sub dermal implants that jump and flash like eels in a fish tank.  A nice girl-from-next-door type serves mood-enhancing ice cream behind the counter while hololamps alter the decor to match the mood of the music, pouring forth from liquid glass speakers painted across the ceiling.  From where I’m sitting, I can see an old woman exiting her luxury apartment.  She’s wearing the pelt of a freshly-slaughtered hipster; the empty eye sockets, the intricately tattooed flesh and magnificently waxed moustache perched high on her left shoulder as his draining irony gland weeps down the back of her dress like the trail of a snail.  She’s assisted into a white stretch hansom drawn by a team of black supermodels…

R.E.S.C.U.E comes to the aid of an advertising executive who finds himself pinned down in a daytime firefight between warring cabdrivers while he’s enroute to a planning meeting.  Seeking cover behind a rusting dumpster, he winces at every ricochet, emptying the contents of his regulation-issue stainless-steel briefcase onto the filthy pavement and cowering beneath it while frantically pressing a small red button on the handle, praying to fuck that his recent work on the SupraTec account has been up to par.  (Employers reserve the right to discontinue their employees’ Esc@pe accounts without prior notification.)  “Welcome to R.E.S.C.U.E.  Please wait while I triangulate your position and plot your escape route.  If you are presently in a situation which threatens your safety, please seek suitable cover…”

15JUL2011 – Good morning from 42nd gear.  I am:

Listening to: Iron Maiden, Fugazi and KISS, three of the four basic food groups.  Speaking of the fourth, I’m:

Drinking: Venti iced coffee (black-eye, sweetened) made with average care by some cute little barista who slaves away at the corner Starbucks.  She’s got big brown eyes, perfect teeth and the good graces to laugh at my dumb jokes when I’m in the mood to make them.  I like my coffee like I like my women: way too young to interest me.  (I am to 4 p.m. what 3:30 is to 1:15.)  And I’m:

Functioning: But barely.  This week has been an experiment in sleep deprivation.  I’ve been awakened every morning at 3 a.m. by the chirp of the Batphone.  Sometimes every half hour.  And each time I’d settle back into the soothing syrup of slumber, the motherfucker’d chirp with news of an oil sheen or a vessel collision, a swimmer lost to the appetite of a rogue wave, a jet skier grounded on a sand bar, a report of a bridge jumper or a body in the water.  The lines between sleep and awake have begun to blur…

Outside my window, sunlight-dappled Battery Park is full of well-rested tourists going on about their happy affairs, expensive cameras slung around meaty Midwest necks as they pause to take snapshots of the first skyscrapers they encounter when they step off the Staten Island Ferry — which is weird, because there’s nothing on Staten Island to draw them away from Manhattan in the first place except mafia housing, sandwich shops, a methadone clinic and a boat rental agency.  The once-idyllic fishing village has earned a bad reputation for being the Island of Misfit Toys and brother, when those Toys come a-charging out of the ferry tunnel like B-Boy baby bullets with bad attitudes, you don’t want to be standing in their way.  A parade of used-up harpies, strung-out scarecrows and burned-down buildings of human beings trickle into the heat of the morning sun like blood from a gut wound, searching for a free cigarette and a park bench to snuggle up to, squawking at each other across the busy pavement about nothing you’d ever want to hear once you’ve washed your face and hands…

In the future, we will all have a chance to bite the hand that feeds us,

TWM

Stevie Wonder, Me, and The Death of The Fightin’ 88th

So, there I am at my favorite diner in the valley.

It’s a bright Saturday morning; I’m tucking into a stack of Silver Dollar pancakes smothered in blueberry syrup and a damn good cup of coffee, and enjoying the company of the man seated across the booth from me – one Stevland Hardaway Judkins, born May 13, 1950. You know him better as the genius who wrote ’Higher Ground’, released on his 1973 album ‘Innervisions’.

We were talking about this, that and the other thing and before long the conversation turned to dreams, so I told him about the time I dreamt I was being chased across the Gobi Desert by a vengeful Mariachi band…

I ran until I could run no more and when they finally ran me down, they marched around me in an ever-tightening circle, blowing their mighty trumpets as if to crumble the walls of Jericho.  I lay where I fell, battered by the force of the angry sound, balled into the fetal position and doing all I could to protect my head while they stomped ever closer.  Spikes of hot sunlight glinted off their polished golden instruments and the sequins of their exquisite costumes; their brown leather sandals kicked up mile-high plumes of hot dust and desert sand like explosions in an old war movie…

It was a dream within a dream.

I can see it now; the four of us, the only ones left from the Fightin’ 88th - Little Joe, Arizona Frank, Mikey-from-the-Bronx and me, the MoPic – running like Hell while the Devil took potshots at our unprotected backsides.  We dove as one for the relative safety of a foxhole, blown over the top of the uncoiled concertina wire by the force of a nearby explosion.

“Well,” gasped Little Joe a few moments later, ”Whadda’ we got left?”  We dumped out our bags. It didn’t look good. We had 40, maybe 45 rounds of pistol ammo between us, 23 rounds for a Thompson with a jammed feed, three hand grenades, two canteens of water and no rations to speak of.

Arizona patiently counted the ammo a second time.  “We’ll be fine,” he says looking at the rest of us with a bemused grin, ”so long as there’s only 39 of them left and none of us miss.”

As for me, I’ve got three frames left on this roll and a bagful of stuff that will probably never see the inside of a dark room.  I snap three quick portraits of the other men – something for grieving widows to frame and place on the mantle right next to the wedding photo.  Hurriedly, I jot my name and rank, the date, I.D. for each of the men, my serial number, press affiliation, and some final ironic observations about the brutality of war into my field notebook before stuffing it and the camera back into my old canvas bag, covering it with my pock-marked helmet and covering the whole thing with a pile of stones and a white handkerchief.  Hopefully one of our guys finds it. Looks I’ll have to accept that Pulitzer posthumously.

The eyes of the haunted stare back at me, their faces drawn.  It is silent for a moment, save for the boom of distant shelling.  The minds of the doomed men reach out to the friends and families they know they will never see again.

Little Joe suddenly grabs the radio, twisting the crank on the front like a man possessed.  Arizona slowly reaches over and points out, yet again, the gaping bullet hole in the face plate that prevents it from working.  Disgusted, Joe casts it aside.  “This is it,” he fumes.

“I reckon yo’ right about that.”  Arizona speaks slower than a sunset.

“No way!  We’ll get out of this! Right? I’m supposed to get married!” That’s Mikey-from-the-Bronx, dumb kid, still green.  Brand new to the unit, barely 17, lied about his age to impress his old man, killed his first Kraut about an hour ago.

The explosions creep closer, slamming into the ground like a giant’s footsteps… closer, closer still… I jump with each blast, as dirt and debris rain down around our heads.  They’re zeroing in on us… better this way, I guess.  Faster.  A mighty pressure builds in my chest, and try as I might I cannot breathe… we’re not gonna make it out of here, not this time.  We’d pushed our luck taking out that machine gun nest.

Suddenly the air is filled with the Doppler scream of an incoming round.  This is it.  Without thinking, I light up a smoke and jam my fingers into my ears – I don’t know where I’m going next, but there’s no sense in showing up deaf… I close my eyes, shouting to be heard above the banshee wail of the mortar shell.., louder, louder!  “It’s been a hell of run, gentlemen!”

I awoke with a start to discover my own hands clutching my pillow tight against my face and my alarm clock beeping like a dump truck in reverse.

Stevie clapped his hands and laughed with delight, swaying back and forth the way you imagine he might.

We called for more coffee, and continued to talk as the morning sun shone brightly.