august not march

lost weekend

all kinds of nothing

-which paul?

-the 'that's why i got pepper spray' paul.

-oh shit. i think i dated him.

-s.l.u.t.!

they're all leaving for the a____e____ show. (i want to get home before i forget all these great things that are happening in this moment, but obviously i didn't.)

-bailey! are you coming with us?

sometimes when you get in a fight or you take speed or crash a car or whatever, it's all for the same reason.

-yeah, i'll go.

bix

le mort d'arthur

i got some slivers in my hands this weekend as i was collecting spiny hedge cuttings from the yard. i anticipate how these painful slivers will cause major problems for my golf grip during tomorrow's round so i'm frantic to remove them. however, i could not locate a pin or tweezers with which to pick them out (SOP for splinters and slivers), so i tried sucking them out with my mouth, pressing the meat around them with my fingernails and even with my teeth but nothing works and mostly i just injure my hands even worse. this goes on for hours. finally, my friend says to me, what are you biting your fingers for? so i show her the slivers and she gets all excited and says, can i cut them out for you? i love taking out other people's slivers. i was like, no way!

that night, while soaking my hands in cups of water (thinking that this will soften the skin enough the the teeth method might actually work) i watched a national geographic special on monkeys grooming cats. i wonder if a cat can love a monkey. anyway, so, after some soaking, i get a pairing knife (pearing knife? i love homophones. like when we were kids and we had those pink, grade-school issued notebooks that said on the cover "etobicoke board of education" and we'd scrawl overtop "[the kids of] etobicoke [are] board of education". it was the 'board' that made it hilarious) and slice down into my fingertips to get at the slivers; which by this time are, like porcupine quills, working themselves deeper into my flesh in an attempt to get to my heart and kill me. beads of blood well up out of the gouges and i become slightly faint. the monkeys meanwhile have discovered how to comb the cats with crude implements like rough sticks and bunches of grass.

in the end, it all worked out fine. and i went back to drinking and lying like always. you never learn from things you can escape i guess.

apache

raised on promises

-you know what i want?

put your fingers up my ass?

-yeah, that. but also a clear conscience.

yeah, that'd be nice.

-let's get out of here.

one more shot?

-alright.

try some, buy some

more fw

prehensile.
rotunda.
teton.

so hot that

...zookeepers are feeding lions frozen blood to cool off.

the heater don't work (you're no mencken)

jonny used to smack me upside my head with his palm. 'are you stupid?' he'd fold his chin in and look around the fire at his friends like i was unbelievable. i had no comeback. mostly though they'd let me stick around without trouble. they'd send me into town for condoms, beers and cigarettes. they were older and darker and they'd let me keep the change. sometimes i'd drive their pick-ups home for them with their girlfriends. all the way they'd tell me how lazy their boyfriends were and how they were all so leaving all this small town shit. sometimes they'd tell me how cute i was.

one time, this girl named veronica had a ronettes tape and we listened to be my baby over and over on the drive back to the city. she fell in love with jonny after he left highschool to work at the plant. he had a telecaster and a paycheque and she was in grade 11. but she wasn't in highschool anymore. i had elastics on my braces and my pops had just given me his father's .22. he'd took off for florida the next day. she was wasted but her plan made sense. i mean, nothing ever happened in our shitty town.

anyway, everytime i hear the ronettes, this is what i think about. she sent me the tape my second year of the hitch. no note. just a pack of matches from the bar with her lipstick kiss on it. she actually married jonny's brother right after the murder, but he died of brain cancer at 32. left her with two kids and six payments on the trailer. i read about it in the paper. i don't blame her for rolling over on me. but i wonder about the brother. you think about time different when you're in a box.

(conscience is the inner voice which warns us someone may be looking.)

are you awake?

you know the pot i found on the floor at hero burger?

yeah.

it's fuckin awesome.

you're crazy.

so you're coming over?

i guess. you want something from the s'lev?

hoop dreams (babyface)

i find this deflated basketball in the trash outside the bar and it totally captures my imagination. i'm so bummed from charlie v being traded, you know. with an idea, i start digging through other queen street trash and i find an empty cardboard box. it says: 'handle with care', but i'm not going to. so i set it up against a sidewalk tree trunk. and i start bombing shots. they're dropping like i'm A.I. ball don't lie. sometimes i throw a fred jones into it. (c___ fucking exhales this: it's an imac box. fucking on dirt roots of a sidewalk fucking curb tree, you suck dude) anyway, i'm into it. i'm breaking ankles. then a guy comes out and i want to have fun. i take a shot just as he moves towards the box and it hits him in the head! i put my palms up, but he freaks and throws the ball at me and it hits me in the balls. i lose it and go right at him. at the last second i figure i'll just wrap him up. he's kind of a punk. to diffuse it, i start up the game verbally. i try to make it loose and cut the tension giving him eye contact and calling out: 'hits the open man' but he doesn't get it or put his hands up and my pass hits him right in the chest. (no justice for squaring me but) i say, 'i'm not antagonistic!' but i'm figuring at this point he must not speak english because he puts his skateboard behind him and steps up. trying to ward off the inevitable, i pull out a movie quote -- despite my antipathy to all things celluloid: 'english mutherfucker! do you speak it?!' nothing. he's got that brutal stupid drunk look plastered in his eyes and all i can think about in that moment is babyface nelson. what would he do?