west coast swamp rock

never say die

hard-bitten loner

[edit. 1.0201]

Benny's been obsessed lately with Tennis. Specifically Ricardo González, aka "Pancho". He goes around these days carrying an old wood racquet and he's beening wearing the same white tennis shorts, wrist bands and stan smiths for two straight weeks. Still, his obsesssion with the game hasn't affected his drinking any.

I walk into the bar after work and Benny's sitting in his usual spot and he's in the middle of one of his great "In Defense Of..." routines. The place is otherwise empty and the bartender is a new girl that doesn't know how to get out of the line of fire.

I pull up next to him and order a beer. Benny's got two modes of talking to women: lecture and complaint. Neither works particularly well but then you'd have to be a special kind of girl to really get him. There aren't many of those in the world.

Benny's in full stride:

-- Sure, Federer's amazing. I mean, he's AMAZING. but we're talking about a guy here who Sports Illustrated declared that if the world was in peril and humankind's very existence depended on the outcome of a tennis match, the man you want on the baseline would be Ricardo Alonso González.

I smile a little about this. Benny loves this line. LOVES it. He mixes up the quote as well; adding his little personal touches each time.

[TK]

maybe it's me

why don't i
like anyone?

1934

Ain't Life Grand

silly rabbits

gun club

you are forgiven

sixx

666

motivation

[redact]

you back down
every morning.

what's up b?

ugh. i guess i'm listening to tom petty and that talking part to start Here Comes My Girl is how i want to speak.

yeah, or put on open all night.

yeah! fried chicken on the front seat.

wow, nice.  you know it!

oh yeah.

so what else?

nah, i got nothin.

alright.

you can't see

benny shows up with his pockets full of backstage passes. his army coat i notice is actually on fire. well, it's smoldering and he reeks.

= we can't serve you benny, you know that.

Candy's working and she'd normally slide benny a carbomb but they installed cameras over the break and now you can't do anything.

- just a half shot of bailey's Candy.

benny doesn't even look to see that she has to say no. that's what i like about him.

winning streak

god damn auras.

iraqi styles

- Have you seen "Julia" with Tilda Swinton ?

-- no but i LOVE tilda swinton. she plays a bad angel in Constantine (otherwise an unwatchable movie) and also the puffy ammoral lawyer in Michael Clayton. the scene where she is putting on her creepy brown girdle while rehearsing her closing remarks to shareholders is hot.

- She was fuckin' great in Michael Clayton. In Julia she kidnaps a kid and wears a black mask, also Hot.

voice

i am insulated
nothing special to say
nothing comes into my space
i never leave
i don't hurt,
i don't win, but
i don't lose

(you always lose, pard)

marshall the stacks

F.W. is back from Warsaw and he's jet lagged from the flight. His arrival is unexpected.

A hasty assembly gathers at the usual spot.

You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way, says bob dylan.

we're all there. but things have changed. For ten years we had a reliable arrangement, all of us peers. Then one day it was different.

There were babies. And loans.

There were break ups. And jealousies. And failure.

Some talk later, the others depart to pursue their lives. F.W. and I move to bourbon. I happen to have an extra ticket to Ricky Jay's Arcana and Oddities Exhibition at the Bathurst St. Theatre, so we have something to do after we're asked to leave the bar.

F.W. was never much of a talker. But i can tell he's not impressed with Mr. Jay's demonstrations. His agitation seems centered on the middle aged futz sitting next to him.

Before he can start any trouble with the effete, i make a point of passing him the salt shaker.

Later that night we're outside the theatre and Nigel Erdmann is introduced to us. We know each other from ten years before when i rejected his novel. he nearly immediately moves to strangle me but we escape through a hedge.

best show

mercy little rocker

.

looks can kill

gonna go out

things that don't last as long as i wish they would:

highs
haircuts
the stash
jeans
good body
nights
deadwood
new
22

corn fields

where
you been
bailey?

sex

we need two of each other
one to fuck and one to love.

will not sing a hateful song

etobicoke, ontario

i want drugs.

(this is how the trouble starts)

i want women.

(this is how the trouble starts)

i want money.

(this is how the trouble starts)

(i want a clear conscience)

i trouble.

likes to unlike

she says, the lord in his wisdom salted his works.

he nods over the ashtray; he doesn't care, but they share habits so they pretend to listen to each other.

bottle talking

walking
home from
someone

i earned
my yellow
teeth

down the long road

... sorry i didn't make your event.

[redacted]

good morning

life is not confusing yourself for smart.

little august

it doesn't help
that she looks like
kim deal

summer

certainty against faith

i'm getting close to 40. i can tell this matters to me because i've started waking up earlier in the afternoon than usual. There's this feeling of things slipping past me at a rapid rate; a slipstream washing over and by me. I would raise my palms against the wind, to try to feel more, to push it back a little. But it's just pebbles in a river.

Women. As hard as i try to focus on my work, or my drinking, it's women that consume me. They arrive so unexpectedly and just as i realize what they've done, they leave. I suppose it's fitting that my best moments with them have come in prisons and cemeteries.

This last one, she was a sneaky knockout. I never saw her coming, but now i can't stop seeing her leave. What are they thinking? Women.

My work? Well, let's just say i'm no overachiever. But i've learned to accept my pace. I've learned that sometimes, there can be only moments. That they can't last is the tragedy. That you have them at all is your art.

This last one, we had some moments.

city blocks

the arc of triumph

/cut

the gathering concern

just before sunset, Sunshine finally shows up. almost three hours late. alone.

she slides in across from me at the picnic table and roots around in her purse; all pastey and shakey curtained by liquored-out hair.

'so, where is he?' i finally have to ask.

"not coming."

'not coming. this is unbelievable.'

she gives me the sideways death stare.

'what went wrong?'

"you don't want to know." she indicates a crushed cigarette. "gotta' light?"

'no. i quit.'

"i liked you better when you smoked."

'what's the difference?'

"all the eye contact."

i take a deep breath. 'you know, there's an envelope to all this. to their patience.' i try to make it even-handed, 'everyone is aware you're under pressure Sunshine, but there is gathering concern...'

no reaction unless you count the predictable stonewall. a heavy silence crept over the deserted parkette. mastering my panic ins't one of my strengths and she knows it. i crack as per usual.

'we're fucked now, you realize that? it's complete calamity. are you registering this Sun? please, tell me what you think my options are.'

"yes!" flourishing a found match she ignites her 100. "don't be so dire Siggie. it makes you unattractive. life is a comedy remember? you used to say that."

'please, just tell me what went wrong. tell me something i can tell them.'

she laughs out a smoke plume. "tell them it was food poisoning."

anti-climax

Beans and Puddin'

_draft..011.01_

Everyone is exhausted. Morale has bottomed out. Wry amusement centers on the quickest way to die. They're just kids.

Puddin' keeps unconsciously tugging her big brother's shirt tails. Terrified to lose track of the only one left. He is overwhelmed by her slight fingers and vise-like power.

No one knows what's going on. No one knows why these terrible things are happening. No one knows how come they're the ones that are left. But for Beans in this moment, he knows that his next decision will mean the difference between question and silence.

He's fifteen. Just made his regional track squad. His mom would tell you that he's an introspective boy. He reads Irving Layton and Twilight. He made his own bike. He catches fish.

His father took him to the gun club on his fourteenth birthday. Introduced him to the skeet and trap shooters. Taught him how to produce his own shells. Let him call "pull" and obeyed him instantly.

No one knows why the invasion happened. But Beans is ready. Pull.

hud

atlantic city

i come home late and beat but i'm hoping i can get some work out of everything. just as i get a glass set up, i hear the knocking on the basement door.

benny's wrapped in cigarette smoke and rolls sideways into my place, landing deep on the sofa.

"maybe i just can't be around her", he says. i fix us two whiskys and put his tumbler in front of him.

"she was there when i got there. i didn't plan it this time".

Benny is hung up on coicindences and happenstance. Like every jilted lover, they see their ex in everything. recurring times, street names, tatoos. it doesn't matter the stretch, benny gets convinced with any co-incident.

"did you say anything to her?"

"nah, i made the bartender put on Atlantic City and then i left"

"you left?"

"yeah. What the fuck was i supposed to do?"

Benny is a good guy. He could be someone. but he never seems to be able to handle his emotions. I get tired of him sometimes.

ball don't lie

the lower half

used to hang

she puts on born in the usa and more people know it than you'd think. know all the lyrics. know the stalls and the big drum hits. he makes her wait before thunder road. they need to hear badlands and rosalita first. those suburbans.

maybe it's not true that they know less than him, but it seems that way. overhearing the stupidest conversations about rockband destroying musicianship, or the horror of unisex toilets. it's enough to make you understand the right wing.

he keeps asking for darlington county even though they're past the third track. you know that this record was written by a guy in his thirties. you can lie on you floor in your bedroom at 14 and think you know the lyrics, but at 38, when all the words come back crisp and in time to impress the old blondes lining the bar no surrender controls the pace of your heart like fear or her.

we keep drinking, one after another. right out of the icebox, the bottles are wet and slide just enough to make it fun to sling them around. her giant brown eyes seek out the rough ones around the bar and he likes her poise.

you only get this for a quick moment. you only live at the bar for a short while. but you can always tell someone who has. they've got it.

TCB

coffee and cigarettes

warm beer cold women

love burns

you can blame the whores
or booze, or cold nights, or just
blame o'leary's cow

there is no box

where i grew up, you tell a person something and they believe it. what people thought of you was none of your business. when you got drunk you did it in the next town.

i admire people that can come up with ideas alone. with songs, or dialogue. i admire people that can think outside themselves.

when itunes is on shuffle, i started to skip songs it would select for me. after a while i skipped each song. then i uninstalled itunes.

i put all the cds on a shelf that's out of my reach. i glued the pages of my books. i cancelled cable and got banned from theatres. i insulted my society and quit my job.

don't answer the phone, pull the blinds. curl up.

you got the silver

the wedding

she turns into him and says, 'you haven't heard Winner's Blues'?

the sun is slanted into both of their eyes, heading south towards memphis.

he is dying to get back to the city, but there's no way they're gonna make it tonight. he's trying not to think about it.

'put it on' he says, and 'can i have a smoke?'

it's the only tape in the console, he notices as she reaches in, other wrist on the wheel, cigarette dangling from her fingers. One-handed she unfolds the cassette cover and chucks the tape into his lap. it's clear red.

'first song, second side.'

the player swallows the cassette and a green arrow comes on. there's the sound of tape catching up to the spool, and she says:

her name here

/cut/

the warrior

i think you want me to be smart and have insights and things that are clever and as good as milch or stoppard. but i am not that good. i don't remember how to write. and also how to live has deserted me. i am not the same. i am somehow gone. tiny voices nudge me to some preservation, but i don't really care anymore.

i want so bad to write.

man falls down

this old looking hobo with a shopping cart was crossing the street and the wheels of the cart got tripped up in the streetcar tracks. the cart overturned and all the bottles spilled out all over the intersection. the guy was trying to right the cart all wrong and more bottles kept spilling out. the people on the corners were watching his struggle. when the light changed i crossed the street and went to get a coffee.

benediction

/cut/

let's get it up

- you used to think about fucking. now i don't get you.

-- give me a break. i was in the divorce.

- you think you can hang on to fucking being young but dude you are fucking sleeping in.

-- thanks man. thanks

the sand table

hello out there!

looking at guitars (redux)

807

'round the block

- maybe you have to try to imagine you're somewhere else.

like where?

- i don't know. someplace you can think of that you know. like the bar.

yeah. the bar.

- don't be down on the bar man. that place made you who you are.

are you trying to help me?

- i don't understand you man. why are you against yourself?

[TK]

by popular demand

[as if someone was overhearing this]

if i was a fighter pilot that got shot down and then spent years in a wartime prison camp and then i ran for president of my country and i didn't get elected, i'd be pissed off.

altho, it's kind of like saying that you got married and raised kids and then your wife left you cuz you were boring. and that happens all the time.

sometimes i'm glad that i only have hard liquor in my place because it makes me think about the size of my pours. same thing with drugs.

i've stopped listening, reading and watching. I'm cruising on stuff i absorbed like ten years ago. It's going surprisingly well. Anyway, at a certain point, everything you've done that means anything one day means nothing. You can't fight it.

the big one

chapter one: hangfire position

_draft..008.07_

Beans yanked the garage rope down and shut out the blazing sun with a metallic clang. He turned to face us, shifting his Tigers cap up on his head. We were all sweating and breathing hard, arranged in a semicircle opposite him. A week before the invasion, climate authorities had been claiming it as the hottest July in the last fifty years. Everyone was talking water conservation. Radio News instructed old folks to stay indoors. That was six days ago. Now the radio was silent.

Inside the stifling garage, the five of us set down our packs, adjusting to the shadows. Any movement caused puffs of choking dust to swirl, so we kept as still as we could. Beans hunkered and wet his finger, then started to lay out lines on the sooty concrete floor. He pointed:

“Ok, we’re here. This is Royal York. This is the park. Here’s Pop’s. Benny, your dad’s truck is for sure out back?" He flicked his eyes over to Benny.

“That’s right Beans.” Benny crowded forward and licked his own finger. He drew a couple lines on the garage floor, adding to Beans’ map. “But they’ve got the school. The car lot....”

From the get-go, the plan to make the run out of town was a longshot. The Concern had us all tagged. Chicken’s leg was broken and both Benny and Bobby were going grey from the Afflict. Professor Niehl’s jam charge was about 15 minutes from spent. Things were gonna have to happen fast.

“We all agree, we can’t make it through the park, right?” Nods. “So, it’s the alleys then.”

I leaned in to situate myself on the diagram. Across from him, it took a second to reverse the plan, but then I figured out where he wanted us to head. It took another second to realize what it meant.

The rest of the guys had seen it too. Cigarettes appeared and Chicken looked down at her busted shin.

“Comments?”

He’d meant it for me. I knew saying nothing was the only way to keep panic at bay. He knew it too. It wasn't like, at fifteen, any of us had given much thought to death, til now. We shared steady eye contact and instead I methodically checked down my arsenal.

“Five capsules, double-sixes are stocked. Regen pack stocked. Let’s take the fucking alleys.“

Maybe the rest took a heartbeat, but the guys sounded off in good order, one after the other. Beans’ eyes cast the Eagle at us.“Alright guys. The alleys. Let’s do it.”

All told we were pretty well-armed. But travelling that way, through the alleys, we’d be naked. Any airborne, or if our jam wore off, we’d be begging to get husked. The Concern were bringing in the heavies now. No need for cloak-and-dagger stuff. It was raw power. Total destruction. But at least we could see what we were up against. Better than the terror of not knowing who was real,and who’d been replicated.

Me and Benny took one arm each, supporting Chick. Bobby leaned up against the backdoor of the garage and filled up with breath. Beans was in the back and he looked at each of us in turn. We were ready. Steady.

“Go!”

The first meta-slugs took Bobby in the chest, pulverizing him into red mist. Somehow Benny propelled himself and Chicken forward out the doorway. Spinning away from them to the right, I fired wildly into the sun. Monstrous shapes closed in. They had us surrounded. In that first blast of white light and heat, all I could perceive was the crackling of slugs zipping past my head; then feeling Chicken crumple down and then Benny’s truncated scream. Behind me enormous bodies pummeled the garage; huge, paralysing concussions. Burning chips of wood and metal stung my face and hands. I was on fire. Through the warble and hiss, i jerked back towards Beans but there was nothing left. No garage. No Beans. Nothing. The downsplash from the rotors of the heli above blasted the flames. Almost a balm. It was over in seconds.

chapter two: the roughriders

I’m not sure how long I’d been KIA. Not long enough though. Because every single second of my resurrection was a living, burning hell. The Re-Gen injection dangled from my chest like a stupid arrow. Amazed, I focused downwards on a ponderous bead of blood, sliding down the silver needle. So mesmerized by the oddity of the syringe protruding from my heart, for a merciful moment, the unholy stench of my immolation didn’t even register. Only after the searing hammer of pain slammed me into total awareness did I inhale the putrefied taste of burned human flesh.

Regenesis, as I later learned, often kills again. The accompanying pain is so intense, the recipient’s heart perforates from the pressure. Encore la morte. Within 48 hours, of the 3% revival rate, half again expire due to catastrophic stress. And even when the dead live, they’re often blacked out; so depressed they’re useless for life.

The day of my resurrection I knew none of that. Just the cauterizing agony of my life regenerating one searing cell at a time. But inside all of this, beyond my physical torment, there was a cold awareness of something else. An inarticulate, malevolent presence; a moray coiling in some dark subconscious fissure. Like a guilt, or a shame lurking inside your guts, washing up against you in the middle of the night. An incrimination. A taunt.

Then it was gone.

An armoured hand appeared around the syringe and unceremoniously jerked it out. I coughed and vomited.

“He’s back, sir.”

“Fine. Now, let’s get moving. Roughriders, mount up!”

Captain Roland Forty-Four rose fifteen feet into the air on the back of the largest cat I’d ever seen.

“Welcome back sonny.” I heard my father say. And then I blacked out.

chapter three: regret the tone

'first, do no harm', is how it was put to Benny by Dread Cardinal Allin during basic training. First principles. you do not want to fuck someone else up. That is the premise that ought to guide us, he thought. Another way he heard it was, 'we make our own monsters'. But what words can defuse our need for revenge? When the worst has been done to us... or anything that hurts. Who sees themself as a monster anyway? Doesn't everyone have a story? Isn't it, in the end, what you can live with? Would you want me dead if it meant rescue from devastation?

What can you hope for? What principle tells us anything we can actually fucking use? Yet, today -- he understood like a man should understand -- it was his turn to pay. With each slug of whiskey this became more apparent. Until he had decided that it was practically incumbent upon him to seek out actual, tangible judgement. Passions rule. Plain and simple.

Luckily, he passed out in the ditch before he agented these mortal impusles. For all of us there is doubt and a pure moment when we percieve everything we'll never have. And you can blame your lover, or your position, or your time. And who'd blame you if you snap and freak the fuck out? All those scientific laws of attraction and gravity and never any mention of what it feels like to get fucked for real.

entry

at the bar tonight were cindy, josh and me. She came in from Vancouver for a week and a bit. We are old friends. We are friends from the bar.

i think i know when i first met her. At my place on gorevale when the white couch backed against the front window. I liked it set there. Those old warbled windows and the sodium street lamp made everyone on the couch look famous.

nathan played danzig as he closed it down. we convinced him to give us a pack of coronas.

T-72

“What kind of rig does he have? I need a guy with a small rig.”

“I don’t know. I could ask him about it.”

“So, you could broker this and get him on hold for me?”

“Yeah. I can do that.”

“Just tell him that I’m asking other people, but if he wants, I can put him on my list.”

“Yeah I can do that.”

“Alright. Where does he live?”

“I think with his dad.”

“Does he smoke weed?”

“Yeah.”

“Does he have a car?”

“I think he has a van.”

...

“So small rig.... Like, describe the right setup.”

“Like my ideal rig? Um, A traynor head and a four ten cab.”

I wrote it down. “So how do you like your new neighbourhood?”

“Um, I found the indie record shop.”

“Is there a Junction local?”

“Yeah. We should go sometime. That girl that was in your band, Betts, she used to work there and maybe still does.”

“Oh yeah? That’d be good. When I get healthy enough to drink.”

“Uh huh. Hey there’s a beer in your fridge. Can I drink it?”

“Oh, you might not want to. I froze it by accident last weekend.”

“So?”

“I thought it was bad to drink a beer after it’s been frozen.”

“Not canned beer.”

“I hadn’t heard that.”

He took a big gulp and smacked his lips and smiled, a little beer squirted out. “Mmmm, delicious beer.”

“Freak.”

...

...

‘I was thinking about how you’re down on yourself for being short. I found out something that might make you feel better.”

I stared at him.

“Did you know that the Soviets designed their T-72 specifically for soliders under 5'6"?” He bobbed his head up and down, smiling, drinking the thawed beer. “It’s one of the greatest tanks of all time.”

badlands

my approach

got another thing comin

out there is a fortune
waiting to be had
you think i'll let it go
you're mad

seriously, you think you could write that?

-- you're wasted. this is metal dude. metal.

doesn't mean it doesn't mean anything.

-- pass me the pipe.

expelled

with his time
now free, he began his
musical career

playing bix

old world communism

august self portrait

open all night

all out of quarters,
standing next to the payphone.
she doesn't answer

bathtub gin

a man called aerodynamics

gentrification

new sidewalk bushes

knew all the
yards, my door to yours.
that summer.

the kid

the flame is agent
to our habit. it's the ice
keeps the company cool.

some girls

show downtown

can't pay attention

He doesn't want to want to go to the bar again. but there he is, standing in the doorway of Leo's, completely unable to imagine any place else to spend his money. it wasn't that Herman Guild didn't have goals. More that he liked to drink.

it was easy living in the city and Leo's was the easiest place going. Herman had a running advantage over most of the other regulars in that he reliably supplied extraordinary tips. that got him things like the occassional car bomb, gratis. or sometimes a telephone call in the kitchen.

he didn't want to want to go in the bar again. and there he is, standing in the doorway.

love is a fire

blackwood

i'm rough on the keyboard. i like the old things. old things for me.

there was a girl. four years ago we knew each other in bed. tonight we know each other better.

she has such small shoulders. we have such bad habits.

she's tougher now than she was, and more tired looking. but she's also calmer, looks around more often. when she looks at me i like it.

she breaks the strings on my guitar trying to tune them while i fuck around with bad cables. we smoke. she empties her purse on my couch looking for something.

her small hard shoulder bumps into me, and she looks out the open door every other minute. I keep thinking she's gonna run for it, and then she'll turn and hug me and say she loves me.

coasters

you can't explain circles to squares.

dumb fucking luck

butch looks off
the steering wheel:
marcellus.

gathering concern

just before sunset, Sunshine finally shows up. almost three hours late. alone.

she slides in across from me at the picnic table and roots around in her purse; all pastey and shakey curtained by liquored-out hair.

'so, where is he?' i finally have to ask.

'not coming.'

'not coming. this is unbelievable.'

she gives me the sideways death stare.

'what went wrong?'

'you don't want to know. light?'

no. i quit.'

'i liked you better when you smoked.'

'what's the difference?'

'all the eye contact.'

'you know, there's an envelope to all this. to their patience.' i try to make it even-handed, 'everyone is aware you're under pressure sunshine, but there is gathering concern...'

no reaction unless you count the predictable stonewall. a heavy silence crept over the deserted parkette. mastering my panic ins't one of my strengths and she knows it. i crack as per usual.

'we're fucked now, you realize that? it's complete calamity. are you registering this Sun? please, tell me what you think my options are.'

'yes!' flourishing a found match she ignites her 100. 'don't be so dire Siggie. it makes you unattractive. life is a comedy remember? you used to say that.'

'please, just tell me what went wrong. tell me something i can tell them.'

she laughs out a smoke plume. 'tell them it was food poisoning.'

cool as kim deal

on the scale

discouraging
pounds
gained.

armed and dangerous

the straightener

i don't know how i met her exactly. you'd be bored by the remembrance. the only reason i'm even thinking about her is because of the velvet underground. not the bar.

i think it's cheap to introduce art to make it seem like taste equals character. but i do it anyway.

i guess there are more obscure ways to tell people you're in love. maybe not telling anyone is the best way.

i don't want another one of the women i always get. but those are exactly the women i can't stop thinking about. the ones that give you excuses to leave everything.

leaving your doors open in the summer means you're gonna get flies.

what goes on

girls in pajamas
with hidden side entrances
just down from the bar

downhill is quicker

dashes for spaces

all i meant
by that is
punctuation

confined to quarters

i wish beer
was also sandwiches

know what i know

i would say this to any kid who wanted to play a hot song for a girl. learn "love gun" by kiss. trust me. slow it down. play it acoustic. surprise her. will ferrell is making a living off this shit.

get what i'm after

no gunga din

you say you can't do things but it's only you're lazy.

-- i'd fight you for saying that!

would never

she goes to parties
to lose herself
to find herself

goldman's

point of view
start near the end
of the story.

got your machine

i think we put more into the strokes than they put into us.

-- i tried calling you last night. got your machine.

it's too late.

-- that's not fair. you can't just make decisions about people.

what about the huns?

-- don't be sensational.

you're old. you think concern is action. i'm telling you, you--

-- --they're finding feet in british columbia. you read that?

i don't get you sometimes.

-- ah it's just conversation.