Embedded in the middle of the road, so wide as to be impassable, is an immense crystal, almost perfectly transparent. It breaks the air into smooth planes. It heaves itself up from the earth like a beaten ship, sharp prow thrusting skyward in an act of mute keening.

The rider clutches his helmet tightly to his chest in a rigor of apprehension as he steps closer to the thing that breaks from the hard soil like a drop of sweat from a jagged pore.

It occurs to him that he is the first witness to an incident that will surely merit its own page in the hide-bound eschatology of Earth, harvested piecemeal from the blackened buds and ends of many-vined history where insignificant events flare into muck-piercing wails of universal terror and innocent agents commit unknowing sins against the perpetuity of life.

In a few days, he imagines, this silent encounter will be the province of a hastily-assembled team consisting of a few drowsy and sleep-creased geologists, wary firemen and pale and wispy-haired academics zippered up against the crisp morning, with devices for yanking and hammering and gouging and striating and analyzing this insular artifact from another world, an ordinary citizen of a reality wholly unlike his. A cogent cog in a deep-fathomed and immense machine that was and is and shall still be, even when his world winks out of existence like the black, beady eye of a small aquatic animal, flooded with the stiff milklike effluvium of disease.

The immense crystal seems to possess, from the unblemished center of its body outward to the microvibrations or tracks of awakened purpose along its chipped vertices in the cool pre-dawn air, a strange pathology. A supernatural pathology. The phrase haunted him; it contained a menacing contradiction. Not just a trick of language – a clever juxtaposition of terms – but an actual ontological paradox, stemming from certain absolute and horrific qualities of the many-hatched beast that rears up before him, silent and nervous as the sun begins to soften its edges with a tincture of slow mercury. A cold heaviness sinks through his body and rises again, feathering the great hall of his bowels with dread.

He is certain that the crystal has a taciturn name for him, too, like the one that burns in his throat, suspended in lymphatic sourness behind his tongue – a silent swear, a swear unlike any other. It watches him in his loneliness just as he perceives its astonishing hermetic strangeness, its wrongness, sees the fatal mistake it made in escaping its system and flopping awkwardly into his, an ungainly remainder of timeless stochastic processes unfathomable to the human mind, heaving noiselessly in the cold morning air.

What really bothers Dave, however, is a resemblance to a certain figure of mythology.

He instinctively reaches behind his ear and probes for the switch of his CogAtt. Pressing it, he dials the entry for Tertianism with a trembling hand. A clipped synthetic voice begins to recite.

“Although derided as ancient superstition, crude imitative magic descended from pre-linguistic ritual, the impressive mythos of Tertianism pervades our modern age, as it has every era following its banishment. The majority of humans living on Earth now believe in a neatly coordinated binary metaphysics wherein two balanced systems move in scalar synchronization with one another, neither wanting nor requiring a mysterious third force to explain the mechanics of their engagement, which is apparent to anyone with undamaged spacetime faculties. It was, in fact, so readily apparent that the few schizophrenics, deficients and public lunatics who professed to believe in the existence of the Third Timekeeper were openly persecuted as instigators and obscurantists by an increasingly vehement majority. It was generally thought that denying the sacrosanct transparency of the system was an unpardonable, perhaps the only unpardonable, sin.”

The only unpardonable sin. Perhaps.

“From the beginning – that is, from one of many beginnings – all life has been governed by two entities: the God of Long Hours and the God of Small Hours. The elongated, loping rhythms that characterize sleep, wakefulness, and all organic and inorganic derangements endemic to these processes, are overseen by the God of Long Hours.”

“The split-second processes that define reaction times and allow the human agent to analyze phenomena possessing variations on the scale of milliseconds are ruled over by the God of Small Hours. These gods are conceptualized, and often represented, as organs residing within either the individual or collective human corpus, in a position of influence and fitted with all the necessary devices to perpetuate their patterns throughout the fine tapestry of human action and reaction strapped across the twin brute engines of stochastic operation and causal correlation which keep improbable time in a rhythm of immense complexity – with, of course, the occasional mistake. It was from this realm of error that the Third Timekeeper emerged, and over which he came, in time, to reign.”

What unwholesome seismic event had resulted in the pain-racked miscarriage of this shivering monolith? Or what accident of celestial mechanics had hurtled it through the atmosphere and plunged it deep into the Utah soil, where its edges rattle nervously at the prospect of discovery? Did it pine for the rarefied air of an ancient orbit, or yearn for the charcoal womb of earth’s crust?

“The Third Timekeeper is portrayed as a refugee from the rational dimensions, in flight from the oppressive regimes of long and short history. It constitutes a third wheel across which the band of time runs, throwing off the rhythm of the long and short wheels.The duration of this dysregulation is generally short, and the compromised process either self-terminates or returns to periodicity after a short interval. From these periods of dysregulation, two sovereign mysteries have arisen. The first is the wherefore of the termination of a compromised process, one in which long clock and short clock are no longer operating in sync with one another. The second is the wherefore of correction, in which long clock and short clock spontaneously reconcile after a period of desynchronization.”

“Tertianists believe that the Third Timekeeper regulates the termination and correction of these processes. The Tertian Schism of 522 BC saw the Third Timekeeper displaced by the Doctrine of Irregularity, which states that self-termination takes place when an inconsistency cannot be resolved, and self-correction when it can. This explanation is perfunctory and by some accounts contradictory, as it views inconsistency as both product and process, simultaneously static and dynamic. Hermann Trost  has pointed out that the Doctrine actually has a self-contradictory nature, expressible by the equivalent proposition that self-correction is the termination of an inconsistency, and self-termination is the correction of an inconsistency. However, he claims that this weakness arguably reinforces the Doctrine instead of dooming it to an ignominious fringe existence. ‘The Doctrine’, he  writes, ‘stands as an explanation which exemplifies itself in providing an account of paradoxical systems, being therefore self-justifying as well as self-contradictory’. Still others have countered that the Doctrine is in fact invalidated but not dismissed by its self-contradictory properties; its inconsistency simply necessitates the introduction of a still larger system capacious enough to contain both the true statement and its also-true inverse. “Transcendence” is the Tertian word for this so-called system-jumping. System-jumping or expansion is an ongoing process, perpetuated by the occasional jammings of the mechanisms by which the clocks of long hours and small hours engage each other.”

“The remaining question is this: by what awareness or mechanism does a compromised process disperse itself into the orderly warp and weft of the universe on the erratic tendrils of chaos? By what intelligence, what fine ecology, does the deranged routine marshal its irregularities back into the lockstep of scalar synchronicity? And the upshot of both these questions taken together: What, exactly, determines which processes self-terminate and which processes self-correct?”

The crystal seems to possess just that sort of blind and monadic, dispersed but nonetheless fine-fingered intelligence. The explanation which explains itself. Dave observes the singular twitching of its points and edges and duly imagines it capable of probing and perhaps even comprehending the captive language of silence; the intricate network of pauses, falterings and ellipses harbored within the spoken word. He fumbles through his CogAtt. The earpiece crackles to life with the bucolic vowels of a synthesized Andy Rooney.

“Time was, folks’d just open up their mouths and the words would come right out…”

Dave frowns and snaps the dial to the right, searching for the appropriate set of emotional algorithms for this momentous occasion. A smooth, fluid English voice picks up the entry.

“The addressee, most often a willing conversational partner, would respond as he saw fit, taking into account the tone, timing, timbre, pitch variation, breathing patterns, and a host of other auditory information in considering his response.”

Dave relaxes. This reading is optically synthesized from the voice of Sir Laurence Olivier.

“He also laid store by the visual information available to him: facial expressions, body positioning, gestures, involuntary movements, and the like. Face-to-face, unmediated communication was the standard for two million years, and innovations came exceedingly slowly. Modern humans have only a slightly better grasp of the subtleties of aspect known by such names as microexpressions, microtones and microgestures than their marrow-crunching forebears. This pathetic state of affairs was improved somewhat by the advent of written language, which corrected the–”

He froze. The crystal had emitted a thin, metallic yawn.

The sound: a razor-thin wire endlessly unspooling, glass rubbing against the back teeth, a million tiny engines toiling in a cup of earth, the alkaline taste of silica, the jaws of a synapse held open, the babble of a needle-tongued insect.

He scrabbles at the selection wheel, seeking anything to drown out the sound, still orbiting.

“…certain markings on Sumerian clay tablets, once regarded as incidental, constitute part of an elaborate system of contextual cues including a sophisticated form of wit which may be an early instance of verbal irony.”

 

Shit.

“In 1951, a series of small trefoil-shaped marks on a tablet fragment believed to have been written around 2400 BC (marked for identification as 854.5.[1]a of the Ashken cache), caught the attention–”

The crystal lurches noisily to the left.

“–of Boris Shutov, a graduate student studying the texts of ancient Sumer under Adam Buchholz at Heidelberg University. Buchholz, studying the markings, declared them to be a device–”

Squats bleakly on its haunches.

“–by which the original scribe had in effect worked his own signature into the letter. Dissatisfied with this theory, Shutov analyzed the passages where the markings occurred and realized, to his astonishment–”

Trembles.

“–that the affected passages could be read in such a way that they expressed a non-literal contradiction. Line 8c[XI-XII]–”

Rattles.

“–states that “[Beshnet's] wife is a prize, having thighs the size of a horse’s belly.” The same marks appear elsewhere in the document, surrounding the sentence fragment “[...]Ud-sahara will be thrice disposed to trade your shepherd’s glass pipe for his largest ox” and marking off–”

A single crack splinters across its surface.

“–the latter portion of “I have been taking drink with Apillaša, the Sage of the Assembly“. Analysis of similar documents suggests this technique emerged in the First Dynasty–”

Gray fog begins to collect in its depths.

“–of Lagash and disappeared soon after. Was there an incident–”

A black knot settles at its nexus.

“–that led, directly or indirectly, to its death?”

The crystal erupts into a deep, throbbing moan.

He lost it then, finger still flattening his upper lip, the flesh of his fist concealing a sour ruminative frown which pulled his face into a pensive rictus. There it remained, a mask of measured analysis that gave the lie to his fraying mind. His heart thrummed and swam like a half-formed galaxy between his thighs. A colorless fog wrapped his senses; he no longer saw or heard or felt what was happening. A blackness traveled from the back of his skull to the shades of his eyelids, collapsing them, and he saw through closed eyes the ground rushing to meet him.

The sound: hundreds of smooth black obelisks whipping past the open window of a train, the fathomless state of quantum superposition, the silence of Megiddo, the brain exposed, the rippling of a solar flare, the menu of dread to be found in deep space, the measured trickle of massive history through the delicately-furnished now and unsteadily onward towards a darkening future.

- Theresa Smith

An astronaut.  Fireman.  President of the United States of America.  A Monkey.  Burt Reynolds.  Anything You Want.

A desk.  Wooden, old.  A 17 inch imported computer monitor, made in Taiwan.  A mouse, off-white, with dirt-ridden scratches.  Grey cubicle walls, upholstered in polyester to absorb the barely perceptible noises of virtual strangers sitting four feet away.

The pledge of allegiance, followed by a lesson on Antarctica.  A He-Man lunch box, a banana.  A PB&J sandwich.  Recess.  Sweaty and boisterous, freezing in the air conditioning now and not caring at all.  You shiver and the sensation is amazing.

A meeting.  Budget forecasting.  Synergy.  A cheap, shit tie gently choking you to death.  Hung.  Over.  A strange fear fills you, at any moment, another human, one with an inordinate amount of control over your destiny, your happiness, your checking account – this human may ask you a question – and your answer will define the perception of every person in the room.  They will love or hate depending on…

Lunch.  Mom has removed the crust from your PB&J and the J is cold and the white bread is fresh and not squished.  You sit with Ricky – you sit with Ricky every day – and the girls bother you a little bit today but not too much.  In spillout you punch Jessica in the arm and run away.  You think you love her but you’re not sure yet.

Lunch.  There is a hole-in-the-wall sports bar three blocks away and you know no one will be there but you drive there, roundabout anyway… incognito.  A sandwich and only two beers this time, Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum.  You are full, and the beer makes walking into the office easier but you sneak into the upstairs bathroom and quietly masturbate.  On the way back to your desk you don’t think she noticed you staring at her breasts and you grab a Coke to mask the lingering taste of the beer, but it only makes it worse.

The bell rings.  You buy a pencil and an eraser at the school book store and some sort of atomic candy that will rip the taste buds from your mouth.  The car ride home, watching the clouds and cars float by from the panoramic window of mom’s station wagon, pointing your finger – an imaginary pistol – at a stranger driving a sports car.  He winks and shoots back.

4:37 PM.  Twenty-three minutes early.  Leg is shaking.  Fuck it.  Freedom.  Hustle to the car, sneaky.  Smoke is lit as you pass through the back door of the office.  To the bar.  A beer.  A shot.  A smoke.  Decaying hops and something that used to be liquid attach your forearm to the bar.  In the near darkness you can hear the silence beneath the classic rock blaring from the Wurlitzer.

Home.  Snack Time.  Sweet, red, cold juice and cheese-flavored crackers.  Fresh apple slices and a cartoon.  Your bike is calling from the garage and you answer it, press the button and watch as the musty darkness and car smell explode in sunshine.  Going as fast as you can, the air is stinging your eyes but the tears feel good.

The room is not quite spinning.  Vomit flavor and fried – something – in the back of your throat, and the last cold sip of beer does nothing to change this fact.  To the bathroom.  A line of blow, another.  Which key is it?  Roll down the windows and light a smoke.  Chew some Wrigley’s.  Your eyes bounce up and down from the halos around the bright lines on the black asphalt to the speedometer.

At the dinner table.  Mom made chicken (again) and broccoli.  You don’t want any of it but be a good boy and finish your dinner, honey.  Reward: dessert.  Sweet, sweet, vanilla iced cream with Hershey’s chocolate syrup and brown sprinkles.  A mud volcano.  During dinner your sister had taken a WHOLE TREE of broccoli and chucked it at you, and you kicked her under the table.  You were mad but you laughed anyway.

A motel.  The odd scent is not overwhelming, but it is also not pleasant.  She is naked already and her teeth are a little fucked up but her body is still OK, and you can’t see the acne in the darkness of the room.  She tries to put it in her mouth before the condom but the room still isn’t spinning – are you fucking stupid – and you put it on and you are in her.  You can’t come because… how many dicks have JUST been where yours is right now?  The ghosts of hooker pussy past.  You leave what you think is a fifty and a crumbled wad of ones.  A smoke on the way to the car.

The bathtub is gigantic.  A sailboat floats by.  The water is warm and icebergs made of bubbles feel like clouds.  It smells of heaven.  Mom is there, and she pours shampoo on your head.  You protest but it feels good anyway so you let her scrub your hair.  The towel envelops you and you pick your PJs from a vast array of cartoon character printed, freshly washed cotton goodness.

The shower is freezing.  The bill for the water heater repair sits in a pile of shit strewn on some dust covered surface somewhere in the other room.  Floodlights through the window from the busy street outside illuminate the Herbal Essences conditioner from some broken ex-relationship which you are happy you had because you don’t have anything else to wash off the pussy stench.

Story time.  Dr. Seuss – Horton Hatches The Egg.  In your wildest dreams you would have never imagined that an elephant would sit in a tree for weeks just to make sure that a tiny egg stayed warm.  Mom is reading slowly and softly and you fall asleep without realizing it before the story is over… an ELEPHANT in a TREE.

Naked on the couch atop a pile of clothes.  Head pounding, alone.  Watch a violent porn, the bitch is getting choked and sucking a cock with another in her ass.  You finish what the hooker couldn’t.  It is warm and nasty on your stomach and some article of dirty clothing wipes it off before being deposited back on the filthy carpeting.  The coke is wearing off.  Passing out is a memory you won’t have but the smell of your own shit breath tastes the same when it wakes you up before the sun rises on a Tuesday morning.

- Foster Siren

web is perceived

don’t use photoshop

word processing

- Blaine Wyatt Carteaux

Reading The Savage Detectives

MEXICANS LOST IN MEXICO (1975)

NOVEMBER 2nd – 3rd

I hope this doesn’t turn out to be a turning of age deal. I understand that, in life, we grow up different; we grow older with the passage of time. That doesn’t mean this tale repeats itself for everyone. Truth is, how can you believe in something? I don’t believe in anything, or any absolutes, and most things are possible. There are just certain things I don’t believe in, and they are very few and far between.

NOVEMBER 4th – 5th

I always use the informal tu, even in my head while speaking English. Seems strange to me though, because Bolaño has written about Gauchos. Thought he might have picked up a thing from them. I can picture Cousin Rob not using the informal tu with a girl he might have just met, and Cousin Rob is the one who relates the most to Bolaño, and the reason why I am reading this book in the first place.

NOVEMBER 6th – 8th

Things just got very interesting.

NOVEMBER 9th – 13th

Sometimes I turn into an archiving gargoyle. A friend of mine is a real compulsory information gatherer, Bernardo, he tracks it, whether it be book, movie or album, scribbles it down on centimeters of white corners on scraps of every available paper near him as soon as he incepts. He eventually reaches every scrap at a later date, every title, every time, in eventuality. For me, there is just too much data out there, and not enough people or time to consume it all. Why bother storing it somewhere then? Let moments be moments.

My penis rages a boner when I read a description of a girl or sexual act in a book. It doesn’t even have to be excessively sexual; a simple description of how she looks, what she’s wearing, how she smells, how she’s standing, anything, and my dick turns rock hard. In fact, its hardest and quickest erections happen when I’m reading a book, unmatched by real life situations with women. They make it hard, just not the same.

Latin America as a theme in writing is I can’t write when I’m drunk. It’s cool that they’re getting high, or at least I think they are. Whether or not drug dealing translates to usage is left to be seen, but if they’re not, then I really cannot relate to the characters in this book.

NOVEMBER 14th – 15th

That Indians communicate with masculine and feminine isn’t surprising, but that this passes on is truly a revelation. Although Mano is only a nickname due to the fact that it distinguishes me from my sister Mana, it’s a couple of terms used to differentiate the masculine from the feminine, as if nothing else matters. Avo with an accent and Avo without one signifies grandmother and grandfather. This Naco and Naca business is the type of thing they call wisdom or enlightenment in youth, bliss in ignorance. You could argue that the distinction between sexes or sensuality is a sign of caring, but it’s pretty far removed from modern categorizations and the over-analysis of every microcosmic speck. From now on, I think my coffee is naco, and my mate is naca. Talk about solving the gender problem, our brains aren’t developed for androgyny, might as well break the boundaries of male and female now, and stop relating it to genitals.

It’s cockamamie how hard I get from literature. Any mention of a woman, or girl, with the smallest amount of description, and in any scenario, will flourish in my mind and hit me hard in the vein. All I know of Maria Font is that she is tall, dark, with dark hair and thin lips, and yet I feel her smooth and tan skin, see her goose bumps glistening in the sun, and I feel the dark hairs on her arm, warm, the slight moustache above her upper lip which is so prominent in Indian women. I grip her inner thighs, which aren’t hard but as soft as unbaked bread dough. Her breasts are small and her nipples even smaller, but are pointy, and they’re hard. She’s thin, elegant; her eyes are dark and look down at everything, seemingly disinterested, stemming from her inner uninteresting self. Her boredom waxes off on everything, but she feels delightful when I kiss her. She’s tall, dark and thin-lipped.

NOVEMBER 16th – DECEMBER 28th

Not sure if Magnetic people are attracting trouble necessarily. I have met a few, one with a spooky name, Henry, who is certainly a magnet, and it seems he is involved in trouble often, although I can’t tell if he’s attracting or creating it. Maybe it’s unfair to call people around trouble magnetic. Maybe they are just the creators of creative situations. And maybe that goes for everyone who’s magnetic to something, they are merely creating fun, horror, excitement, deathly boredom and complications.

Why do people feel the need to keep saying things, about anything? It’s almost as if, while you’re explaining something you experience in some way, physically, visually, intrinsically, transcendentally, you’re trying to understand it as the words come out of your mouth. Why can’t the words stay in your head, quietly brewing and boiling into your answers? Because you’re not a shithead, so you let it come out of your mouth, so you’re eating shit, a shit-eater. Maybe it’s a bad instinct, that first reaction you have, that you have to know what you just witnessed. Maybe in some ways if you choose not to understand you will not only understand it better some day, maybe the answers will come to you in the form of unexpected revelations, like a vision in your girls’ iris. Think you need to stop being able to see too.

Don’t know what it is about dawn, when the joggers and bikers come out, but it makes you real weak in the knees, weak in the spirits, shakes your fingers to an unsteady beat, and you either want to kiss someone passionately or cry for hours nestled deep, warmed by the stuff of life between thighs. I had the most wonderful traumatic experience, a dream in which I could not awake from, where I cried for hours and no one understood why, and when I awoke I was crying. And I kept on crying for hours, not knowing the reason for all the sadness that I felt, but when I woke up at two in the afternoon I felt rejuvenated. Except there was no vessel lying next to me, so I wonder where all the sinful darkness and hardness could have gone. Back into me? Surely not into my bed. My tiny, single bed, two mattresses stacked on one another pushed against the wall, a small amount of leverage for my frail manhood.

People all look the same. We focus on the minute details that make us different, such as the degree of the arch of your eyes, the amount of space between your lips and chin, thickness of your fingers, length of your torso. But take a look, at a sketch of a human being, and with the exception of disfigurement, we all have the eyes in a line next to each other, and the ears, with a nose in the middle, and lips below it and an open mouth with rows of teeth, and you can figure out the rest. And the genitals make a huge difference to us, the inversion of a single organ to operate two different functions, useless on their own, with the same end result. It separates us, exclusive to ourselves. We see uniqueness when uniformity is staring right back at us, from the same region of the face.

Coming of age stories always feel so crummy. I feel as if after this it won’t be coming of age any longer, that it will be of age, but I realize the easiest way to relate to another person, specifically a man person, is to tell the story of a seventeen year old fucking some bitches for the first time, and then being all raw about it. It’s almost like cheap thrills, and I understand why underage love is so easily exploitable. The weekend is an inherently adolescent thing. I guess we all carry trophies of youth with us. Those trophies are vases, they contain dreams, and one by one those vases fall off the shelf and shatter. What do girls relate to? Do they read “Catcher in the Rye” and enjoy it? Eventually someone is going to call this sexist and then maybe someone will refute it, but to all you people arguing that shit YOU’RE FAGGOTS!
I really hope I’m not missing the point of this book. I doubt there is a point. I don’t believe books have points or that people can get them or miss them. A book can only be read, not understood. The subtleties between lines is something different, but even those are hard to capture. When reading Thomas Hardy you probably need a guide or notebook to explain that when he describes the way the animals move along the grass and among the trees and the way the branches sway in the wind it’s actually just a metaphor for ‘A WOMAN IS BEING RAPED.’

DECEMBER 28th – 31st

Quim belongs in an insane asylum. I wonder how magically realistic the rest of this book is going to get. Hopefully not at all. Hopefully the Fonts’ house wasn’t an insane asylum, or a labyrinth or poetry or something else symbolic and stupid like that. I keep forgetting that they’re in Mexico, and not South America. Did Bolaño write this while he was living in Mexico? He almost describes Mexico City in a South American way, the small amount of times he actually describes anything. Every once in a while he throws in a “Mustang” or “Camaro,” and you never see those cars in South America, at least not as much. It’s a rare sight, not a normal discovery.
Also, if he is Belano and not Madero, does that mean he is describing his own sexual ambitions and conquests, or those of others? I’ve read Bolaño talk about his “problems of a sexual nature” during his adolescence in his short stories collection The Insufferable Gaucho that have recently been translated into English and published by Picador. There are two essays in the collection that are less concerned with a story but are much more similar to ramblings of a mad man. Did Bolaño ever make a girl cum fifteen times in one night, or did one of his friends brag about it? What worries me about this is that I feel an innate connection between Bolaño’s thought process and mine, at least in the two essays “Literature + Illness = Illness” and “The Myths of Cthulhu.” Even in short stories such as The Insufferable Gaucho and “Alvaro Rousselot’s Journey” the writing seems very familiar to me. I think it’s because Bolaño is South American, and therefore he and I share similar grow-up traits. I traveled in my youth, and have never lived in South America for longer than three years, and those years weren’t very conscious.
I’ll come back to this.

THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES (1976-1996)

Amadeo Salvatierra, Calle República de Venezuela, near the Palacio de la Inquisición, Mexico City DF, January 1976

I’m dying to try this Mezcal Los Suicidas, although I’m sure it tastes like any other tequila. I die to try anything in a book, the liquor and the women. Wonder what makes some people so happy to see others. I often find myself more than happy when someone comes to visit me at my home, regardless of who they are. I like them to feel comfortable, and I’m offering anything they can consume or use at my house. It must come off as lonely, like Amadeo. Amadeo is probably older, someone who hasn’t spoken to his fellow poets in many years. Seeing these two probably makes him feel nostalgic, although he’s in for a surprise. Why is old age always surprised by the differences between the years and generations? That ‘times are different’ is really shocking to anyone? The worst are the claims of better times or something. Older people of the world, do us a favor and resign your citizenship along with your right to vote by the time you’re fifty-five. Make it fifty. You’re old, you make poor decisions based on outdated knowledge, and you won’t be around long enough to live with the consequences of your choices, but others will. Others, the living, the young, will have to deal with remnants of your old, ignorant and arrogant genuine beliefs, systems, thoughts, ambitions, and will be cleaning it up until they’re in the same boat as you, ruining it for some other strangers they give birth to. Come to think of it, it’s almost strange that old people don’t treat someone significantly younger than them as their own child. The herd has spread out, become large and diverse, and it is strong enough to sustain those who do not vibe with the master plan.
I like the idea of offering them a drink, because that’s what generations have in common, it’s what writers do. The only thing that changes where you go is the distilled alcohol. For some it’s tequila, for others, whiskey and even vodka, gin, and then the variety of all sorts. Some people claim certain distilled liquors to be more supreme or royal, very important and even more special than others, VSOP grade, or Very Special Old Pale. It’s all the same that ends the same. One could spend all night drinking VSOP and one could spend all night drinking a plastic bottle of gin, the experience might vary but the result will be the same. Similar thoughts, enthusiasm and tribulations will come.
I once spent a night with some friends drinking nothing but “fine” scotch whiskey. I don’t recall most of the brands, except for a Chivas Regal aged at twenty-five years, which someone convinced me at the time cost around five hundred dollars. That might have been true, but most likely it’s a fucking lie. Either way, the parents are rich and so is this kid and his house and upbringing. We get real shitfaced. There are three gentlemen, two girls and a free love ordeal. We drink and become daring. The parents are out of town, we spin in the beamer around the neighborhood, skinny dip in the pool and don’t worry about ash or cigarette buds, and the whole while drinking this fine whiskey.
To be honest with you, I’d have had a great time with cans of watery beer, with enough of them. The experience is slightly different, because the drunken feeling ain’t the same, and the morning after is certainly a separate monster, but I’d still live the same night in my memory. I laugh and cheer with good company, play some of my favorite albums as the designated DJ, although one fucker keeps hassling me over the music selection, and I even sneak kisses and squeezes from the girls. I pass out in the king size bed with a guy and a girl, and after a couple of months I never hang out with those people again.
That’s not true. I ran into one of them years later. She was tipsy nearing solid drunk, and I think I was in the same state, although who knows, supposedly I downplay how drunk I actually am frequently. She told me the whiskey night remained magical in her memory, that the mix of company and freedom, and even age, all complimented the treasure of scotch that we drank. She told me she hasn’t drank (drunk?) anything as good since. Now she’s rather seductive in my mind. I’m playing her over, and I think I’m making up the dress she’s wearing, but she has long brown and straight hair, a little blonde, and she’s average height and very thin. Tan skinned, oriental-western mix looking eyes with a round and cheeky face, very pretty and rosy. No hips or curves, no fat in the three places where it counts, but that makes her elegant. There’s no way of confirming that she looks this way. I don’t think she’s on facebook. Maybe I should look her up. I think I’m giving myself my very first self-literary erection! I’ll have to ask someone how to phrase that more effectively.
There’s something about her eyes too. They look South American.

Perla Avilés, Calle Leonardo da Vinci, colonia Mixcoac, Mexico City DF, January 1976

I ride my grandfather’s horses through his farm, through the forests and the hills, on the field to herd in the cattle. Fenced in, shot with needle, bathed, and then packed up in the back of a truck, and the bills are paid until next year.

I found her on facebook. I know her nickname is Gaby, but I didn’t realize her name is Maria Gabriela Giménez. She’s not the type of girl to write out her nickname, I guess, although when she’s mentioned I’ve only ever heard her referred to as Gaby. Maybe people mean Gabi. Now that’s a thought prying into others’ thoughts. She doesn’t have a lot of pictures up, but it looks like she’s still the same looking girl. One of her pictures proves that at some point since I last saw her she cut her hair short. She’s on a boat with a girl and an older man, hopefully someone’s father, and her hair only reaches her chin. Her bikini is polka dotted, which is a funny contrast to the other girls’ bikini, which looks like one of those fancier tops, with curls and knots and laces. There’s a literary picture of her ass in that same album.

Laura Jáuregui, Tlalpan, Mexico City DF, January 1976

First off, I hope I’m no Pancho Rodriguez. Second, Laura Jáuregui is an idiot. No, she’s not an idiot, she’s just an unappreciative bitch who thinks a little too highly of herself. Whether or not visceral realism is truly an attempt by Bolaño to impress her and show her that he loves her is inconsequential. But if Bolaño wrote this, is he actually admitting that visceral realism is just for Laura? Is there a real Laura, who maybe doesn’t feel this way, but Bolaño felt she did? Well. As far as the story is concerned, she loves a Bolaño, the crate of fruits, and in this I agree with her, so perfect for him to be sitting on, waiting, or I guess I agree with him…Maybe this is just Bolaño. Is this a moment where someone writes fiction that isn’t exactly realistic, and it gets in the way of reading? Here I am hating on Laura Jáuregui, and yet I can’t even believe the character would act this way. I’ve always felt that men can’t write from a woman’s perspective, and vice-versa. There’s no way she could go from understanding and caring to calling him a creep, unless she knows the true meaning of the word creep, which I doubt. Although some women do act completely irrational, it is true, and again someone might someday call me sexist, but they will either be a woman or a lonely loser, which is not a creep in any sense of the word.

Gaby accepted my friend request. Can’t wait until she’s online so I can creep on her hard. Think I’m gonna start creeping on her friends hard, so I can make things interesting. Gonna try and figure out where she’ll be tonight, try and run into her as much as I can. Such a spark of interest. I don’t think it’s necessarily sexual or romantic, but I definitely want to party with her. Wonder what those other people from that night are up to nowadays, but not really.
The club, where I ran into her, when she told me she loved that night, has since closed. I’m sure I’ve run into her or been to the same parties, bars and clubs as she but never noticed, and she didn’t see me. I think I heard someone mentioning her a couple of weeks ago, maybe months, but I can’t remember. Chris was with me at the club, he’ll probably remember. Chris was actually there the night she loved, but only at the beginning. Our party was six, but he had to leave early to take a standardized test the next day, don’t remember if it was SAT or ACT. Man, he must have been taking that thing late. We were already eighteen that year. Or maybe we were seventeen, or even sixteen. Jesus, how long ago was this? And how old was I when she told me she loved that night? I gotta make sure not to bring this up, then, because she probably won’t remember, might think I’m stupid, or that I’m the wrong definition of creep.

Maybe Bolaño knew for a fact Laura Jáuregui thinks that way, but that seems crazy to me. I’ve often felt that I misjudge books written by women, so I’ve stopped reading them completely. That’s not entirely true, however. I am in the process of reading Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem. It is written in a most simplistic way. Almost. There are still some hints of femininity here and there, although it’s mostly covered up by a rampant oppression of California brand liberalism. Liberalism isn’t the right word, but people have twisted it to this point, so why shouldn’t I? Didion is also journalistic, which is a style of writing I’ve never been too into. I am enjoying these essays somewhat, but the real reason I’m finishing the book is because it was suggested to me by the same person who suggested this book (said if you like prose), which I don’t want to put down. I’ve learned to take my time though, enjoy a good read, and the best way to do that is to read a couple of different books, have some that are less interesting or less entertaining than others. It’s a good system, and in the end you end up filling up a bookshelf and adding to your smart repertoire persona garbage.
Back to Laura Jáuregui, if Bolaño was able to encompass this woman’s thoughts, then she’s of an extremely fickle nature. Maybe she comes from a tribe of fickle women. In the span of about four pages, she forgets how many men she slept with at one period, goes from love to dismissal of a man, and openly praises her love of Bolaño, only to debunk it. That part only took about three or four paragraphs. If you write a book about a woman’s interests and disinterests throughout her life, each chapter representing a new interest, how long will that book be, and how short are the chapters? A fifteen hundred-page novel with twenty thousand chapters? Again, sexist, machista, whatever the fuck you want to call it, chauvinist pig me. I love women.

Fabio Ernesto Logiacomo, editorial offices of the magazine La Chispa, Calle Independencia and Luis Moya, Mexico City DF, March 1976

That’s the thing though, you can never be certain of anything. Once you become dumb and throw absolutism out the window, the window and the throwing go along with it, and you’re left to your senses. If it feels good, something ‘knows’ ‘it’, but everything else is utter nonsense.
The word “suppose” is quickly becoming my favorite. I love its definition, love that it was constructed out of a need that humans have to interpret things they don’t understand. No one understands anything, they can’t explain language, yet they create it and they write it as if it were second nature. To assume, to consider, to believe, without anything giving you certainty. And nothing ever does. You just suppose everything. That’s modern living: supposed.
The English word ‘hug” is awful. I’m putting it on my word shit list and the hall of shame for words. It means to wrap your arms around another person, I think, to most people. Embrace is much closer to what it’s attempting to say. That embrace, that sentiment, that undeniable squeeze you get from human being to human being. It’s a warm feeling, it’s universal and it can be discovered in any corner of the world. In molten volcano lava and in frozen tundra, the hug will be buried deep between sand grains. Same thing goes for the word Saudade. Being skillful in the Romantic languages is a very efficient romantic skill. You see, to Spaniards, Brazilians, French, Portuguese and Italians, words full of expression and sentiments are every-day. A regular basis sort of deal. The Germanic is colder. Mix the two, and what you get is a cold romantic, someone who is both bold and smooth. Actually, I don’t know about all that, but I certainly use some words in casual dialogue with women that might seem poetic, but in another language is regular chitchat, and that cannot be a denial. Or it can. Whatever. Fuck absolutism. You decide if it’s appropriate to put a comma after fuck.

Poem novels sound horrific. Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner comes to mind, as well as getting lost in the woods. I wonder if this writer, or rather, I wonder if this poet has Crohn’s disease or something like that. What’s hurting me? I meant to say what’s hurting you? Did I not?
They didn’t drug him. They’re so interested. Chapultepec is gorgeous. The architecture is brilliant white, contrast to the surrounding green, pillars and older buildings, showing age but not too much wear, as if they’ve been spared by time. I imagine having a beer there, walking down the forest, with a five-beer-full six pack in my right hand. I’m not smoking at this point, there is some sweat on the side of my forehead, probably the right, and the noise of the silence and the wind is overwhelming my eardrums. Green skies with blotches of blue in the background, with wood colored brown and gray and red, the ground is yellow, grey, brown and white, a mixture of years of cycle of life stuff. I notice my gait, my locomotive train-wreck, then I start to miss beats, like when I play music and notice my tempo and lose it. I run into some weird Mexicans, one of which is obviously fucked up and in pain and I say “everything OK?” and one of them says “MIND YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS” so I do.

You know when you start noticing something you see it everywhere? And not just with words or poetry or a concept, but solid, physical things? Let’s say you notice a Subaru Impreza for the first time in your life, learn its body and shape, its style, and then you start seeing it more often, but you might have seen it just as often before you noticed it, now it catches your attention. Let’s think that way about women, about the love of your life and everything good for you, or let’s start thinking about making money and how it’s everywhere, you just can’t see it. Well, the spooky thing is that I ran into Gaby at Whole Foods. Straight up, I went to Whole Foods by myself for a beer, which I haven’t done in years, and she was at the Whole Foods dining area having a slice of pizza and a beer. A big beer. It was around five in the afternoon. Sun descending, getting close to winter in November.
It feels like a stupid dream. I walk into the room with beer in hand, grab a ribbed plastic cup to pour my beer into, give me something to do between page breaks of this book. I sit and read for a while, finish about two-thirds of the beer. I look up, I see her and at the same time she looks up and sees me. How made up is this? We lock eyes and smile, a stiff breeze pushes my bangs and her length of hair to the west, even though we’re indoors and the AC is blasting a perfect currentless wave. Her arm twitches for a hand gesture and immediately stops when she sees my legs and hips sway towards her. My hips and legs almost stop working when I notice her arm twitch, but my manly instinct knows better and keeps treading forward. The instinct, which isn’t mine, and I apologize for saying it, makes the right decision.
I could describe the decorations, the tall walls and the dark brown wooden booths that I’m sure aren’t Formica, but I’d rather tell you about her dress, and how it’s barely there. You can say it’s a Sunday dress. Thin, made of some smooth material, and you can tell the textile is a repetition pulled out of a long spindle. There’s flowery roses, the background a light red, black and white and yellow streaks and lines that form flowers, petals and buds, so thin it hu-embraces parts of her body in the most complimentary way. It dances in dead air. Her hair long and light light light brown and glowing blonde. She has a pulchritudinous dark bruise on the back of her left thigh, almost like a tattoo that actually looks good on someone. She’s not giving up her skin for a tattoo, she’s making a bruise to compliment her beauty.
I think I could have bitten down hard on a lock of her hair and closed my eyes and said “Sayonara” and left Earth on some emergency spaceship capsule and never returned, never opening my eyes again and never unclenching my teeth. My smile must have looked ridiculous as I strutted in her direction. Her lips and bunny rabbit front teeth incite me, although I’m only exaggerating, her teeth are pretty straight and white. Her dad is a lawyer and her mom is getting away with being drunk and partying. That’s one of the things she tells me.

It’s not even that absurd, and maybe it’s what’s making me feel strange. I love the absurdity of life, the nonsense, the inexistence of everything. Or the tolerant quality that matter has. These Mexicans and the Mexican wannabe are living a close to ideal lifestyle, just completely oblivious to the absurd structures of their surroundings. Someday I hope to take an eternal vacation like that.

Luis Sebastián Rosado, La Rama Dorada coffee shop, Colona Coyoacán, Mexico City DF, April 1976

Priapo’s is probably a great place as long as you don’t go with people like Luis. I bet I’d have a lot of fun going there with Gaby. She says she likes to get pretty wild when she parties, and since she doesn’t have much to do but a freelance job for the local paper I bet she parties quite often. We talked about a lot of different things at Whole Foods, mostly trying to get to know each other since we’ve never had a full conversation before. Or so I thought. Gaby told me we had a long rant with each other on the whiskey night. I don’t remember this in the slightest.
She was dating one same guy for about three years. She’s moving to New York soon. What a shame, I’ll probably end up in that dump too. She goes on about music, but my experience knows better, a girl’s taste in music isn’t always a pleaser, usually remnants of the last dude in them, so I change the subject. Let me explain this, it’s not that girls listen to shitty music, duh, but music is touchy and people are really into what they are into, so it gets tough talking about it without being dishonest, if you’re looking to not offend someone, according obviously to my personal preference. I shouldn’t even have to add the word personal in front of preference, if you know the meaning of words, but it’s just that these days, with all these half-truths (LOL) and “truthiness” out there, well, it just seems like a lot of people think their preference is something other than personal. They think it’s something that is concrete and factual that must be respected and cannot be offended. Just think about kids and what do we tell them about the sex? In Texas? In New York?
We talk about alcohol, and this part I like, and it makes me drunk. The date is set as soon as she mentions the abbey, gin martinis, gin shots and being sick of hops. Said a bartender won’t skim on a gin martini, and that she likes to get plastered fast.
8th November, it’s now 11th November, and I still sweat when I step outside of anything.

If someone started reciting a poem in front of me I think I’d start laughing uncontrollably or vomiting hysterically. Unless I’m certain that I’m not in a poetry event, hearing, reading, class or themed anything, I don’t care to control my reaction. I don’t worry about acting like a dick or looking like an asshole in such an absurd situation. I mean, come on, who wouldn’t laugh at something so ridiculous? In fact, I cannot remember one experience in my life in which a poem reading would have been appropriate.
In Miami, there is a militant poetry group under the guise of a fake institution, a very clever name for a poetic operation, known as ‘O, Miami’ or some other, and the artists’ group is called University of Wynwood. These forceful soldiers want to shove poetry down Miami’s throat, whether Miami likes it or not. They launch off in planes and strategically drop leaflets with poems printed on them, death from above littering our literary consciousness. They sow tags onto clothing at thrift stores with little poems printed on them, as if one tag wasn’t enough of a bother, now you need a whiny voice itching away at the back of your neck with flowery language. They congregate inconspicuously in public areas, and then in sequence recite a poem, an idea obviously stolen from those lame flash mobs. Flash mobs are a morbid look at self-actualization, how people can gather for the most meaningless event to gain some miniscule amount of attention from a passerby who couldn’t offer more than a second of their life to be impressed by something unimportant, useless, uninteresting, uninspiring. Flash mobs of poetry are something even more vacuous, a soul-sucking hole of pleas and cries, for poetic justice and literary sense or something. Some nonsense just like that.
The Visceral realists need to make a comeback and run these people out of town. I like poetry because it doesn’t reach me and those who practice it don’t speak up.

Luis is a lot to handle. There is an Iranian I know who reminds me of him, he’s a great friend of mine, just very insecure and unsure, both about his sexuality and his identity, I think, and I understand not wanting something like your sexual inclination to mark you as a someone. I might have once been in Luscious Skin’s place (or skin), except I never kissed Luis or the Iranian, I’ve never felt an attraction towards another man, although I’ve kissed plenty, I’m not macho aprovado, approved male, because I’ve never gone through the full certification of getting my dick sucked by a man, or me sucking a man’s dick, or fucking another man, and not being interested in it. You can always be sure you’re straight as long as you ask for the money in the end, according to Jim Carroll according to Robert Mapplethorpe according to Patti Smith. And I guess, according to Just Kids, according to me. Patti and I have a mutual understanding, although it is often written, unremarked.

I like Gaby because she is not unique and she tells me so. She says I look like everyone else and it makes her happy to be with the human population. Our mission is none, chaos is a good result. We jeer at everything, we obfuscate everyone’s unique and diverse and particularly special eyes and ears. This is your drink so I drink it. This is your pride and it makes me laugh. You know that for a fact? I don’t know about that kind of stuff, I’m ill equipped and incapable of proving for or against, lack evidence, can’t claim any basis for an opinion, did not do research and will not take the time, am not troubled by anyone’s conclusion, and the only fact out there I will mention, is that I know for a fact that there is no way you can know something for a fact. She also smocks herself in the silliest see-through shit I’ve ever bit into.

Alberto Moore, Calle Pitágoras, Colonia Varvarte, Mexico City DF, April 1976

Fuck Alberto, fuck Luis and Julita, and fuck Luscious Skin and Ulises and Arturo for right now. Something very strange has happened. I feel very at peace, but when I stop to think about it I feel confused, ashamed, and sometimes I don’t care.
I don’t think it’s gonna work out with Gaby. We were hitting it off for a while, but then we reached that point where parallels turn perpendicular, and she keeps me away from reading this book, which I want to come back to, since it brings me happiness and excitement, which I felt with her, but not anymore. I think at first I liked the book because of her, but now I see the herring of my ways.

- Mike Bertino

Reading Hopscotch

73

I changed my mind about poetry. Rather, the mind has changed its stance on poetry, on poets, on literature.

1

Maga’s flesh bruises and bleeds easily. Who would have thought, or who thinks. Perforated washcloth bucket seats in a color between black and blue, underneath the hatch, reclined, foggy breathing, I bite into you Maria. You make poetry surge from every squeezed pore, from every line on every arm, and the complete canvass stains itself a visceral pigment. A figment, is what I listen to and believe in now, no longer absolutes or devoid of absolutism, whether the sun is set or the grass remains attached to the ground, on the soil where the squirt is absorbed.

2

Shady. You’re too lazy on a Sunday to drive out to a glassy green synthetic bocce ball field? In the middle, you can take a profound douche. That doesn’t sound good to you? Maga Maria, Rocamadour, translated into the Internet age, you have a pooch in a corner that barks all day at the surrounding noises. You’re a sugar cube statue, and you can’t keep the flies off. You fly off. You don’t spread, you’re not recumbent. You don’t alleviate anything. So what if someone doesn’t want to talk about the eight hundred pound stinking sobbing baby in the corner? I am beside myself. I am walking circles around myself. I’m right behind me. I’m too far up high to reach me. I can’t communicate with me. I’m anguished too, you know? I retrace tile by grain and ogle the hints and capriciously write them off. I’m still not sure if you’re serious, if you were ever serious, because you’re not a serious person.

116

Across the window is the heavy head of a statue. You can only see the hair design. Its face is the dark side of the moon. You guess at what its eyes might look like, are they open or closed. But who sculpts closed eyes? The thinker sequel, the anguished, eyes tight shut, fingers to the sides of the head, the depiction of a migraine that never ends. Chisel throb vein. Moldy carving cast. Without seeing the other side of the statue, you assume first, and then guess whether they are shut or closed, and they say people look different.

3

I suppose Maria Gabriela is La Maga, though I am no Horacio. So don’t play with me ’cause you’re playing with fire. Carefully tiptoeing around a fissure vent. It explodes at any moment. First you turn into a lackadaisical one with perfunctory risk and haphazard discreetness. On this side swings the will, on the other side the need, and the want is the embrace. The daylight is boring because it represents the same destructive force with which we make love to the earth. Every night the one turns itself black. There is no limit to our love. Or so I thought. The limit was the opposition.

The limitless is our passion. The one eventually kills itself off. So every night that Horacio and La Maga make it to bed without fighting, well, that’s a significant treasure of life, and I totally understand. You can’t keep sucking blood and expect not to get sick. You can’t avoid illness when your blood is constantly drained. There is more to being one than just stabbing at supple tissue, because you break through, and you have to face what comes out. From the inside, surrounding you with your own mind, your own choice and path, you stand at the déjà vu moment you keep coming back to, and then you see the déjà vu count itself off. Your memory is a trinket. All you think of is burning flesh. All you miss is burning flesh. I know it sounds a little creepy, but sometimes I fixate on your clavicles and my teeth sinking into them, I know the backgrounds and even your body and mine don’t match, just the pierce.

84

You’re an abrupt end. I saw a puppy drown in a river and it impressed me. The years passed and I never got to a comfortable place. I can’t turn backwards. I saw movie once with an arch and development, tumult and finally a rest, and it impressed me. I met various people and surrendered my love to them, I made friends and I surrendered my love to them, and I produced gifts and they did not open. I heard a song about a symbol moving into your home, and it impressed me. I searched for clues and hints, signs to point me in a direction. I read a book about the wonder, the search, and its end, and it impressed me. I looked for a comfortable place down a narrow alley of twisted bricks. Benzo found its way to me and lifted me off. Methyl put me in a comfortable place. I regret not bringing it with me to the narrow alley. A circle spins in one place. Things cannot be one way or another, but they are in many shapes and forms, sounds and patterns, texture and sensation, tepid or pleasing, frigid and stinging, messy and absorbing, fantastical and drab. Sleazy, shady again, sleazy, tired, sleepy, weeping and reawakening, forgetting and holding on, purposeful not at all. To face such things as a half, not likely. We become one, Maga, we become one and we spin in place. Calling things an end and final, even though absolutism has dissolved, a feign resolution. Let’s be clearer. In focus, I beat you, and you beat me. You whip and I bite back. There are no directions. Isn’t that funny? I actually thought I brought you up, after your upbringing. I thought I could lay you down, when I live down. We got 50 guns and 150 slaves. I have no clue what to do, other people feel inclined by some stress and pressure to do something…They are predisposed to? They want to do? They instill in themselves, or does the Earth? Who spins the circle? What is it that spins silk? And 48 rock stars in early graves. I want it to fit. I want to have things to do, and be happy with. The days will reach their climax, settle, the circle spinning in a different direction. It’s easy to look at us from the mirror. You and I, Maga, looking into the mirror, past the reflection of ourselves, we see the one. But it will never happen. You’re an abrupt end. Got 47 Kennedys and 88 white niggers bumming money off of me. Right, true, the chapter thing, the absolutism thing, it doesn’t exist, it isn’t, isn’t isn’t, isn’t, and the chapter flips over, it is over, it starts anew. A smile turns into a frown, the circle spins, the frown turns into a glance, the glance takes shape into an unidentified flying object, which is the familial Cheshire Cat smile. We all have it in our heritage. The moon is colloquial, the green is sparse to some and wealthy to others, you surf the wind and rock the ocean, the gravel, granite, particles, spinning, fucking, spitting into your eye instead of your mouth, mother Terr, your scent, the scent of traces and trails and mixes and wrappers and toilets flushing. Honey, honey, I am coming. Honey, you taste like you’re leaving. Darling, sunshine, darkness, sunset, we sweep up the papers and folders, the dust in your eyelash, your mother under the rug, your father out in the mayonnaise, your brother, your boyfriend, your husband, your cousin, your neighbor, your daughter, my front door. My exit. And a Mexican named Trum who built a casino in the mud. And though it may all seem like a bad dream friend it’s all true. Got a mustard gas war going on in Canada and dead heads finally looking for jobs. Got a story to tell all the dead men in the ground and a lot of women that I knew. And I’ll sell it to you for 80,000 bucks.

we got it all
we got it all
a crash-glam document of the late 20th century rip-off
we got it all
we got it all
the period when whitey finally made himself look bad

One day I’m thinking about you, another day you’re waking me up, and then my sense of the word creepy gets turned upside down. Even though there is no direction, Maga, and you said you agreed. Someone comes to me and says something. Another person agrees. They say things I have heard before. They repeat words. New words are seldom. An idea moves slowly, and when it does, it ingrains, and becomes old. Someone tries to force me, they do not know that no one can force anyone, by definitional language. By the worst method of communicating with anything. By a supposition, communication. Someone enters a room, a metaphorical room, or rather, they’re pushed into the room, not by choice, lack thereof, will, lack thereof, kinda just shoved out into the room, if you catch my drift. You enter the room and they hand you a piece of paper called a check and you don’t have an option to reject. The check is black and white, green or red, positive or negative. That is your check. It keeps you in check. Everyone has a check. Got some snakeskin oil and some aluminum foil and a souvenir from nowhere to. Got a first class ticket on a UFO and an 88 machine gun salute. You need to keep that check, which is a book, balanced. Or you will fall left or right on a scale. This scale varies in colors, sometimes one side will be black and one side will be white, blue and red, yellow and brown, green and red, blue and yellow, pink and blue, black or red, and it will give you some deterministic, empiricist characteristic. Visually, and surely ad poorly enough, psycho(made up fucking work let’s just drop it)logically. Patterns and behaviors. Assumptions. Suppositions. And then a status report. A reality check. Stringent rules. A toothpick in the sand. A pillar in the sand. A structure in the sand. A structure made of concrete on top of a concrete floor, an idealistic vision, guided by virtue, organized by responsive critics, made possible by slaves. The expansion of social norms and hurrah society. Strap on, seat belts tight, spinning. Miscommunication, also known as language, wrapping a spindle in silk. Remember when we started getting high before fucking? Yeah, like that, it starts happening. The earth opens up a warm hole, everyone digs right in. A rigid structure isn’t well spread; it’s the structure of everything. Now you either live in the room or you don’t. Nothing exists outside of the room. Not even space. Forget about space. The room’s door is locked. There are no restraints. The room can change sizes, and it can contain different objects. You can even shape the room. You can make it look how you want it to. You can even make it so that you can’t see the walls, so that that the room seems so never-ending it is wider than the feasible brain universe itself. Got a hooker who likes to play solitaire when I’m having blackouts. Got a round-trip ticket to parts unknown. I’ll use it when you’re out of control.

we got it all
we got it all
a welfare picture of a crazy man’s antenna
we got it all
we got it all
we got videos of when life got bad at the end of the road

The walls will always be there. You can ignore them, push them off to the furthest corner, but you can’t escape them. Then comes the reality of shaping the room. You can do so with your mind, but not with your environment and your resources. In fact, pretty soon the picture you paint starts to reveal itself, your hand is held by another hand, the brush its own strings, strings made of silk, a circle spinning on another circle, another web. The first web spins and history begins. That web catches and webs spin off, catching more, encompassing, everyone tied down to string, shrinking and slowing down. How many webs are you stuck to? Got a picture of Zoot Horn Rollo looking out in his Beefheart hat. Got some naked pictures of your wife I bought from a bartender in Houston. The light in the room expires. Got some really nasty stories to tell you about my life that you wouldn’t want to hear. Got the scoop of what really happened at Paul Simon’s and Edie Brickell’s honeymoon.

we got it all
we got it all
a crash glam document of the late 20th century rip-off
we got it all
we got it all
the period when whitey finally made himself look bad

Look, we got nothing, nothing is anything. You’re an abrupt end. I feel even with you. Even if it isn’t even with your romantic lifestyle, it is a world I do not participate in, a proximity or solace is what I want, not what I’m looking for, because I FOUND IT. BUT I FOUND a way to make it leave, to go away. So what do I do now Maga?

4

Past the tongue of the snake there is a fold, and beyond that fold there lies a ridge. That is where you find the Serpent’s Club. Maga and I never participated in these clubs. When we’d go out late at night after the show and the club and the party and the drive and even after the late night drug theater, the social club climb you crawl into in the a.m., Maga never had any interest in doing something other than laughing at everyone around her. That’s how it must have been long ago, only laughing at me. Then laughing together. Now I’m laughing at her, and she’s not even thinking about me.

What’s the magic there, in the air, past the late at night, amongst a sacred friendship that doesn’t last longer than your bag of blow does? Everyone’s gonna get to know each other real well, right? The records will be played and the conversation will disperse, sliced into pieces based on pace, rapport, and vigor. Someone leads, and another falters, and then a private trip to the private room, or just behind the bushes, thrilling and full of expectations until past the a.m. once again on your way home. Who calls each other the next day for lunch?

71

The past future of communism, the present future of capitalism, and beyond the present no one knows, except Fukuyama, who’s bold enough to say that there is nothing beyond the present, that history ends here. Karl told us we would become managers of our own society, and that society would be powered by a robot, the cornucopia machine, who’s responsibility is to nurture us and support every level of our needs, and we owe it nothing but regular maintenance. Milton said we’d be fair to one another as fair as the value of a market can be, because the market punishes those who punish themselves. Francis said after that it’s over. Come on Francis. You really think it’s over?

5

Dang, can’t believe how much of a snob I’ve been. What is better than playing record after record, passing joints around, drinking some beers and having stupid and funny conversation amongst friends, at one of your apartments, and maybe getting into bed with one of them afterwards?

I don’t think I’ve ever slept in a hotel room, either with someone or alone. I’ve been inside of plenty, I have entered the showers and filled the bathtubs with ice, and set up the circular table with two chairs on the corner into a poker table, and the AC into a frigidaire, but I have never closed my eyes for winks, and I never clenched my teeth for love. What I do reme

- Henry Palm III

Lee told me it worked for him.  I was sure it wouldn’t for me.  I didn’t want to try it.  Lee wanted me to try it.

“I tried it,” he said.  “I tried it and I got laid the very first night.”

“Mm,” I said.

“No, really,” said Lee.

“I believe you,” I said.  But I wasn’t sure.

Lee was sure.  He was so sure that while he was talking, he nearly forgot France and I were there.  He stood there on the fire escape, marching arrhythmically in place to emphasize certain points, gesturing wildly with his hands to exaggerate others.  His reedy twang rose and fell around the neighboring buildings.  They held it for a moment and gave it to us in a short echo.

France and I didn’t say anything.

So Lee continued: “I had ‘em in my back pocket—in my right back pocket—and by last call, I was getting into a cab with a random.  She was a nice one, too.”  At this, he turned to France and asked, “Wasn’t she?”

“She was,” said France.  “Very nice, actually.”

“Mm,” I said.

“Chrissakes,” said Lee.  And with his head tilted back, he said this to the night itself: “Try it!”

The night itself was quiet.  So was France.  So was Lee.  So was I.

I threw my cigarette off the fire escape onto the patio below.  It was cloudy, cold.  No moon.  France coughed, giggled a moment.  Lee shook his head.

“Well, you should try it, anyway,” he said.

He took a pull from France’s bottle.  Then he ducked through the window and left.  France and I looked after him from the fire escape.

After I heard the door shut, I said, “I don’t know, France,” and he laughed.  We both did.

“What’s stopping you?” he said.

I thought for a moment.  “I don’t think I need the help.”

“The hell you don’t.”

“I don’t,” I said.  “I don’t.”  I brought out my arms, my hands palm-up.

He wanted to know how long it’d been since I’d been with a woman.

“I don’t know.  Probably three months.”

“You need the help.”

“Maybe I do.  But I don’t really care.”

“I think you care.”

“Not much, I don’t.”

“You care.  You talk about it all the time.  We all do.  You could knock off a piece.  So could I.”

“Then you try it,” I said.  “I don’t need it.”

“No,” said France.  “I don’t either.”

“Mm,” I said.

I stared at him for a moment, my lids heavy and eyebrows high on my head.

“I wouldn’t even know who to ask,” I said.

@@@

I asked Renee.  She agreed right away.  She was just as curious as we were.  Also, she liked Lee.  France knew this, which is why he insisted I ask her.

“That worked for Lee?” she grinned.  “Who was he with?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “And I didn’t want to ask you.  I didn’t want to do this.”  Then I added: “France talked me into it,” and I nodded in his direction.

“That’s right,” France smiled.  There was no guilt in his voice.

“What bar?” Renee asked.

“Who?” France asked.

“Lee?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said.  “Where was he?”

I told her I wasn’t sure.  Then I told her it might’ve been this place in a nearby neighborhood.  Or maybe a place down the street.  “Anyway, it wasn’t here.”

She wanted to know why we approached her.

“Because we thought you’d say yes,” said France, laughing.

I also laughed.

“OK,” said Renee.  “I have no problem helping you, I guess, but I don’t want to hear about it from anyone else.  OK?”

We nodded: OK.

“When do you want them?”

“Well, when can you have them ready?” asked France.

“Probably before the end of the month,” said Renee.

I told her to call me then.

She walked to the other side of the bar and served two other patrons, both comically intoxicated.  It was about 9 p.m.

When she returned, she had one final question: “Is Lee coming here tonight?”

We weren’t sure.  It was hard to know about Lee sometimes.  I guessed aloud that he was probably just as intoxicated as the patrons she had just served.

@@@

Renee called at the beginning of the next month.  I agreed to meet her at the bar and retrieve them.

I entered with my hands deep in my pockets, uncertain about my reception.  It was 5:30 p.m. or so.  It was still light outside.  It was not light in the bar.  The bar had a way of eating the light and depositing it elsewhere, and it did not deposit any of the light on the one rummy at a front table.  He studied his drink intently, didn’t break his communion with the highball upon my arrival.

Renee was smiling.  I was relieved.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey there,” she returned.

I removed my hands from my coat and took a stool.  I placed my palms on the bar.

We looked at each other, but not really.

“Well,” said Renee.

“Yeah,” I said.

“You want something to drink?”

I asked for a beer.  She brought one over, then removed a plastic bag from beneath the bar.  She set it next to the beer.

I could only say, “Ah.”

“Put it in your pocket,” she said.

I did.  I felt blood reddening my face.  I put my hand to my chin.  I didn’t have much of one.  It was melting into neck, just as my father’s had melted into his, and his father’s before him.  We all had pancake cheeks, too, and mine burned now.

I forced a dry laugh and said, “Well, I guess that’s it.”

“Yeah,” she murmured.  She smiled still.

I didn’t know what else to say.  I decided to ask her if I owed her.

“It’s three dollars,” she said.  “Happy hour.”

“No, I mean”—and I leaned in—”what do I owe you for those?”  I said it quietly, almost whispering.

“Oh,” she said.  She twisted her bottom lip under her teeth and tapped a tower of pint glasses with a delicate hand of painted nails.   “Nothing, I guess.”

“Maybe you want a new pair.”

“They were old anyway,” she said.  “Keep them.”

“Ah,” I said.

“It’s fine,” she said.

“Mm,” I said.

I drank the beer and ordered another.  She turned to grab a glass.  The door opened behind me.  I felt a rush of cool air as I took my hand off my melting chin, turning to see France, beaming as he entered.

“There you are,” he said.  His voice was loud in the empty room.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey there,” said Renee.

We were glad to have the company.

“You get the goods?” He slapped my back.  “You give him the goods?” he asked Renee.

I told him I had the goods.  Renee said so, too.

“Great,” said France.  And to Renee, “I almost thought you’d back out.”

“Nah,” she said.  “It’s no big deal to me.  I just don’t want to hear about it from anyone else.”

France nodded, asked for a beer.

“Sure thing,” said Renee.  She turned to fetch another glass.  Her back to us, she asked, “So why do they call you France, anyway?”

He released a peal of wet, wide laughter.

“It’s a long story,” he said.  “Some other time.”

@@@

(France’s real name was Philip.

The nickname: He once drunkenly told a woman, upon welcoming her to his apartment for the first time, that she would do well to call his place “France.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because,” he said, “that’s the place where the naked ladies dance,” and he pointed to his bedroom.

She left.

He became France.)

@@@

I was half-cocked when I got back to my apartment.  I placed the bag on the dining room table.  I hung my coat on the back of a chair.  Then I went to the tub, grimy from use and lack of care, and ran some hot water.

I grabbed the bag from the table and brought it back into the bathroom.  I ran my hand under the rush of water, and it was too hot.  I added some cold.  Then it was too cold.  I cursed and got the hot going hotter.

I sat on the toilet and took them out of the bag and looked at them.  They were off-white, cotton, sparsely decorated with a pattern of little red and yellow rabbits poised to hop this way and that.

And they were old, just as Renee had said they were.  Her many wearings and washings had pilled them in several areas.  They were no longer their intended color—or their original shape, even.

And there was a violent and dark brownish-red stain in the crotch area.

I studied it, thought of Renee.  She was nice enough.  I liked her blonde hair, long and often pulled behind her head.  I liked her laugh.  She had nice lips.  And she was easygoing, funny.  Strange and personable and tall.  Boyish, a heavy drinker.  With a large, round ass.

I put my nose on the red stain and breathed deeply, thinking of Renee.  It was alkaline and sweaty, like pennies and bleach and fish heads.  Renee.

Renee.

I balled them up and put them on the lid of the hamper in the corner.

Then I went back to the water, and it was too hot again.

“Goddamn it,” I said loudly.

@@@

France kept calling.  I knew it was him, and I wouldn’t answer.

I also knew of the party that night.  And I knew of some mutual friends gathering at a nearby bar, and there was something else happening somewhere else.  I couldn’t remember what.  France probably knew.  I wouldn’t answer.

It was around 9 p.m.  I walked to the store down the street and grabbed some beer.  Then France called again.  I twisted the cap off one of the beers.  OK, I thought, to hell with it.

“Yeah.”

“You avoiding my calls tonight?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Why?  Didn’t you hear about that party later?”  He was incredulous.

“I heard, France, but I don’t know.”

“What don’t you know?”

“I don’t feel so hot.”

“C’mon,” he said.

“I don’t.”

“C’mon,” he said.

I didn’t say anything.

“Don’t you want to try them out?  I’m dying to know if this works.”

“Then you try them out,” I said.  “I have some writing to do at home,” I said.

“I doubt that.”

“I do.  I need to write.”

“You don’t want to know if this works?”

“Lee already said it did.  Talk to Lee.”

“Lee,” he declared, “is probably full of shit.  He drinks too much.”

“All the more reason to forget about it.”

France yelled, giggled, then said something unintelligible.

“I’m coming over,” he continued, and he hung up.  Or maybe I hung up.  I can’t remember.

@@@

I handed him a beer when he came in.

“Take a seat.”

“I’m not sitting,” he replied curtly. “Neither are you.  Get your shoes on.  Drain this drink and get another in you.  We’re going to this party.”

I just looked at him.  He rushed into the living room and put on a record.

I sighed and rose to my feet, tilting the bottle upward and into my mouth.  France craned his head around the corner and yelled something like “THAT’S THE TICKET, YOU RAPSCALLION!”

I smiled with much effort on the way to the bathroom.  I walked in, looked at the grimy tub, then moved to the side of the toilet.  I opened the hamper, dug out Renee’s underwear.  I sniffed them again.  I put them in my back pocket.

When I came out, France was digging two more bottles out of the fridge.

“You got Red Renee on you?” he smirked.  There was something blaring on the stereo in the next room over.  He was really feeling good about himself.

“Yes.”

“Can I see them?”

“No,” I said.  Before he could argue, I added: “Let’s get this over with.”

He twisted both bottles open and really let the laughs fly.  “I love you, you bastard!” he yelled.

“I’m not too crazy about you right now,” I said.

“You’re a crazy bastard!” he yelled.  “We’re both crazy bastards!”

He ducked back into the living room, spun the volume knob on the stereo.  I think the windows rattled.

@@@

We were both uncomfortable at the party.  I had the feeling I was a few years older than everyone.  France had the feeling everyone was rich.  I always had that feeling.  I just assumed everyone was.  It didn’t matter anymore.

“At least there are women here,” France said.

It was true.  There seemed to be dozens of them.  I counted.  There were actually ten.  But they were all smiling, laughing, dancing—drunk.  Their activity multiplied their presence.  They had the projection of dozens.  It filled the room.

The buzzer went off.  A few folks cleared a path while a well-dressed man named Toby made his way to the speakerbox to the side of the door.  He pushed one of the intercom’s three rectangular buttons and said “COME IN!”  He had a deep announcer’s voice that sounded of black licorice and ball bearings.  It was his apartment.

He retreated to a neighboring room.  The living room, I assumed.

More men and women piled in.

“Grist for the mill!” yelled France.  He hoisted a drink.  He was also drunk.

Some guy we didn’t know grinned at us.  A girl screamed and carried on into hysterical laughter in the neighboring room, from where there issued loud music that started, stopped, started, stopped in a comical staccato.  I gathered that the screaming woman and Toby were fighting over the stereo.  His giggles joined hers.  He, too, was drunk.

I glanced around at everyone talking to each other in the kitchen.  I sipped my beer.  I wasn’t much for conversation.

France was.  He moved along and talked with a couple girls in a corner.

I looked for the bathroom.

Someone motioned: “It’s at the end of that hall over there.”  The man gestured down a long hall off the kitchen.  I nodded and started walking that way.

France called after me.  I heard him say something to the two girls as he beckoned me to his corner.

I motioned to the bathroom, nearly ran there.

@@@

I stood in front of a mirror and looked at myself.  I turned the faucet on.  I stared in the mirror for a while.  Then I opened the medicine cabinet, inspected its contents: Noxzema, some prescription medications, tweezers, a couple disposable razors, a figure-8 case for contact lenses, errant cotton swabs, some pennies, empty box that once contained bandages.  I shut the cabinet and looked in the mirror again.  Deeply, this time, studying the pores on my nose, my teeth, my eyes.  I didn’t look good.

I brought out Red Renee.  Sniff, sniff.

I turned the faucet off and left the bathroom.

@@@

As I made my way to France and the two girls, I heard him say, above an increasing, thrumming hubbub of intoxicated men and women: “Well, my name’s actually Francisco.”  And he turned to me and said, “Have you met our two new friends yet?”

I said I hadn’t.

“We haven’t met,” one of them agreed.  She was mousy and short.  A redhead.

We exchanged names, shook hands.  She introduced me to her friend, whose name I learned, hand I shook.  And she asked the question about what I do, and I said, “Nothing.”

She smiled, sipped, blinked.  France frowned.

“C’mon, tell her what you do.  Tell them what you do.”

“I don’t do anything,” I said.

France made up a lie about my attending school—grad school.  I glared at him.

“Tell them about school,” he said.

“It’s great,” I lied.  “Learning a lot.  Busy.”

Mousy wanted to know what I studied.

“Writing,” I said.

“You write?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.  I affected a papery enthusiasm.  “But not the Great American Novel.  No.  Mine will be a subterranean romp.”

She nodded, sipped, blinked.

“Lots of kink, too,” I continued.  “No love in my book.  Just belt in the mouth, boot in the ass.”

Her eyes searched the room for something, anything.

@@@

Lee walked into the party.

“There he is!” screamed France.

Christ, I thought.

We waved.  Lee waved in return: a languid, happy signal.  Some other folks greeted him.  He was wearing a vest and a blazer.  He looked drunk and happy.  I wondered how I looked to Lee.

He didn’t know about Renee in my back pocket.  Neither did the girls, of course.  No one did.

Except France, who now cornered Mousy’s friend.  She was his height and was, like him, a brunette.  I could tell she liked him because she seemed to be feigning shyness.  I could tell he liked her because he talked so loudly.

I continued with Mousy.  Lee walked into the adjoining room, where I heard him greet another group of folks who were eager to see him.

“Who is that?” she asked.

“That’s Lee,” I said.

“He seems nice,” she said.

“He’s something,” I said.

My papery enthusiasm was now watery.  I knew it would soon become wooden, and, finally, empty—gone.  Gone.

I was drunk.

@@@

I woke to the phone.  I let it ring a few times before I cursed and answered it.

“What?” I asked.

“Well?”  It was France.

“You want to know if it worked,” I guessed.

“Yes,” he said.

“It didn’t,” I said.  “I’m alone.”

“Anything else?”

I paused.  “I’m tired.  I have a headache.  I have a hangover.”  It was true.  I had a mouth of charcoal and caramel, a heart of brittle birdbones, a belly of curdled air.  I brought my right hand to my temple and rubbed.

“At least you tried,” he said.

“And failed,” I added.  “Like I told you I would from the beginning.”

France said nothing to this.

“Are you happy now?” I asked.

He laughed and said, “Not really.”

“Good,” I said, and I hung up.

- Eric Cecil

Artist: Led Zeppelin
Album: Anthem
Year: 1975
Label: Unreleased
Catalog : 000000

Perhaps no other album in the history of British rock has generated more speculation and less certainty than Led Zeppelin’s 1975 lost progressive folk opus, Anthem. Even the fate of the original master reels is widely disputed. Well into the ’90s, it was rumored that everyone from Roger Waters to Kim Fowley owned the tapes, with Robyn Hitchcock famously claiming in a 1978 interview to have run them over with his Renault. A box of reels discovered in a pawn shop in Coventry were suspected to be the lost tapes, but were later identified by Andy Ellison as a John’s Children demo recorded at half-speed. During a 1997 interview in Bateria Total, Carmine Appice repeated John Paul Jones’ purported claim that the tapes were confiscated by Indian officials during the 1976 tour. Among the less reputable rumors is the story by which Jimmy Page himself hid the master reels in a Louis XVI vase in his front hallway during a periodic police raid on his secluded residence deep in the Black Hills. The antique vase was subsequently sold at auction to Sir Alec Douglas-Home and remained in his possession until his death, whereupon it was donated as part of a large collection to the British Museum, with the tapes still concealed inside. With apparent mistrust in the ability of a professional appraisal to reveal two quarter-inch reels lodged inside the mouth of a vessel worth approximately 1.5 million British pounds sterling, some Zeppelin fans have made the arduous pilgrimage down Great Russell Street to pay homage to the lost album. Forbidden from congregating or erecting temporary structures within the museum, the pilgrims settled for doling out ceremonial names to the other artifacts and historical ephemera surrounding the vase. Thus, a tricorner hat belonging to Peter the Great, worn on his landmark visit to the British Isles in 1697, and located in a glass case to the immediate left of the exhibit, has been christened “Roy Harper”. Other artifacts include a fragment of an 8th century Moorish building named “Crowley”, an Elizabethan saltcellar named “Frodo”, and a 10-foot statue of a winged, man-headed bull referred to as “Tangerine”.

Perhaps the only clue to the true nature of this missing link can be found in the putative tracklisting  revealed by John Bonham to Mickey Dolenz at the fabled Rainbow Room in 1975. It is left to us to imagine what might have been.

Tracklisting:
1. Morning Song
2. Blues For Dead Che
3. Tallahassee Lassie
4. St. Peter’s Golden String (mono)
5. Terry O’Riley
6. Black Is The Color (Of My True Love’s Hair)
7. Onion Pie
8. The Fountainhead

- Theresa Smith

In later days I would come to remember earlier years and bygone times.  That in my youth I could not see the ebb and flow of causality. So many ill-gotten gains and wrong choices. But now my existence is at an end, perhaps to begin anew in ways uncertain. I remember the first time I had a bowl of raisin bran. Such texture, I felt, I had never experienced before. Sundried raisins betwixt flakes of crunchy honey bran. I had never tasted a dish like that before and would in later years swear by its unique taste. In idle summer book readings with friends I would remark about the sweet yet fibrous filaments of flavor locked in each joyous sliver of bran. During sessions of Brahms by the fireplace with only the hint of tweed in the air I would converse, with nobody in particular, of that wonderful cereal. As time went on and absent friends became imagined guests and my grand villa by the bay became the library of a sanitarium I would always preach to those who would listen. I would sing of the delicious golden taste and jest as to its magical properties. For you see my brothers! It is the very nectar of the gods combined with the fruit of the earth. I would be repeatedly beaten for my beliefs. But wasn’t it Emerson who said that to be great is to be misunderstood? That I would be chosen from on high to spread this wondrous feast. Yet they incarcerate me and dismiss my claims as ‘rampant psychoses brought on by adolescent traumas and the English school system’.  In the halfway point of my life I was tending to the garden when a figure identifying himself as Tiki Barber’s Underpants appeared to me as if by glorious illumination. He held audience with me and told me that my conviction was true and not to lose hope in humanity. He quickly added something concerning blood offerings and such. In my advanced age I can hardly recall those feverish moments spent in deep meditation with a bowl of the sacred foodstuff. A full life of heart palpitations and diabetic comas have led me to this place. Time has no meaning here, It is a place where friends go to wait for each other before they pass on. You see, we’re going to need the boy.

- Mario Acevedo

It is nothing to say how useful ‘no homo’ is as a tool in your vocabulary. I was chillin’ with ma boy, and we had been reminiscing about the good old days that everyone is always talkin’ about, but it was almost impossible to remember them. We talked about the times when we was boys and boys was boys, while kickin’ back a couple of Busch with our zoot suits on. Actually it was wine from a decanter. Or maybe we was sippin’ champagne cognac? It was something real smooth like, and I had to tell my boy that I loved him, and I said, ‘No homo, of course.” And he said, “Yeah, of course.” And then it hit me. Of course when I told my boy that I loved him that it would be ‘no homo.’ That is always obvious, everybody knows that. No homo serves us all a very important service. It’s that lingering thought that something you said kinda came off gay. That sounded kinda gay. But you know what I mean, you say something to your boy like you like his shirt and you think he looks good, and you tell him he looks good, but then you think that could have sounded kind of gay and you wonder if your boy kinda thought it sounded gay, and then the thought of someone questioning your sexuality is really gay. But then came ‘no homo,’ and that problem was solved. Now you can freely say what you want without having to worry about comin’ off like some gay dood. Now we’ve come to a new point of comfort due to to the ‘no homo.’ It has made us so certain of our own sexuality, that we can say things and then say ‘no homo’ and it almost sounds redundant. And it is. No homo is no longer required to be said. You can say things all you want, and if something sounds kinda gay well of course it’s no homo, you don’t even have to say it. In a way, ‘no homo’ is one of the most clever phrases anyone ever came up with. The concept of something resolving a problem in language and social relationships and then dying off on its own after the problem has been permanently fixed is incredible.

- Lou Donaldson