And the devil is outside, flying around like a bat while I'm trying to clear out all the old 70's movies from my DVR. This devil isn't really the devil, it's like the devil in a Tom Waite's song, he plays an instrument (nothing conventional; broomstick bass, spoons, wooden knee blocks). He's more like a mall Santa Claus: an aura of bad ju ju. Like that motion detector light in Brick.
The air conditioner is blowing on me even though it's nice outside. Too many bugs outside, too many smells of mowed grass and salt water, fireworks off in the distance. Fun I used to have. Riding bikes in New Milford. Hanging out in friend's basements on Saturday Night watching Headbanger' Ball. Stealing beer and trying cigarettes. Everything new and fun.
The scope has narrowed and there isn't any fun left. These days I just long for some quiet. A book. Some mad scribble/typing. A few minutes with my girl quietly contemplating quiet futures.
But the devil is outside. He's always outside. Around the corner. Playing that racket.
And it's never quiet.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Maybe This October I'll Get It Right
Every Arcade Fire song exists in the fall because that's when the Reverend Howe first played them for me and since then it's been a perpetual trigger for memories of brisk breezes and dead leaves. I'm sick of the summer already but that's probably my fault. No more afternoon buzzes on the boardwalk with the great expanse of the ocean right in front of me. Everything felt wide open and scary but scary in a good way. The unknown wasn't a bad thing because how could it be bad? Boredom was the biggest bratty fear to have and that was all I wanted to combat. Even all this scribbled down bullshit is really just foggy memories of good times long since run through a kaleidoscope of binges and breakdowns.
And enough on all that.
No one is here to be heady and heavy all the time.
I don't think anyway.
October looms.
It's been a mild summer until now.
It almost felt like fall a few nights
Soon enough the lights will go down early.
And enough on all that.
No one is here to be heady and heavy all the time.
I don't think anyway.
October looms.
It's been a mild summer until now.
It almost felt like fall a few nights
Soon enough the lights will go down early.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
A Brief History of Coffee
A few minutes later I woke up in the Doors movie. We were in a park across the street from the hotel, there was a Native American “Pow-Wow” going on according to the signs. Thumping drums echoed off the buildings a mile away. Chanting and singing. Drum skins taking a beating. Concession stands selling bracelets and stones and crystals, lemonade and hot dogs. A tall man in a wolf-skin and a smoking lantern walked the perimeter of the “sacred circle”. Barefoot hippies climbed the trees and danced around all 1967, beads bouncing off breasts in summer dresses. After a few minutes the drums stopped and someone grabbed a microphone:
“Alright everyone thanks for coming,” the calm voice announced, “I want any couple who wants to be in the dance contest to line up outside the sacred circle.” His voice was dry, too close to the mic he sounded more like a camp counselor than a shaman and it snapped me out of the Summer of Love.
Later on Jimi said to me:
“We don't get no summer of love. We're all at work, or looking for work. Everything costs too much. Can't have fun while you're thinking about your bank account rolling back to zero.”
Which was true. But we were at a bar and I had cash and was entertaining a mild buzz in an unknown city, and even Jimi and his cosmic blues weren't going to bring me down.
Cobain tried that shit the first night we were in town.
He was paranoid. He was always paranoid.
“No one is on your side. No one is on my side. I'm not on your side. I want to be but I'm not.”
“Alright that's enough out of you,” Morrison yelled. He was drunk and so was I. “We're here for a wedding not to listen to you ramble on about how uncomfortable you are in social situations.”
“Oh leave him alone,” I started.
"It's fine," Cobain got up to slink outside for a smoke.Then we talked about getting a room in Atlantic City, just for old times sake. It seemed like a good idea on a Monday night. Weekday rates were cheap, it would be just us and the elderly slot players.
Morrison came up with the plan:
“We'll sit at the slots all night and get our drinks comped. If we win anything we'll go to a bar and cover the tab with it.”
It sounded like a good plan, but no one came around to take our order. Jimi quickly got restless and went to the poker table.
“Fuck it man, I'm going for it.”
An hour later I was back in the room.
The weather had picked up and from 20 floors up I watched the ocean pound the boardwalk while rain sprayed against the window.
Atlantic City was a bad idea.
Luckily we ended up back at the Biltmore, in the restaurant bar downstairs. Everyone was tired. It was a long day and things were closing up.
“Last Call!” the lights flickered.
“I'm not sure you want to hear this, but I have absolutely no intention of going to bed right now,” I said to anyone who wanted to listen.
“No, I'm up for going somewhere, but where? We don't really know this town,” Morrison answered.
We went through the park. The Pow-Wow was over. Everything was over.
A dark pub on the corner invited us in and we sat in a booth.
“I'm tired,” Jimi said.
“Go back to the hotel, we're probably only staying for one anyway.”
“That's not what I mean. I'm just tired. We got old fast.”
“You got old fast,” Morrison slurred, “I've always been old.”
“I'm not sure I want to do this shit anymore. Going out, sitting in a bar waiting for something weird to happen.”
Everyone was quiet for a moment, acknowledging that Jimi was just slinging some drunken honestly, drenched in melodrama.
“Well what the hell else is there to do?” Morrison answered, peeling the label off his bottle.
“I don't know. I guess that's the problem.”
Then the fire alarm went off.
There was no visible fire, and everyone looked at each other as if someone was a member of the fire department and would tell us all not to worry it was just a malfunction but no one was qualified enough to make such a statement.
We slipped through the door, if for no other reason than the alarm was terribly loud. We walked back towards the hotel, and found the diner truck still taking requests.
We ordered and took our sandwiches over to the steps of city hall.
Two tuna melts and a cheeseburger.
Over priced.
We'll regret this in the morning.
“I don't think this is tuna,” I said.
“I don't think this is bread,” Morrison answered.
I rolled over onto a hangover that morning. I never remember to shut the shades after a long night of drinking and I always pay for it with light piercing into my beer-beaten brain the next day. A vague headache.
My neck hurts.
If I can just sleep for another 20 or so hours I should be fine.
But there are things to do.
Michael Keaton Batman was fighting Jack Nicholson Joker in the stereo of three tv's. The Door in between is Open.
Sir Paul is there in a fluffy, white bathrobe pacing.
Methodically.
Into one room around the corners then into the next room
He has a suite which lends itself to such things.
“What are you doing here, are you dead?” I groan.
“No. I'm getting married,” he answered.
Later, after the whirl-flash of fancy clothes and blue and red lights we're back down at the bar.
Ties undone.
Dresses exchanged for jeans or sweats.
I'm not sure I know who any of these people are.
There's music but I'm not sure what it is.
Background music.
It's probably on someone's I-pod.
On their “Awesome Songs” playlist.
This buzzing could be someone's favorite song.
Their Wedding Song.
But not tonight.
Everything is over tonight.
Couple of flashes of weather puddle up the streets and sidewalks and stain the park with mud.
The bar closes, again right on time.
“You guys can hang out for a bit and finish up if you want,” they say.
“You want another one?” I ask Morrison.
“Nah, I don't think so,” he slurs back.
“We can't sell you guys any more,” the bartender interrupts.
“That's fine because we don't want another one,” Morrison shoots back.
He puts his head on the bar.
“It would be too bad if I don't remember any of this.”
It wasn't long before I found myself back at the kitchen table. It was late.
Or early.
The sun was coming up.
The coffee started brewing.
Everything was finally quiet.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
The Unenployment Thing That I Got Them To Keep "Whachamacallit" In The Title Of
I can not come up with non-nonsensical titles for straight pieces, so the fact that they didn't change the title of THIS, even though it's not really a good one is a victory in and of itself.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Dracula's Castle and the Wildwood Monsoon
Hair gel always smells like the beach to me. I dabbled in using it for a little while in the late 90's when I cut all my hair off but haven't touched the stuff since. It was the same hair gel I brought to Wildwood when six of us crammed into one hotel room and the same hair gel we shot into a pair of poor ol' Reinhold's trunks while he was on the deck chatting up some girl. I'm not sure if he noticed they were loaded before he put them on because I was probably passed out on the floor between the bed and the air conditioner, wrapped in a blanket or two.
On every pass through I made it a point to stop at Castle Dracula, I don't know why I have some weird affinity for haunted houses. I don't even particularly like horror movies, I just like Halloween and haunted houses. Castle Dracula sounds like a goth-club and it probably is somewhere but this was just a building that was made to look like a castle with some plywood, drywall and stucco.There was a moat running around and under the building and slabs of wood wrapped in rubber that ferried you around while people jumped out at you along the way.
The Castle itself was a longer attraction. You went through a parlor where a man appeared seemingly out of thin air and warned you to go no further because his "master" wouldn't be happy with guests. I worked in a haunted house for many Octobers and the 'master' theme was prevalent in each incarnation. I'm not sure if it's just standard haunted house procedure or if maybe it was ripped off, either way, everyone was just an Igor serving their faceless master.
It's not hard to fall for girls in places like that. Heaps of makeup, tight black dresses, fish-nets, candy-striped socks under high boots. Things like that.
And that's what happened.
I got smitten with some girl who worked the guillotine.
We caught up with her at the pizza stand across from the castle and barraged her with questions like the drunk teenagers (re:20) we were.
She just moved to Wildwood and sort of had a boyfriend but not really. It was complicated.
It's always complicated.
She has to go back in, her break was over.
She stomped her cigarette out on the boardwalk and told us she might be back around later if we were still in the area.
We were but we didn't see her.
A few weeks passed by and Professor Hogan, (then only Mr. Hogan) decided he wanted to take an impromptu trip to Wildwood before the summer was over.
I was already in Brick, not living there, merely visiting the empty house that was about to be shut down for the season. Headmaster Porr of Slytherin was also down there. We had a few random beers left over from the last party and were enjoying them when Hogan showed up in his his fire-truck red SUV blasting Metallica, armed with a bottle of Vodka.
"I'll drive" he said as we gathered a cooler and threw in anything remaining in the refrigerator that could be considered an alcoholic beverage.
Hogan sped down the Parkway stopping only at toll booths to open his door and recover any change that weak-armed drivers threw but didn't make the basket, until he was yelled at by a collector.
We made it down quick and checked into the first place we could find that had a 'vacancy' sign.
Let's call it the "Ocean Gate".
It wasn't but I can't remember what it was really called and Ocean Gate sounds the most motel-y to me at this late hour.
We walked into the office; two shirtless children, both girls, chased each other to all corners screaming at each other while their mother, behind the counter, held an infant in her arms and yelled back at them to "knock it off."
"Y'all want a room?" she asked.
Her hair was ragged and unkempt, and there were teeth missing from her smile. She handed us the key after we handed her our cash and she returned to yelling at the children after our brief interruption.
The only thing missing from the room was the chalk outline of a body. The rug was shit-brown with enough water stains to make it look like a map. The television looked like it was shipped directly from 1967, rabbit ears and no remote. There was no clock in the room but there was a musty smell as if no one had been in here for years. We put this aside and opened the cooler. There were two patio chairs in front of the room and if we turned our necks left we could see the ocean clearly.
Two hours later the weather had picked up and I was alone. Headmaster Porr and Professor Hogan were snoring the song of vodka drenched dreams in the room while Happy Days flickered on the screen. We were out of booze, and I couldn't sleep.
It was still early but the wind had started whipping around anything that could move. The patio chairs were dragged and some turned over as the gusts gained strength. I decided to take a walk down to the boardwalk even thought it looked like most people were packing it in.
My head was helium filled, drowsy but incapable of sleep. Not in that place.
I passed by the large hotels along the coast of the town. Bright beautiful lights, devoid of the sound of any people or cars or any other interference. Just the wind swelling up and down and the hum of the lights.
If that girl was working I was going to ask her to get a drink. Or a slice of pizza or whatever.
Why not?
And it wasn't a psych-yourself-up moment. It was just a simple light bulb flash. Oh yeah. That girl might be in there. I should see if she wants to do something since my two traveling companions have passed out.
I waited in the short line. Went through all the attractions. Finally the guillotine room. She was there. "off with his head" she shrieked before pulling the rope to release the wooden blade. As the group filtered out I hung towards the back of the line, she pointed to the exit, I approached her and took my "Hey I don't know if you remember me but we hung out a few weeks ago and I don't know what you're doing after this but I wanted to see if maybe you wanted to get a drink or something to eat when you're done" inhale but nothing came out.
I choked.
She looked at me for a second and kept up with the "get out" routine, perhaps knowing instinctively what I was trying to blurt out.
A few minutes later I was walking back to the hotel. It started raining now and I pictured myself as some dejected-hero in a movie, walking in the rain.
"Eh, broads."
I got back to the room and the two were still passed out, having only rolled over in the last hour. The Mary Tyler Moore show had replaced the Fonz. but I knew there was no way I was getting any sleep. Not in that place with whatever microscopic-DNA-monsters were swimming on everything.
I pulled up the patio chair and lit a cigarette. I started scribbling some bullshit, post-high-school-yet-still-high-school-sounding thoughts or poems about the tall girl in the vamp costume who I choked in front of. Then I heard a grunt.
I looked into the room but it wasn't coming from there.
Another grunt followed.
It was coming from the open window directly across from me; the upstairs level of the office.
Another grunt, a moan, a shriek, a moan, a grunt.
Head board slamming into the wall.
Yeah. Harder. Yeah. Oh. Oh God.
The tooth deprived woman with the ratty hair and topless toddlers was getting it good.
Good and loud.
The rain started up again drowning her and Mary Tyler Moore out.
The wind threw the rain around splattering up in my face a little.
I was awake and it looked like I was staying that way.
Only a few hours til the sun came up.
Plenty of places to go for breakfast and kill some time until Hogan and Porr recover and we can get out of this town and flip the calendar to Fall.
Until then I sat on the patio chair hoping, Mr. Hotel Keeper didn't have the stamina for another round.
Slightly drunk and wide awake.
Pretty fucking haunted.
On every pass through I made it a point to stop at Castle Dracula, I don't know why I have some weird affinity for haunted houses. I don't even particularly like horror movies, I just like Halloween and haunted houses. Castle Dracula sounds like a goth-club and it probably is somewhere but this was just a building that was made to look like a castle with some plywood, drywall and stucco.There was a moat running around and under the building and slabs of wood wrapped in rubber that ferried you around while people jumped out at you along the way.
The Castle itself was a longer attraction. You went through a parlor where a man appeared seemingly out of thin air and warned you to go no further because his "master" wouldn't be happy with guests. I worked in a haunted house for many Octobers and the 'master' theme was prevalent in each incarnation. I'm not sure if it's just standard haunted house procedure or if maybe it was ripped off, either way, everyone was just an Igor serving their faceless master.
It's not hard to fall for girls in places like that. Heaps of makeup, tight black dresses, fish-nets, candy-striped socks under high boots. Things like that.
And that's what happened.
I got smitten with some girl who worked the guillotine.
We caught up with her at the pizza stand across from the castle and barraged her with questions like the drunk teenagers (re:20) we were.
She just moved to Wildwood and sort of had a boyfriend but not really. It was complicated.
It's always complicated.
She has to go back in, her break was over.
She stomped her cigarette out on the boardwalk and told us she might be back around later if we were still in the area.
We were but we didn't see her.
A few weeks passed by and Professor Hogan, (then only Mr. Hogan) decided he wanted to take an impromptu trip to Wildwood before the summer was over.
I was already in Brick, not living there, merely visiting the empty house that was about to be shut down for the season. Headmaster Porr of Slytherin was also down there. We had a few random beers left over from the last party and were enjoying them when Hogan showed up in his his fire-truck red SUV blasting Metallica, armed with a bottle of Vodka.
"I'll drive" he said as we gathered a cooler and threw in anything remaining in the refrigerator that could be considered an alcoholic beverage.
Hogan sped down the Parkway stopping only at toll booths to open his door and recover any change that weak-armed drivers threw but didn't make the basket, until he was yelled at by a collector.
We made it down quick and checked into the first place we could find that had a 'vacancy' sign.
Let's call it the "Ocean Gate".
It wasn't but I can't remember what it was really called and Ocean Gate sounds the most motel-y to me at this late hour.
We walked into the office; two shirtless children, both girls, chased each other to all corners screaming at each other while their mother, behind the counter, held an infant in her arms and yelled back at them to "knock it off."
"Y'all want a room?" she asked.
Her hair was ragged and unkempt, and there were teeth missing from her smile. She handed us the key after we handed her our cash and she returned to yelling at the children after our brief interruption.
The only thing missing from the room was the chalk outline of a body. The rug was shit-brown with enough water stains to make it look like a map. The television looked like it was shipped directly from 1967, rabbit ears and no remote. There was no clock in the room but there was a musty smell as if no one had been in here for years. We put this aside and opened the cooler. There were two patio chairs in front of the room and if we turned our necks left we could see the ocean clearly.
Two hours later the weather had picked up and I was alone. Headmaster Porr and Professor Hogan were snoring the song of vodka drenched dreams in the room while Happy Days flickered on the screen. We were out of booze, and I couldn't sleep.
It was still early but the wind had started whipping around anything that could move. The patio chairs were dragged and some turned over as the gusts gained strength. I decided to take a walk down to the boardwalk even thought it looked like most people were packing it in.
My head was helium filled, drowsy but incapable of sleep. Not in that place.
I passed by the large hotels along the coast of the town. Bright beautiful lights, devoid of the sound of any people or cars or any other interference. Just the wind swelling up and down and the hum of the lights.
If that girl was working I was going to ask her to get a drink. Or a slice of pizza or whatever.
Why not?
And it wasn't a psych-yourself-up moment. It was just a simple light bulb flash. Oh yeah. That girl might be in there. I should see if she wants to do something since my two traveling companions have passed out.
I waited in the short line. Went through all the attractions. Finally the guillotine room. She was there. "off with his head" she shrieked before pulling the rope to release the wooden blade. As the group filtered out I hung towards the back of the line, she pointed to the exit, I approached her and took my "Hey I don't know if you remember me but we hung out a few weeks ago and I don't know what you're doing after this but I wanted to see if maybe you wanted to get a drink or something to eat when you're done" inhale but nothing came out.
I choked.
She looked at me for a second and kept up with the "get out" routine, perhaps knowing instinctively what I was trying to blurt out.
A few minutes later I was walking back to the hotel. It started raining now and I pictured myself as some dejected-hero in a movie, walking in the rain.
"Eh, broads."
I got back to the room and the two were still passed out, having only rolled over in the last hour. The Mary Tyler Moore show had replaced the Fonz. but I knew there was no way I was getting any sleep. Not in that place with whatever microscopic-DNA-monsters were swimming on everything.
I pulled up the patio chair and lit a cigarette. I started scribbling some bullshit, post-high-school-yet-still-high-school-sounding thoughts or poems about the tall girl in the vamp costume who I choked in front of. Then I heard a grunt.
I looked into the room but it wasn't coming from there.
Another grunt followed.
It was coming from the open window directly across from me; the upstairs level of the office.
Another grunt, a moan, a shriek, a moan, a grunt.
Head board slamming into the wall.
Yeah. Harder. Yeah. Oh. Oh God.
The tooth deprived woman with the ratty hair and topless toddlers was getting it good.
Good and loud.
The rain started up again drowning her and Mary Tyler Moore out.
The wind threw the rain around splattering up in my face a little.
I was awake and it looked like I was staying that way.
Only a few hours til the sun came up.
Plenty of places to go for breakfast and kill some time until Hogan and Porr recover and we can get out of this town and flip the calendar to Fall.
Until then I sat on the patio chair hoping, Mr. Hotel Keeper didn't have the stamina for another round.
Slightly drunk and wide awake.
Pretty fucking haunted.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Regardless of Most Things
At the end of the day you'd probably miss this weight in your chest. The one that keeps swelling up at all those sad George Harrison songs, and revisited conversations. It's that big freak out that'll get you sooner or later.
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