New writing, this book is going to carry me away....
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
She had only been gone a week and already I had forgotten her. Miserable the first few days, I had been doing what so many people do when they get involved with someone -- you ignore all other parts of your life and over time, atrophy. I was slinging espresso at a local independent cafe, working late, then getting high behind the bean bar after closing. I fancied myself a DJ but had no connections, and to be honest I had no idea what I was doing. I'm not sure what it is I wanted, or what I was trying to acomplish, but I was going to do something, anything so long as it was big, boisterous. It was as if everything before had been in infinite shades of grey and I was going to inject color with a needle, cook it down and freebase it -- I was at a moment of paralysis, stuck right at the second your pupils dilate, swallowing your iris, but your high hasn't started yet; time seems suspended in fluid, thick and viscus, like swimming in egg flour soup at 96 frames a second. Suspension, but with no cliff, more like being stuck in an elevator, bored, contemplating the crowbar marks on the bar.
First I must say a word about Eric and Mike -- they swept into my life with a typhonic velocity, leaving the landscape of my world changed. Eric, a leo, what a fuckin' leo; he was the glue that held things together, and in hindsight I think I was the apoxie that dissolves said glue. He was short, but bulky, a strong jaw, and this terrible flat top, made him look like a white rapper from the early nineties, you always took him deadly serious, but had to laugh at the same time. Mike was tall and gaunt, had big sad eyes that sparkled, not with intelligence, but with something else, something indescribable, like a warm breeze. It was a friday night when they walked in, this mad clown duo, dilated pupils big pants with too many pockets shackled in plastic jewelry, I'm suprised that they could even move weighed down as they were with hot pink beads and green stars. As I was serving up their coffee I asked what party they were headed to.
Eric made a crooked, gap-toothed grin I was soon to be alll to familiar wiith, "The fuckin' Happy Kids party, it's gunna be off the hook, Mars is gunna be there and so is DJ Morgan." Pause, "You wanna come?"
"Can't I'm here till midnight."
"Tommorow man, there's this beach party, we'll stop in on our way there, you should come, have some rolls, it'll be tight."
"Tight." Echoed Mike, he gave me an incredulous look.
At twenty I still had enough of the child in me to lose myself in long flights of fantasy, that night I lay awake in my bed staring about the ceiling, thinking about euphoria, deep and profound connectons, like I had never known, about cute raver girls. I got myself so worked up that I nound it impossibe to go to sleep, I wandered into the basesment and zoned out watching some doccumentry about the birth of stars, narrated by William Shatner. When I finally fell asleep I think I had a wet dream about a dark haired woman with perky breasts and sparkling black eyes, like a queen.
The next evening I was waiting in my cafe, trying to read to pass the time, but waiting always makes reading impossible. At the time I was reading Daniel Quinn's "Ishmael" an easily digestable novel about a talking gorilla and original sin. Overpopulation, false humanitarianism, birth rates of rats. I was enamoured, taken in by the agenda, it's like he was giving words to ideas I had always had but was unable to express. I wanted the ideas to be my own so I talked about the book endlessly, in the useless hope that constant expression of an idea could make it my own; I think I just bored everyone (to tears). They wandered in about nine thirty, Eric slaped me on the shoulder.
"You ready?!" Eric, the driving force.
We swung by Eric's house, a country house with an absurdly large backyard, firepit, hot tub and greenhouse that moonlit as a game room and dj booth, it wasn't actualy very far, just in an older, less dveloped neighborhood, but being there you always had the impression of being miles away from everything. The paint was peeling away, the grass turning brown, the "garden" if it can be called that was overgrown, inside everything was dusty and old, left a film on your fingers, like all white trash homes do (a phenomena I have never been able to explain). As we walked through the door he dropped two little white pills into my hand.
"Rolls for the road." Smirk.
Something that is learned very quickly when one hangs out with people who do a lot of drugs, it takes at least thirty minutes to get moving, no matter where you're going, no matter the agenda, the import of the errand; one learns to accept this. One also learns that they make up for the thirty minutes lost with reckless driving, often with large quantities of one illicit substance or another, the inherent reckless self destruction is what attracted me. When you are wrapped up in counterculture there is no choice but to live solely for the moment at the expense of all else, because the next hour could spell arrest, a long sentance (they throw the book at exctasy users) or death. Many mornings on my way home from one party or another I was witness to the remains of rave-related car accidents, flipped cars, abulences, the surviving ravers sitting on the side of the road next to the cars in their bright colors, sucking their pacifiers and shaking, staring off into space, the weight of consequence only half in their mind, the flashing red lights in the pale, cerulian light of early dawn adding to the impression I sometimes got late in a party, this sense of being in a cosmic waiting room, a purgatory full of stange colors and winged people, wandering aimlessly awaiting judgement. I'm not sure what we were doing that was keeping us from the road, but I nebulously have memory of Eric counting money, rifling through droors, rolling up three ziplock bags and putting them inside his sock. Mike and I made akward small talk, mostly about music. Mike was very reserved, it took him a long time to warm up to someone, I never learned much about his background, although I have a feeling he is very close to his family, a mama's boy, respect for his father infused with just a little fear ("you best mind what I say boy, else you see the backside of my belt!"). Eric's car was a tiny two door honda hatchback with scratched paint and various dents and dings, most likely from his careless driving, he had a huge sound sysem, the sub directly behind the back seat, shaking the whole car.
She had only been gone a week and already I had forgotten her. Miserable the first few days, I had been doing what so many people do when they get involved with someone -- you ignore all other parts of your life and over time, atrophy. I was slinging espresso at a local independent cafe, working late, then getting high behind the bean bar after closing. I fancied myself a DJ but had no connections, and to be honest I had no idea what I was doing. I'm not sure what it is I wanted, or what I was trying to acomplish, but I was going to do something, anything so long as it was big, boisterous. It was as if everything before had been in infinite shades of grey and I was going to inject color with a needle, cook it down and freebase it -- I was at a moment of paralysis, stuck right at the second your pupils dilate, swallowing your iris, but your high hasn't started yet; time seems suspended in fluid, thick and viscus, like swimming in egg flour soup at 96 frames a second. Suspension, but with no cliff, more like being stuck in an elevator, bored, contemplating the crowbar marks on the bar.
First I must say a word about Eric and Mike -- they swept into my life with a typhonic velocity, leaving the landscape of my world changed. Eric, a leo, what a fuckin' leo; he was the glue that held things together, and in hindsight I think I was the apoxie that dissolves said glue. He was short, but bulky, a strong jaw, and this terrible flat top, made him look like a white rapper from the early nineties, you always took him deadly serious, but had to laugh at the same time. Mike was tall and gaunt, had big sad eyes that sparkled, not with intelligence, but with something else, something indescribable, like a warm breeze. It was a friday night when they walked in, this mad clown duo, dilated pupils big pants with too many pockets shackled in plastic jewelry, I'm suprised that they could even move weighed down as they were with hot pink beads and green stars. As I was serving up their coffee I asked what party they were headed to.
Eric made a crooked, gap-toothed grin I was soon to be alll to familiar wiith, "The fuckin' Happy Kids party, it's gunna be off the hook, Mars is gunna be there and so is DJ Morgan." Pause, "You wanna come?"
"Can't I'm here till midnight."
"Tommorow man, there's this beach party, we'll stop in on our way there, you should come, have some rolls, it'll be tight."
"Tight." Echoed Mike, he gave me an incredulous look.
At twenty I still had enough of the child in me to lose myself in long flights of fantasy, that night I lay awake in my bed staring about the ceiling, thinking about euphoria, deep and profound connectons, like I had never known, about cute raver girls. I got myself so worked up that I nound it impossibe to go to sleep, I wandered into the basesment and zoned out watching some doccumentry about the birth of stars, narrated by William Shatner. When I finally fell asleep I think I had a wet dream about a dark haired woman with perky breasts and sparkling black eyes, like a queen.
The next evening I was waiting in my cafe, trying to read to pass the time, but waiting always makes reading impossible. At the time I was reading Daniel Quinn's "Ishmael" an easily digestable novel about a talking gorilla and original sin. Overpopulation, false humanitarianism, birth rates of rats. I was enamoured, taken in by the agenda, it's like he was giving words to ideas I had always had but was unable to express. I wanted the ideas to be my own so I talked about the book endlessly, in the useless hope that constant expression of an idea could make it my own; I think I just bored everyone (to tears). They wandered in about nine thirty, Eric slaped me on the shoulder.
"You ready?!" Eric, the driving force.
We swung by Eric's house, a country house with an absurdly large backyard, firepit, hot tub and greenhouse that moonlit as a game room and dj booth, it wasn't actualy very far, just in an older, less dveloped neighborhood, but being there you always had the impression of being miles away from everything. The paint was peeling away, the grass turning brown, the "garden" if it can be called that was overgrown, inside everything was dusty and old, left a film on your fingers, like all white trash homes do (a phenomena I have never been able to explain). As we walked through the door he dropped two little white pills into my hand.
"Rolls for the road." Smirk.
Something that is learned very quickly when one hangs out with people who do a lot of drugs, it takes at least thirty minutes to get moving, no matter where you're going, no matter the agenda, the import of the errand; one learns to accept this. One also learns that they make up for the thirty minutes lost with reckless driving, often with large quantities of one illicit substance or another, the inherent reckless self destruction is what attracted me. When you are wrapped up in counterculture there is no choice but to live solely for the moment at the expense of all else, because the next hour could spell arrest, a long sentance (they throw the book at exctasy users) or death. Many mornings on my way home from one party or another I was witness to the remains of rave-related car accidents, flipped cars, abulences, the surviving ravers sitting on the side of the road next to the cars in their bright colors, sucking their pacifiers and shaking, staring off into space, the weight of consequence only half in their mind, the flashing red lights in the pale, cerulian light of early dawn adding to the impression I sometimes got late in a party, this sense of being in a cosmic waiting room, a purgatory full of stange colors and winged people, wandering aimlessly awaiting judgement. I'm not sure what we were doing that was keeping us from the road, but I nebulously have memory of Eric counting money, rifling through droors, rolling up three ziplock bags and putting them inside his sock. Mike and I made akward small talk, mostly about music. Mike was very reserved, it took him a long time to warm up to someone, I never learned much about his background, although I have a feeling he is very close to his family, a mama's boy, respect for his father infused with just a little fear ("you best mind what I say boy, else you see the backside of my belt!"). Eric's car was a tiny two door honda hatchback with scratched paint and various dents and dings, most likely from his careless driving, he had a huge sound sysem, the sub directly behind the back seat, shaking the whole car.
- "stuck right at the second your pupils dilate, swallowing your iris, but your high hasn't started yet; time seems suspended in fluid, thick and viscus, like swimming in egg flour soup at 96 frames a second. Suspension, but with no cliff, more like being stuck in an elevator, bored, contemplating the crowbar marks on the bar."-
I know that feeling and could never describe it so eloquently.
Explain the white powder from white trash homes, I am curious, I do live in the South you know.
i want to know what happens next. i didn't want that to end.