Poison Oak
It begins with a whisper. A quiet rasp back to a childhood, to a childhood hero. The kid who dragged. The kid who dared. The kid who turned away from a no place. The kid who slammed the door on a fallen face. The kid who stole and forged and left.
The kid who got away.
The brave one. The one with enough guts to inspire. The one with enough guts to provoke. The one with guts enough to put his life at life's mercy. Simply so that he could live. Simply so that others could live with him, through him, after him, beyond him.
We all have those kids in our pasts, even if we are those kids. We all have those kids within us, even if we don't dare to bare their soul. Some of us still are those kids, risking and itchy and foolish and true. As a child it's considered imaginative, at adolescence it's called flighty, for a period between late teen and early twenty it's celebrated, past that it's deemed irresponsible. Unless past a certain age, when it becomes eccentric.
Here it's celebration. Love. Always. And there is no age limit. There is no limit. Are none. Possibility does not allow for such small. Ever. It takes real resolve to remain rash and reckless in this world; the rash and the reckless are this world's real resolute. Taut. Like the wind. Honor.
Awe. At the feet of such great he's but a particle, dust, aflutter. Alit by recollection. The hiss of a drowned moment, the singe of swallow's last gasp. Where once there were flowers, dreams, hopes, now there is mud. Tears.
Sheds, words evaporate. The steam of reason. Inspiration's ether. Seeps into the skin, spreads, that rash again. The body gets covered, coated, hived with chilled warm. And all that love and awe and cry breaks. The voice cracks into a know. Connects. This is just what the witch doctor ordered.
From then on it's nothing but freedom. The statuette crumbles, the elixir flows, piano keys reverse the way. Down is the new up. Sad is the new happy. Transcendence. From the bottom of a welling unwell.
He calls himself Bright Eyes, his song is Poison Oak, and it is anthem.
Scrapping
My fingers are thick as pickles, dilled, dulled. Swole, as they say. Swole to stiff. The skin dry, scabbed, cut. The joints null and unresponsive. As I type my hand must hover and aim, consciously recalling what it is to do. What I do. How I do it. Like some enfeebled bird of prey who's lost the facility of instinct. I know I must attack; I just can't unencumber the wherewithal to do so.
Worse, I'm wasting my half life slingin' about slogs, frettin' the despicables, sweatin' the all encompassing small. 'Cause this half life they've designed for me to lead, I've deigned to let 'em make me live, is but a still stall burden of small. Sisyphean by day; by night a crush. One interminable load of meaty toothpicks jabbing into my battered back.
And nary a truth to be told. Rereading Auster I see what I'm missing, I get a feel for what I've missed, and, nevertheless, I'm weakened by the strength of his seeing, feeling. The Invention of Solitude makes me dizzy with despair, thrilled somehow with the agony of my defeatism. Citing Lull and Fludd and Bruno (is it a coincidence that the three are bisected by "u"?), I remember when I too was wondered by their genius, their nobleness, their belief. All is linked, everywhere, everywhen. And I tear knowing that I've not listened their lesson, had not even thought their names, in a tangent's age.
The way the knowing rolls off Auster's tongue shames me. Jonah to Descartes, Crusoe to Lycophron, Stevens and Augustine and Holderlin and Hegel and all that is and can be known forever. Not just who they are or were, but what they stood for, how they still stand. Knowledge dropping, spewing, careening, on and through and around. Rain, geyser, ricochet. If he's a font, I'm a cipher. Tidbits of know stolen by night and stashed in the marrow of my soul, never to be heard from, learned from, again.
I sit. I stir. I devalue. What value a man who does naught? Then I strap on the boots and kick myself, take off the gloves and smack myself sillied, sully, tear the very hair from my disgrace. And I sit again. And this time I stir up trouble, old trouble, but trouble nonetheless. Deep blue sometimes trouble. I call it Penmanship: The Biography of a Murder Instrument. It's a big idea that came to me way back when, back when I believed exile could be licked. It's a big idea that's come to me all over again, and this time it'll kick an ass other than my skinny, scrawny own. Instead of scrape, I'll scrap, thank you. And those bruises, those black eyes. Those will be the marks of victory.
First though an Austerian pause: "He cannot be anywhere until he is here."
Hard time I was here.
I'm No Chippee
The blisters, the cuts, the bruises, the abrasions, the burns, the burn lines, the strains, the sprains, the fatigue. It's not me. I'm not it. If I'm to be in the sun it'll be under an umbrella. If I'm to sweat myself silly it's gonna be for sheer pleasure. I'm a thinkin' man. My game is ideas. Words. Angles. Or at least I thought so.
Once again I guess I thought wrong.
I do know this: I'm not built to build buildings.
In Australia, my pal Brent says they're called chippees. Here in America we use a few less complimentary epithets beginning with redneck. Whatever you wanna call ‘em, call ‘em someone else. Not me. I'm no chippee. And I'm no red neck. Never was, never will be. Don't much wanna be either.
Worse, seems the little long hard time I've spent slogging on slogful construction sites has already caused me to lose an assignment. With Paste. Seems they need a wordslinger with time enough to pay attention to wordslinging, especially the details that make all the wordwork possible. I don't blame 'em. I can't. A professional organization requires professionals, not some mad ex-con fake-ass laborer masquerading as a professional. I wasn't on top of the publisher; the publisher (Wiley, thank you very much) didn't get me the book. In fact they never even responded to my request. Twice. Guess they got enough hype in their life.
Wonder if Joshua Greene, the scribbler whose book was set to be covered, feels the same way?
As if embatterment and hacklessness weren't enough, now I might be in trouble with the House. See the woman on whose home we were slogging yesterday put out a dynamite spread of fresh meats and cheeses for us stinking, sweaty slogs. Among the layout were rolls, big, fresh New York-style rolls. So ravenous was my appetite I didn't even notice that the rolls were liberally sprinkled with poppy seeds until the seeds were taking root in my stomach. We're not allowed to eat poppy seeds, of course, might make for a false positive. Or excuse away a true one.
So when I report to my counselor come Monday, I’ll be reporting my inadvertent transgression. I’ll also be requesting that I tender my resignation; looks like it's time for a new slog.
Whoa Billy (In Its Entirety)
(Note: This week's blessed Electric City runs with
my take on a Live Idol; thing is it's not all there was to it. Oh, I'm not averse to the cutting (Zeus knows I get a lot windy at most times), but two semi-salient points -- Billy doing Randy and Steve doin' dumb -- need to be mentioned, if only right here. So, right here it is, Whoa Billy in its entirety.)
Whoa Billy
By John Hood
Where do old punks go once they've passed their primetime? Well, if they're Billy Idol, they go back, way back. Back to when then was now. They go for all the gusto they got left, all the gold in the wild world, the brash rash of rank and redolent glory. They go for the throat. The hustle and rustle and stink of the road. What they know and what they know will make 'em go.
They go to the crowd.
Onstage at The Kirby last Wednesday night, Billy Idol went to the crowd and the crowd went wild. Goosey goose bumps tingled the mass of "Flesh," choraled choruses echoed the chanted "Yell," and fisted fists raised hang 'em high for all that mad, glad "Mony."
As if it was 1985 all over again.
Idol raucously concurred. Malcontent to the core, the peroxide punk trashed his laurels and came out swingin' anew, with the Velvet Ramone crunch of "Super Overdrive," stab one of slab now, Devil's Playground. For a so-called has-been hit man, comin' off longshot was a gutsy move. And it proved beyond the shadow of an ol' roustabout doubt that this ionic Idol would be a whole helluva lot more than just some dumb carbon of that Idol.
And what well-defined guts he's got. Lean if not leaner than even his leanest mean (Is there an L.A. trainer in his house?), the Idolized-one packs a sinewed-six of pure unadulterated gall. Fit, furied and tuned like a fine classic, he revs, he rumbles, he glistens and he gleams.
"Overdrive" kicked into his first overground hit, "Dancing with Myself," from the animystic [sic] days when Generation X defied their onanistic own. "Dancing" in turn twirled the crawl of "Flesh for Fantasy," a click for all the chicks and each and every those who dig them.
The gimme-give and shimmee-take continued apace with "Body Snatcher" (dedicated to Dime Bag) and "White Wedding" (cited circa Danceteria), "Scream" (predicated on fellatio) and "Eyes without a Face" (eradicated into Eros). A frisky, risky four-step between all the now that then can muster.
Settled, if a sweat-soaked steam engine could ever be settled, Billy strapped-on an acoustic and Hollied his way through "Sweet 16" (nodded to right-cool Ed of Homestead's immaculate Coral Castle), "Plastic Jesus" (a sort of accidental protest song), and "Cherie Cherie" (where Idol does Diamond one rung sidewise).
Then, in an uncharacteristically-charactered act of unadulterated candor, Idol let the steam stream into the hurt and the heart and the heavy of Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927," a remarkable song that marked a remarkable moment. In fact it was the high point of a peak performance – mountain deep and deft, and not in the least bit spoiled by the cribsheet Billy had a helper hand him. (After all, who wants to get those words wrong?)
Had he followed with either "Lady Do or Die" or "Summer Running," the two new tracks of tears that near Newman's greatness, we would've lied happily ever after.
But he didn’t. Instead. Billy took a breather and left in his spotlight a void of stale air -- or, rather, hair. We mean of course the monumentally coifed would-be guitar god Steve Stevens, who chose to strip Billy's bout of poignance with a flaring glare of pompous virtuosity. The six-slinger's histrionic interlude might've been masterful, almost impressive even, but it was unnecessary. Doubly unnecessary was when Stevens went inexplicably Zep. We bet the Bromley's were spinning in their exile.
But null lulls can last only so long and this null lull was no exception. "Rat Race" explained it away to a Steppenwolfing "L.A. Woman" (suitably recast as "PA Woman"), "Evil Eye" brought the "World Coming Down" to a smashing crash, and the die-hards got their hard on the old school favorite "Ready Steady Go," (though they might've softened by the soporific guitar solo).
Then it was nothing but a barrage of Monsters -- "Rebel Yell," "Kiss Me Deadly," "Mony Mony,"— done-up in arena drag and marred only by some strange Molly Hatchett-like guitar boogying. For a minute there we thought the meatiest Vegas bar band on Earth had posted up in the cut. It was that rockist.
The crackerjack laughs though gave it away -- this was all good cartoon fun, a none too serious display of none too serious stirrings. The better to beat you, my dear. Best was Idol himself – aglare, aflutter and aglow – with a dynamite-eyed smile that never once left his bedeviled face, even when smacked into that patented snarl. He was happy. He was hilarious. He was enjoyful. As if he himself was surprised he's still here to hero. But here he was. And right there. For some two hours and fifteen minutes, the hardest working punk in show business was at it and at it again. The old boy couldn't help it; it's in his blessed bones.
An End to Sloglessness
Well, it didn't last long. Yesterday morn I walked off one slog, this morn I'm back at another. See this cat called the House last night, asked for some laborers, and one of my, er, colleagues told me about it. Curious, I went to the Monitor, asked if it were true. He countered with a question of his own: Was I sure I wanted this kinda labor? Sure thing, I replied. I'm Johnny Labor.
Boy am I. Not. This general labor stuff. It's not me. I mean, I'm not that kinda good with my hands. I'm not a good man with a hammer. I'm not a good man with a drill. Hell, I'm not even a good man to have on site, unless perhaps you're looking for entertainment. I can fight, I can write, and I can gesture. But the fight's all bluster and the write's all wrong (thanks Joey G). That leaves gesture. And there's only so much a man can do with gesture. I was given a drill; I broke the bit. I was handed a saw; I broke the blade. I was asked to hold something still; I let it unstill. Thrice.
Then I got wise. Turned down the sound in my head and just went with it all. Sure, I still made mistakes, but they were less and less noticeable, of less and less consequence. Best, the mistakes began to be outweighed by no mistakes, the pitch went from squeal to hum, until before I knew it, I'd helped to finish an entire deck. Okay, so it was a nothing deck affixed to a nothing house in a nowhere place. Still it was some small accomplishment. A tangible result of something coming from my hands. Something other than hyperbole and boil, that is.
At the end of the day, sunburnt to beet, scratched to shred, bruised to purple, I got in the truck and looked back at that deck and smiled, a little less impressed with myself, but impressed nonetheless. I'd constructed a thing, a touchable durable. It was almost cool. Just so long as I don't make a habit of it.
The Monitor was correct, it's not my kinda work. It's work best left to men of such habits, such strengths. I know my place, and it is not on a construction site.
My place is the story, and this could be some story. The company's called Good Cents. I know, the name's unfunny; the man behind the name though is a riot. Broken of nose, square of jaw, loud of mouth, and manic of manner, he's cartoon incarnate. Pulpy. Peppery. Profane. I tell ya, talking to him's like a nonstop bop with a well-connected townie who wants nothing but to make you blink and think twice about it. That's if you get a blink in edgewise. The cat's a natural, a natural rascal, of some ill-repute. Smart. Sharp. And unafraid to stick and jab. In other words, my kinda guy. If I don't have to last too long in the slogging, it might make for a slingable story.
Slog Free
On Sunday I was a sap. Yesterday I was a scold. Today I'm slog free. Well, not entirely. I'll be slogging again elsewhere come Monday, but right now I'm off the slog. Straight outta UG Hell, the slog of all slogs. And it feels delicious.
This forlorn morn they had me bent up on a rickety electric scaffold and propped in the top of a steel bin the size of a soccer mom's mini-van, head down, elbows askew, fists wrapped 'round a filthy instrument of disruption, scraping away weeks of caky caulk and pourable concrete. The fossiled remains a hundred and one production runs. It was a crushingly filthy sweat, requiring muscles I never knew I had, never knew I had to use, muscles so reticent they turtled. A daunt made all the more petulant by the noxious, toxic fumes steaming from the solvents required to break down the industrial crust.
I'd had it. In fact, I've long had it. And I'd said so, again and again and again. I said it to myself, and I said it to others, each and every day of my slogsistence, including the very first. It became a running joke among some of my cooler co-workers: What time you leaving today Hood? At 8 I'd say 9. At 9 I'd say 10. And so on, through the dog day's droll of hellsome hours. Each idle threat met with a rejoinder: You ain't going anywhere.
But today I decided to kill the idle. Make good on the threat. Do something. Today I was going somewhere. Somewhere else.
Of course I first had to get permission from my counselor (don't want a little thing like a walk-off to send me back rivering), and of course at first nobody believed I'd do it. I don't know whether it was 'cause they couldn't, wouldn't or shouldn't. I know they never had. And they couldn't fathom someone who would.
And did. I made the calls. To my EC editor: She can't promise me more work but she'll try. Good enough. Then to the counselor. She says stay. I say no way, it's toxic. She says okay. Then, just like that, I go. Pick up my unread New York Times and walk UGL right outta my life.
I can still feel the disbelieving faces. A little bit haughty (he can't handle the work) and a lotta bit green. I was doing what they'd wanted to do forever. Thing is, I just had the guts to do it. Had they and their forebears done likewise ages ago, there'd be no need for me – or them – to do so now. They'd be making a fair wage in a safe place, respected and fed. Instead they make pennies, still, and the place is a menace. They're disrespected and fed up. I don't blame 'em. I was too. That's why I walked.
I heartily recommend it to every indentured someone.
The Rub
Forget the slog, that mind-numbing, bone-boiling, soul-strangling drudge of a so-called job. Forget that the toy store is the only place to buy a cool gift for someone. That there's no place to get shoes (unless you like Dockers). No place for sneakers (unless you like Foot Locker). Forget that the multiplex only updates a quarter new (hence my sapping bout with Just Like Heaven). Forget that I'm in a House where ill-repute is a prerequisite. Forget that there's no train. Forget that I can't plane. Forget that I've no automobile. Forget that there's no bookstore. I can handle all of the above and more, and I have, for seven swayed weeks. I mean, next to the gulag, these are but minor inconveniences.
What I'd rather not handle is incompetence. The complete lack of professionalism in those professing to be professionals. Or those supposedly on their way to being so anyway.
Like my
Be Hear Now, stab one at an Electric City cover. The turnaround was short -- a weekend -- though to be fair it's long been on the agenda. No matter. I'm mouthy, brash, and full of rant. I can bang out two thousand words on drywall in two hours, much less the same about music in two days. That the subject was college radio made it all the better. I listen to college radio. Religiously. And I owe it. Immensely. It was college radio who played me way back when; it's college radio that I play now. It's half of how I stay on.
So I was understandably excited when I landed the assignment. One more generous stroke from my incredible Editor; one more solid next last chance. Covering cool radio would be a cinch. A delight. A pleasure. And I commenced at once, Googling-up the coordinates, bathing in some of the stream, and electronically alerting every kid at every station I could find.
But these days seems some of the kids just aren't with it. Oh, they're with it sonically, I guess, and I'm sure their fashion sense is very au courant. Sound sense and found style though can only go so far. You gotta get wise. Wherewithal. Wherewith.
No, they're not with it with civility. The basic tenets of good manners and common courtesy. And they're not with it with the way of hype, exposure, connectiong the dots that make digs. If someone emails you re: coverage of your concern, Reply. At once. Don't dawdle. Don't drag. And certainly don't ignore. Don't wait three days to inquire. Don't wait five. And don't be disappointed when your wait has wrecked your world. The ball was in your court, you didn't even pick it up. The onus was on you, and you were off elsewhere.
So what? No skin off my skull. You wanna play pause I'll press another play. When I'm given a deadline I meet the deadline, regardless. If the kids wished to operate with such reckless disregard, they'd be disregarded. Or at least regarded how I best saw fit.
And I saw fit to give them all the benefit of doubt. Their silence wouldn't stop my shouting from the rooftops about all that was good and grand and going on the airwaves of this region. I spilled and I spilled liberally. I gushed and I gooed and I plugged and I pulled-for. Till there was no more overboard left.
Then I come to find that one of the stations is wrongly-repped by a six-year old renegade site and I got the dish all dirty. That's right, the number one Googled-up entry is a six year old joke. A hypester's cyberparty prank. Okay, so it might not have been a joke then (the site actually looks pro cool), but it's sure a joke now. And it makes the station a ridicule. Yet it remains ruling the ether.
Worse it made me look clumsy. I'm a lot of things, but I'm not clumsy. I fall, I don't stumble. And I never drop a ball. I may throw it away. Let out the air. Kick it. But I don't drop. Unless of course the drop's on me. Or I get the drop.
And there's the rub. I don't get the drop. If I put something in your hand, hold it. When I toss a lob over the plate, hit it. Outta the ballpark. Into the rafters. For all it'll ever be worth. Don't just stand there when someone's helping what you do to do something. Do something.
Ugh. I just spent the entire day endeavoring to get the right data to the right place at the right time and all I got was an "I'm shy." Really. That was a Reply. To two calls and three emails from two different people. At least it was a properly-spelled and -constructed sentence. A subordinate couldn't even muster that. A college kid. Who doesn't know the difference between are/our and couldn't get the right order of letters in the word here. Unbelievable. 6:13 and I'm still waiting for the promised update to match my promised pluggery. I wanna put these kids names in print, and they can't even pound out something printable for me to cite.
It's enough to make me hit Skip.
But I won't. I can't. I'm too much the fan of real radio. I'm too much the fan of youth. And I'm too much the fan of next last chances. I shall plug away. Maybe they'll get it, maybe they won't. But I shall do my best to ensure that their best is heard. Loudly. Clearly. Nowly. And one day, some day, in another place, another mindframe, one someone might realize what more they could've done, then they'll do so.
Sappery
I'm a sap. An unmitigated sap. Jelly-hearted and teary-throated, like all the other sad saps out there in Sapland. Yes, me. The long hard ex-con. Who's stood up and got over and made due with some of the nation's meanest, ugliest incarcerates. The man of back alley brawls and club cons and fist-in-the-face candor. The cad. The cadge. The cat. That me. A sap.
It's downright pitiful.
Like this glad aft at
Just Like Heaven. First off, the fact that I even went to see Just Like Heaven should tell you how much of a sap I am. It's peddled as sap. For saps. And I went anyway. But I didn't even make it through the previews before I started sapping out. It happened during the trailer for
North Country, when Charlize and Sissy and Frances stood their ground, and father Sean broke down and stood his too. And it happened again through the view of
Elizabethtown, when Orlando Bloom gets with Kirsten Dunst. I welled. Not into a weap, mind you. Nor even a tear. But a welling that could've been a hair trigger from either. Both. It had that much swell. I tell ya, had someone said pull, I would've lost it.
Yeah, that sapped.
I get why the sappery might of happened from North Country. It's causal, and I do still so wanna be part of a cause greater than me. I mean, it'd sure beat being the cause of all wrong. And I kinda understand (though I'm a bit reddened to admit it) why the sap happed in Elizabethtown. Kirsten reminds me of Karen, my gal of once upon a Chicago, and I do still so secretly want a next last chance. I hurt her. Hurt there. Hurt. The well helps the heal.
But getting and understanding in now way mitigates the sap. I'm too close to the surface, my laugh and my cry and my smile and my sigh are too near reveal. At breaking's tipping point, at collapse's door. Submerged in
The Singularity.
Makes me wanna take a sap to my head.
And yes, I dug the movie. Not that it was named for a Cure song (though there is that), or that Katie Melua did a credibly cinematic job of covering it in the opening credits (though there is that too). No, I genuinely dug the flick. The quick cut character reveal, the slow creep of closeness, the warm and fuzzy feel of it's fullsomeness. Script-slingers
Peter Tolan (Analyze This/That, Rescue Me) and
Leslie Dixon (The '99 Thomas Crown Affair), and lenscrafter
Mark Waters (Freaky Friday, Mean Girls) did a swell well of a job with Marc Levy's
If Only It Were True. And if the sappy Happy Ending was a given, it can be forgiven.
In Every Way (Revisited)
(Note: In this original post, I gave too short shrift to the world, to Billy, and to me. Curfew had beckoned and I had banged a little too rashly. A lot too unkeenly. Zeus-willing this'll make up for it.) Every day, in every way, I feel I'm coming closer to a world. I'm not sure what world it is, or what that world is, and I know it's not yet my world, but it is a world. I know to that it is a world of my choosing, even if I have no choice. Taut. Tangible. Tagential. A world that sidles astride with each and every do, each and every maybe, each and every communique.
Like the
Idol, a harried piece of hackery if ever there was one. Oh, I'm not saying I did a hack job, or that I don't appreciate the opportunity to hack. But Billy Idol? What more could possibly be said about such a bygone phenom? What more could possibly be added? And why? Well, turns out ol' Billy's flipped the script a bit. Still has something to shout about. Sure he's still all leather and fist and snarl, and the Forsey/Stevens re-collaboration ensures he's still real Billyfied, but Billy wouldn't be Billy if he were not him. More tautology I know, but nonetheless true for its tautness.
Take the unworthily-named Devil's Playground, his Spiky One's recent bid to re-emerge. There's a moment or three there when the grown kid kinda quiets, his voice gulps a crack or two, and he reveals himself. What he reveals himself to be I've no clue. But there's a reveal there -- especially on the Caved and Cashing Lady Do or Die ("it takes a dog to cry... misshaped before my time... I wonder what it takes to free someone") and the slung-low Summer Running ("There's always the world you know") -- a reveal of haunt and hurt and harm's waywardness that is -- yes -- candid to its core. It's a small consequence in the grand scheme of all things, still it's nonetheless consequential for its intimacy. Hell, the intimacy might even make it more of a consequence. More consequented. Whatever. The point is I wouldn't, couldn't have experienced such surprising nuance if I hadn't been assigned the hacking.
Color me grateful.
It's not an unusual color for me, this grateful, in fact I've long known it's hue. Now though, in this place that's not my place, at this time hat will be my time, the color's becoming me more and more. It's a hue I can taste. A hue I can touch. A hue I can live with.
And it's a hue that's becoming brighter by the days. Today I hacked my way to what I hope will be the first of many first Electric City cover stories. The piece
Be Hear Now is some small testament to this newfound appreciation of the what-all wherever I find myself. There's gold in every hill, sometimes it just takes a little longer harder effort to dig it up.
Last night the dig was a near cinch. Billy Idol came to town -- well, actually, the nearby town of Wilkes Barre -- and he came in all the glory and all the gusto a formerly angry young man can muster after lo these many many years. More. Different. The same. Reliable Idol. He played the hits, he played the latest, and he played it with more heated heart than a certain-aged ex-junkie punk should. Cetainly with more than any certain-aged ex-junkie punks I know could. And though Billy mostly played it rock hero safe, he can be forgiven for the histrionics. The guy was just having too much fun.
No, he did't play Summer Running or Lady Do or Die, but he more than made up for the miss by pausing to breathe Randy Newman's brilliant
Louisiana 1927, a strong, sad, terrible and terribly hopeful song who's time has unfortunately come again. And there, on the stage of the old Kirby Theatre, alone with a piano man, Billy Idol broke into hue, broke into heart, and broke into hurt. And something inside me broke too -- the big bad break of gratitude.
Call Me Hood (No Such Luck)
Eddie's one of those perennial also-rans who never was, never would, and never will be. Less than almost, far short of not quite, and not even in league with maybe. He's at most a spec on the windscreen, at least an ignorable blip in the corner of the eye. At worse he is what he is: a devout UGHell boy without portfolio. Without position. Without props. Without even a liveable wage.
That means of course he's
with a lot of anger and attitude and orn.
Too bad for him.
My word for him: Whatever happened in your life, buddy. I didn't do it. So leave me out of it.
Eddie, though, can't take know for an answer. Bitter 'cause he's again and again been passed over for promotion. Bitter 'cause the bosses still consider him disposable. King-comed Edward's bittered himself right outta his battered mind. That leaves him the mindless, thankless, thoughtless tasks of the tradeless. And since he's been left deep-breathing toxins and bullshit for lo these many moons with no even unreal reward, not-so-Fast Eddie takes it upon himself to be both toxic and full of bullshit.
To the help.
That of course means me. Me and the temp brethren brought in by the Agency from the State halfway houses and County work centers of Scranton. Since we're all being kept on very short nooses, none of us make even the slightest of contrary moves. After all, even perceived contrarity could ring our necks back to the panoply of pens from whence we came.
I too tend to keep my eyes to the grind and my big mouth shut, 'cause I too wanna remain at large. But sometimes even a noose isn't enough to muzzle me, and I just gotta speak my piece.
So yesterday, when dead Ed said: You, go get me a handtruck. I went and got him a handtruck.
Then I replied: Call me Hood. Call me John. Call me J Hood. Call me JH. Call me any name you want. But I am not You.
Wrong said Ed of course didn't get the crack, let alone the cut. And took the whole thing into his outta conscious.
Are you picking on me?
No. I'm merely stating the obvious.
Well, it's obvious you don't have to work here anymore.
And I smiled. And I grinned. And I thanked my lucky stars for all the unlucky idiots in the world who'd let a little nothing get me outta nowhere. And today when I woke and walked to the job, it was with a decidedly skippery step 'cause I expected to receive the papers that'd leave me walking elsewhere. But No Such Luck. For when I got to the job my time card was there among 100 other time cards and the big boss standing by the time clock didn't give me The Nod. In fact, he didn't even give me
a nod, that's how inconsequential I am. And apparently that's just how necessarily inconsequential I am to the company. The company of fools.
So There
I could no longer bite my tongue. It was bloody. And it was, as they say, swole. Like some long hard con's biceps. Swole. So swole it opened my big mouth. Wide.
The pudge had been giving me shade long enough. Ten years in at UG Hell. Four packing boxes, and the last six feedling cans into a conveyor belt. Day in. Day out. Like some trained seal. And he thinks he's better than me.
I don't think so. In fact I know. I'm mandated to slog in this pit -- what's your excuse? I can see a down-at-the-heels reflex enlistment. I can see start-of-life working-your-way-through-school positioning. I can see end-of-the-life coasting. I cannot see every day all day for the prime time of your life. I just can't.
But pudge not only can, he does. And oh does he do it so much better than anyone else ever. Posed and poised he stands, three empty cans in each hand, a thrice-greatest match to his hollow head. Feedling and feedling and feedling a Lidditious machine. As if the whole mild world depended on it. As if he were the only one suited to the task. The thoughtless, thankless, ridiculous task of a thoughtless, thankless, ridiculous so-called man.
Like I said, he's been giving me shade, acting all uppity and over just because he's got time in. I've seen it in men who've time in -- in prison, time in in life, but not time in in a filthy nothing factory. Boast and brag and beam all you want, but back it up with something.
And don't shine your lite beam on me lest you wanna get beamed right back. Heavy. Full Full on. Full on spot in front of your pitiful place.
At 4:10 the gaggle adjourns to the outdoor alcove to smoke. The greasers and the hippies and the fogies and the unpleasant one of the two girls and me. And pudge. He's beaming his barren bask my way and finally I just let go:
Did your Mom once tell you that you were cool and hard or something? Huh? Well, she was wrong. Way wrong. You're warm and soft, like a muffin. A mealy-mouthed muffin. If I were you I'd move outta Mom's house and get a second opinion.
The alcove went still. Silent. Pudge, after all, has gotta be pushing forty. Fat, natch. Stupid, ditto. With the kinda stupid smirk you just wanna wipe right off his smug pudge of a face. There was no smirk now. The want was wielded and the wield did wound. And all that smug pudgery went leaking out into the ether like so much stale hot air.
Seconds later the silence was broken by a man who knows something about breaking silences: Damn. That's gotta hurt.
I hope it did hurt. Not because I'm such a bully, but because I'm not. This man had made many other men feel weak and inconsequential, when all along it was he who was weak and inconsequential. I gave as I saw. I gave as I saw fit. And if tomorrow he's back to his usually fake-ass, dumbass swagger, I hope it's with a tell-tale limp.
So there.
Downtown Saturday Night
I make people nervous. They watch me from the corner of an eye, flinch when I say Hello, shy when I inquire. Maybe it's the suit; a suit suited more to a city of suits. Maybe it's the mug. I am a strange face, from a stranger place. It's gotta show. And maybe, just maybe, it's because I haven't been around civilians for nearly four years. None, except the far-flung family and friend. And they know me. Know no qualms. The cons in the joint knew me too, who I was, where I came from, what I meant and what I mean. And if they didn't know someone told 'em. Ditto the wild world before my fall. People always knew me, the better for worse.
Not so now. Here. I come without entrée, without introduction, without reputation. Even a bad reputation would add some perspective to my being here; perhaps even earn me some respect, 'cause all that badness would come contingent upon all that was good, or noteworthy, or at least noted. No reputation on a block braced by two halfway houses bursting at the seams with just-released bad guys means No Good. Period.
Such was the sorta sordid story last eve at Test Pattern, the only venue I've seen where once I would've hung, where I once would've been welcome. A storefront gallery, much like the storefronts of the East Village ‘80s, particularly Civilian Warfare or 101 St. Mark's, though with a peculiarly Chicago bent (this, after all, is America), the Pattern is ramshackle and charming and honest and most importantly, it's there. A haven and a showplace for Scranton's indie artist set.
But even among Scranton's most open minds, I was suspect. Heads turned and just as quickly turned away. Nerves jangled at my approach. Like a ring of keys held by a hand in a hurry. Like a haunt. Who is this unmasked man? Even a lone figure, pony-tailed and standing forever alone in the center of the gallery, chose to point me to a card rather than answer my simple question, forcing my gambit to fall flat on my face. Egg all over again. Of course I could get the artist's name from a flyer; I'd prefer though to get it from a human being.
Then Conor McGuigan, local gadfly, roustabout and proprietor of the joint, dashed to hide the tip jar near where I inadvertently happened to be standing. I hadn't even noticed the thing till he had it in his hands. By then I was mortified. I've done some mortifying things in my days; but nothing quite so scummy. And nothing quite so struck me. That I'd even be considered so below low was tantamount to a tarring. I wanted to tell the cat that I robbed banks, not galleries, especially not cool little indie galleries struggling to make their way through the morass.
But I didn't say any such thing. Why would I? I can't blame the guy. He doesn't know me from Badam. I'm just some slick in a suit lurking around the fringes of his center. An intruder in his midst. He's right to be wary. Who knows what evil might be lurking within.
And who knows if I'm even accurate. Nervy, I might’ve just nerved to a situation that never existed. Conor was nothing but a gentleman throughout my brief, suspicious stay; I, on the other hand, have yet to fully regain charm's favor. He had me as his guest, and that itself is a welcome. For that I am truly grateful.
As am I to the crafty Cassie Rose Kobeski, Test Pattern's artist in residence for the month of September. Her show, 'Nobody Kids On Me,' is a hodgepodge of cleverly assemblaged knowing, equal parts Belmar and Johns, all parts on display. These are the stirs of our souls. Beth B would approve, as would Marie Kennedy, two wily women artslingers of equally explicit strength. Since I'm of a more literal mind, I kept thinkin' of Mary Gaitskill’s Two Girls, Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, and Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry, and all the other knockout narrativists I dig so much but fail too often to recall. Kobeski triggered the recollection. Her work is that potent. That imploreful. Her show a wondrous welcome blast back to a place where a future exists, a future made to mean, a future with a vivid visual core.
And a future that surely would've been aurally compounded had I been allowed to stick around to watch and listen to Kid Icarus and the three other bands on Test Pattern's basement bill. This is the true underground, a place I used to know all too well. And this is where under gets over. Unfortunately, curfew killed my getting anything more outta what would've undoubtedly been an even more remarkable evening. Too bad. I would've luv'd to have stayed. Swayed. Spoken. Let the cool good people of indie Scranton warm up to a cold hard ex-con.
Presence
I am not here. Okay, so I am. Here, that is. But only just. Even when committing bloggery, supposedly an act of utter presence, I am somewhat removed. Whether excused to the craft or blamed on the guile, I remain wrapped in faraway thought. Wrapped up. Thinking about what I was thinking about to write. Thinking about what I was thinking about to say. Thinking about what I was thinking about before I was thinking about thinking. Taut.
I am not there at the job; if I were I'd be basketed. The grueling numb, the repetitive hum, the hollow drum of thoughtless, thankless tasks. Many of my co-workers must think me a moron I am so not there. I don't talk. I don't inquire. I don't pay attention. I don't care. And so I go elsewhere.
In prison I perfected the art of removal. Removal of myself, that is. I drifted. I darted. I deployed. As if being absent would save me from the absence.
At the hillbilly jail in the County of Bradford, I walked counterclockwise laps in the pipsqueak gym and imagined myself in London, New York, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, depending on the time zone, the unstruck mood. I'd picture whatever city, its traffic at that any given hour, and immerse amidst. In better words, I'd go there. I'd be there. Swinging and strutting and scheming and clocking. Wherever it was I wanted.
In State, once the fall had kicked in, I had no such compulsion. No such talent. Instead I walked the gravel Yard and pictured all my wrongs, catalogued. I'd pull 'em all up on an imaginary flat-top, put 'em in pityingly-named folders like Jerk, Dumbass, Idiot, and, yes, Scumbag, then scroll through, again and again and again, till my numbskull cracked from the shellacking. Reliving every ugly minute. Believing every fisted insult. Wallowing in each worthless, unshod tear.
That didn’t last long. It couldn't. Otherwise I wouldn't be here now not being here. One can only smash one's soul against the wall for so long before it splatters. Eventually you gotta clean up the mess.
At Mahanoy, stop two in State, I came to my nonsenses and kicked 'em outta my ever smalling world. I mean, there wasn't room enough for me, let alone some humdrum pity. I'll admit, at first the bareness hurt -- there's something tremendously comforting in a blanket of down wallow -- but it hurt a whole lot less then it should've. A whole lot less than I wanted it to.
There, with a Yard big enough to almost get lost in, I turned inside out, to books, and the stories they held, the promise they proffered. This list is relentless -- some 500 titles in 44 months -- and to single out a single one would make me a singular fool. I've been fool enough, long enough. Let's just say I read the books, walked the books, thought the books, and I became a part of the story.
And I talked the books. Oh, not to any of my con colleagues -- the few times my mouth lit into a title I got some seriously wrong looks -- but to my correspondents, the far-flung faithful, who's cards and letters I kept as trophies, keepsakes, links to my own peculiar elsewhere. And of course I talked the books in Bully. Blessed, blest, Bully.
Sometimes the books talked back -- a pal had read it, a plugist had plugged it, a writer who had written it. Sometimes the books talked trash -- why aren't you in it, why haven't you lived it, why hadn't you written it. Sometime the books didn't talk at all. They didn't have to. Their silence and their still was plenty.
At Chester, State stop three, the Yard was a lot, literally, so I took the book talk inside, to my cell, where I had a con's eye-view of the Delaware. I took it in to myself, where I was trying to look. Since everything I said was overheard, I said nothing aloud. But I never stopped talking. The French call it thoughts of the stairwell; I call it thoughts of the jail cell. All the things you should've said and done. But didn't.
Yet still I wasn't there. And except for the odd few times when I felt seriously in danger (more later), and the too few times I was blessed with visits (ditto), I remained elsewhere. At large in a little place. It was instinctive, something hard-wired into my thick head. It was expansive, something larger than me. And it was existive, something that made me feel alive.
Now I can't seem to shake what I learned, what I fell to. I walk these Scranton streets, still silent lest I be overheard, a good three paces off my stride, and I'm elsewhere. Unmindful. All that chatter, all that matters less and less. Occasionally I'm caught without thought, beyond thought, but that occasion is seldom. When it does occur though -- at the foot of a building, in the face of a humor, on the line of a missive, that chat with Rube -- I rejoice. So this is what it's like to be there. To be somewhere. To be here now.
