Badfish: A retrospective
Louie only used his index fingers on the typewriter, tapping one key at a time until his words were complete. I never knew how to speak to him when he was writing. I never knew how to look at him or even breathe. He’d escape and I’d be left behind with my bare legs and dirty feet. Wild orange and red curtains were the backdrop to our nights at the typewriter, a 50’s or 60’s Remington Quiet Riter that he’d bought me for Christmas. Into the distance beyond those autumn bedroom windows there was a road that stretched for miles and miles along the river, no winds or curves or stop signs. Lined with trees and houses, no street lights to guide your way. He’d look through the windows into this road for all of its worth and remember everything that he could about the war. About the only war he would ever fight apart that which he fought with himself.
His stories never brought me to tears. Never made me upset. I never thought to myself, God I wish I had never known this about him. I wanted more of him, wanted more of his words, more of his truth. I wanted to know how all of those people died that he’d killed. I wanted to know exactly how he ended their lives and how it felt to end them. But he would never tell me such things…he would never. And I would never know what it was like to walk for hundreds of miles of desert in the same pair of socks and army-issued boots, just to stop suddenly to end someone’s life and move on along.
I do know that he killed a pregnant woman. She held a gun to another troop’s head and he reacted. He used to have dreams about her. Nightmares. He used to wake up screaming and smack me across the ribs, fighting to wake up from a reality he would never be able to shake. A cold look in his eyes, sweat on his forehead, he would growl at me as I tried to hold him and shake himself free…then roll over so that he wouldn’t be facing me.
On the nights that he would sit at the typewriter I would crack open the bedroom window and we’d drink red wine straight from the bottle and put cigarettes out on the carpet. Everynight we slept on a mattress on the floor and started drinking when first woke up in the morning. By afternoon we’d be at the piano in the living room, pounding out our misery in song until he’d get bored or sober and decide to disappear for a few hours. But he was always back by 1am. Sometimes we’d hide at our favorite dive bar…him playing pool and me at the bar, reading a book and drinking until I couldn’t feel my limbs any longer. Then we’d stumble home, him whispering “I have a surprise for you, black beauty” and “Don’t let them steal your heat.”
We’d roll onto the living room floor, locking out his stoned friends on the way, tearing at each other until our arms were weak and we could only think of sleep and our small place to hide in the corner of my room.
He called me Clint. I called him Clyde. Trouble is putting it lightly.
2007 Clint and Clyde Mix Tape
Side 1
Led Zeppelin “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”
Sublime “Badfish”
Jeff Buckley “Mojo Pin”
Nirvana “Lake of Fire”
The Beatles “I Want You (She’s so heavy)”
Procol Harum “A Whiter Shade of Pale”
Ryan Adams and the Cardinals “What Sin Replaces Love?”
Radiohead “You”
Jeff Buckley “Forget Her”
Nirvana “Heart Shaped Box”
The Drill “What You Are”
Mad Season “Wake Up”
Coldwar Kids “Hospital Beds”
Agents of Oblivion “Hangman’s Daughter”
Stone Temple Pilots “Big Empty”
Chris Cornell “All Night Thing”
Elliott Smith “High Times”