(no subject)
i took a hard one to the mouth and as i went down i kept my head tilted up. the sky was kind of blue still and the stars were streaked as i started gaining speed. i cupped my left ear with my right hand and hit the ground. thwarting the apparition but causing some damage to my knuckles i gave him a good one in the stomach. it was a good clean punch, he was wearing a white shirt and i could see the marks from each knuckle. with an elbow to the back of his head i knocked his doubled-over figure to the ground and kicked him in the side as he reached toward me. then i took his hand. he grabbed the bottle, sprang to his feet, and let me have it right over the head. the bastard even took it out of its paper bag so it would do some damage. i was out after that. most of this is just what i was told, but i remember stars and his stained shirt. no one had to tell me he took the bottle out of the bag. i figured i was bleeding to death when i awoke in a puddle by the side of the road. he was sitting on the curb drinking from another bottle and i told him with a lot of breathing and groaning, "you should have told me you intended to kill me." he poured some whiskey on my head and i sat up, realizing i was simply wading in rain water and probably some piss. the gash on the top of my head burned like fuck and i told him so, sitting beside him and taking the bottle. he was not amused. i still had both my ears so he hadn't won. he must have known this. i'm sure he stood over me a time or two with a gleam in his eye, an idea in his head and a knife in his hand (maybe he left it in his sock though). i stood up, kicked him in the stomach, and said, this time without so much groaning and breathing, "let's walk." standing up, he delivered a damn good uppercut and i was almost proud when i picked myself up from the ground so i put my arm over his shoulder and grabbed the bottle. the street was narrow with brick buildings to our left and a chain fence to our right. and we walked.
it's entirely possible that i am mentally unstable but in a kind of new way. i call it goghphobia. we must've somehow made it back to ala moana from waikiki because i woke up in the trench-like parking lot of this abandoned strip club that has all kinds of crazy sea creatures painted on the outside. it gives off a very blue feeling if that makes any sense. it does make sense if you think i'm talking about b.c. rich but i'm talking about the color. the neon sign is even still there but it's red or some variation of red. i've never seen it lit up so it could be orange or pink but it looks red. in any case my head was still stinging when i woke up and i felt to make sure my ears were still there. my goghphobia is entirely irrational because i feel that ears are quite useless. two holes on the sides of my head would be just fine, but instead we have these elaborate flaps which i can describe as nothing other than a congregation of flesh. ears make me uneasy because i feel that they have a hidden agenda. all this distrust must mean i love them. imagine it -- me, alone on my back in that tiny parking lot with my ear fetish and burning cranial hole. but that's enough of that.
i visited greg in waipahu because i knew he had some vicodin but he has a really shitty apartment and it depressed me so i told him i had to go take a piss (there is no bathroom in his apartment) and i didn't come back. instead i caught a bus to the shipping docks where i spent the rest of the day. "the rest of the day" wasn't much, actually, i had left greg's apartment just before evening. the gigantic hangars and moored ships entirely blacked out the moon so it was completely dark save for the reflection on the water but even that was inconsistent, more like rippling highlights but you couldn't even tell it was water there. dylan came by a few hours after it got dark like that. i saw the moonlight on the bottle of jack he had with him and he saw it on my glasses. "fancy the quay, do you?" this was the third time this week he'd found me there. he was drunk and romantic. always with a bottle. he yelled with his arms out, spinning, "just imagine it, man!" he thought he had it all fucking figured out. he thought i had it all figured out, too, and didn't need to explain himself. he thought i'd been imagining it. i don't buy it, not for a second. i don't trust him anyway, when he gets a few drinks in him he thinks he's a poet and that's enough to make anyone uneasy. i didn't even feel like fighting him, though my head had numbed. i told him he was wrong and he sat crosslegged on the ground, he didn't understand but he didn't say so because he knew i wouldn't explain. i threw him for a loop and explained. i told him, "what you should say, man, is 'remember it.' just fucking remember it." this was too much. he hadn't expected it and hadn't wanted it though i think he understood now. he took his shirt off and jumped in the water. last time he did that i had to drag the wino son of a bitch out but this time i just threw in one of those life saver floating ring things in the hope that he would save himself. i started to walk away, considered taking the bottle, then considered my liver and left it. then i turned around and dove in to drag that wino son of a bitch out. i left him on the wooden planked ground and changed into his shirt, leaving mine beside him. he vomited and passed out. hell, at least he didn't pass out in it. he had won that night. does that mean i lost? i don't think so, but i took the whiskey with me anyway.
a few days later i visited greg again. we were laying on the thatched roof of his apartment building and he told me that dylan had come by earlier and eaten an entire sheet of blotter, "he was going apeshit, man, he pissed in the fireplace..." greg doesn't have a fireplace but he kept talking so i left him that way and he must have noticed because he started talking louder -- i could hear him still when i got downstairs. i went back to the docks and found dylan. he was drunken and looking sober. "i've a cannibal living in my mouth," he said. the cigarette resting on his lower lip fell on his right thigh. he recognized me. he didn't recognize me as me, but he recognized me as someone and that was a start. and at least he wasn't drunk. i plucked the cigarette from his lap. "two points," i said, and took a drag. i looked him straight in the eye. not really straight, though, because he wasn't looking at me. "what day is it?" "thursday." he always seems to know what day it is, but i don't know if he's right or wrong... it all seems to match up and he never says "i don't know," so i take his word for it. it's not that important anyway. if it's really wednesday, i won't be living a lie. i hadn't quit smoking yet that week. i try to quit at least once a week. i finished the cigarette and with all the disgust i could muster i threw it in the water. "i'm through with this filthy stinking habit." i took the pack out of his coat pocket and put a cigarette in his mouth and one in mine. i didn't light his. "and so are you, man, you can't get around like you used to." he was either sleeping or dead now. i didn't get the impression that he was dead so i put him over my shoulder and took him to sergio's.
sergio came to the door in a towel about five minutes after i knocked. smoke flooded out of the doorway and i saw two attractive girls in blue bathrobes taking bong hits, lying on an enormous bean bag chair. i told him that dylan was a little out of his head and needed a place to stay. "is he dead?" he was listless again... most of the way there he was screaming about firesticks and headlight rape. "maybe." "goddam i'm having um a little get together see you can see but just put him in the bathroom you know, throw him in the bath tub but don't turn the water on, it doesn't work anyway and the pipes might explode and he'd just drown himself anyway, i can't afford to flood the basement again..." sergio has a high voice and is so expressive with his hands when he talks that i had to step back to give him room to orchestrate. i put dylan in the bathroom and when i came back out the two girls were watching woody woodpecker, i could hear his laugh from upstairs. sergio was nowhere to be found so i told one of the girls who i recognized somehow to tell him i said thanks. they were watching the show dubbed in spanish and they laughed as the buzzard guy ran straight into a wall. i trusted the girl mostly but left a note on the door just in case.
at the pink cadillac i found gabrielle working, she told me that sergio called yesterday, he was looking for me and sounded pissed but she couldn't understand him, there was too much screaming in the background, she was worried that someone was getting murdered at first but she heard giggling too and decided it wasn't that important and didn't know how to get in touch with me anyway. she said "i'm gonna take a break come on let's get some food and go down to the river." i nodded and told her to let me finish my drink first. after a few minutes i took it with me. she grabbed a bottle of wine and we left. we were there for hours and when it got dark we took our clothes off and swam, i took the bottle and a sandwich in with me and when we got out we put our clothes on and walked down to the abandoned part of town where there are whole blocks of empty shops and we climbed a fire escape and laid down on the top of an apartment building. it was a weird building, almost like the center of it was missing, there was a huge column of space in the middle of it and there were windows on the sides of the walls. we threw rocks at them. it looked like a fortress but now most of the windows were broken so it didn't look like a very safe one. the water had made my head start bleeding again and she noticed that my hair was dark and matted and asked what happened. i avoided the question. "i've been trying to stay drunk all week but i don't have any money." reminded of the booze i picked up the empty bottle of wine and threw it at one of the unbroken windows. i missed and the bottle shattered on the wall beside it. she often forgets what she's worrying about when i do that. change the subject, i mean. not throw bottles. that might work too, though. she would be off on her own tangent soon anyway. "what do you think of thanksgiving?" she threw a small rock and it bounced off the glass. "terrible." i threw a bigger one at the same window, broke it. "yeah." and then she screamed. i threw a pebble at her mouth but hit her cheek. we were pretty far apart. after that it was quiet. "doesn't it feel better when it gets quiet? it almost makes all the noise worth it." i can't stand it when people say things like that to me. "what do you have?" she took out a prescription bottle filled with assorted pills. i took the prettiest ones and went to sleep.
dylan was talking with a pistol in his mouth and i couldn't understand him. it was one of those classy six-shooter russian roulette style guns. this was an odd scene to be had in the living room of gabrielle's house, there were windows all over the place and the sun was brighter than it had ever been and all her furniture was white and glowing and so was she. he was screaming but i had no idea what he was saying. gabrielle was sitting on the floor on the other side of the room in a nightgown, not looking at me or at him but between us. i could tell he was saying "you" and "me" a lot, but i don't know what he could have been blaming me for and i figured i was wrong until he finally took the gun out of his mouth just in time for me to hear a clearly defined "you" and he tried to point it at me but he missed and shot out a window. the bullet came damned close to my ear i think. he started to point it back towards his face but i jumped on him and slammed his hand to the ground. he fired twice and the bullets went through the couch and i was shocked to find that the couch cushions were filled with feathers. now i was sitting on the chest of this squirming coked-up armed madman and looking at gabrielle who was also stoned i think but i couldn't help thinking as white and brown feathers floated down over just her like she had her own special stormcloud, jesus fuck, what a beautiful girl, and she's got a white couch with feather-stuffed cushions and i'm sure someone is in love with her (though i later found out that this wasn't even her house, it was her friend's parents' house but they were island hopping, probably in maui right about now but she was still very beautiful and i'm sure someone still loved her, i forgot all about the pillows eventually). dylan was sweating insanely and i finally got the goddamned revolver out of his grasp. he was still squirming and struggling to break free so i hit him in the face with the butt end of it. i think i broke his nose and it was bleeding and swelling and that was the last time i ever saw him. unconscious with a broken face. we waited a while until we thought he had sobered up and we took him to the hospital.
i spent the next three days in that house with her. eventually she said "maybe you should leave" and i nodded. we slept in the same room but i was on the floor and i could hear her fucking guys (maybe the same guy though) practically every night and i never saw a single face, i could only tell who was on top by the positioned silhouette. maybe she was fucking guys who loved her. i loved her, too, sometimes, when there was enough to drink. but i really did love her when she told me to get out. i told her so and she said "i don't love you, though, not even when i'm drunk. and you know it." i told her, "of course i know it, hell, that's the only reason why..."
and the bottom line is, i was out on my ass again because i didn't pull my weight. but i didn't fuck her and it's strange how it all always somehow boils down to that.
it's entirely possible that i am mentally unstable but in a kind of new way. i call it goghphobia. we must've somehow made it back to ala moana from waikiki because i woke up in the trench-like parking lot of this abandoned strip club that has all kinds of crazy sea creatures painted on the outside. it gives off a very blue feeling if that makes any sense. it does make sense if you think i'm talking about b.c. rich but i'm talking about the color. the neon sign is even still there but it's red or some variation of red. i've never seen it lit up so it could be orange or pink but it looks red. in any case my head was still stinging when i woke up and i felt to make sure my ears were still there. my goghphobia is entirely irrational because i feel that ears are quite useless. two holes on the sides of my head would be just fine, but instead we have these elaborate flaps which i can describe as nothing other than a congregation of flesh. ears make me uneasy because i feel that they have a hidden agenda. all this distrust must mean i love them. imagine it -- me, alone on my back in that tiny parking lot with my ear fetish and burning cranial hole. but that's enough of that.
i visited greg in waipahu because i knew he had some vicodin but he has a really shitty apartment and it depressed me so i told him i had to go take a piss (there is no bathroom in his apartment) and i didn't come back. instead i caught a bus to the shipping docks where i spent the rest of the day. "the rest of the day" wasn't much, actually, i had left greg's apartment just before evening. the gigantic hangars and moored ships entirely blacked out the moon so it was completely dark save for the reflection on the water but even that was inconsistent, more like rippling highlights but you couldn't even tell it was water there. dylan came by a few hours after it got dark like that. i saw the moonlight on the bottle of jack he had with him and he saw it on my glasses. "fancy the quay, do you?" this was the third time this week he'd found me there. he was drunk and romantic. always with a bottle. he yelled with his arms out, spinning, "just imagine it, man!" he thought he had it all fucking figured out. he thought i had it all figured out, too, and didn't need to explain himself. he thought i'd been imagining it. i don't buy it, not for a second. i don't trust him anyway, when he gets a few drinks in him he thinks he's a poet and that's enough to make anyone uneasy. i didn't even feel like fighting him, though my head had numbed. i told him he was wrong and he sat crosslegged on the ground, he didn't understand but he didn't say so because he knew i wouldn't explain. i threw him for a loop and explained. i told him, "what you should say, man, is 'remember it.' just fucking remember it." this was too much. he hadn't expected it and hadn't wanted it though i think he understood now. he took his shirt off and jumped in the water. last time he did that i had to drag the wino son of a bitch out but this time i just threw in one of those life saver floating ring things in the hope that he would save himself. i started to walk away, considered taking the bottle, then considered my liver and left it. then i turned around and dove in to drag that wino son of a bitch out. i left him on the wooden planked ground and changed into his shirt, leaving mine beside him. he vomited and passed out. hell, at least he didn't pass out in it. he had won that night. does that mean i lost? i don't think so, but i took the whiskey with me anyway.
a few days later i visited greg again. we were laying on the thatched roof of his apartment building and he told me that dylan had come by earlier and eaten an entire sheet of blotter, "he was going apeshit, man, he pissed in the fireplace..." greg doesn't have a fireplace but he kept talking so i left him that way and he must have noticed because he started talking louder -- i could hear him still when i got downstairs. i went back to the docks and found dylan. he was drunken and looking sober. "i've a cannibal living in my mouth," he said. the cigarette resting on his lower lip fell on his right thigh. he recognized me. he didn't recognize me as me, but he recognized me as someone and that was a start. and at least he wasn't drunk. i plucked the cigarette from his lap. "two points," i said, and took a drag. i looked him straight in the eye. not really straight, though, because he wasn't looking at me. "what day is it?" "thursday." he always seems to know what day it is, but i don't know if he's right or wrong... it all seems to match up and he never says "i don't know," so i take his word for it. it's not that important anyway. if it's really wednesday, i won't be living a lie. i hadn't quit smoking yet that week. i try to quit at least once a week. i finished the cigarette and with all the disgust i could muster i threw it in the water. "i'm through with this filthy stinking habit." i took the pack out of his coat pocket and put a cigarette in his mouth and one in mine. i didn't light his. "and so are you, man, you can't get around like you used to." he was either sleeping or dead now. i didn't get the impression that he was dead so i put him over my shoulder and took him to sergio's.
sergio came to the door in a towel about five minutes after i knocked. smoke flooded out of the doorway and i saw two attractive girls in blue bathrobes taking bong hits, lying on an enormous bean bag chair. i told him that dylan was a little out of his head and needed a place to stay. "is he dead?" he was listless again... most of the way there he was screaming about firesticks and headlight rape. "maybe." "goddam i'm having um a little get together see you can see but just put him in the bathroom you know, throw him in the bath tub but don't turn the water on, it doesn't work anyway and the pipes might explode and he'd just drown himself anyway, i can't afford to flood the basement again..." sergio has a high voice and is so expressive with his hands when he talks that i had to step back to give him room to orchestrate. i put dylan in the bathroom and when i came back out the two girls were watching woody woodpecker, i could hear his laugh from upstairs. sergio was nowhere to be found so i told one of the girls who i recognized somehow to tell him i said thanks. they were watching the show dubbed in spanish and they laughed as the buzzard guy ran straight into a wall. i trusted the girl mostly but left a note on the door just in case.
at the pink cadillac i found gabrielle working, she told me that sergio called yesterday, he was looking for me and sounded pissed but she couldn't understand him, there was too much screaming in the background, she was worried that someone was getting murdered at first but she heard giggling too and decided it wasn't that important and didn't know how to get in touch with me anyway. she said "i'm gonna take a break come on let's get some food and go down to the river." i nodded and told her to let me finish my drink first. after a few minutes i took it with me. she grabbed a bottle of wine and we left. we were there for hours and when it got dark we took our clothes off and swam, i took the bottle and a sandwich in with me and when we got out we put our clothes on and walked down to the abandoned part of town where there are whole blocks of empty shops and we climbed a fire escape and laid down on the top of an apartment building. it was a weird building, almost like the center of it was missing, there was a huge column of space in the middle of it and there were windows on the sides of the walls. we threw rocks at them. it looked like a fortress but now most of the windows were broken so it didn't look like a very safe one. the water had made my head start bleeding again and she noticed that my hair was dark and matted and asked what happened. i avoided the question. "i've been trying to stay drunk all week but i don't have any money." reminded of the booze i picked up the empty bottle of wine and threw it at one of the unbroken windows. i missed and the bottle shattered on the wall beside it. she often forgets what she's worrying about when i do that. change the subject, i mean. not throw bottles. that might work too, though. she would be off on her own tangent soon anyway. "what do you think of thanksgiving?" she threw a small rock and it bounced off the glass. "terrible." i threw a bigger one at the same window, broke it. "yeah." and then she screamed. i threw a pebble at her mouth but hit her cheek. we were pretty far apart. after that it was quiet. "doesn't it feel better when it gets quiet? it almost makes all the noise worth it." i can't stand it when people say things like that to me. "what do you have?" she took out a prescription bottle filled with assorted pills. i took the prettiest ones and went to sleep.
dylan was talking with a pistol in his mouth and i couldn't understand him. it was one of those classy six-shooter russian roulette style guns. this was an odd scene to be had in the living room of gabrielle's house, there were windows all over the place and the sun was brighter than it had ever been and all her furniture was white and glowing and so was she. he was screaming but i had no idea what he was saying. gabrielle was sitting on the floor on the other side of the room in a nightgown, not looking at me or at him but between us. i could tell he was saying "you" and "me" a lot, but i don't know what he could have been blaming me for and i figured i was wrong until he finally took the gun out of his mouth just in time for me to hear a clearly defined "you" and he tried to point it at me but he missed and shot out a window. the bullet came damned close to my ear i think. he started to point it back towards his face but i jumped on him and slammed his hand to the ground. he fired twice and the bullets went through the couch and i was shocked to find that the couch cushions were filled with feathers. now i was sitting on the chest of this squirming coked-up armed madman and looking at gabrielle who was also stoned i think but i couldn't help thinking as white and brown feathers floated down over just her like she had her own special stormcloud, jesus fuck, what a beautiful girl, and she's got a white couch with feather-stuffed cushions and i'm sure someone is in love with her (though i later found out that this wasn't even her house, it was her friend's parents' house but they were island hopping, probably in maui right about now but she was still very beautiful and i'm sure someone still loved her, i forgot all about the pillows eventually). dylan was sweating insanely and i finally got the goddamned revolver out of his grasp. he was still squirming and struggling to break free so i hit him in the face with the butt end of it. i think i broke his nose and it was bleeding and swelling and that was the last time i ever saw him. unconscious with a broken face. we waited a while until we thought he had sobered up and we took him to the hospital.
i spent the next three days in that house with her. eventually she said "maybe you should leave" and i nodded. we slept in the same room but i was on the floor and i could hear her fucking guys (maybe the same guy though) practically every night and i never saw a single face, i could only tell who was on top by the positioned silhouette. maybe she was fucking guys who loved her. i loved her, too, sometimes, when there was enough to drink. but i really did love her when she told me to get out. i told her so and she said "i don't love you, though, not even when i'm drunk. and you know it." i told her, "of course i know it, hell, that's the only reason why..."
and the bottom line is, i was out on my ass again because i didn't pull my weight. but i didn't fuck her and it's strange how it all always somehow boils down to that.