Sternislouse’s offer. I felt forced, in a way to take it. Not that my life depended on it. Sometimes you know you have one opportunity to find out about something. There might’ve been that time when you blew a girl off and regretted it ever since. Maybe you turned down a chance to see someone like Johnny Cash - then he dies. The golden portals of corporate
But that doesn’t mean I was happy about it. I felt awful for Pepe even though I’d derided his entire concept of life only months before. I spent the rest of the week in a drunken stupor; it’s a wonder I made it to work on time everyday. My nights consisted of one dive bar after the other, senseless meandering through the hood, drunken banter with god knows who, then sweet oblivion on my couch. Always the couch, never the bed. Taking off my work clothes was too much of a chore. After a couple days they were wrinkled and I probably looked like the typical skid row drunk. It was Gina who smoothed those wrinkles, got some sustenance and water into the mix.
What would I do without her? Ever since we met she’s had a calming effect. It’s Koyaniskatski without her - life out of balance. They’d been meaningless flings before her. Not that she wasn’t about sex. It’s just that with her I didn’t come out of climax and have the urge to escape. I wanted to be with her and expose my soul. So many times I’d been fired up, cocked, completely out of control until the sobering moments after sex. But I have no regrets. How can you regret your nature? Your own flesh?
Life is like that. The order is only in our heads. The grids and the symmetrical structures, the beams and the foundations - all random chaos. Like monkeys with twitchy fingers typing Shakespeare. The odds are one in millions, but it can happen. In the end, what does it all mean? What are moral principles in the face of pure passion?
So Gina found me. I was working as a janitor for the options broker, downtown. She was working at the record company, like she still does. It was pure math, is what it was. In between my building and her building is a diner called Leo’s. Right smack dab in the middle. I usually came in towards the end of the day shifts, to clean up the remains of the paper chase. This was just about the same time that she got off work. That day, at the end of her shift, she went for a coffee. I was going to work and went for a coffee. We already had one thing in common.
It was raining so hard people were bunched up close to the sides of the buildings. Rivulets made crazy patterns on the diner’s windows; the street lights came on early, the headlights and break lights blinked and flashed through the crystalline curtains draping down from the sky. I remember all that, and the smell of wet fabric and corporal steam. It was like a movie with glossy streets pointing to the horizon. Like a modern day noir flick.
I was soaking wet after run/walking the few hundred feet from the subway stop. My eternal condition had seen to it that I wasn’t prepared and my permeable clothing had sponged up every drop. I wanted something hot like coffee or soup and there was Leo’s right in front of me.
I got a coffee and sat in a booth near the front. Suits and secretaries and messengers were stuck up against the window outside, their clothing streaking the smeared glass. Wayward drops came hurtling in from up above, sometimes pat pat-ing the glass, sometimes ruining a hundred dollar hair-doo. Watches and cells flashed, and intermittently a brave modern soul would make a dash through the elements, opening a gap where I could see through to the street. In one of these gaps I saw this individual, a fifty something man in a suit, trotting through the deluge. The sidewalk splashed up with each step, and his once tailor-made suit was now skin-tight, and cheap looking. He was drenched, but for some reason he couldn’t accept this fact and held a newspaper over his head - a soaked newspaper that was dripping yesterday’s news into his brilliantined hair, down into his suit. What on earth was he trying to do? I heard a woman laugh, as if on cue, and turned to my left and there was Gina, sitting at the counter, wet and cute looking. She said, “What kind of idiot would do that?” I knew she was my kind of girl. I shrugged my shoulders and tried real hard not to say anything stupid. So I didn’t say anything at all.
Thanks to that I didn’t seem like I was ingratiating myself with her. Soon she walked out and I got up and paid. I ran like a fool to my shit-cleaning job, so I could punch that clock on time. But that very same weekend we crossed paths again, this time at a friend of a friend’s house party. So we had another thing in common: our circle of friends overlapped somewhere. We were introduced and the whole charade began. Our feelers were out, and slowly we tested each other’s waters. We both had a thing for Billy Holliday; we both hated the Patrick Nagel 80’s cocaine aesthetic; we had differing opinions on cinema and literature - and the respect of these opinions was mutual. Soon we were intimate, real, and I said, “Don’t you remember the first time we met? There in the diner, with the guy outside and the newspaper?”.
“Of course I do. Why spoil a moment with words?”
She’s just way more clever than I am. My cognitive gears cracked up and made me silent. Luckily she misconstrued it for animal intelligence and our relationship was borne on new, natural currents. And here we are now. There’s been good times and bad times, but life’s momentum has kept us tight.
She slept over last night and we’ve decided to go Larry’s Coffee shop for brunch. This is one of the myriad Chinese diners that dot my hood. There’s nothing Chinese about these dives except for the crews of people that sling hash and wipe tables. The golden era of jazz clubs and juke diners was long ago, and the original owners have long since died or moved on. But the new owners have done a good job of assimilating the greasy spoon m o.
I bought the Sunday edition of the Daily Times, and have it spread out in front of me. Gina has the supplement, and is reading about the new Botox craze in
Jobs Offered:
Telemarketers...
Waiters/waitresses...
Bilingual Assistant for local television station. Tasks include translation and production coordination. At least five year’s exp. 9$ an hour.
I wonder who had the nerve to write this thing. Some people are paid twice as much to sit on their ass and act like assholes - without getting even one language right. I skim on:
Security Guard...
Dog walker...
Hot Dog vendor...
Personality needed. Janky Communications needs outgoing individuals to dress up as company mascot, a fun-loving cell phone, and hand out flyers. Easy work, and fun! 7$ an hour.
There was a time when I would have considered this job. Desperate days indeed. Though I don’t think there is anything easy about being humiliated in front of your peers for seven lousy bucks an hour. I doubt, for example, that Sternislouse would be capable of this job. He doesn’t have the honor.
Extras...
Actors needed (m/f) for amateur erotic movies. Good cash up front. Call Dan.
The allure of starring in a porno movie. Quick easy cash I’d assume, but a friend of mine went to one of these “castings” and was filmed jerking off. He was paid fifty bucks and adios. The dude never called him, and now he probably has a collection of these “castings” for his own personal enjoyment. Dirty sleazebag taking advantage of raging hormones and starving youth. The key is to make the movie yourself, then market it and rake in the cash. I run the idea by Gina:
“The old cliché ‘sex sells’ can’t be wrong. Just look at all those late night advertisements... all the porno mags... all the personals... it’s the lynchpin in this giant machine. You can’t miss if you invest in it.”
“Here we go again...”
“I got this idea for a reverse fetish movie set in the future... but you know, like a Blade Runner type future where alot of things look the same but they’re run-down. People are essentially sexless... guided by a giant moral arbitrator that controls them through microchips they have implanted in their bodies. They live to work, and procreation only happens once in their lifetimes, in a laboratory. Sometimes the governing chip malfunctions and the citizens are sent to the insane asylum where the doctors are sex androids and for a thirty day period the inmates get ‘their brains fucked out’... until they’re ready to assimilate the microchip and go back to being Joe Citizen. Here’s where the reverse fetish thing comes in: everything will be white, including the bondage gear. Solitary confinement will be equipped with every imaginable sex device...”
“You just spent the entire night telling me how you were ready to take Sternislouse’s offer...”
“This is fast, easy cash baby!”
“Where you gonna get the cash to fund this thing?”
“That’s easy. I’ll just put an ad out and the phone’ll be off the hook with investors.”
“Why would they trust you?”
That’s a good question. I don’t even trust myself most of the time. The waitress has just laid down our orders of pancakes and waffles. The steam rises up and engulfs my face; maple syrup and butter scent the air.
“You really have to bust my balls all the time, don’t you.”
“Busting nothing. You talk one thing yesterday and all of a sudden you wanna be the next Larry Flynt.”
“I know. It’s just that the Sternislouse gig isn’t exactly what I had in mind for a career.”
“Whadaya wanna do then? Make skin flicks?”
“No. Write, I guess.”
“What are you doing about that? You spend all day philosophizing and criticizing. You’ve barely shown me anything.”
“That’s because I tore it all up and...” I can’t resist the soft delectable pancake in front of me and stab it and pinch off a heaping forkful. Chewing, I continue, “...thoo it out... da winnow.”
“What?”
I gulp down, take a sip of watery coffee, what Europeans call American coffee. “Out the window. I threw all my crappy stories out the window.”
“Alot of good that’ll do.”
“Oh c’mon! Your remonstrations don’t really do me any good. You think I don’t already know that?”
“Then why’re you telling me all this? You’re asking for my opinion.”
“The truth is I want the job. I want the cash and I don’t care one iota bout how I get it. There.”
Gina takes some sips on her coffee and looks out the window. The morning light is harsh, and the people straggling outside - hookers, bohemian kids, blue collar workers of every stripe - all these people look like they had a bitch of a night.
“If you wanna take it then go in straight. Don’t hedge. I hate hedgers, and that’s what you’re turning into.”
“I just wonder why it has to amount to this. What the hell is the point?”
“Oh please. Don’t whine now. Dork.”
I laugh despite myself. It’s like she suddenly laid it out for me. “Nothing to it but to do it.” I got that one from Sternislouse.
The place is starting to empty out and the regular morning champs are coming in for their afternoon coffees. When we finish our brunch we decide to walk it off with a little stroll around the hood.
I love lazy Sunday afternoons. The world is so docile. There’s no idiotic scramble, no stress. People hang in the park, go to movies, just enjoy life in general. Here in my part of town it’s a curious admixture of freaks and the down and out. Also, the perennial lost tourist. We all are, in a way, kinda like these lost tourists - when we aren’t self-conscious. They are wide-eyed, gawking, taking everything in. That makes them easy targets for the hustlers and the conmen. But if they go with the oldest advice in the book - pretend like you belong, like you know what you’re doing - they won’t get fucked with. Life’s like that in general. How many people really know what they’re doing? The best pretenders are the most successful. Just look at all those fools on top. We’ve come so far away from our animal souls in 60,000 years of evolution that we live almost entirely in our heads.
“What’re you thinking about?” Gina asks me as we walk past piles of electronic junk laid out by a sidewalk vendor.
“Nothing.”
“It’s like you drift off sometimes. I’d love to know where you go to.”
Up ahead is the bus stop for the park bound bus. It’s been a while since I spent the afternoon there, since I fell under the luxurious spell of soft grass and endless sky.
“Why don’t we check out the park?”
“Yeah. Why not. It’d be nice to get out of this shithole for once.”
“You calling my hood a shithole?”
“Don’t take it so personal, darling. I’m a girl.”
“There’s lots of girls here.”
“You don’t get propositioned by johns just for wearing something cute.”
“You gotta point.”
On the bus, sitting on the lateral seat in the middle. Here you can contemplate life as it flits in and out. It’s like the stage for free theater, like cinema verité in real, vibrant life. Of course, that depends on how you look at it. Most people get on and make a point of ignoring everyone around them. They got point A to point B mapped out in there heads, and anything breaking that straight line will make their lives utter chaos. I like observing, spying, the deviant path.
Not many people on the bus, but that’s understandable because it’s a Sunday, summertime, and what better thing to do then wander around in the open air? At every other stop people get on and off, and through the back door, where people can hop on without paying, is where the most colorful characters get on. After a couple lurching stops a homeless guy gets on and staggers to a seat towards the back. Luckily he’s about three seats away from us, cause from the look of him he’s seen better, more hygienic days. Up front a couple punk rocker girls with listless, been-up-all-night stares sit sullenly, swaying with each turn and stop of the bus.
“I wanna just film this. You know, document all this... the people getting on and off the bus... the stuff going by outside,” I say.
“It’s a pretty desolate view of life.”
“This is true, you know. It’s like the mascara that coats everything is dripping down. Society’s ugly face is rearing itself.”
Two older men, obviously a couple, get on and sit down near the front. They hold each other and look around nervously. Probably tourists who’ve heard one too many stories about The City - the random violence, the thievery, exaggerated tales that make more impact, therefore more news. At this same stop two kids get on by the back door donning baggy gear and a boombox. Whatever’s playing on it, it’s a loop, with no lyrical soundtrack. I’ve seen these kids before, probably on this line, freestyling, capturing in their way, the moment.
“...mashin, smashin, bus-hoppin on the 31, fuck payin tolls cause I'm the dirty 1...”
The other passengers glance briefly at the two jesters, then go back to being themselves. Ba boom boom ba...
“...avoid the back seat cause it smells like piss, and the dude sittin next to me needs to get dismissed, sportin a shit stained trenchcoat in the middle of the summer, ripped up the back so he’s smilin like a plumber, his shoes are hella big for his little ass body, $100 nikes on a homeless jon gotti...”
“... bus driver, busdrover, yo pull the fuck over, it’s time be up and get over like grover, can I get a transfer, yo I paid my fare, don’t be a bitch cause this nigga don’t care, don’t drive another block just drop us right there...”
“... the bus is my limo, driven by my driver, I tag on yer windows cause I’m a graff lifer, tomorrow I’ll be mashin on the same fuckin line, sitting in the back droppin rhymes like dimes...”
They get up at the next stop and one pulls out a fat marker and scrawls out something, I’m guessing his name, on the bus’s paneling before getting off. Their beats fade out when the door hisses shut. Up ahead, I see the green of the park and we get up, grapple the aluminum pole, each other. The bus is strangely silent and introspective now that the two kids have left.
“That’s mean what they said back there,” says Gina.
“People say mean things all the time. Just not in public.”
We get off at the park stop and walk into the lush microcosm in the middle of the concrete beast. Little encampments of homeless people can be seen on the periphery, but further in, where we’re walking to, the meadows open up and people are laid out, reading, making out, playing fetch with their dogs... I can hear drums in the distance. Circular tribal rhythms that blend in nicely with the drunken Sunday atmosphere. We walk on, towards the beats, and up ahead some hills open up, and on them, around them, are groups of kids with the anti-global tribal aesthetic - like straight out of the Mad Max post-apocalyptic guidebook to style. We walk towards the amalgam of disaffected youth, enter, and sit amongst them watching the circle of drummers pound out their souls. One guy with a sax is blowing dissonant notes, but they blend into the beats; a girl is twisting, doing some kind of trippy, post-Woodstock dance. Everyone around us is puffing on something. We fall back, our elbows planted in the soft earth, take it all in...
We wake up to a jangly guitar and a dry, whiny voice. I get up first and see an old guy with stringy, long hair, stubble beard and a biker’s vest. Looks like one of those guys that never had their rude awakening. Looking down on us, his mouth forms a gappy grin and he hop/dances to the next sleeping individual a few feet down; and the routine begins anew:
“Wooooo... those crazy days are comin... comin round the bend... hoooo yeah... yahkah-yaw yikkee-yay yikkee-yay yikkee-yah yikkee-yo!”
“Man what a trip,” I say, staring ahead. “Looks like he just got off the ‘Furthur’ bus.”
A kid with dreadlocks sitting to our left passes Gina a joint and she takes a couple quick hits and passes it to me. With the first hit I don’t really feel anything, but the next hit suddenly funnels all my attention to the immediate surroundings. The circle of drummers is still going at it, and the whole meadow, groups of people, seem to mirror the ad hoc chants and rhythms. I lean over Gina and hand the joint back to the dreadlock guy.
“Thanks,” I say.
He’s nodding to the beats, eyes chinked, and though his head is profiled, I think he just smiled. He takes the roach and pulls hard on it, then exhales a mighty, languid cloud. It dissipates into millions of tiny strands wisping in the air. Ba ba ba ba ba ba boom, ba ba ba ba ba ba boom...
Dreadlock guy hands a flyer to Gina, gets up and snakes his skinny self into the mélange. It looks like he’s doing some psychedelic variant of tai chi, but really I know he’s dancing, doing what Whitman called the body electric. I glance over at the flyer he handed to Gina: two tone, black on yellow. It reads: [freespace] Collective. Art opening and all night freak out with visuals by 3rd I. Starts at
“Extreme yoga?”
“Yeah. I heard about it. Michelle is into it, I think. It’s like yoga, but hardcore. It’s supposed to be really, really hard. A total work out.”
“Where’s this at? I gotta check this out!”
I grab the flyer and scan it for the address. 45 Laissez-Faire lane.
“Isn’t that next to where Black Sausage played?”
“Yeah around there.”
“Why don’t we check it out?”
“No, I’m not really up to it. I gotta work tomorrow.”
“So do I.”
“I’m gonna chill tonight. Go check it out if you want.”
We split up after the park and I stopped in a Mexican joint and ordered a huge burrito mojado - with heaping amounts of guacamole and sour cream. My stomach is bulging out now, satiated, a full tank of gas for my motor. My sex machine. I take the 40 minute walk to the Freespace Collective to burn off the monster burrito.
After passing through neighborhoods, each one a different variant of the myriad minorities we have here, I get to one last one where the buildings are suddenly drab gray and brick. The warehouse district. After several missed turns I find
“Is this the Freespace collective?”
“Yeah. Shhhh...” she holds up a finger. “They’re in the middle of the extreme yoga session. Are you on the guest list?”
“I only got this,” I say, holding up the flyer from dreadlock guy.
“No, that’s not it. To come in you need to make a donation of five bucks for the art opening.”
I’ve already come all the way out here, so I don’t feel like turning back - though the idea of paying for this miffs me. She smiles, spreading luscious lips, and I buckle. I pull out a wad and count off some ones, hand them over, then brush past her and enter a red-lit gallery. White walls to the left and right, around the corner, and adorning them are photos of buildings in “beautiful decrepitude”. The light washes over everything, but the red tone makes it hard to really appreciate whatever it was this photographer was trying to do. I hear a woman howling, then a horrible grating sound, then the same woman’s voice, moaning. It’s coming from behind the partitions and I walk through the small gallery, out into an opening. There’s a group of about twenty people in a cat-like crouch, and a large video screen with a topless woman sitting on a beach. It’s moving slightly, probably a loop. In front of it is what looks like the same woman, also in a cat-like position. She stretches out and the group follows her, then she takes the microphone and howls again. I cringe, but manage not to plug my ears. There are others, like me, watching the spectacle. They don’t seem to be bothered at all. The woman flips to her back and starts shimmying, pushing herself in circles. The others follow her. Then she screams and takes the microphone and mashes it in some sand she has spread out around her. The amplified cacophony is awful. Extreme hardcore shit, all right. Some of her students also scream, but most seem to be having a hard enough time just shimmying around in circles. The woman howls again and I let my eyes wander, then follow them with my feet. At a makeshift bar in the corner I ask for a beer, and the girl behind it glares at me.
“We don’t have beer. Alcohol is forbidden in here. Don’t you know that?”
“What do you have then?”
“Smart drinks. Smoothies. Water. The prices are on that menu in front of you.”
I look down at a list of drinks with names like Namasta Blasta, Kakaram, Shinto Dive... all for exorbitant prices, totally out of my range.
“I’ll take a water.”
She hands me a bottle about the size of my fist, ice cold, and I fork over $2.50. I say “thanks” and she ignores me and stares ahead at the gyrating yoga cult.
Ten minutes after I arrived tons of people started showing up. All of a sudden the whole space was filled, and there were kids sprawled out on cushions they pulled out of the woodwork; some were off in corners on sofas, like me, just hanging, waiting for the next act. I take out the flyer again and unfold it. It says: BFO video presentation. Over the PA someone clears his voice, and the murmur around me hushes. I get up and strain over the group. The speaker, he’s strangely familiar.
“Thanks for coming out. We’re the Brigade for the Oppressed, the BFO...”
That’s where I recognize him from. Those spectacles, the slapdash bohemian look. The ride back from Sealed ASS...
“I’d also like to thank you for the donations at the door. Some of those proceeds will go to our cause - a good cause. For the people!”
Some scattered applause, cheers.
“Lilly? Can you hit that first slide?”
I look up to my left and above and there’s whom I’m presuming is Lilly, at the controls. The screen behind the BFO guy switches to a computer desktop, and the cursor slides over it, clicks on an icon, and a list of newspaper headlines appears.
“These are all news items culled from nationally syndicated corporate media outlets. They were presented as news items, as real actual facts. But we, the Brigade for the Oppressed, created everything. Lilly, can you show us that first slide?”
The screen behind BFO guy switches to a close-up of what looks like a piece of fried chicken, dangling from two fingers.
“Lilly, can you show us the details?”
The slide switches again, to what looks like the same photo, but blown-up. The odd thing about the fried chicken is that the undulations of fried meat form something... like a picture.
“A few years ago some of you might remember the O’Donnell’s Christ O’Nugget scandal. One shocked customer reported finding the image of the lord on her O’Nugget... next slide Lilly.”
The slide switches again and we see two masked figures in a kitchen apparently preparing some Christ O’Nuggets. Then the slide switches again and we see the two figures holding up a completed Christ O’Nugget.
“We paid an O’Donnell’s employee twenty bucks to sneak the Christ O’Nuggets into some orders. Most customers ate the nugget without noticing the peculiar pattern... but one customer, a Ms Agnes Mills reported the Christ O’Nugget to the local TV station and the scandal erupted as planned. Things went a little awry. The Christ O’Nugget actually increased business, and the O’Donnell’s franchises around the country were packed with doddering fools trying to get closer to god. Eventually the employee who planted them fessed up and the scandal blew over... but it was never traced back to the BFO.”
“The Christ O’Nugget showed us how easy it was to manipulate the media. And by manipulating the media we were manipulating the masses. The masses, people!” He folds his arms and has a smug look, eerily reminiscent of Il Duce in one of his public rants. I hear some scattered, half-assed applause, but most of the kids around me are too busy packing bowls, bullshitting.
“All the rest of the news items on that list were conceived by us. False alarms throughout The City have been responsible for evacuating entire buildings. Reported gas leaks, even, like this last one... Lilly, can you show us the next slide?”
I see what looks like a street in the grid, downtown. On the sidewalks in front of the buildings are thousands of people.
“That was an anthrax hoax. All we did was mail an envelope with common household flour inside. The current psychosis does the rest for us. The rumors rippled through the feeble masses of corporate slaves and soon the whole building was evacuated!” he stands back again, arms crossed, but this time no one applauds. Everybody around me is smoking, sitting in concentric circles. Two girls off to my left are practicing capoeira.
“History has always been made by minorities! Just look! Amongst the masses there is a new stream - a stream of opposition. Like you here in the Freespace collective. We are anti-capitalist, outside of the system. You, enlightened ones, gathered here, it is the recognition of this fact which is already in pursuit of the American system, which is already hunting the system down... we will one day scourge the masses into action!”
“I, comrade Kojak, fellow BFO men and women, are in pursuit of the fundamental truth. We are enlightened, we know the corruption that lies in the heart of the average citizen... the average citizen that waits for hours to buy their Christ O’Nugget, the average citizen whose pathetic lives consist of nothing other than the pursuit of one material object after the other. What do they need their designer shoes for... what do they really need... a swift kick in the ass is what they need...”
Looking around me I would say this group of kids needs a kick in the ass as well. One kid with a bone through his nose hands me a joint. I take a hit off it, and pass it back. One of the girls practicing capoeira almost steps on me with her Adidas...
The BFO has lots to say. Though I don’t think anyone here is really listening. Not that there is a coherent message behind any of this. His points are driven home by colorful language and doubtful metaphors, and if anything I think he should try his hand at poetry, not political agitation. Still, he fits in here, somehow. The collective has one thing in common - a complete negation of self. By assimilating cultures and half-baked philosophies they think they are being noble. Like they are up above, looking down on the unenlightened masses. BFO continues, though his hurried tempo indicates that he senses restlessness.
“The fraud of the present money madness must be revealed! The system only begets more sheep, more people that buy into it. It is based on lies and deception, on stock market fraud and speculation, on the exploitation of migrant workers, of people like us!” Another pause, but this time he doesn’t cross his arms. A patchouli cloud drifts by me, cherries lights up. “We, the BFO, have prepared a video as a parting gift. Lilly, can you click on the movie please?”
She closes the window and pulls the movie off another menu. “BFO presents” fades up from black. Breakbeat rhythms blast in the background. We see the billboard to a gas station, with the varying prices, the camera tilts up to a familiar tri-color sign - Exton. Then, on black, “Exton, good for your car”. We see a car pulling into the station. “Exton, good for driving” We see the car driving off. Next we see a pair of masked individuals sneaking up to the same car, parked in a driveway. They pop the gas cap with a screwdriver and jam a hose into it. Next shot is a close-up of the hose following a pinkish translucent liquid that flows down into a container. Next we see the gas being poured through a funnel, into a bottle. Then we see a rag being stuffed into the bottle. Cut to what looks like footage from one of the G8 protests in
I check my cell phone.
