Acid Fizz - 6

It's time for a brand new installment of the WWD insano-fiction serial Acid Fizz.  Please let us know what you think so far.  If you'd like to catch up on earlier chapters you can find them here:

Acid Fizz - 1

Acid Fizz - 2

Acid Fizz - 3

Acid Fizz - 4

Acid Fizz - 5

click picture & open link in a new tab for a song while you read

PAULO QUIRINO

This is all a bit like when that guy Rufus played me a recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony slowed down one thousand times into one angelic chord that unspun eternally.  It was during the ethnography conference in Hamburg, we’d gone back to his apartment after the dinner.  I’d had a few glasses of red wine and we smoked Rufus’ hash that he’d rolled into a little worm on his coffee table and lit at one end and I listened to that chord and it was as dreamy as the world had ever been for me.  There was a humid gust of air through the window and I got it on with him just because I felt too good not to.

            I feel now like I am that chord and also I guess a little like the hash smoke my breath plucked out of the air, that stung my lungs and vitrified my brain.  I never understood then where drugs put me, that they staged me just high enough so I could step up to the gate, but left me there without the key.  I know now there is no amount of wine or narcotic that can give me that key.  The key is something else.

It was luck that I found it but it was like the terreiro was just waiting there for me and also like I’d found a secret compartment hidden in me, some unknown clump between two organs where all that I was meant to be had squirreled itself away.  So lucky that I found what I didn’t even know I was looking for.  If I had never gotten that Fulbright to study in Brazil, never joined the House of Tulio, where in the world would I be now?

            Not here, not riding this angelic chord, not some scattered molecules in the sky.  Ever since Ed’s teddy bear incinerated in the landfill and the last of the stuffing fizzled away and I drifted away in the smoke I’ve felt so free.  It is the feeling that every drug only hints at like photographs of the Sistine Chapel only whisper of the real thing.  But then by that same token I suppose there is the Sistine Chapel and then there was the actual Genesis it depicted.  It is wonderful to be a gas.  I hope all other gas knows that.

            I kick around a little, something must be flying through here.  A bird’s wings toss the air over and then it pushes under me and I swirl and then graze some membrane.  It’s an eye and I impregnate it, slip into it and the diffuse feeling like that infinitely stretched chord ends.  It’s like I grow veins out of me, grow them into a brain, into a spine, and the spine grows into bones, and each bone grows into other bones into more bones into muscle and into the follicles holding my feathers in place.  I flap and lift and the wind is solid as I cut through it.  It is like kneading the air into the right shape to slide on.  I hope this bird knows how magnificent this is.  Its thoughts are just indecipherable twangs, like some ragged twirling cylinder in a player piano.

            There is a purple glow in a corner of the dark sky and I know its name:  Milwaukee.  I shove the bird’s body to force it in the city’s direction.  I angle the beak, I paddle the wings.  It is difficult to coordinate and I can’t quite repeat the motion I’ve felt it do.  Maybe it is the rhythm I can’t get quite right.  Everything falls out of joint.  I drop, flip in the air, first one way, then another, knocked hard this way and that as the air shoots up all around us.  I’ve lost control.  In my head I hear a car wreck, aluminum crumpling and glass crunching, but that’s only my imagination.  I withdraw completely from the controls and the bird extends its wings and beats them against the rocketing air.  A few muscled flaps and then he rights us.

            I poke myself forward just a tad into the bird’s brain and look at the glow of the city, but I don’t touch anything else.  The bird is willing to concede its direction to me and we fly toward the glow.  Maybe it was headed that way to begin with…

I skim over the swerving taillights and fuming noise on Locust Street, over the cool air rising from the river, over the wooded strip of Riverside Park, and then over Oakland Avenue.  Drunk folks line out of Oakland Gyros and around the corner.  Is it Saturday?  Some of them touch each other and the others just reach to their friends with course barking and cackling.  I’ve been among them, smoked a hole into my good shirt waiting in that line once and then scarfed a gyro down without noticing and demanded a new one.  They threw me out.

            It must be Saturday.  No other night of the week would be so busy, not in the summer.  And it must be late on a Saturday night, around bar close.  Did I get that lucky?  Exactly one week since I was lying on my bunk in the MSDF.  Odd to put a name on that length of time, like naming the number of minutes between the big bang and now.  I don’t even have to wait.  She’s at her microphone right now, ready for me.

            I steer the rudder and point the beak at the campus, at the red fuzzball the radio station’s antenna blinks into the hazy night.  The trees and houses file in a line under me.  Soon all this matter will be like a foreign country to me or like a luxury.  I won’t have to guess at things, how do I do this? why do I feel like that and how do I get to feel different?  Beethoven’s Ninth won’t play at a one thousandth, it will play at every speed possible.

            There’s Stadler Hall with the antenna climbing out of its roof.  The website said the studio was on the sixth floor, so one-two-three-four-five-six, there it is.  I nose us down and accelerate.  I’m getting the hang of it and only falter a little.  The twangs from the bird’s mind spin faster, possibly protesting, I don’t know.  I lock the bones into place and glide on my bearing.  It’s not like I want the bird to die, but I happen to know the place it’s headed to and it isn’t much worse than where it is now.  It’s not as if it can go where I’m going.  No one can.  Thank you, Oxalá.  My head is yours.

            The red bricks come into focus, so close I can see the texture of each one.  This is extraordinary, the air wedging between my feathers, supporting my belly but also caressing my back, the softness of the bones against each other, barely exerting like stirring a spoon through sweet yogurt.  I hope it knows how wonderful it is to be a bird.  I can hear the music through the wall.  The bricks are too close to focus on.  The bird chirps sharply.  I smell its blood as I osmose through the wall, dispersing again, slowing into something primeval.  It is wonderful to be me.

Bug Spray

It was wrong to be that way, and tell her she looks like a baby bunny and for some reason this works, even though your glasses are taped to shit, your shirt is stretched and you just recently washed a dick drawing off your face.

I told my mom that it was becoming a problem how close I was getting to this thing. That the further I got, the more they’d all make up their minds to what I was. But it was time to get in or get out. And sure she’s proud but i doubt she wants to watch me go down like this.

But we go to the beach and I remember both of their names but have a hard time splitting the two. D has his new puppy and it rolls around like crazy, then sleeps like crazy. We watch the water turn and drink tall Pabst. The Yankees shell our ace, he only makes it two innings.

The last night we have a fire and invite the cats round town. We eat pizza pockets because no matter what I’m to tired to be drunk. I dream all night in a lazy boy about being in Pittsburgh and turn over and back.

And the baby bunny wrote her number on my hand but when I woke up it was smudged. So i really don’t have a lesson, moral or punchline - just some lies, some truths and it doesnt matter which is which.

Macaroon & Tapioca

it's not too often that I have macaroon
so get me some of that tapioca
and then go get the macaroon
cuz I like macaroon after tapioca

Acid Fizz - 5

Wow.  It's an all new chapter of the groundbreaking WWD serial Acid Fizz.  It's not TV, it's World Wide Dirt.  If you haven't been keeping up with it, you can check out the first few chapters:
Acid Fizz - 1
Acid Fizz - 2
Acid Fizz - 3
Acid Fizz - 4

click picture & open link in a new tab for a song while you read

THE JAR MAN

I’m sucked up from the village while I inhale a pungent vapor and I realize they are somehow the same thing.  I coil in on myself, wind tight, and then there are two hands before me, my hands, wearing thick rubber gloves and wrapping a sheet of tinfoil onto a machine made of metal tubes, covering a jet of leaking air.  I gag from the taste of it and I’m thinking: god, that smells like a burnt barf and oh no, chambers is going to fucking kill me.  i didn’t touch anything, didn’t do anything, i’m on the other side of the lab watching youtube, i don’t know why the afm/stm machine started leaking, fuck.  i’m off the project, no two ways about it, off.  all i did was forget to double check the mass spec reading last month and he threatened to kick me off then, screaming, hitting the tabletop so hard the beaker fell off and that blue acid eating into the floor and him looking at me like he wished it was my face that was melting away.  i shouldn’t have called him just now, but what else could i do?  it’s condensing and dripping from the ceiling.  he’ll be here any second.  maybe i could just leave.

            I feel thoughts all around me.  Under the storm of them is a structure like a mountain and I climb it, each foothold a detail of a self that I am now a part of – tyler li/five-foot-eight/24/chinese-american/the reasonable one/chemistry grad student/less than average attractive/wish i had gone for a motocross career/4 months without sex/3 months since i talked to my mother/thirty-one thousand dollars in debt/four-hundred, eleven dollars, sixty-something cents in my checking account/microwaved spaghetti, garlic bread, coffee in my stomach/never been that sad, never been that happy/blame my mother for my being unassertive, my father for chemistry/don’t like eye contact/often dream of China I saw as a boy/can’t get this lil wayne song out of my head for three days/don’t want to get kicked out of chambers’ graduate assistant team.

            We rip another piece of tinfoil off on the box’s teeth and layer it over the steaming leak.  I can’t focus in this noise of consciousness.  Chambers.

Two metal doors rumble down the hall.  that’s him, shit, shit, i should have ran, is there someplace i can hide?  shit.  under the table? behind the door where i can run out as he soon as he walks past it?  The jet of gas bursts through the new layer of tinfoil.  Two feet drag toward us down the hall.  here he is, he’s going to kill me. maybe i could hide in the closet.

A man walks in and regards us with dull, angry eyes that I remember.  fuck.  this isn’t my fault, isn’t my fault.  He’s scrawny but with a gut, flat silver hair, wearing a misbuttoned short-sleeved shirt.  who leaves some vague experiment in a bunch of rusty pipes for a decade?   Andrew.  Andrew?  It is him but some other version of him.  no one even knows what’s in there.  it’s probably burnt out any chemical agent and turned to water by now.  you are heating fucking water and i’m gonna get my credits robbed from me for leaking your worthless steam.  His breath is loud, deep lines are worn into his face.  everyone knows you’ll  be booted from the department sooner or later because you don’t do anything.  but you expect your students to be perfect.  fuck you.  don’t look at me like that.

“Get away from that right now!” he says.

We bound backward from the machine as if his command has robbed us of our volition.  I have never seen anyone nervous around Andrew like Tyler is right now.  Andrew stares into the puddle as if it were deeper than it is, like he’s looking at the bottom of the ocean.  It is as if his eyes dull even more.  I’ve never seen him look so hopeless.  Why do I keep getting sucked back into this world?  I do not want to be here.

“Did it touch you?” he asks.

“Just my shoes.”

“Get in the shower now!”  He bites on each word.

“I didn’t touch anything,” we say.  “I’ve been trying to patch it up with tinfoil.  I can put some more on and that might help.”

“Tyler.”  He brings his front teeth down on his lip to form the “f” of “fuck,” but stops himself.  That I have seen before.  “Get in the shower right now or you could die within the next few minutes.  Throw away those shoes and don’t touch them with your hands.”

i know the fucking procedure, cocksucker.  “I know,” we say and run out the door.

I hate the dullness in his eyes.  Give me the sludge, I don’t care if I see the village even, give me eternal blackness, not this.  I remember my brother and he’s funny and he loves things and his shirts aren’t misbuttoned and his hair is combed and it makes me sick to see him old and angry and diminished.

I try to push out of Tyler like I did from the millipede.  Our body heats as we run down the hallway toward the showerhead.  I focus on the warmth, pull at it and then it becomes part of me and I heat and I push toward the surface and sweat out of Tyler’s pores and evaporate and drift out of him as he reaches the showerhead and yanks the pullchain and I slip into the darkness and am so relieved to hear the sound of pouring water fade from me…

I’m tossed side to side and whirl around in the darkness and suddenly I’m gagging on that sharp salty stench and I’m looking through eyes at that puddle on the floor.  What am I doing back here?

no.  it’s really not a mistake. i had myself fooled there, idiot that i am, telling myself tyler was that dumb that he must have had the wrong afm/stm machine in mind, that it couldn’t really be mine.  but he’s only just so stupid and there it is, the scientific american-featured chambers solution, in a god damn puddle on the cracked tiles. of all the experiments in this whole building it had to be that one.  it had to be that one.  god damn idiot students, they don’t give a fuck about consequences, they does not have a fucking clue what they mean.

is tyler alright?  well, i’d know if he wasn’t.  i remember how eric screamed.  i fucking hear it when i go to sleep at night.  i had suspected that the solution had diluted in these years since eric.

Eric.

i could hear him all the way down the hall.  for god’s sake.  fuck.  i don’t even give a god damn about anything in this lousy fucking lab except one thing, why does it have to be that, god damn it, god damn.  the only fucking thing i ever created that was worthwhile, the fucking solution my brother lost his life to and for what?  for a fucking puddle on the ground eric is dead, for a fucking puddle on the ground.  i am a fucking idiotic waste.

Eric is dead.

            We pick up a glass flask and raise it to throw against the wall.  We take a hard breath and set it down on the table.  The hardness presses on our eyes and squeezes one tear out of each.  A couple of drops drip from the ceiling and add to the puddle’s mass.  How could this be you, Andrew?

i was never this way when there was a reason not to be, when someone gave a fuck how i acted.  i had a wife, i had friends, i had colleagues who respected me, i had a brother.  they’re all gone now so what the fuck does it matter how i act?  i could walk around with my dick hanging out of my zipper and vomit instead of saying hello and no one would care.

I will us down onto a stool.  I unbutton his top button and adjust it to the right buttonhole.  I try to slow our breath, slow our thoughts, try to let him hear my thoughts.  He seems to sense them, like how a noise from the real world creeps into a dream without being recognized for what it is.  Andrew, it’s okay.  You’re brilliant.  I know that you are brilliant and so do you.  That solution of yours, you can make another one or if not you can make something just as brilliant.  I remember you, you could do anything.

how could i do anything after i killed eric? no, not just killed, got him eaten alive by acid.  Eric is dead, eaten by acid.  Am I a part of that puddle, a part of that acid fizzing out of this machine?  how the fuck do i do anything after that?  what if i killed someone else?  i would have dissolved the solution by now if i had the nerve.  it’s just it’s the only thing i ever discovered that’s worthwhile.  if it goes then what was i even here for?  but then why didn’t i ever do anything with it?  i’m such a fucking loser.  what the fuck was i blaming tyler for?  i’ll dissolve it tonight like i should have done nine years ago.

No.  Andrew, don’t throw it away.  You can keep it safely, you’ve done it for nine years now.  There’s no reason to throw your life’s work away.  Eric wouldn’t want you to.  Not much has leaked out and we can patch up the afm/stm machine tonight to save the rest.  In the morning you can start to figure out what you’re going to do with the compound.  Everything’s going to be fine.

This is all very familiar, from some past life that seems too old to have happened in recorded history, like a hieroglyph carved into crumbling cave walls.  Andrew gets upset and I have to talk him down.  I remember doing it a hundred times when he was falling apart over a girl or breaking his head to figure out a formula.  It feels like I’m reanimating some muscle that’s gone stagnant and decrepit from eons of neglect.

Such a Night

There were twice as many people as I have ever seen inside of Downtown Books.  Text-dotted footprints cut from old books led the way to the stages.  People painted and drew in the aisles.  People laughed at the stories that were told and nodded along to the poetry and tapped their toes to the rock and roll.  People turned to the person next to them and said, "They're really good."  They ate cheese.  They tried to find their friend and found themselves in the circus section or the dim dog-book corner and laughed at finding great books that they never knew existed.

The proprietor laughed at the nonstop line of folks carrying armloads of discontinued paperbooks and obscure encyclopedias.  People proved, against popular conceptions, that they still read and that they value books, and what's more, they value art and the artists that compose it.  It was fun....!

A Pat On The Back

An excerpt from Sean Williamson's upcoming book Mighty Me

Tonight I got it bad and they don’t know it. Little Steve lays out some shots and Merna cackles like a demon watching Three And A Half Men. It’s busy, for Wednesday it’s busy, twelve or so overall.

I take the shot and Little Steve opens me a beer. I eat some popcorn, look at my phone, take a sip, look at my phone, take out my wallet and look for a phone number I wrote on the back of a CVS receipt, look at my phone.

Karl with the broken arm tells me about his kid busting his garage door. I ask him how his arm is doing.

“Still broken” he says.

Nobody calls me Dirty anymore. Which is good, or maybe it’s because nobody sees me anymore. I’ve been out of the loop. Hanging out with Wendy and whatnot.

Two guys a few years younger than me in school talk in the corner by the BASS poster. It has a bass on it. One says to the other-

“Well you shouldn't have just tossed em’ without asking”

To which the other replies “I just figured everyone was done with the penis cakes. How much penis cake does one household need anyway?”

Which I thought was a fair question, but forget that now, focus man.

No call, no text, maybe she’s at her mothers house. But you won’t go there, her mother is not into you, you are not her favorite person.

These people here, they don’t know. Unless you show it.

And everyone laughs crazy as hell at what that lady from Kenosha says and we all have another shot.

I walk outside passed three twentysomethin’s saying nothing and into the road, the air is wet like summer but it’s colder now. These people don’t know anything right now, if they do they only know a version, they don’t know you got it bad.

And its a dastardly oneupper when you tell the woman you love you cheated and she tells you she’s pregnant. But that, my friends, happened just a few hours ago, to me.

I shoudnt have said anything, hell, when i said-

“Baby I got something to tell you.”

She said excitedly “Wait, me first.” with beaming eyes. But I told her it couldnt wait, then what I did.

And all the boozing and stumbling, strip club clubbin, all the backstabs and overdoses, long looks and cold shoulders, cheap beer, nasty leers, accidental success and almost impossible failures - this really takes the cake.

My Lady, pregnant with my baby probably doesn't want to see me anymore. I’m surprised she ever did. I made damn well sure to fuck this up, thanks me.

To The Replay

I’ve been writing less and thinking a little bit more. If thinking is what you want to call it. I always had a hard time reading in front of people and was a lot more comfortable talking shit. Even then I lose track and have a hard time saying the things I want to say. It is only once every great while I cut out the scatter shot philosophizing and say exactly what I mean.

So anyways, I’ve been taking a break from the ramble jambles because there’s something I want to get at.

I said last night at the downtown books reading that I think to myself, when things get hard, that I wish I had made the exact opposite decision in every step of my life.

If I would have worked harder, focused more, been less impulsive, less romantic – things could have been entirely different. I would have a good job and a car and a gal and a full fridge, I could go to the movies when I wanted, I could go to baseball games when I wanted, if I had known how it was going to be I could have changed everything. I could have felt different.

Instead I’m walking in the rain and hanging out at fucking Kinkos, eating slims at bus stops and cursing to myself, about myself – all in the attempt to get maybe one, hell maybe two people to read my newest piece of underground fiction.

And a long time ago Ladd from the band PARK told me and the dudes that if we wanted to play in a band, if we wanted to enjoy it and get any sense of fulfillment from it, we had to be able to measure our own success. And we played for another six or seven years after that. All things considered I measured it out and it was a great thing that brought a lot of fun times and new friends.

And there was a show last night and Downtown Books that I think exceeded everyone’s expectations, people coming out and enjoying fiction reading, live art and acoustic music sets. Shit was bonkers man. I thought it would go well but it exceeded all my expectations.

Even in the good times, the triumphs and victories, the underlying doubt remains because after you drink your drinks and applaud each other’s efforts you still wake up lonely on someone’s couch and walk to school to take a nap in the stacks.

Last night I said that many people believe that art comes from passion. I rarely feel passionate in a traditional way about my work. But in the same way I can’t go back and change the decisions I’ve made or reconstruct my life, I can’t stop wanting to write books and make movies. If passion means doing something because you think you don’t have a choice, I got mad passion. If passion means writing and making art because you’re trying to save your life, I got that too.

Someone once told me that waking up early for work on a cold Milwaukee morning was the loneliest time in their life, that they were the only one alive and the two minutes they sat in bed before they actually had to step out and get dressed was the longest two minutes known to humankind. The two minutes of isolation and loneliness stretching on into infinity until it was not a measure of time at all, but a symbol, a statement of affairs and a stamp on their reality.

And the more decisions we make (one way or the other) the more we scatter these statements of loneliness, which only fade when we don’t expect it.

We’re all responsible for what we do, and while making art can be frustrating and hard – It’s also a choice (hell I wouldn’t be a good doctor or dentist anyhow). So as my man Frank always says, “You made that bed, now lay in it.”

So let’s lay.
Happy Friday and much love,
SW

Acid Fizz - 4

Brand new continuation of WWD's ongoing serialized dramatic madness, Acid Fizz.  The first three parts can be found here, here, & here.

click picture & open link in a new tab for a song while you read

VIRGINIA HOLZKORN

Great good golly it thrills me so when the apple of my eye whispers in my ear.  I get real speechless and I act so shy but all I can say is a-nee-nee-nee-nee-nye.

My hair flings side to side as I shake it.  I doo-doo-la-la and hum to the song.  I sip my coffee from a paper cup.  Slurp.  Mm.  Sweet and luke-warm.  Now what do I do next?  Let’s see.  I flip through the records I have stacked here.  Talking Book, Brooke Benton, Doc Watson, Ohio Players (later), Beach… Boys.  Why do I love to hear the Beach Boys every time I’m in love?

            Not love, come on, get real.  You just like him, how could you not, he’s a hunk, a categorical hunk.  He likes Howlin’ Wolf, he touched your arm, your arm.  Ah!  Okay.  Enough.  Beach Boys it is then and not because you’re in love (not in love) but because the Beach Boys rock.  Got to be Wild Honey, Wild Honey, Wild Honey.  Title track?  I Was Made to Love Her (I was born in Little Rock, had a childhood sweetheart, we were always hand in ha-ha-ha-hand)?  Darlin’?  Darlin’?  Darlin’ (dig-diggity darling, who who my darling you’re so fine).  Ding.  That’s it.

            Slide the platter out of its case.  Grease: The Original Soundtrack from the Motion Picture gets expelled to the mess of unsheathed records on the counter.  Let’s see, side two, cut three.  Lower the needle.  Play it on the in-house track.  Sounds good, sounds great.  Stop the spin.  Turn it backwards and there’s the backup singers in reverse and slow, dooj-blaj-cooj-brooj.

            He wanted to kiss me, I could feel it.  We should have slipped away.  I wanted to kiss him.  I bet those lips taste like applesauce.  Him on me…

            Shit.  My playlist is blank.  Fuck.  I haven’t filled it out in a half hour.  Let’s see, I had Wanda, Olivia and John before that, Booker T., Aretha, no, Chambers Brothers, Dylan before that, then Aretha, and what fucking started the set?  Shit.  I can’t remember.  This is why it’s no good to be in love.  Fuck you, in love.  Just fuck him already so you can get off your mind.  Yeah right.  I fuck him and I won’t stop thinking about him until next Christmas.  I don’t want him off my mind.  I like him on my mind.  Bobby.

            This is why you fucked up the Chambers Brothers.  Snap out of it.  Don’t want another insomniac calling in and complaining because you accidentally let their favorite song play for three seconds.  Hooka Tooka, my soda cracker.  I wonder if anyone will notice that I only played love songs all night.  The secret theme for the night.

            Ring-ring!  “Hello…  Hello…  Hello…”  They huff.  I’ve heard this huff before and the static over it.  The receiver rubs something.  Click.  Dial tone.  That’s sad.  It’s sad that my music hits dead ends.  I wish everyone that heard my show heard my thoughts at the same time, I try to make that happen.  Not all of them, but the important ones, the big ones.  I want them to hear my thoughts through the music.  It’s great when they call back and I can hear theirs.  It’s an open channel, it flows both ways.  It’s a pity that there’s someone out there that can hear me but can’t let themselves be heard.  I wonder what they’re like.  Could it be Bobby?  No.  He’s not shy.  But I would like it if he called right now.

            It’s funny.  When I look at the dials and the records and keep my head in the music and my thoughts and then all of a sudden I look up and I’ve forgotten where I am.  I’m alone in a dark building in the middle of the night.  It’s lonely and a little scary, but also nice.  I love it actually.  I’m alone but I’m connected to who knows?  A couple hundred people probably, maybe more, all over the world.  That couple in Tacoma that listens every week, the request last week from New York for The Exciters, that guy in Rio who likes to email.  Ah!  I love Saturday nights.

            And I ain’t got nobody.  I got some money ‘cause I just got paid.  Oh shit.  Can it wait until after the Beach Boys?  No.  Got to be now.  I got eleven seconds until the end of the song…  Ten…  I can do it.

            Lift the needle, toss the platter.  Flip through the records.  Not Sam Cooke, not Sam Cooke, not Sam Cooke, not Sam Cooke, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, shit yes Sam Cooke.  Side one, cut three.  Dip into silence for a second.  Drop the needle.  Hiss.  Silence just a hair too long.  Good.  It builds suspense.  Another Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody.  I got some money ‘cause I just got paid.  Now how I wish I had someone to talk to.  I’m in an awful way.  Dig this.

it's an....

EXTRAVAGANZA!!!

Do you dream of wandering through tall windy stacks and then seeing someone reading a story aloud?

Perhaps you like very dusty things, and also music performed by obscure but talented musicians from Milwaukee?

Or, you like cats. Specifically Milo and Merlin, the cats that live at...

DOWNTOWN BOOKS!!!

If you answered yes to any or all of these questions, you should come to the Domestic Gastronomists/World Wide Dirt sponsored DOWNTOWN BOOKS EXTRAVAGANZA!

June 23rd (this thursday) at Downtown Books (327 E Wisconsin Ave)
Doors open at nine (when we usually close) and the shows start at 9:30
     **I say shows, because this will be a multi-staged event, with people performing live art, music and
           literature simultaneously, on various stages.

Performers Include:

WWD's Dirt (Sean Williamson) and Guy (Parker Winship)
Nick Kotecki
Bethany Price
Sleeper Lake
Le Anna Eden
Mary Shippee
Travis Thorp
Rebecca Pollack
A Robot!!!!

and OTHERS!!!!

Sure

Sure I bought a couple shitty donuts and a Mellow Yellow from the gas station this morning.

Sure I splashed around in dirty water all day.

Sure I ran from the bus stop to the party at my house I thought I’d miss.

Sure I’m looking at my rolls of film in the fridge next to a penis cake (why?) and chicken tenders.

Sure, it’s true.

But I aint scared of nothing, for sure that’s true.

Acid Fizz - 3

New installment of the adventure/scifi/fantasy/tragedy/comedy/travelogue/romance/epic serial Acid Fizz.  The previous two can be found below or here (chapter 1) and here (chapter 2).

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PAULO QUIRINO

Gasp.  I wake.  My head is where it was on my pillow, damp with sweat, my body still weighed down against the bed like it was before.  I really escaped that time, I really did.    I just didn’t get far enough and now I’m back.  Chin up, Paulo.  You’ll get it.  Don’t worry.

            “Paulo?  Paulo?  Are you alright?”  Ed says from the bunk above me.

            “Yes.  I’m fine.”  I whisper to hint for him to keep his voice low.  I’ll be gone again in a minute, this time for good.

            “You were breathing loud,” he says.

            “I was having a strange dream.”

            “What was it?”

            I know he won’t understand it, but I tell him.  “I was swimming through a black pond, under the water, and someone grabbed me by the arms, they were trying to pull me to the surface.  I pulled away but then I sank to the bottom and I woke up.”  It’s strange to tell Ed about these things, like splicing together two movies of disparate tones.

            “Do you have my teddy bear?” he asks.

            “Why?  You want it back?  You were going to throw it away, weren’t you?”

            “I already told you.  Yes.”

            “Good.”

            “Why is that good?”

            I’ll be gone in another second.  I don’t want to get caught up in an argument with him.  “Why is that good?  Because you said why, because it’s too painful, you said.”

            “It’s not good.  It’s just what I have to do.”

“Yeah, well.  But you’re going to throw it away for sure?”

            “Yes.”

            “You promise?”

            “Sure .”

            “Okay.  Good.  Can I sleep with it just for tonight?  And then you throw it away tomorrow?”

            “Do you want to keep it?”

            “No.  Just for the night.”  I pull another string of stuffing from the bear and chew it.

            “Fine.”

            “And you’ll throw it away tomorrow and you promise, right?”

            “Yes,” he says but like it’s a question.

            “Okay.  Thank you.”

            “Yeah.”

            “Ed?”

            “Yes.”

            “One other thing.”

            “What?”

            “I wrote a letter to Jake Heast.  Will you give it to him when you pull hospital duty tomorrow?”

            “I do the hospital on Friday.”

            “Okay.  Will you give it to him when you pull hospital duty on Friday?”

            “Sure.”

            “You sure?”

            “Yes.”

            “You promise?”

            “Yes.  Jesus.”  Too loud again.

            “Shhhhh.  Okay.  I already put the letter in your pants pocket so you won’t forget.”

            He says nothing.  The smell of blood wafts up from underneath my bunk.  I wish there was music on the radio, but she’s still talking.  I lie here for a moment and rest before I leave again.  I try to forget the fear that I might not get far again, that I might not be able to leave for good.  What then?  Forget it.  Relax.

This place isn’t really that bad.  Of course it is, it’s that bad and worse.  I’ve got hurt and seen gallons of blood spill to the floor and men cooped away from their lives.  On the outside they’d call that kidnapping.  It is, in my opinion, a horror to keep a man from the world when it’s right there, right outside his window.  I sometimes have a problem getting my mind around how this is possible, much less lawful.

They take so much away that getting anything feels strange.  You get so used to living in a blank that something real dropped into it drives you crazy.  The teddy bear is a Father’s Day present, an “I still love you, daddy” present, and it tears Ed up just to look at it.

            “If Jimmy wanted us to be close, he should have hid a gun in it so I could shoot my way out of here,” he said.  “Or put it to my head and shoot my way out that way.”  He really said that.  And then he cried and tore the bear’s leg off, poor guy.

            She’s still talking on the radio.  I’d like to hear one more song before I go.  I love Ginny’s music but she just talks too much.  “Sorry,” she says and then there’s one of those pauses you only get on community radio.  “I was just a little distracted before and I let the Chambers Brothers record play long and had to cut it off, so I do apologize.”  She makes more mistakes than any DJ I know of, but it is charming somehow.  “We had a caller in here a couple minutes ago and I fully concur with his assessment, that ‘Hooka Tooka’ is a bitching song that does not deserve to get cut off, so I promise we’ll get it in next week’s show or the week after.  One of the next few weeks for sure.”  She has a hot voice.  I bet she’s a fox in real life.  We’ll see.  I owe myself a Coke if she’s not.

            Yeah.  It is awful and it isn’t.  I can still lie here and listen to the radio, still be me, still fuck Ed, talk to him.  I have to get out of here, but it’s not so bad.

            The bunk above me squeaks and I stare into the bottom of his mattress, wanting to reach through it and touch him.  Ed.  I’m still here.  I might as well say something to him while I’m still here.

“Ed,” I say.

            “Huh?”

            “Most things in my life, you know, I could take or leave.  But you, I’ve always liked you.”

            “Okay.  Yeah.”  He mumbles, “Me too.”

            “Okay.”  Good enough.  “And you’re going to toss the bear?”

            He grunts.  “Yes.”

            “And you promise to give that letter to Jake Heast?”

            “Not if you fucking ask me again.”

            “Okay.  Thank you, Ed.”

            She finally starts a new song.  She doesn’t play this kind of thing much, but in truth I’ve always liked this song.

I could stay and listen to the rest, but it’s time now.  I feel it.  Close my eyes.  Feel the offering I left under my bed rise through me and lift me up with it, through Ed’s mattress, through Ed, the ceiling, the cosmos, all the way to Oxalá.

            Oxalá, Father of Gods, my head is yours.  Oxalá, Father of Gods, these offerings are yours.  Oxalá, allow me to pass through your realm on my journey.  I know I cannot progress without your blessing and I bow to you now and forever.

            I breathe in the cell one more time and stare through the bear on my lap.  Numbness inches across my fingers, then my toes.  I lose my hands, my feet. Breathe out.  Feel myself spread.  Oxalá, Oxalá, Oxalá, Oxalá.  My arms gone, legs gone.  Chest gone, breath gone, blood gone, and then, and then.  And then, here… goes… my… head.  Thank you, body.  Thank you, Ed.  Thank you, Oxalá.  Thank you.  Thank you.

Pete June

For other reasons, I called Pete June in Omaha. Hell, he didnt want to talk to me. I wasnt suprised.

I thought about coming out and seeing her, I said.

Yeah, well, I’ll see it when I believe it, he said.

Other way around, I said.

You know what? fuck you, stay away from us, he said. The line went dead.

I figured that’s how it’d be and finished my cobbler.

I Aint Sad Girl

And it never seemed like anyone wanted to mind their own beeswax. So lets just get out with it, shall we?

On nights where all the old world rushes on like half a nightmare. Like those reoccurring roads I have in my dreams that lead eventually to a huge restaurant/hotel/museum built into the side of the tree.

Or the gas station that is never really open, or (more often than not) the barn with the open door i can’t see inside. It’s there though, over a small valley from the house with the swinging screen door.

I consider everyone as up in the game. Hey, and maybe that’s what twenty-five-year old dudes think, that they can’t lose. Maybe not. I just like what I see going on and it seems like the universe is giving a payoff. And in my estimation they only come now and then. I remember being twenty and feeling like I was completely fucked (and a few times since then) but I’m still here.

I don’t know man.

You ready for the Downtown Books Extravaganza?

My rib feels terrible buts it’s summer and shit gets fun in Milwaukee.

Keep lovin and dreamin, devilishly scheming, be nice and respectful, and live these moments like a monster - but the good kind, like from Monster Squad.

And always remember that it isn't all roses for anyone, eventually we all take a hit. So be grateful and helpful.

love,

SW

Acid Fizz - 2

Here's the second piece of the new adventure serial, Acid Fizz.  The first can be found just below it.

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THE JAR MAN

The black sludge sucks over my body, fills the cavities left by my vaporized senses.  All I taste and feel is the sludge and it’s just me again.

            I can’t hope that I’ll see the village again.  I won’t even look.  But I do look and it is there, little lights like pinholes poked through the sludge all the way to the outside.  I focus on the holes and they expand, fleck the darkness into colored blemishes, then they take shape.

            I could stop.  There’s no proof that going further will help.  They might throw me out or even know some way to hurt me.  I could just drift away.  Let the ghosts in the village swirl in their mysterious patterns and I could recline back into the numb sludge.  It might one day consume me completely and then my suffering would be over.

            No.  I promised myself.  After I turned away from the last village, the last light I’ve seen in this darkness for years, I promised myself I would visit the next one.  More vast years agonizing over the same neglected path are unthinkable.  I let the shapes grow and they are frightening just like before.  They bloat and then they’re so big they might grow right over me and crush me.

            Before me a pale road like a stream of white smoke widens and on either side of it pale houses inflate.  The road ends at another house both greater and more vague than all the others.  The village feels as immense as a planet, but it is only a block and it looks as if it is constructed of dirty paper scraps pasted together.

            I could turn around right now.  I walk forward.  A grayish-blue man to my left wearing shabby clothes and a brimmed hat stares through me.  He opens his palm to the ground as if he’s waving to it.  Something black leaks from his hand and falls.  The road absorbs it and for a moment I can see through the ground, see the man’s black ooze drip from under the road down to whatever is beneath it.

            Another gray man puffs out of the house across the street.  He glances at me and then starts toward the end of the road, to the big house.  He has the long beard of a hermit and a sack rides under his shoulder.  I approach him.  Two black shapes kick out in front of me in time with every step I take. 

            Legs.  I have a body.  I thought I was only a few floating ideas bundled together with a rubber band.  But I just couldn’t see myself all those years in the lumenless sludge.  I have a body, solid black and glossy, without dimensions or shades as if I were a silhouette. Am I a silhouette?

            I walk quickly beside the gray man.  Ahead of us a bubble rises from the ground.  It is so richly black it might be the darkest hue of another color.  The gray man grumbles as he regards it.  The bubble twitches, slides along the gravel, then deflates back into the road.

I pick up my speed, pass the gray man, then turn and stop.  He stops a few strides short of me.  I open some valve in me and free the words I’ve circled over five thousand times since the last village I passed.  “I am a spirit. I have floated through darkness for years.  I do not know what I am supposed to do.  Will you please tell me?”

            The gray man opens his mouth and I scramble to understand what he says but the words tumble away from me.  “What?” I say.  “What did you say?”  He repeats the same phrase.  It spills out like water.  I can’t catch it.

            He steps around me and makes his way to the big house.  “Please,” I say, but I don’t.  Nothing comes out.  “Please,” I try to force out of my mind and into this world, but there’s no sound.  Did I speak to him?  Have I said anything at all or have I only been exhausting air?

            “WAIT!” is the word squealing in my mind, but on the outside it’s transparent, a glass bullet shot against nothingness.  The gray man walks away.  I don’t belong here where my soul is phoned in as a shadow and an empty voice.  Or is that all that’s left of me after all this time alone in the sludge?

            The gray man stops.  In front of him the ground bubbles black again.  He stares at it, reaches into his sack.  The bubble flattens and vanishes.  The gray man locks his eyes on the spot it submerged into, as if waiting for it to reappear.

            It does.  It leaps from the ground, arced like a trout above a stream.  It stretches its arms and legs in the air then dips back into the road, but not all the way, leaving just a bump like the back of its heel maybe.  The black bump jerks down the road.  The gray man follows it and draws a dagger from his sack.  He dives to the ground and lunges at the bubble with his dagger’s point, but just misses it.  The bubble jukes up the road the way I came.

            The gray man looks up through the dust cloud he’s unsettled and spits a sound.  It might be a curse word.  The bubble is about to slide right past me.  I don’t know what to do.  I kneel and grab it with both hands.  It has the feel of slick skin fuzzed with static electricity.  I tug it halfway out of the ground, holding it by the arms.  I feel its pulse.  It struggles in my grip, so heavy and strong I won’t keep it in my fingers more than a few moments.

I look to the gray man for help.  He scurries through the fog of pale particles, the dagger in his hand leading his way.  The black mass in my arm twists and I lose one of its arm.  It sinks into the ground and I grip one wrist in both my hands.  The gray man sprints up to help me hold it and just before his chalky hands reach mine the black mass squirms out from between my fingers.  It roots into the ground and disappears beneath it.

The gray man looks at me and speaks.  More curses.  He gibbers and motions his hand, first at me, then at the end of the road I came from.  He wants me to go.  I wish I could speak.  He stomps down the road to the big cloudy house.

I stand at the side of the road.  The man with the hat still waves to the ground.  I don’t think he’s noticed any of what has happened.  He sways a little as if drunk.  I stare up at the hollow white sky and hope no one else tells me to leave.