May 24th, 1999

I just got done watching a documentary on a fantastic mind. I wanted to write immediately afterwards. I don’t know if it was his shaky voice, the way his words clung to the curtains, or how hot it became, lying there on the couch. Like nothing. But I did that for a little while longer anyways. Wanting to write this bad is like having a dead-weight, black-out drunk partner at the end of the party. The need to move is there, but the capacity to do it isn’t. Last night was a crazy one which I am still collecting bits and pieces of. I rearrange them in order of clarity, and clarity is determined on how badly disfigured any one friend of mine’s body was. Blurry, or not blurry? We’ll start with what I remembered first. It had rained. This is for certain, the air was moist this morning as it usually is during the mid-west spring, but this morning the air hung low like a damp rag on the line; and then I remembered the drumming of our feet on the blades of grass the stung so cold in the heat that they kept the feet lifting, like walking on fire, we were not going to stop, until it was over. We danced like it could get us out of jail, and lighting came and knocked hard, each white flash lit up our angelic faces, and for a second we were the Joker, or Manson, or any other villain we’ve all secretly admired once before. This was it the way to be young, if we closed our eyes tight enough we were dancing on the sidewalks of San Francisco in 1967.  The appearance of the police and the scattering of minors washed this masturbatory thought right off; in ’67 we could have kept dancing. And of course we left the two most ill-equipped people out there to deal with it. A curly haired girl whose biggest let-down in life was moving from Fargo, North Dakota to Lincoln, Nebraska, and had never had seen a cop up close before. And a psyched-out rockabilly kid from Seattle who didn’t know jack shit about Lincoln, or policemen who think with their guns rather than the pressing time like back home. In the end – though our house is permanently on their list of slum houses – everything turned out alright. A girl who had hidden in a closest came out in a fox fur checkered jacket, in such a way that I had to take second glance when she slunk up the stairs her drunken manner. I’m still tying together what happened after the new breed of calico fox entered the room. The night snaps back with the sound of a fly-swatter against glass when the curly haired nit-wit pulled me aside and explained that she had no idea I was an artist, this is funny, because until just now, neither did I. She was referring to the canvases and wine-bags with brightly painted gibberish on them littering my room. I thanked her, but the second I did I wished I could take it back. What’s next? I explain that this is a meditation exercise, I am no artist - I am merely a stressed-out therapy junkie who splatters bullshit on to the bags that used to hold the 9$ fifth of medication that I. Just. Cant. Get. Enough. Of. Re-use. Recycle. I of course have to make an example of this. Have you ever painted? Here, let’s paint this.

Waking up this morning and seeing the hard canvas that I’ve been lugging around with me for almost five years with vomit stains of black and spill on it made me smile crooked and sigh tough. It looks like complete utter shit, not that it was any good before, but; it’s not often that you’re reminded not to actually possess anything, and that a memory is the only thing you can hold on to. I will not forget their faces and pleading chants for “their turn” finishing this great big hum bug of modern art. I fell asleep in the living room, head down into a pillow after convincing one of my roommates to awkwardly come break up the middle school-aged attempts to fuck being thrown at me by the gayest straight boy I’ve ever met in my life. So many things about the picture were wrong, the cheese dip was gone, I couldn’t hear what the characters of the show I hadn’t watched in a decade were saying, I had smoked so many cigarettes that I was almost positive I had burned a hole in my stomach, and if I got up one more time to get water I would surely be asked why, and I couldn’t handle that. Twenty minutes, yes. That’s enough time to lapse between get ups and sit downs. In twenty minutes time I’d go get someone. Anyone. Every minute that had passed by, his hand crept, his body leaned and scooted. When I felt like the moment was just the right temperature, I literally shot off the couch, something you’d see a cartoon character do when they accidentally sit on a tack. Big animated clouds of dust probably smacked him in his face during my departure. I can’t be sure, I didn’t turn around to see. With the presence of my friend, I was able to slowly melt on to the floor with the appearance that I wasn’t denying this poor lad, but that I was simply making sure every one has a good view of the other, and enough room to sleep. 95 seconds passed and I was out.