and, you know, living in a deadend capitalist hellscape wondering where all my sugar daddies at
never had them bitches before and now i'm fifty. a motherfucker is due some lucre if not celebrity
youtoooobz you failed me
Chalk. I'm quite fond of it. It's up there with charcoal, for soft media. Soft media captures the diffuse, particulate, impish nature of light. Hard media, like inks & paint, lock & block light out. The big hassle is getting all the chalk dust off the paper, once you've worked a sufficient amount into the fibre of the piece. I'm attempting something tricky right now; the hope is thoroughly embedding the blue chalk in the paper and then dusting it over with drafting charcoal and working THAT in. If all goes well then there will be a blue "glow" beneath the gray shading. If all goes awry, then it will be a massive setback. Just gonna be patient and work it step by step...
In the dark of the bridge the sonofabitch nance rogue deputy cop Charlie Rakes takes three bullets and a knife deep in his viscera and that almost begins to make up for the carnage what he brought.
Lawless (2012) is Nick Cave channeling Dick Tracy energy & John Hillcoat catching it in the shadows that connect us to a time & place wrought from bloodfeud and bottled lightning.
Fire in the blood indeed.
Sometimes I'll just be cooking soup on the stove and I'm back in the aftermath of the accident, waking up in the hospital. I'll just be doing something mundane & efficiently and I'm right back in the middle of being sewn up and then left in a dark hallway listening to the sounds of a hospital on a bad night with the network down and wondering what happened and where I am and if my husband knows where I am.
It's a little discombobulating in that it's just memory. Very clear, very clean memory. Memory wired to pain and confusion. That doesn't get dull. It's the stuff that isn't keyed to the Big Notes that tends to get slippery, now.
Anyway. I'm okay. Yesterday I was just experiencing flashes of pain. Today I'm involuntarily reliving their point of origin. As I prepare potato and corn chowder. I just got done with all the prep.
"Hello," says Siegfried as he returns from work.
Started the bottom. Now we here.
Re-reading heavy lately. Could be because the present's so shitty the future looks like '72. I may've missed some stuff. You could maybe give-a-damn? If my ass believed in patreon. But, shit. Started from the bottom, now the old teen's here. Started from the bottom now we here:
Listings are in reverse chronological order, freshest-to-oldest. Read the top five Just Today b/c have I mentioned quitting smoking has my голова crenellated like one of CF's typographical fugues of revelation...?
Distant Ruptures: A Selection of Comics (2000-'10) - written & illustrated by Christopher Forgues
Stormwatch #47 - 'Assembly' (1993) - written by Warren Ellis & illustrated by Jim Lee + Richard Bennett
Dark Knight Universe Presents: The Atom #1s (2016) - written by Frank Miller & Brian Azzarello, illustrated by Frank Miller & Klaus Janson, and coloured by Alex Sinclair
Silicon Horizon #1-3 (1992) - written by Mario Bergeron & illustrated by Richard Forgues
Billy Budd, KGB, a.k.a. Bouche du Diable / The Devil's Mouth (1989-'90) - written by Jerome Charyn & illustrated by Franois Boucq
Secret Agent X-9 (1934) - written by Dashiell Hammet & illustrated by Alex RaymondX-9: Secret Agent Corrigan (Nov. 1970) - written by Archie Goodwin & illustrated by Al Williamson
Blood Lines a.k.a. The Fury #1-7 (1987-'88) - written & illustrated by Rob Walton
night life #1-8 (1986-'91) - written by Derek McColloch & illustrated by Simon Tristam
Ring of Roses #1-4 (1992) - written by Das Petrou & illustrated by John Watkiss
Grendel #16-17 (1988) - written & illustrated by Matt Wagner, and coloured by Tom Vincent
'The Aerialist' chs 1-3, from Dark Horse Presents #40, 45, & the DHP 5th Anniversary Special (1990-'91) - written & illustrated by Matt Wagner
Stormwatch: Team Achilles #2-5 (2002) - written by Micah Ian Wright & illustrated by Whilce Portacio, w/ colours by Alex Sinclair, Jeromy Cox, Guy Major, & Whilce Portacio
Post-Mortem starring Savage Henry & Those Annoying Post Bros. (1977-'90) - written & illustrated by Matt Howarth
Introducing Postmodernism (2004-'05) - written by Richard Appignanesi, Ziauddin Sardar, & Patrick Curry, and illustrated by Chris Garratt
Gov't websites with RFKjrwtf's sundried dessicated potato face on 'em should be a crime.
Another day off, another day reading on the beach. Up a tree and beneath it. A peculiar feeling, to be nearly fifty, sitting on a stack of books. Not literally, but near as damn. PAINLESS, AZURE PANTRY, DENIZEN, THE KILL HOUSE, and PROMISELAND. Five of the fuckers. Who'da thunk.
I keep saying, "I'm not a writer," and there's nobody to argue. But the OCDemon in my head has different ideas. Quite a few, if page count is any indication. Not sure where the OCDemon gets them all. I don't quite remember writing the possessed monologue toward the end of the PROMISELAND script. Not entirely.
I do remember having Christian's Smith-Corona at the Hip Pharmacy, back in my late teens, early twenties. He loaned it to me to fuck around with and clean up. I used it for sure, but for what, who the fuck knows. At some point he swung past, curious what I'd been up to, said no-one had seen me for two weeks. Said Chris Neal told him "Dee is writing the great american novel," to which I replied "The great american novel is a rosy bucket of balls." Which elicited a laugh, and he asked to swap the Smith-Corona (was it his dad's? i think it had been his dad's) for his old IBM tower, which I guess was my first computer, after leaving home. I'd had an Apple IIc in high school, and vague recollections of 'writing' / free-associating a freewheeling script-- about 60 pages, single-sided --with conceits largely swiped from Phantasm (1979) and teevee Peaks. So I repeated that process of typing whatever the fuck seemed compelling, on the new machine, and the results weren't half-terrible. There was a lot of Wild Palms (1993) and Destiny Turns On the Radio (1995), and not much else that wasn't swiped from Fire Walk With Me (1992). Can't even remember the title. Prob'ly best.
Christian was the one with the lit degree, and over the course of our time in Auburn-- 1994-99 --we were engaged in a friendly competition to see who could read the western canon of 90s hipness quickest, so his constant encouragement meant a hell of a lot. I always expected him, or one of his friends (Christian was, is, a great collector of people with talent) to produce that Great American Ballbucket. But, y'know, life didn't happen that way. He went off to work for fuckin' Google, to drink and smoke his way across Europe, leaving me in Atlanta, having literally broken up his last home, 'The House of Slack'. Twentysomething years in Atlanta was tailormade revenge for that wrong, I figure.
See, I kind of ruined his room-mate situation, after he'd ruined the previous one, by not fucking the right room-mate. We both fucked incorrect room-mates, which sent us caroming off into weird, wrongly-angled lives, billiards-style. [Let us avoid the subject of Charlie and Kate, except to note how thoroughly frustrating it is to be a witness & interlocutor to friends fucking other friends over. Which I'm sure Christian grokked, given what happened with me...] I still haven't forgiven myself, exactly, for failing to fuck Saneesh. I should have. Instead I stole his girlfriend. Typical ol' me. To be fair she was only with Saneesh because she'd made a pass at me the year previous & I redirected her at Saneesh. Then he left town, for several months; though she & I only waited a few hours after his car left the driveway. Hyptertypical old me. Zero impulse control.
Dennis Whorehopper: that shoulda been my name. If I couldn't smoke it or drink it, for sure I'd eventually fuckit up, up and away.
I know the whole idiotic scene tore Christian up. But he was tired of watching me be crazy. I cannot disagree. Crazy Dee wasn't great entertainment. Witnessing me losing my shit over & over, destroying everything and starting anew. It was endless. If there was a sin committed on C's side it was simply that he didn't try to arrange psychiatric help. He did every other damn thing he could think of: including encouraging me to be a writer, whether I was one or not.
So hey. Christian. The g.a.n.? Still a ballbucket. But PROMISELAND is my ballbucket.
Figure I know who the dedication will be to.
By night, dim streetlight trickling in. The khaki of river mud. The tricycle with its rainbow coloured appliques, its wooden panels and wheels, sunken. Like nothing inherited, no known or secondhand known toy, but evocative of them.
So no surprise when I find him stretched out on our couch. Elbows up, technician's fingers interlaced back of his skull. Hair dark as his forties, drawn into ponytail. The pooled light on his glasses obscuring his eyes. He pretends to not understand my anger. Not smiling.
He pretends to not understand. But he sees its radiance in me. A fury like hot asphalt, warping the air between us. It flares, swells and distorts as I turn, my voice an eruption. The accusation of abuse sliding off his pretense of ignorance, for but a second, as I pile it on.
I won't let him not hear. I cannot let him pretend any longer. He knew. He always knew. The living room feels smaller. Or is it the heightened pulse of emotion that's reduced my surroundings. The man on the couch, on the defensive, stony indifference downshifting to fear as he notices my balled fists.
No water beneath that bridge. There was once. That childhood belonged to another.
Marijuana was part of my life.
Is that a sentence? It feels incomplete.
Marijuana was part of my life for decades.
Yeah, still looks like a sentence. Still feels lopped-off.
Marijuana was part of my life for decades, even when I wasn't smoking it.
Hmm. Closer. I dimly recall, at seventeen, trying (& failing) to smoke my parents' pot. I wasn't a smoker, at that point. I hadn't had my first cigarette with Cameron. My first time smoking weed was with Chris Neal, probably 1998. Had a little anxiety, got minor spins, but it wasn't any stronger-- or more pleasant --than alcohol. I had convinced myself that since previous exposure hadn't done anything, what I smoked with Neal was laced. And of course I was a human party foul because I expressed this anxiety to others, trying to convince them something was awry with the weed.
That put me off it for a bit. I stuck to alcohol, when I was drinking. Which wasn't infrequently, but it wasn't an avowed Habit, either. The only full-on habit was cigarettes. It wasn't until '99 that pot came back into things. There was a band kid, James Blackledge, and a friend / neighbor, JoMichael Nelson. Summer, we'd smoke up and listen to Massive Attack vs. The Mad Professor on the rooftop of the converted motel we were living in... Take late night field trips to Auburn University's art department, or the practice spaces of nearby churches, and do guerilla recordings. This was the first (adult?) time I ever flirted with actually Making Music, which speaks to how fuckin' high I must've been.
But still, not really a habit. I didn't keep weed around the apartment. In part because every time I ever sold anyone any mushrooms or acid-- my plug was my manager at CheeBurger, CheeBurger --then every useless teenage waster in Auburn would somehow make their way to my door. For a while there was a sign on my front door which declared "THIS IS NOT A HIP PHARMACY", to deter the dopers. Just being around them made me want to be straightedge. Which became the other extreme of the pendulum, for me. Either I was amenable to altered states, or I was too wise for 'em.
As you can see, I've not gotten any more personable. Or concise.
The Richmond & elsewhere years, weed didn't really factor in. So there was roughly three, four years where drugs didn't happen. Mainly because in the fall of '99 I overdosed on 'shrooms. A violently unpleasant bit of psychic fragmentation, there; I got the whole "ego death" thing the heads of my parents' generation used to drone on about. Put me off drugs almost entirely. Encouraged me to doubt my sanity more than I already did. The skittish look in people's eyes might have been projection, but there was no way to be 100%. So I took it as a given that there was Damage, and to steer the hell clear for as long as was tolerable.
Ut! But I tell a tiny lie. There was some weed in the Richmond era. I lived with a doorman at Bogart's, a lousy mob-run jazz club, and that dude smoked more than anybody you've ever met. Pete was a True Loser, bombed-out ragged-out from heroin use (which he would never deny), seventy if he was forty-five, and a gross old freak like I've never known before or since. Kept a television tuned to static in his bathroom, "as an art project", liked to sit and smoke on a stool by the vent fan in the terminally disused kitchen with his feet in the oven, and had an intractable attraction to using my toothbrush, which, given his bog monster dentistry, disgusted me. I don't know how many toothbrushes I bought him, or why he kept losing them, and using mine. I couldn't keep much of a stash around because if Pete ran through his, he'd sniff out mine, no matter where I squirreled it.
Eventually he pocketed all my-and-his-son's rent-- he rented an art studio to his kid, who lived elsewhere --and fucked off to Newport News to try and scam his daughter into caring for him, leaving his kid and me cleaning up that rat's nest and getting kicked out. Which was half a shame, because I liked the sound of the piano teacher, downstairs, and the widow's walk on the roof was my favourite feature from any home I've ever had.
Pete was an object lesson in what addiction looked like, and sometimes I forget what a warning he was.
But here it is, day four. And I remember. Lord.
Marijuana *was* part of my lives. All of 'em.
Not much to say here, apart from the epiphany that sometimes, when reading, a work does not sit well with a reader because they have their own book. My experience of being queer in North America is certainly not this author's, and vice versa. But he's using a familiar toolbox, the tools are anyone's to use, & I do not believe what he has built is very like what I have built. It's been a couple years since I decided to create a queer horror novel; I think mine stands on its own, and does not make the choices made here, because-- I'm not writing for the marketplace. I don't want to write for the market. I think orienting oneself towards that goal neuters the actual emotions of apprehension, anxiety, nervousness & fear that power such work. All that said, 'Red X' is not a bad book; but it is not a Great Book, as horror / folklore goes. It reads like work by a writer who feels beholden to the broader history of horror, as chronicled in the twenty-first century; it feels like 'Danse Macabre' and many other King books besides; it echoes too many other things, and speaks not enough for itself. It feels like a second novel, shepherded to print with the assistance of an editor who's looking to make their career off a Hot Young Author. But mostly it feels like I need to stop reading it, soon, because I have forty pages to go and too little patience left.
