Stalling for Time

I am still working on the third chapter. I hope to have it out tomorrow. I am very happy with the way this story is developing, and I feel like I can keep it going for awhile. For those of you wondering, this "novella" or story or whatever you would like to call it, is based off of Drunk Worms, which will be incorporated into the plot line at some point. For now, wish me luck!

-Stephen

Chapter Two: Ada

My eyes were blurry with tears and my head was shrouded in an angry fog, so I pulled over to the side of the old dirt road I had been roaring on and killed the engine. I felt dead inside and I let my head fall and smack itself hard on the plastic steering wheel. I sat there, with the night humming around my tiny metal frame, and calmed my buzzing head. I opened the glove box and rummaged around, my fingers expecting to find the small bottle of Jack Daniels that I kept for emergencies. It was gone though, and with a groan I realized my mother had probably stolen it from my truck around the time that she had taken my keys from me. I grabbed the bag I had hastily thrown randomly chosen personal items in my haste to escape and rummaged through it, praying to God that I would find booze. I found instead a smattering of clothes, a jar full of money I had been saving for four years, a toothbrush and razorblade, Amerika by Kafka, a picture of Caroline in a broken wooden frame, a small bottle of mouthwash and the last letter I had received from Ray. I tried drinking the mouthwash and felt my insides light on fire. I flopped out of the door and crawled over to the ditch on the side of the road and was sick. I picked myself out walked into the middle of the road and lay down on my back. The night was calm and quiet and the crickets and peepers were singing their summer song and the stars were winking down at me through the treetops. I was at peace then, and wanted nothing more in life than for a car to come roaring down that road, for that driver to be dazed and distracted and for that car to hit me full force out of this world and into the arms of whatever come next. No car came though, and I lay in that road until my brain flickered off and the night carried me away into a black and empty dream.
I woke up to the sun rising and a hangover. I was stiff in every joint and the sleeve I had used to wipe vomit from my lips was dried and disgusting. I wiped it off with my handkerchief and slowly walked back to my truck. I slid into the front seat and gathered my thoughts. I considered heading back towards my mother, but I decided against it. I took out my mason jar of money and counted the bills. It was a sizeable load for a glorified piggy bank and would hopefully keep me afloat for a couple of weeks if I rationed it wisely. I had some money in savings, but I didn’t want to touch it unless absolutely necessary. I started my truck and was happy to see the gas gauge resting decidedly on full. I started driving then, towards the only gas station in our town. I got there in less than ten minutes, stepped out of my traveling home and walked over to the payphone the station kept outside with a handful of quarters and an address book. I needed someplace to go, someone to see and someone to make me feel human. Ada’s was the first name on the list. I dropped the quarters in the slot and dialed the number, my fingers were crossed as the phone rang and finally a tired, raspy voice rattled through the telephone.
Ada Murphy was pale, thin girl with dark brown hair and Irish freckles and ice blue eyes. I had known her since high school where we had a brief fling our freshman year that was decidedly juvenile. She was a good friend of mine, and when we went our separate ways during college we managed to stay in contact and keep our friendship intact. Ada had always been a bit of a mystery to me, more demon than angel and more human than anyone I had met before. In high school she was always a true rebel, someone that I wished I could be as angry as and someone whose creative independence always struck a perfect chord of jealousy and envy within me. I had loved her for everything she was and hated her for everything I couldn’t be. We had some rough years during high school, but distance had tamed my jealousy and made her one of the closest friends I had. My final year of college had been straining in all of my relationships as I fell deeper into depression, deeper into my writing, and deeper into alcohol. The only people and had managed to keep contact with had been Caroline and Ray. I hadn’t spoken to her in a year, and as her voice came over the phone, the same as always, I hoped she remembered mine.
“Hello?”
“Hey Ada,” I pressed my fingers into the corner of my eyes “it’s Jack… Jack Capistrant.”
There was a pause and then her growl slithered through.
“No shit.”
“Yeah…so listen…How have you been Ada?”
“I’ve been good Jack.”
“Good, good. Are you still living with your parents?”
“Heh? Nah Jack, I’m in Boston.”
“Ah, some nice apartment with a view I bet.” She laughed, long and deep and I stayed silent, breathing quietly into the receiver. She found her breath and composed herself.
“Oh it is shit man, absolute shit. I’m living above a butchers shop. It stinks to high hell when the heat waves roll through and I hear at least one gunshot a night, Crack! Crack! Right outside my window. I never thought I’d be kept up by the smell of death and the sound of violence when I moved here I tell you that.”
“That sounds absolutely appalling.”
“Bah, it isn’t so bad after awhile. You should really come down and visit me sometime. I have a couch you can crash on and we can catch up and stay awake until the sun rises, listening to gunshots and getting drunk off our assess.”
“Actually Ada, that’s why I’m calling…see I’m in a transition period and I feel like driving myself into the ground. I need a place to stay traveling through to hell,” a place to curl up and forget, I thought, “and so I called you.”
She laughed again and she gave me her address and then I was on the road and driving south towards Boston, fighting off the tremors of a beaten body and feeling a glowing seed of optimism crack open and spread its tiny fingers outward.

Chapter One

The summer after I graduated college I was living with my mother at my childhood home, nestled in the woods of northern New Hampshire. My father had committed suicide a couple years before, and for awhile she craved my presence. I was working part time for a small construction company, but work was slow and the pay was weak and what little work came my way was unrewarding and left me feeling empty and defeated. I floated through the prime months of summer a corn husk in a yellow hardhat, wasting my time either manning a rusting backhoe or drinking straight from a handle of Old Crow by the river than ran through our property. I was alone. All of the friends I had grown up with were scattered across the country and across the globe.

My friend Ray Cassidy had enlisted in the marines and was off in some third world fighting for something he didn’t fully believe in, but that was Ray and I loved him for it. I heard from him occasionally in letters scrawled with a shaky hand, but I had never read any of them past the first word. The first word was always my name: Jack. I kept those letters in a big shoebox under my bed and years later, after he had come home with a Purple Heart and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and after I had moved out of my mothers and was living out in Northern California writing for a pulp fiction rag, I brought them out of that big box and burned them all.

Caroline Fisher, the girl who I loved, was in Paris floating along in the music scene and drowning in big bubbling vats of culture. I had only been able to talk to her in broken long distance static snippets and curt postcards that just made the distance that much more tangible. Missing her made me drink and drinking made me miss her.

I was an alcoholic that summer, someone who thought drinking first thing in the morning was a respectable activity. My mother was worried about me, especially when I started coming home from work stone dunk and stumbling. It got so bad that she stole my car keys and hid them away deep within the house. I missed two days of work and was fired. I blamed it on my mother and we had a fight that I wish I could forget. She called me a drunkard and a burden in her life and I called her a whore and yelled as loud as could, that she had driven dad to suicide and that was it for her. She broke down into tears and threw a vase at me. It hit me in the right arm and shattered on the floor and then I was packing and she threw my keys at me and I ran out to my truck and screeched away, radio blaring out country and tears pouring out of my eyes and I was screaming to Ray and Caroline and Moira, Ada, Shirley and Theo and all my other crazy lost beatdown wanderlust life companions. I needed them all then, crammed tight into my rust brown trucks tiny little cab, howling down those back roads at fifty eight and howling for the sake of being heard but they were all gone and living and I was alone and headed out towards God knows what bitter eastern end.

Two American Tailored Haiku's Concerning My Future

Oh tasteless doldrums!

You have in you a seething cauldron of stories, don't you?

Spill it out and drip it, down down down

Anxiously typing

Barely sleeping

Below average, cliche nightmares

The Greatest Show on Earth

They blew in with a cool June breeze and set up their tall red and white candy swirl tents on the outskirts of Brownsville. They brought with them a long caravan of trailers and hay bales, elephants and monkeys. They drove their spikes into the caked earth and erected their monolith high into the sky. When the lights went out and downtown Brownsville was closed and emptied the freakshow slithered out slowly and filled shop windows and telephone poles with their dull orange and black fliers. They covered Brownsville in cheap paper, silently and hurriedly. They made it back to the base just as the sun was peaking over the tops of the plains, back into their cages and iron chains that bound them in service to the ring leading master Mr. Maddow. The townspeople would wake in the morning and see what was left behind and wonder what specters had invaded their town during the twilight hours while they slept warm and safe in their beds.

The sun rose and revealed what the night had given birth to. The grounds were perfect, brought together tight at the seams like a beautiful handmade suit. The great big tent rose up in the center of the carnival, swirling up and up towards the sky. Above the entrance into the hive hung an ancient arch, its twisted iron letters spelling out the name of the traveling phantom. It was surreal and confusing to look at, but if one looked long enough the shapes would eventually come together and reveal their message. It was a strange garbling of letters in a foreign language that to most, meant nothing, but left all anxious and unsettled.

The path leading up to the main tent was lined with gypsy carts, fortune tellers, rigged games and the freak show. The Gauntlet, as the path was called by the workers, was a hall lined with human deformation and misery, and it was meant to capture the audiences’ morbid curiosity, preparing them for what lay ahead. There was the bearded lady, a woman with who was cursed with a wispy brown beard. There were the Sharppe Twins who were amazingly joined at the waist, forever together and forever on display. There was the Fish-Boy whose eyes popped out of his head and came out at strange angels. He was missing his lips and all of his hair. He was one of the main attractions and it wasn’t terribly uncommon for people to faint at the sight of him. There was Misha the dwarf, Oleg the giant and Charles, a man with an unfortunately distended chest who was mocked and berated by the men of the towns they traveled through.

Hidden on its south side, far away from the public and view were the housing caravans; small ramshackle things that were more transportation than home. Inside of these little shacks on wheels lived the workers, the clowns, the acrobats, the fire breathers, the knife throwers, strongmen, and magicians. They were all cramped together there like cattle, sleeping on linen covered hay mattresses and eating grub ladled hard tack. Mr. Maddow only allowed them to leave their portable cells when the night came crashing down, lest they reveal themselves too early to the wide eyed and idiotic patrons.

Opening day came and the town emptied out and ran excitedly toward the great tent, money in their hands and arms akimbo. The businesses were shut down for this exciting event, entire families came hand in hand and some people even brought their dogs. It was a marvelous day indeed!

The townspeople paid their tickets and filtered in, buying their children cotton candy and popcorn from the vendors that lined the Gauntlet. They all stopped to gaze in amazement and horror at the freaks, especially the Fish-Boy. Some nastier children even spit on the poor deformed child. Eventually, after much ooing and ahhing everyone made it inside and took their seats on the uncomfortable wooden bleachers under hot hot electric lights. They sat there chatting in hushed whispers, excitement oozing like honey out their pores, when suddenly the lights with out with a silent bang. A single spotlight came on and there, standing under the white light stood Mr. Maddow in a brilliant black suit with long tails and a tall tophat. He swept it off his head and cried out, in a big booming voice:

“WELCOME! Welcome, welcome welcome my wonderful friends, to what could very well be the greatest show on earth!” The crowd erupted in furious applause and cheers, children jumped out of their seats in sugar fueled rushes of euphoria and several restrained dogs howled in the madness. Mr. Maddow hushed them then with a bowed head and outspread arms.

“Prepare yourselves ladies and gentleman for a show the like of which you have never seen! We have mysteries from every corner of the world, amazing feats of glittering magik, untamed beasts and oh so many laughs! Prepare yourself my friends, for an evening you will never forget! I know introduce to you-” The spotlight went out then, and silence reined king. There was hushed breathing and quiet whispers. With a sudden flash of light the spotlight came back on, but instead of Mr. Maddow there stood a clown, his face painted with a most forlorn expression.

“Ladies and gentleman, I regret to inform you, but there has been a change of plans. Instead of presenting you the Greatest Show On Earth, we will instead be showing you, uninterrupted and oh so personal, The Greatest Show Of Your Lives!”

With that the light went out once again, but instead of pure darkness as they had experienced before, there was a faint orange glow surrounding them. Smoke began to curl its way into the nostrils of the patrons and slowly they began to realize what was happening. Men scrambled over children and the dogs were let loose as the fire began to consume the great tent. Some rushed towards the fire in an attempt to contain it, while most ran towards where the great flap had been. Instead of sweet escape, they found instead an elephant, terrified and stomping, roped to a stake in the ground that was quickly pulling up. Some tried to run beneath its smashing feet, and most all were crushed. Some escaped just barely, but were met by a swarm of released, furious freaks and clowns. They tore down the escapees brutally and without mercy. The carnies gathered just outside the entrance and listened to the screaming coming from inside. Eventually it quieted to just a few mixed moans and the great tent began to fold in on itself. The elephant had broken free of its bonds and was running, burning and burning across the plains. The tent was fully engulfed, orange and red and yellow and the carnies watched it burn and burn and burn as the day twisted slowly and surely into night and then they left, to find their new homes in the quiet ghost town of Brownsville.

Yellow

Still working on the same piece. It will hopefully be done by Friday. For now, an American Haiku:

I saw today, a woman

her face framed with yellow hair and sitting tranquil

Never has someone looked at me with such hate

A Seriousness Haiku

I am posting this because I am currently working on a longer piece and it needs more work.

This has gone too far

My delusions of grandeur

Have fun with it Steve.

Cookie Cutter

Open yourself up she tells me with green eyes glinting in the fluorescent light and her long brown hair shining with Chinese chemicals. Open up to the world and experience life love happiness and joy! Don’t get caught up in the morose bullshit you call your home any longer. It is time to be free and clear and healthy and happy not closed and forsaken depressed forlorn and dying! Her voice is like honey sweet to hear and she smells like a Humphrey Bogart seducing femme fatale caught in a cloud of cigarettes. She is staring at me from across her polished mahogany tower and waits for me to respond. She want smile to tell her that she is right that artificial happiness is the one true emotion to feel. That happiness is the one shining path to walk upon and that all negative emotions are made of filth and leeches that coat us in sickness and drain us of every drop of calm and conformity from our blue blue veins. Sadness is the root of all evil to my cookie cutter vixen and ignorant euphoria is the one bullet that can blow its brains out on the marble floor. I want to show her my leeches. I want her to see how they have grown and how big they are. I want her to see my pride. A father’s pride. I hide them and forsake them and take from her pale thin fingers the drugs that will kill them dead. I take it with a glass of cold plastic water and feel my leeches shrivel and die. I am still now. Placid. Numb. I am as calm as the top of a tall glass of milk. I have become the same as my neighbor down the street. I am clean cut and square and ready to serve. She gives me her bill and I sign down my name: Mr. John Smith Jones Brown Doe and walk out onto the perfectly plain streets.

American Haiku

I realized today

while walking with friends

that now is no different than later.

Burnington

Creeping exhaustion and the bitter taste of frustration

How close you seem today

Even when the sun is shining and the clouds are just right

Simmering a pin-scratch second away

Festering like a gangrenous wound

The breaking point oozes

Bright yellow and sick

I hope

I pray and pray

That no one can smell my infection except for me

I can barely stand it myself

Bile

Disgust

It creeps up deep from my twisted insides

Into my mouth

Past my teeth tongue and lips

I push it back

Way down to the bottom of my shoes

I put a smile back on tell them

"I'm tired only and that's it!"

I hope

I pray and pray

That they don't see through it

Though my glittering bullshit

And straight into my boiling burnstew

A Guide to Living Wonderfully When Broke, Young and Crazy by Stephen Goodrow and Matthew R. Laurion

1. Be a cheap bastard.

2. Sing off key to annoy Mozart's everywhere.

3. Learn to disappear at will.

4. Stare at people with wide, goofy asylum eyes. They will be frightened.

5. Love to eat but learn not to.

6. Build and then destroy something beautiful.

7. Get a cheap hobby. Like writing.

8. Love everything

9. Learn that hating things is a waste of time.

10. Scream as loudly as you can during very inappropriate moments.

Paperwork

I'm moon faced and delirious

staring up into the night sky

wondering where all the time went

I'm young

youthfully alive

and yet the clock is winding down

Every year towards my prime is one year closer to The End

so I'll stand and deliver to the grim reaper his five pounds

of bloody flesh

In the form of my dismembered and mutilated

Dreamscapes

Hopes

Wants and Wishes

The beige colored sacrifice I must give

To my parents

To my teachers

To my society

Is enormously plain

Here I come office doldrums!

Here I come deathless suicide!

Here I come blanketed goshwow!

Here I come passionless soul!

I'm headed now, for that great spiritless gray landscape to bide my time and live out my days

Passionless

Lack

These nighttime shades really dampen my mind

I’m clouded and confused by sundown

Haunted by pitifully exhausted spirits

Whispering “Write Write!

Practice practice practice!

Don’t sleep run run run!

Lack depth lack thought!

Lack creativity!

Lack sleep!

Lack originality!

Lack peace!

Lack sanity!

Lack individuality!

Lack water!

Lack food!

Lack organization!

Lack life!

Lack love!

Lack booze!

Lack drugs!

Lack ink lack repetition lack form lack gleam shine and prose!

Drown in it breathe it in die die die!”

Spring Break Haiku

It isn’t warm here

Lots of people ran down south

Cowards and loonies….

Rain Days

Ernest was out working on his bus and Joe Saternallia was out interviewing for a similar job. Joe had be feeling lost lately and I hoped that a job would help to ground him. He left for his interview and I settled on our green couch to read a book I had picked up at the library a couple days before. The window behind me was open and a breeze was blowing strong. It was raining outside and could hear it hitting the pavement outside with a click splash click. The constant pitter was driving me into restlessness and I couldn’t concentrate on anything having to do with literature so I picked up and left. The only place I could think to go was Karrie Gleeson’s place across the way. She had a nice two bedroom place in a good part of town, decent rent and a landlord who left you mostly alone. It was a short walk, and I slipped into the lobby and warmed up a bit. It hadn’t been raining hard, but it had been freezing and I was worried that pneumonia would set in. I had had it four times when I was a kid, so I was justifiably concerned. I hiked up to her apartment on the fourth floor and knocked really quiet and discreetly. She heard me inside and called out “Just a minute!” so I plastered myself against a wall with my arms crossed and my button down open in the front all the while pretending I was Paul Newman. Karrie opened her door then and laughed a gunshot laugh. She motioned for me to come in and I sauntered on by her, eyes slit and arrogance abounding. I settled in a round chair she had in the center of the room and slouched all the way down in the chair like a regular jackass would. We talked for a bit, mainly about my pal Ernest Williams. They had been batting at each other back and forth and Karrie felt like she needed to talk to a neutral party. I was more than happy to listen, so we sat there for an hour or so until I became overwhelmed with her drama and felt like going for a walk down to the grocery store. It was a quick walk and the rain had let up a bit, but we still got soaked through. I had five dollars in my pocket so I spent it on an expensive chocolate bar and pickled peas. I mistook them for the pickled green beans I had eaten as a kid. I realized this after I bought them and was disappointed but they turned out to be delicious nonetheless so I accept it as divine intervention. When I brought my strange combination up to the cashier she looked at me like I was a looney so I acted the part/. My hair was already crazy enough from the weather so I went all bug eyed and crazy. I made her nervous and got a good chuckle out of it later on after we had left. We went back to her apartment and I devoured the chocolate bar and felt pretty sick. Karrie stepped into her bedroom to change her clothes and when she came back out she was thinking about Ernest and was in a foul mood so I took off and trudged back to my flat. I opened the door and flopped onto the couch. I drifted off into a half sleep dreamscape and saw a crowd of people sew their faces together like that was a normal thing to do. Ernest came back and woke me up. He was in a good mood and was telling me all about his life plans. I was feeling lousy and cruel so I began to find flaws in his ideas. I whittled them down to nothing and he got very defensive. For awhile I thought he was going to come at me, but he didn’t, he just sat their quietly and stared at nothing in particular. He left to go eat and I sat there alone, writing in my notebook and sorting out my thoughts.

Jack

Rambling prose was his style
I try to emulate
Benzedrine haze was his bag
But it ain’t mine
Free spirit, roaming energy, traveling fiend
I wish I could capture that spark
I could travel far away
And become a rucksack bum
But those mountains always pull me back
My own personal lot of order and peace
But sometimes chaos tastes so sweet

Headlights and Wooden Thoughts: A Fictional Nonfiction.

The headlights blew me away as I was wandering back from the downtown. I was crossing over the crest of a hill when they hit, their halogen white freezing me to the spot like a deer. I was wild eyed, living my last seconds, drunk on fear and damn near pissing myself. The light was too bright, I lost all sense of distance, my muscles tightened in anticipation of the explosive destruction careening towards me, and a prayer was quickly being rattled off to whatever deity cared enough to listen. The impact never came; the car had seen me and screeched to a halt. I ran to safety on the far side of the road and tried not to glance over at my would-be butcher as it slinked away into the night. I was embarrassed, and my hands were shaking from the adrenaline that was coursing throughout my body. I sat down in the rain slicked grass in shock, and closed my eyes. For a moment I had been dead; smashed up on the road on a crappy dark night. I had felt my life leave, ascend somewhere far above and then hurtle back to earth with such force and such furious speed that it had driven emotion straight from my body. I sat there, on the grass numb and gone. I was like a great oak; alive and forever unfeeling.

Spring

It was late winter and the weather was unusually warm for New Hampshire, fifty degrees in the shade. Bitter cold was finally yielding to spring, and we spread out onto the campus en masse. I was shying away from the outdoors, holed up in my dorm room with a paperback copy of an ancient science fiction rag that I picked up in a second hand junktique in Burlington. It mothball smell was intoxicating, and I set it down in hoping my head would clear. Outside a bus backfired and a skateboarder hit the pavement with a moan and a scrape and I couldn’t help but smile. I was drifting off to sleep when Joe Saternallia kicked in my door and jolted me back into reality. His red hair was a mess and his thin frame glasses were askew and his brown eyes were wild with elation.

“Hey Jack. Have you been outside yet?” “No Joe, no I haven’t.” He looked at me in disbelief. “You want to go for a walk? Heh?” “No Joe, I don’t really want to go for a walk.” He looked at me, his eyes pleading and imploring and asked me again and again until finally I said “Alright Joe, I’ll go for a walk with you, just please stop talking for a bit, sound good?” He looked hurt and I felt bad but I didn’t apologize. I grabbed a loose fitting Oxford shirt and we wandered outside into the daylight. He was moping along for a bit so I apologized to him and his spirits seemed to pick up and we started talking a bit. Small talk at best, but we were talking. The sun was shining bright down onto us and we soaked it up as we walked towards a clump of trees off in the distance.

We hadn’t been to this part of campus before, and so were wild eyed in wonder and excitement. We were in a rural neighborhood, one that reminded me of home and not of city dwelling college life that I had grown so weary of. We passed an old dilapidated A-Frame house surrounded by the dregs of a wonderful hippie commune. Two girls, one of them wearing only a bright red bra, were smoking pot on the roof and talking about something all consuming and all important. I tried to wave, to connect, but they were too absorbed in their dope to notice or care. We found a little trail that lead to the edge of a river and we sat ourselves down and stared out onto the water. The wind was blowing steady, the air was crisp and clean and I closed my eyes and listened to the song of the wild. I was home again, away from college, away from anyone I’ve ever known. Peace, calm, zen and the art of isolation.

Fear and Loathing in Durham

Note: I tried writing a piece tonight and got quite a bit done...but I hate it. So for now, enjoy this article I wrote for a magazine!

Fear sat cold and heavy in our stomachs as we blindly stumbled forward through the thorn filled brush. We were lost, clueless, suffering in an uncharted territory with no visible way out. I could hear Jessica breathing and Dave was silent as we slowly trudged the thicket. Jessica whispered that she had lost a shoe and I told her to keep her voice down. We were heading deeper into the abyss, far away from the dark and now silent house, far away from the booze, from the incrimination, from three other friends. We were heading into the unknown to escape possibility and chance.

A flashlight cut through the darkness and I crouched low away from its beam. It disappeared and my pulse returned, quicker than before. I felt Jessica nudge my back. Keep going, she whispered, keep going. I began to creep, keeping my body as low as possible. I felt cold, skinny fingers on my wrist. Stephen, grab my hand, I don’t want to lose you. It was Jessica. I whispered, low and hoarse, Where’s Dave? She told me she had his hand, it was alright, just keep going. I kept crawling low. The house behind us was being swallowed up in the inky blackness. It was silent. What was happening in there? Did the cops bust it? My thoughts turned to my friends who had accidentally been left behind in the escape. I could only hope they made it out.

The house erupted in noise. Human cries of defiance split the night in two. I felt Jessica’s hand tighten. We were lost in the woods, in the black, and just behind us the world seemed to be coming to an end.

~

It was Thursday night, my roommate Dave and I were sitting in our room, knocking our heads against the wall in boredom. Outside cars were rushing by, our lives following close behind. We had been at college for a month, and every night had been spent as if we were living off balance on a razor‘s edge. One false step would cut deep, so we stayed in, away from the mysteries of the night, away from the danger and risk that crawled outside our darkened room. We barricaded ourselves behind a wall, homework in hand and boredom, like worms, eating at our insides. Tonight felt different though, the worms had eaten their fill and it was time to fill the void with some sin.

A fraternity seemed like the way to get our hands on some fun, so we decided that tonight, Thursday, was the night to go searching like two good ol’ boys with little regard for safety or sanity. Dave and I were ignorant on the subject of Greek life, so we went about gathering our gang. Our neighbor Jack was excited by the idea and asked if he could tag along. We responded in classic cliché fashion: Sure, the more the merrier Jack, we’d be honored to have you. But tell us Jack, do you know how we are going to get in to one of the ragers? He shook his head and we shrugged our shoulders. The night was beginning to mature rapidly and we had no idea how to get in, so we tracked down some friends of ours to ask them how they had managed the seemingly impossible.

Donna had some ideas. She told us our gender was our biggest drawback, that we would need girls. At least three each, any less than that and we’d be thrown out on our asses. We weren’t happy to hear this. Nine girls was not only a stretch, it was also testing our morals. We were looking to get twisted and ripped, but we drew the line when the entrance fee was human. Her brow furrowed in thought as she thought of an alternate route that involved less human objectification. Well there is always the fire escape, she told us. I laughed, thinking she was joking, but her face remained deadpan, her voice monotone. My laughter trickled into nervous bubbling. Dave asked her to repeat herself. The fire escape, she echoed, you sneak up the side and have someone inside let you in. Once you’re inside, who’s to be the wiser?

The three of us looked at each other and knew instantly that this was right out of the question. We may be young and invincible, but nothing does a better job at shaking that resolve than an alcohol fueled punch to six years worth of orthodontia and seven stitches up the side of your face. We needed another way, and we needed another way as soon as possible. The night was getting tired, and we all could feel it way deep down.

Another way fell into our laps in the form of two of Jack’s friends. The two gals, Lisa and Sara, knew just the place to go for a good time in the wee hours of Friday morning. It wasn’t a frat, but it had liquor and strangers. We didn’t ask questions, gave ourselves over to fate, and headed out. I called up an old friend of mine; a short brunette called Jessica, and asked her if she wanted to join us for a jaunt downtown. Her reservations were brief and quickly quashed. We met up and headed off, Sara leading the way. The walk was longer than it should have been as we took every wrong turn we could think to take, but we didn’t care; we were lost in the comfort of friends, and swallowed by the quiet night.

We walked for what seemed like a lifetime, passing every poor, lowdown, drunk bastard on our way towards the quintessential college experience. We eventually found our way to our destination, and I felt more than a little nervous. Off in the distance we heard the dull echo of excitement and inebriation. The woods shot up like knowing, spiteful parents glaring down at their young spawn about to run off and ruin a perfectly good batch of innocence. We neared a house where, entombed within its thin wooden walls, lay the object of our desperate adventure. We were stopped at the entrance by a gang of partygoers, the head honchos it seemed. They told us to turn around, it was full up, that there was no way we were getting in. One guy took a pull off a bottle of tequila, grinned, and told the girls they could go in if they wanted. Our spirits deflated. All the excitement, the anxiety, everything was a bust. I felt detached from it all. I was emotionally gonzo and physically drained. But then hope came blaring through the Novocain haze as one of the bigwigs eyed Jack’s tie. He motioned to him, Hey man…nice tie…listen, he hiccupped, you let me…wear that thing…and you guys can go on ahead in….all of ya.

Jack was reluctant to part with the small strip of fabric, but once all eyes turned to look at him, pleading, he slipped it off and passed it over. The gatekeeper slipped it over his head, pulled it snug and smiled. Go on in guys, have a good time.

We were in. The place was packed, wall to wall carpeting of drunken college students, and us, trapped in the middle of the maelstrom. Lisa and Sara took off towards where they thought the beer was, so I dropped my shoulder and muscled through the crowd, past the sweat drenched partiers, past the liquored up gals in skirts smaller than a thong, and into the Mecca of the house; the beer room. Sara and Lisa jumped into the line, anticipation painted across their faces as they anxiously looked to the front of the line.

Jessica popped up by my side, two beers and a grin spread across her face. She clenched a can of beer in her hand and she pointed it out to me like a proud mother. A friend from one of my classes just gave it to me! Her excitement was infectious, and I watched as she popped the top and took a swig. Try some. I told her I’d love to, grabbed the can from her and took my first drink of college freedom.

The door burst open and a heavily built man in a tight white shirt screamed: Everybody shut the fuck up! The cops are here! Shut up!

Just like that we were moving, out the back door and into the blackness. I looked for my friends and saw Dave and Jessica. It was time to fly, so we put our heads down and crashed headfirst into the inky dark.

`

The world was ending. The screaming from the house was sending chills down my spine. I braced myself for the inevitable meteors and hellfire. I was jolted out of my doomsday attitude by the buzzing of my cell phone. I flipped it open and saw Jack’s name printed in cartoonish letters across its screen. O sweet angels bless you! I read the text, my spirits rising and my displaced fear ebbing slowly. He was fine. Everything was fine. He wanted us to come back inside. I let Jessica and Dave know what I had just received and we headed back, embarrassment lying heavy on our backs. We found him just where we left him, in the beer room with Sara and Lisa. I asked him what had happened. He scratched his head. I’m not sure. See, we were following you guys out when we got cut off. Someone told us to go back inside and to shut up. The lights went off and we stood there stock still until the cops left. We laughed, Sara and Lisa jumped back in line and we settled to the back of the room. I looked around the packed room, my eyes passing over faces I had never seen and would never see, again. They were all happy, drunk, everything creating bliss.

I began to realize why parties happen, why booze is such a prevalent part of college life. In the day we are all the same, the sunlight shines down on our tired frames as we shuffle between one class to another, wearing our everyday, normal crowd pleasing masks. But then the night rolls in and the fog of surreal living creeps into our minds. We turn out in troves onto beer lubricated streets and lose ourselves in the moment, if only for one night. The whiskey, beer, whatever, lets us escape the monotony, the driving, painful torment of living in a harsh and confusing landscape. These years define who we are, and I for one would hate to live in a world where everyone wore the same face day in and day out in quiet acceptance of the mundane and inevitable.

Sara and Lisa came back. The keg was kicked; there was no point in being here anymore. We grabbed Jack’s tie and left the party. Jessica complained that the night, while interesting, hadn’t been a very good one. I smiled to myself, and breathed in the night.

Generational Bum

I’m followed by a Technicolor addicted Peter Fonda
Haunted by the Vroom Vroom of Buddha vibes
Chased by wild eyed road bums tearing their way to Denver
I long for that feeling of far away desperation
For Luke’s Blood Stained Blue Shining Eyes
For the burn of Marlboro coughs under Starry Skies
Cool died in the sixties
Cool died before it got too real

Cool died when we needed it most
Cool died and left behind scraps of bad tasting pot
Cool died and left ink stains
Found in the back alley’s by plastic hipsters
Cooked and served as art to the motherless Beat Fakers
Like me.

Fish

I am rooted on the bottom of an ocean teeming with life

The fish float by, mass produced and plastic

They breathe deep the water pumped in from

China, India, Mexico and Japan

Nothing is local, Nothing is wholesome

They float, and I stay anchored deep in the muck and slime

Longing for the taste of pine wood air

For blue skies and white peppered nights

Their hum is a nail in my hand

Their greed is a bullet in my brain

I see the Pac Sun Fish, tattooed a deep purple, black and red

I smell the Hollister Fish, dripping with artificial pheromones

I hear the Abercrombie Fish singing boom boom crash boom

I taste the sick, bitter taste of Excess as it swims by

I feel shame, deep, burning and rooted

Franzia Blues

Note: Continuation of Drunk Worms to come soon. Until then, sift through some poems if you’d like.

Sick and hung over

Beaten black and blue

Left alone

Pick yourself up out of fever

Dive into the back alleys

Lay with black cats and mongrel dogs

Human faces

And Animal eyes

They blur together don’t they?

Snap Jazz Beat and Bongo

I channel Jack and Allen pretendin’

Writin’ poems for a misty cloud of beatnik bums

Clickin’ fingers to the Boom Boom

of slaughtered Kerouac bongos

and lopsided Ginsberg fantasy

I ain’t no hipster magistrate

Some pretend creature in Japhy flannel

All red and black plaid and sewn

With delicate Chinese stiching

And middleclass dollar signs

I ain’t no Beat

I wish I was.