Analyze This
As I walked towards the valley of the wharf, above the old Ghirardelli chocolate factory, a few blocks below North Beach, towards Tower Records, I was reminded by the vacant spread of nothingness just how desolate the district remained as a no man’s land.
With my Walkman in hand and a strut in my stride, I jammed a thematic spooky electric mix from the Man on a custom TDK 120 wound so tight it would periodically snap on the down beat. Over time, the screws in the corners were stripped smooth from the pressure-bearing twists and turns of my exacto-blade as I forced them lefty-loosey to pop open and repair the tape with a slice of sticky Scotch.
Once inside Tower, I browsed the merchandise letting my fingers do the walking down alphabet street: Parliament, The Police, The Pretenders, and Primus, until I landed on THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN THE WORLD from the Gold Sessions. The album cover was a hostage collage of fine ones who had tossed their rings on the bottle for a chance to win an evening with a dancing cavalier. With a flip, the new clear plastic joint with white paisley logo took the place of the TDK as I bounced upwards past the basketball courts, north to North Beach with chills and thrills and a bounce in my stride. This was more than a bounce. This was a sky-high catapult over the wicked wall to the stax o’ wax castle.
“What to wear…what to wear…”
Around that time, I was fostering intimate relations with a woman sharing the same name as my sister. Screams of passion were awkward, as you can imagine. When we made love, or more appropriately, when she would use me like a lightening rod, the raincoat would inevitably slip off, yet she would keep riding towards the hills like there was no tomorrow. I was invisible. Time and time again.
Rumor had it, she had a pocket-full of jockeys, soldiers, and some of them used.
Eventually, she broke my heart.
Once night, at 2am, I rapped on the window pane of her apartment down the back alley where Grant met Greene, her roommate with no name took pity on me, let me in, poured a stiff one, confirmed the rumors, and healed my wounds with a velvet touch.
I left behind a mix-tape for the one that got away: A TDK 120 with the song DARK recorded over and over and over and over and over and over. 120-minutes of desperate pleas to end the unbearable lightness of being.
Freaks on this side…
Slipping away down Jasper Alley, the spring in my step had worn down like a stripper’s heal, snapped off in a drainage ditch, then floated away down the empty gutter like a soggy cigarette. I felt low, so low the curb was like a very tall city building.
Another ballad. Another slow jam.
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(Inspired by track No. 3, Breakdown from Art Official Age by Prince)
Words by -j.2u
Images by j.zen
Published by First F15teen
Go ahead, click on the heart, you know you want to…
