two for two
1)
Tom Lucky (RIP) reminded me about that time i laid one down at the Choate School. when the Howard Ave New Haven Collective went there for Franny’s gig. god knows why they asked her to play. it seemed incongruous. she was a way more intense song writer than the place could have anticipated. regardless, they offered up a buffet dinner at the headmaster’s house. soggy paper plates of oozing shepherd’s pie atop knees tight together, tinkling china, stale coffee, plastic cups of Cott’s ginger ale. i was in another room banging away on a low boy upright. it was my John Lennon scream therapy Gestalt period. lots of cruel hard truth and absurdist lyrics, lost in my delirious soundscape, mesmerized by the paradise of boys. late for din din. Tom said everyone was sitting around on their thumbs when i came back in, did a quick spin, a twist at the waist, raised one leg high, like a figure skater and fired one off. ten seconds of reverent silence followed. oblivious, i moved in on the pie of the shepherd and loaded up.
2)
Harlow Voorhees and i dropped speed and drove night and day from Santa Barbara to Philadelphia in my blue panel truck. Tucker, black lab — passed out in back on doggy tranquilizers. Harlow came out to rescue me from my aborted attempt at recapturing my love affair with Kenny. it had been a disaster. i’d been thrown in jail for shop lifting and Kenny’s father had to (secretly) bail me out. i was losing it. i didn’t know who to call. somehow Harlow persuaded my dad to lend him the money to fly out and drive me home. on meth. no stops necessary. never stopped talking. the drug had us believing we could handle anything: all answers to all The Great Questions. we drove straight cross country in thirty-six hours. if we got tired, we just ate more speed. in Missouri we hit a pit-stop at an over-sized barn-like Jesus restaurant. early afternoon and practically empty except for Harlow and me and a round table of little old ladies playing bridge. they didn’t even look at us. their tight little shoulder blades fluttered like insects’s wings trying to disregard the loud, obnoxious hippies in the corner, banging glasses and yelling at the waitress. I was in the john taking a long piss when i cut this huge explosive cannonball fart. i’d left the door open to the men’s room and the entire restaurant heard it. the bridge ladies couldn’t cope. cards sputtered up into the air and away from their precise gnarled angry little hands…sppwoosh!
This is an excerpt from my book, The Paragraphs — Cutlass Press
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