Pride Kills: A Serial

His voice seemed out of tune. That song, or album, rather, had seemed to be on auto-pilot all night long, ... But thru the haze he realized that it was the radio he had left on against the silent dark hours.

Now, it spoke to him, as he shook the crap from his head, shake & yawn, shake & yawn, "It was," the fascist, republican radio, media outlet, spilled to his house, world, "A real May-December romance. She's 64, he's 25, ... "

He turned that red light out. That red light that was his salvation, that reminded him that there was an outside world. He knew that world would ne'er match up with the world he enjoyed now, but he knew it as a life-line to remind him of the huge expanse beyond.

He took his hand off his dick, and cursed (v lightly). He dint need pictures these days, there were memories, dreams in his head, that turned that experience in to reality. A sexual-Situationist, before anyone had heard of such a thing, his imagination had defeated pornography.

His situation was such, his situation was, fuck, his situation was awful. He imagined it beatnik, a shared room of 4 floors, incl a shared kitchen (the freezer owned his 7 frozen pizzas a week, that he'd thaw upstairs, listening to Spiritualized, & reveal toasty & special in his half-ass toaster oven, presenting golden & magical to his self but crush his self & soul & heart the next morning.) Jee-zus, he shared a bathroom, too. (When his friend, Mark, the commie ex-pat, was staying with him, there was blood leading to one of the shared toilets, toilet caked with blood, & Black Sabbath coming from the speaker grille, loud enough for the neighborhood to hear, from the anti-christ of the building.) Really, are you kidding me, he imagined from this space, he would write the great novel.

To be fair, he saw that Leonard Cohen back cover. The typewriter, the hot blond, the room, spartan, greek sunlight spilling in, ...

Ohmigawd, the creepy-ass biker waits in the hallway. If our hero wants a shower he will need to pass this seedy gauntlet.

In fall and winter months the hordes of kids & moms & dads trudge up the hill just past this whole drama. They are trudging on the slim hope that a bunch of 18 yr olde kids can make their dreams come true on a field 100 yards long.

A shower today is, as opposed to most other days, v important to our hero, Dal Remy. Kat waits downtown.

What a farce, what a shadow of a person, Dal is compared to the ultimate beauty that Kat is. He is lucky to stand next to her.

Kat, he met thru work, serving her. If you are serving someone, you must be beautiful & if you are not beautiful you must have a gorgeous soul. Kat recognized this gorgeous soul & what the fuck, gorgeous soul, my ass.

He straps on the Walkman and heads straight to work.

Dal's fave bands are Pavement, Pixies, Big Dipper, Stereolab, Yo La Tengo, whatever, ... Cafe Berlin, will she, Kat, be there?



*******************



"What was his name?" she sed.

"He is your heartthrob, not mine, " picking at her nails, Debut, frowned & smiled, laughing at her barely younger twin sister.

Kat sized up the room. An open, not quite living, not quite dining thingy, she pined for Bill & Ted to come waltzing through, "There is something there, I swear, in him. In Dal."

Debut was named because she came before Kat. They were/are identical twins, raising hell & terrorizing all of Texas.

"You know nothing, I'll repeat that, you know nothing," Debut sed, " About this guy."

Kat understood druggy squalor. She felt, she knew this guy. Her room was piled high with Smiths posters, Cure crap, vodka bottles, rolled-up dollar bills, coke residue, detritus of all-night bar sessions, just been fucked hair, (look at her bathroom: it is pills and hairspray.)

"He was talking about, Dal was talking about, " Kat sed, "Lipstick Traces. A movie, a record, many records, ... "

"I am heading out," Debut acted as if she had heard nothing, raised her left hand, shook it, and sed, " Take care, sister, I love you. I know how gushy you get."

Debut kissed Kat and left. Kat walked to her room, sighed, and began picking up. She started with the pizza boxes and moved on to the magazines.

Notes on this holiday weekend

It is scalding hot here in my home. Soon I will report to work to do Quarter-End inventory. Ah, retail, ...

I propose a retail worker's holiday. This is necessary, due to the fact that Labor Day is not a retail holiday at all. I propose that all retail shops should be closed for two days, the first consecutive Monday & Tuesday of August.

Retail workers would host huge Summer parties, or head for quiet in the hills. Cyclists and pedestrians would own the streets. There would be music & mayhem & untrammeled joy. The notes proper begin now:

*** Couldn't say it any better than this: "Now that we have decided to not elect a woman president, we'll go back to judging potential first ladies by cookie recipes and wardrobe purchases." That was a letter to the SF Chronicle Opinion Page on July 2nd.

*** Finally got a chance to see Billy Liar, & was amazed to discover how much Ewan McGregor has "stolen" in terms of "style", mainly vocally, from Tom Courtenay. The film shows remarkable depth despite its, even then, shopworn "frustrated adolescent paralysis" themes. Plus, it is possible I would love anything Julie Christie is in.

*** The honeymoon is well over for me and Mr Olbermann. I can barely watch his show now. His Obama/FISA about-face was the last straw. I hope he will return to his Summer of 06 form as we get closer to the election. I am sure eventually all will be forgiven.

*** Mojo Magazine gave a rather tepid review to White Denim's import full-length, Workout Holiday. I don't think they have listened to the record enough times. (I know that's a facile, fan-ny thing to say, but it's true.) It is amazing how every time I listen to those songs, I hear something different or new. What seems a mess at first, opens up so marvelously, with depth, breadth, and power. I had completely given up on "indie" (whatever that is) music for good. They have lit a fire up my butt, for sure.

*** I miss Molly Ivins terribly.

*** Went back to Austin a few months ago, and fell in love all over again. Even the up-scale restaurants there are funky. We preferred Castle Hill to Wink. Everyone is still in a band, everything is open 24 hours, still. It was the perfect speed and mode of travel for life today.

*** I celebrated the 4th by curling up with the Criterion Dazed and Confused, "Remember what you're really celebrating: a bunch of white, slave-holding aristocrats who didn't want to pay their taxes."

*** Will the US ever reach a point where the people will finally decide that even a modest, fair tax burden would make life so much better for all its' citizens? Will it take a full-fledged depression again to see this happen? Meanwhile levees burst, bridges collapse, & nearly half of the country uses the emergency room as its' doctors office.

*** We landed at the Barbara Jordan Terminal when we went to Austin. It is not nearly so much as she deserves but it is a start.

*** We don't get HBO, so we've been watching the Wire on DVD. I am dying to know what happened to Omar. No spoilers, please! Next month, season 5 is released.

*** Nadal owns Federer now, & what a thrilling, awesome match that was today, but I worry about Nadal's knees and his future. Federer, meanwhile, mainly because of Nadal, has gone from an athlete in the Tiger, Jordan, Ruth, Gretzky league, to simply an all-time tennis great. Nadal deprived him of transcendence.

*** It is disgusting to see the TM insulate Walnuts from legitimate criticism. And Mr Clark said absolutely nothing untoward or wrong, even. Crashing jets in wartime does not, on its' face, make anyone more qualified to be POTUS.

I will most certainly curl up w/ a Claude Michot Poilly-fume tonight after counting wine bottles all night long,

mds