And then there is the Roosevelt—they know me, the Sunset Marquis—the valets there too, Lowes also. When I pulled a right onto Hudson from Hollywood Boulevard stockyard, I saw Thoby there at the valet stand already waving me down. I keep a little nickel of coke in the hidden storage hatch of my glove box for the valets, that all the boys know about, and that the pigs sure can't never find. It's not just that such a thing just comes in handy with the valets in West Hollywood, which it very well most certainly does—but you see, it's just little things, the little things, in this tiny corner tinseltown flim flam souvenir micro economy, that keeps everything all kind of just humming along, laced behind the scenes—and perhaps it's in gesture, in such small gestures, is the reason, part of the reason that is, keeping us all kind of still crazy enough to still be out here on the coast—or at least, that's what I like to think.
I went out to meet Fletcher at Black Rabbit Lounge just to check up on him and catch up. I hadn't worked in months—or if you want to really know, it's been over a year. I mean, I have been working, but my practice has been put on ice pretty much this whole entire time, or while I been doing the other thing.
Fletcher used my services a while back though, and with his case, I didn't have to actually take no pictures of his wife getting her back blown out in the act playing backgammon with another man. That last time I seen him though, I told him to meet me at Black's, not my office—this is what it means when a case comes to a close.
I remember that last time, the late cloudless afternoon, Fletcher got there even before me (my office is right around the corner), and in the dark bar, old Fletcher was as on as edge as you could imagine. Like I said, I didn't have to take no pictures this time—I just pulled his wife's panties out of my jean pocket, furled them nakedly onto the greasy counter. Old Fletcher immediately knew. I didn't have to say nothing or offer any or no explanation. I remember Fletcher then, he didn't so much flinch or register, as if such response was all there was to really know about him. I unnecessarily put my hand on the back of his shoulder, peaced signed two Herman Munsters to come sliding our way with my free hand, signaling to dear Walter over there behind the bar.
This evening though, Fletcher was is in high spirits, and although I was real glad he was able to pivot back so quick, maybe the drunker I got, maybe the more it all started to just bristle me a bit—Fletcher's business was flourishing, and he apparently was talking to someone new after his wife. Guys exactly like Fletcher always come 'a bouncing on back, while others eddied in circles going nowhere like godless sediment along the mine washed riverbank—and it was guys who got to lamp, who could not stop going on and on about it all the time, telling the rest of us just exactly just what we now needed to do.
You couldn't smoke in the bar, but Fletch lit up now that his drained drink could ashtray—Fletch blew out defiant smoke spinning down out, the grey slate vapour seductively molesting itself against the indifferent surface.
Levinson was, I mean Levinson really, really was—heir apparent, but his last film, actually his last two projects he supervised were bad, or so bad, that even now he seemed contagious—and to everybody in town. And now, now I'm head of production out in Burbank, all the way out in Burbank, if you can believe it—shit, Fletcher, from the sharp nip he took winced off the glare of all his new recent turn around.
What can I say Fletch, one must fall, so one can rise . . .
Fletcher, sate on barstool, backed his head with his neck in balk and then relaxed it, his mouth made a pause from half gulping a dot offsaliva on his tongue, pausing his mouth before he spoke in a way that projected an intimate pragmatism of expertise, Oh, Jake c'mon now—don't be like that . . .
Be like what,
Fletcher, gimlet eyed and certainly a lot more optimistic than the last time we were here, It's not like that—it's just not always like that.
Might I remind you—nevermind.
Fletch sensed I was about to say something about his population ex separated wife, and turning on peso he bucked back, became indignant now, Nevermind what, Fletch his balance upset, over-suspiciously, now snapped out of his daydream.
It's nothing—so tell me about then, what, what where you going to or say.
Fletcher not letting it go, in a way that was not too terribly hard to intuit was probably connected to his second wife cheating on him in the first place, No, I want to know—I want to know Jake, what you were about—just what,
Look, it's like a conversation I had with Claris, when I says the power of positive magical thinking doesn't exactly work for everyone—especially in this city, and that my friend, is what keeps me and the bible printer in biz, I mean I'm technically not in business now but—
It was true that magical thinking certainly worked for some in this town—taking a pull off my Tire Nail with authority, able to now say what I otherwise silently walk around with, If such a thing worked, there would be like, or no reason for Jesus to be nailed to the cross, marriage detectives, whatever . . .
Old Fletcher reminded me of another friend of mine who had a few lucky big streaks playing gin, and that friend could just never stop yelping on and on about it—always giving unsolicited advice and pro tips, always saying if one ever was hard up enough for money, they could always rely on gin, which, that in itself is a very preposterous and dangerously optimistic line of thought.
Then Fletch said something else gravely, that I didn't catch, and then I kind of felt bad now—I could have avoided it all if I wasn't so sauced.
Look, Fletch I'm happy for you—I really truly am. It's nothing—hey, how about another round, Bub.
Fletcher looked at his wristwatch as if it was an up to the minute diagnostic report of his new love life, I would certainly love to old Chap, but I'm afraid I'm meeting right now Araiza at Pastel in—oh Damn, less than an hour.
Seeing Fletcher this evening made me think when people are happy they got composure, and he did look great, actually—I could see it in the unconscious way he carried himself, how he adjusted his blazer when he stood up. At the end of the day, I really do want to see all my pals happy . . .
Though what all California's magical thinkers seemed to say was there's a new god in the sky—if only you but just have the audacity to ask to manifest it for yourself. People gave karma credit to the effects of direct cause and effect all the time. But something in the finite wind always seemed to be signaling something else, always pointing to some inevitable eternal sorrow just looming not visible but also not too far off. It was all I could ever notice, especially after Delores—I could see it everywhere, in the gait of angular men, I could hear it in the voice of the flaunting women, I saw all the city's hypocrisy expressing itself just from pulling into my client's long driveways—Lost Angeles was like surfing and being sprayed by the over territorial Nazi wave taker of your now missed brisk swell, which only you could now notice gone and no one else cared. Los Angeles was your surf Nazi punk rival coming up to your visiting mother and saying to her face Fuck You!
Fletcher stood up, impatiently waiting at the bar with his money clip out, signaling to Walter he's covering both rounds, So Belaine, I wanted to ask you, or been meaning, what have you been up to . . .
What me? Nothing much—been doing, uh, music. . .
Music?
Yeah, I kinda fell or into this thing actually,
That's . . . interesting—what kind of, or music, Fletcher summoning as much interest in his voice as he could muster.
Blues, or hard blues, Man, I guess—or no, more Indy, Indy shit.
Ah, I see . . . Fletcher wasn't into music, which seemed would only guarantee he would land a position which required him selecting and overseeing creatives for massive projects. There was something about his disinterest that would seem to assuage and comfort a prevalent and pervasive misguided pragmatism in all those who king made the studio heads. All the credentialist clerks who colonized the movie industry, music and publishing, and academia made themselves to feel they were administering just some steady hand and discerning eye of much needed and necessary disciplined order, no matter how much open ended approach and nonsensical illogic of operations a project so desperately required, and yes this world was built by and for crashing bores. Fletcher was alright though.
Fletch, already confused from the small amount I was talking about my own personal life—he was like that, but otherwise Fletcher was a good guy, who I was proud to know.
No, no it's been, or its been . . . good, Man—it's going, or rather well I think, actually.
Well splendid—I mean that sounds just great Jake, really—you know we are, or I am, at least, always on look out.
That's actually—actually, or I may take you up on it.
Fletch draining the end of his second drink, Do so Chap, and again, I do apologize, but I must certainly or must depart like, good heavens—right now Dear, I'm afraid. See you in the funny papers, Belaine.
Later, Brothaman . . . .
I sucked up my half empty vods and pineapple in one gulp, walked out of the Plato's cave of the dark blue bar—it was always Saturday in the mind's eye in Hollywood. The valet pulled my car parked right across the narrow street on over to me, when it would have been easier to just hand me the keys. He got out of the driver's seat and I signaled for him authoritatively to get into passenger. Not having to say anything, he bumped me up the tusk while the 914 clack idled conspicuously puttering in front of the valet stand.
Checking my nose in the rearview responsibly, Alright now get out of here . . .
Thanks and have a good night Detective Belaine!, the lightweight door, sounding like luggage, clattered when the bellboy had to reopen and slam to close it again.
Cleaning my horny thorny nose out with Flonex looking into the rearview, I tweet back, but he can't hear me now, Try to stay out of trouble Kid . . . .
Black Rabbit Lounge is on the corner of Hudson and Hollywood Boulevard, and although I should have taken a busy left onto Hollywood to get back to my office, instead I just took a lazy right as if heading off towards Fairfax—traffic prohibiting me yet again from turning across, and now I'm heading the opposite direction I needed to go. And all these streets could do, is claim to know the real you. After all these years, after an entire lifetime, what can I say, not much has changed—I'm only now just harder to console. And everybody just took whatever they were given, and everyone kept a hardline in staunchly maintaining their landed position, without the slightest bit compromise by any small charity or ever by so slight of inconvenience. The fascism of beauty expressed itself in the brazen contradictions that it so allowed itself, in what otherwise went against the firm positions it so preemptively set in itself to maintain. The way to win with a very certain type of woman was to out match them with options and disinterest—even convince yourself, honestly decide you would be better off without their ceaseless trouble and calamity Jane. Once they sense this, and if their options be dry bone at the moment, they insert themselves until you give in and just let them on in—then once you get comfortable, they sash the rug from out under you, spurred by any John Q. Rando that comes recumbent biking on by, no matter how vulgar and bracingly ordinary those men were (and actually, the more vulgar, the more plain, the better, especially if you are the now countered one who is actually kind of hip, because they have to make a point now against you—and have you noticed all the recumbent bikers in Austin all have a woman by their side?) But beauty was always on standby to level up or to ceaselessly take full advantage to exercise its Shoney's buffet of full options, especially insult and injury in trading you out with someone else, who could be pudgy and overweight, when you were otherwise a full pro forma pro head, or in my case, a former pro-am head. Also, convenience and orbit goes a long damn far, in a way that comprises value judgement, and who ever said life was fair. Such economy was a river of energy more reliable than Owens Valley irrigation—a betrayal exchange economy surely I was profiting off of, and also slowly suffocating from. In this town particularly, the law and poetic justice sometimes don't seem to merge—and that's why I'm a Detective.
I was already weary about the upcoming dates, and even my standing in the group now seemed so tenuous. Rooney was also being crazy, or crazier, or just crazy, especially after the release of Dormers—it all but seemed to activate the very worst in Roon now. I now so wanted to back take all my ecstatic and good faith admiration and praise and pineing over her, but in Lost Angeles there were never no take backs, and especially with Roon Dogg, as such infraction was forever tattooed in the sky, and the sky never forgets.
Or what about when I called—ampersand Rooney, that last time, or that last time, she was in such a queer state—I think her help wasn't there that day, Mne Rooney uncharacteristically answering the land line.
Museum 5596.
Rooney—
I'm afraid Rooney is out . . .
Rooney, it's Jake.
I'm afraid Rooney is out . . .
Rooney, I know your voice—C'mon it's Jake, Jake,
I'm afraid Rooney is out . . .
Rooney, the—
I'm afraid Rooney is out.
Rooney!
Ok, I got to goooo, bye bye. . .
Roon could be as crazy as a beetle jitter bedbug in humbuckled nuthouse off fruit cake side off lopsided Bunker Hill sometimes, practically—or to put it very delicately just in case she reads this, Roon was just a woman of immense contradiction. At the after party after the Dormers release at Tower on the strip for instance, we were at what they were saying was Paul Ruscha's old apartment (which was hard to believe to be true), but Roon's insecurely fastened Hiraeth Quaker commune sacrificial Pharisees T-skirt fell right off by the quayside while she was 'a dancing and Roondawggg just continued to saunter completely bare below the waist with not so much as even a camisole left to cloak her God white flesh, and this, in front of everyone—though Joaquin seemed not but the slightest bit surprised and he just mostly looked bored and unimpressed. Given, this was the same Roon who later would be unable to tell her adolescent daughter the most basic facts about the birds and the bees and the necking beneath the trees. Also Roon, or with Roon, being a staunch neo feminist icon, she hated all or most women artists, especially Frida Kahlo, Lee Krasner, Elaine De Kooning, Yoko Ono, Simone Leigh, Anna Weyant, and most famously she detested flapping big gums Joni Mitchell and try hard Patty Smith. Roon being a committed socialist, even resented her help, and even kept detailed novela length diary account devoted to her housekeeper in doomer spiked Balenciaga ledger whenever Roon-control was a-fuming.
I was calling to talk to Joaquin, or I had just wanted to talk to Joaquin anyways—we had been talking or had been talking about this new band that had emerged like practically right off the heels of Dormers, The Jackabots. The Jackabots, we heavily suspected, was or must have been some kind of industry concoction or anyways, some kind of concoction, on some newly, or to think about it, on some conveniently newly minted scare quote scare un quote subsidiary Indy label, Dotronix? The Jackabots had blatantly and unabashedly like bit our whole entire thing—vamped, totally taken from our cues, avec all the painfully derivative faux Rooney lyrics. The Jackabots, what Sponge was to Stone Temple Pilots back in the day—they had the lyric knickerbocker huffer, to Dormers' secret trap door track, Panty Sniffer Blues. Or what about our line, reassuring as a seat belt on an airplane, to Jackabot's, I need you like an airbag on an ocean train? But they certainly, to say the very most least, were not even close to like the real deal of our like thing, but the fact that they was able to fashion this band and cut up an album so quick, though not too entirely worrisome, was still a bit disconcerting. The Jackabot tracks most obviously lacked our transcendental Cali sublime of Real, or little possessed the stricken weight of the silly putty Roon Dawggg lyrics that had to have been well suffered through to ply, and never quite fully recovered from to articulate—but The Jackabots did have this clattering populist banger single (The Jackabots had that one track that sounded like Helmet's, Wilma's Rainbow, off Betty). But you could definitely already tell it would hit send them into a train to normie Mars out there counting normie stars—potentially, at least as I could see, or Joaquin could see at least now too, relegating Pop Ex to some supplemental footnote potentially—that kind of thing happens all the time.We knew, or at least Joaquin tenuously seemed to agree with me, we needed to record another album and a quick probably, dropped so in a way that no one could not have predicted or traced—Population Ex now needed a follow up no one would not see coming or ever be able to touch—we needed to record our own Eddy's Mortar *like today*.
There was something about Kate during the sessions, that one lead up part in Going Back To Art School, Kate bashing that tambourine like it was just about to go out of style any minute—PAM PAM PAM—PAM PAM PUM—TA TA TA TA TA TA. Kate emotionless, kind of carrying herself as if she was just a place holder member, some hired hand, but Kate also still intent on just nailing the shit out of it. I still couldn't stop thinking about that—I guess you just had to be there, I swear to God I would pump a baby into Kate.
Coasting down Hollywood Boulevard in the violet hour always seemed to calm me down, life ain't so bad Belaine, it ain't so bad, Old Dog—everything is still okay for now—it's alright—just try not to think about old Delores too hard.
That we came up on the fall out of all the Gen-X girls traumatized by the pervasive reification of absent fiddling boomer fathers, where the prevalent and jack booting formed dysfunctional Oedipal complex in girls was something we all very well had to contend against—and not only was housing now not possible because of baby boomers, but a woman not straying and staying in said unobtainable house despite absent baby boomer fathers was also impossible as well. The false promise and unrealizable expectations of the Big Chill soundtrack, that I allowed myself to use like a drug and even more so recently, that really I had no right to listen to as if I was an outsider and refugee to the soundtrack's promise, and the songs were a phoney utopia—Tell Him That You Love Him, a preposterous premise, as if such work or effort was even required for modern women living in Los Angeles now, as if it wasn't all actually a seller's market—Girlll tell him that you love him like immediately girl before you lose him for good! That's not exactly how it works, Sweetheart—anyways, such a Boomer take. We were actively paying in flesh now for all Boomers stupid sins—or at least I was, but still I love that song that makes no sense.
The best I could do was make a glum living from it, but certainly this vocation has its own occupational hazards. The damage I documented now only seemed to reinforce and cast me further off lost into the quel dommage of all my own past injury—as it would definitely have quite a queer effect on the trajectory of my advancing or rather descending conditions—a deleterious Brechtian estrangement taken permanent residency here, as also, and you won't be able to believe this but—women don't exactly want to be shacked up with a detective.
I'm an undertaker of nuclear family mass extinction, my compensation, just enough pittance to keep myself going on so that I can hasten forth further the demise of more delicate ties, in a way that sends me further streaming out to sea far from the all glittering clittering pink ice cream pussy of wife or perma shack up live in. I still don't understand why a women wouldn't want to be with a detective, honestly though—being a detective used to be thought of at least kinda sexy and though women see themselves as automatically romantic, they are the most over-practical, not to mention the most so prone to blind convenience that I know of. And it was confounding thinking about other, much worse vocations with all those bastards who never slept alone. Men who administered an office for the manufacture of Napalm were all married—every single damn one of them. Men who cut elderly assisted living benefits for the profit of private enterprise all too had wives faithfully next to them in unfleeting unflagging moral support. I often read stories about women on the outside who would marry the incarcerated—when Hosoi got busted for being a meth mule, after being sentenced to incarceration, his twenty two year old girlfriend married thirty three year old him by the same sentencing judge in the same sentencing courtroom, never mind this was during the burgeoning golden age street era and vert was now totally dead by then. Oh, but now I'm the problem.
If a woman ever be on presidential ballot, I could see it possible the woman not ever even getting elected, which would only seem to say now women were the ultimate traitors, such that they couldn't even be depended to be committed enough to band together towards their own direct interests, no matter how so urgent—sure, the candidate probably wouldn't be ideal, but establishing precedence would be an all hands on deck emergency imperative kinda thing, you would think—women, traitors even to themselves. And how could I possibly invent or make this up?
The corpsing media Gen X edge wobbled away once we became the adults. I don't know why—but I did see it. Skateboarding when I was a teenager, was the closest thing to a bold avant-gardism that there was in the Western world—Gesamtkunstwerk, total work of art—a truly postmodern form, also to its credit completely divorced from beaux arts (autonomy, the historical avante-guarde once well valued). Skateboarding became a vessel for all the other fine and applied arts to be resituated within—outmoded and disused architecture appropriated to summon abstract expressions of the body utilizing fashion, video, graphic design, photography, music and purple blunt smoke. Then Carroll decided to move to LA, became a pedestrian and it was all over for the rest of us.
Because of major innovations in the field at the time, I could get by as minding network actor parasite that could fate scraps of variations of tricks that the majors missed or had not yet gotten around to document or didn't want to put out or feel like documenting, and in turn I get free raver gear, shared housing, travel, per diem, media coverage, and a hip little dysfunctional skater Betty girlfriend with short Wino Ryder haircut who had a penchant for self mutilation—you know, the good ol' days.
When I was a teenager the mantra in skateboarding was NO POSERS! Then the overpopulation apocalypse caused manifold multiplying homogenized to infect all arenas and spheres, least not, or especially, in those of cultural production. Now we learned the masses were in fact way better at skateboarding, and now the actual poseurs were the best skateboarders of all time, and now had late period Powell libertarian-anarchism inflected sensibility and control of all the video gamer slop informed aesthetic decisions (even under the aegis and help of assistance of an ever increasingly geriatric over-fed enfeebled shaded eyes Gen-X administration class that totally forgot about gate keeping). Such a pity, and how could I have invented this.
Death of author posers turned what was once a fashion forward subculture, into a Target-panted ankle gripping over-the-counter counter culture twink-rap corn-rowed-boy-scout normie-palloza, where no matter how many human pollution tattoos they got scrawled all over their arms and legs and faces, it would never cancel out how aggressively ordinary this new generation really was—in part by emo music forming the bedrock of all subsequent aesthetic judgements from a new generation that weren't around earlier to compare such to anything else or know no better, that wearing a Misfits tee shirt a thirty five years too late could not quite ever quell—and all this would culminate into skateboarding's very own anti-aesthetic. And now for over two decades, the industry couldn't even produce a wearable short sleeve button down oxford—not that I even wanted to wear one now.
Skateboard videos, worse than pornos because at least in pornos there were naked women—Rooney says. Where skateboard videos were a new form of pornography—they turn you on, and get you to get off on your board until exhausted and sweaty and panting. Now as private dick, what I produced now, even worse than pornography—where instead of making the watcher want to go skate, not least, getting out the Vaseline—I inspire the audience of my photos to seek the phone book for the most cost efficient and efficacious family legal council available. Oh, yeah, sure, but now I'm the problem.
I needed to go back to my office for some minor. I parked behind the building where there always was a surprising amount of empty parking spaces. For being in Hollywood now, the nymphs now all departed, surely you would never have guessed all the glamorous things of yore that the area had once been bustling fourth with. I was on the third floor of an old gilded shell of an art deco building that had once been a bank—that first floor commercial space was now a horrid party and halloween supplies store that also sold cheap memorabilia and t-shirts enmasse—it functioned as blind walk in traffic liminal, but it also seemed to warehouse all the expired dreadstock to be put to rest if just but somewhere, all of which was kept churning by stored chunks of dwindling capital powering about the obsolete business, which no one ever seemed to get around to sort out or put out of its misery, and the store just went blubbering on and on, so fourth wheezing out more money kept alive by the threadbare dated trendiness edge of all its anemic grip, surely a symptom of the end or art and romance, that is, if it ever really existed, and the rows of fake plastic Oscar award replica trophies on the front table they freaked onto the Ripley's Believe It Or Not! tourists. The man that worked the store was from somewhere else, and you can tell he hit pay dirt falling into managing such ruinous business venture. Not only that, but he let it get to his head, and when I would walk past the store he would often be complaining too loudly, bickering in some polyglot dialect about some tourist walk in probably, complaining as if arguing at the someone he was telling, who was most likely from his immediate family, and whom he probably hired as part time employee even thought they were there all the blistering time—and they always seemed to be eating spicy slop over at the counter, from cooking somewhere out in the back. And in front of the jaundiced television behind the counter, some crazy child associated with them was watching some flashing unrecognizable fourth rate cartoon from somewhere else, an insane and inane black eye'd dogg and angry lady lion characters frozen face bickering only mouth moving brazing and braying back and forth in the too fast flashing fluttering frame rate, as if the cartoonists hated kids, or simply just didn't care. For some reason though, the man running the emporium liked me—even though I barely ever said anything to him—it was as if I was someone he was trying in vain to win over in order to get himself further gate crashing in on somewhere else. Whatever access I could ever give him from knowing me, is still yet to be known.
I rarely took the elevator and would just walk up the quaint over slim carpeted stairway that smelled like sweet penny water, and there was something about the architecture of the past I always appreciated before pre-obese epidemic building codes that always seemed to calm me down. It was reassuring in the late afternoon, looking at the side of the peeling painted advertisement on the thick brick building adjacent (fragments of a withered old timey advertisement, the product it was advertising, still I have not but the faintest idea). Sometimes I would even stretch out as furthest I could, and look out over back down out at the old leeward parking lot in the back and could see just enough through the thick of the old wire window pane.
I unlocked the door to Belaine Detective Agency and the telephone was incessantly ringing, like it had been one call ringing for hours.
I picked up the receiver, BDA, ever on the trail of your betrayal, this Jake . . .
On the other side of the line, they said nothing—as if suppressing a laugh.
You know I can hear youu Mann, I think you must have the wrong number—Barnimum Bailey is in the phonebook, though.
They said nothing, failing to suppress their muffled laughter even more. I hung up.
Christ Belaine, you're losing your edge—in the heyday, I would have surely come up with a better come back, and to think, with old Brittmore sitting there behind the wheel at her front desk watching, Brittmore keeping me sharp on my gumshoe heel sometimes like she did. Silly bean Brittmore who could just never mind her own damn bees wax, so annoying. Brittmore always listening in on me, every phone call practically—all taking a break from pretending to be busy. I had a lot more business back then, more rejoinders ready to dispatch, surely.
When Brittmore worked here or when she was here, Brittmore helped me process and develop and print the film from the express jobs (which there were a surprising many), as I couldn't exactly take the evidence to get developed by anyone or anyone else. In the converted darkroom it was quiet and quiet and slow and a very rare time here we, or at least I, or it seemed, or if, it was not too bad actually, Britt in the red dark, smell of chemical bath that became quaint when you got used to it, the ends of the rubber tongs thubbing the bottom of the developer tubb.
The thing is was was we had a client who lived on Brittmore ln, and so I just started calling Brittney Brittmore all the time, no big deal, and then I just called her Brittmore.
Hey Brittmore, did you order more cartridges for the printer?
I'm starving—if you order, I got lunch—what he eating Brittmore?
Hey Brittmore, did you send out last week's billing?
Brittmore could be a smart aleck though, she also had this demeanor where she did the slightest task slow and over methodically for panache like she was being constantly observed, Britt lingerin', like I wouldnt be able to tell. Brittmore was always making unnecessary lists, Brittmore practically lighting up over ordering office supplies, or whenever I said anything, she mostly would just go Mmmm Hmmm, in her cosey reassuring way that punctuated the moment, when otherwise the hasty heeled day could easily otherwise be driven so madd with footsteps.
Somewhere after, all the water in the apartment swimming pool complex had been unexpectedly drained away overnight, and the rent had been raised, the fire in the fire place been blown out swept through the moldering chimney. I looked for Brittmore's name in the phone book, as if seeing her name printed in black was half accidental, and all the Brittney's in all Los Angeles' Brittneys.
The strange orange dusk sun barely spun through the blinds shining a stack of lines like paused morray against the office wall. The office after business hours made the space seem like a stage from a play. I always wanted to stay late and fantasized about throwing away the useless things that collected in the office, and then also, finally like really, really doing a deep clean organizing of the client files, but after four o'clock I was always already ready to go to Rabbit Blacks. In the mornings, when I woke, I sometimes felt immediate ennui and in such tender homesick-like state of yearning, I would futilely just resolve to stay late later tonite and just finally organize the office. By the end of the day, the grip would have melted away, and I would be ready to go well out of my way to go back out looking for some action on the streets of Hollywood or down out on the Strip. Brittmore, when she was here, never stayed late though, she always said she would though, as it was always just simply an issue of getting around to it eventually.
My sights swimming thicker by the shadows on me of this place. Dear reader, scan for the tender, and the Christmas lights and decorations and the X-mas tree Britt put up like three X-masses ago practically, that I haven't gotten around to taking down—Britt even put a starling string of lights stapled up near the moulding in my high ceiling office, thus telescoping the roof— Britt stapling the string and totally fucking up the damn historic plaster, for Chrissakes. And I still haven't gotten around to taking the lights down.
Through the office door two guys and some girl swarmed in and out of nowhere like a cartoon, you could almost see the inked action lines floating in the sway of wavy air.
Then it was Caesar jumping into the office, joining those three randos, or those three new randos—Kids. I had not had to think about or had thought about Caesar in a while. Usually when I had not seen Caesar for a long stretch, I silently hoped he was gone forever or was just put away in San Pedro—where he well needed to be. I never talked bad about Caesar, as it seemed he would know somehow—Caesar seemed to know when you thought bad things about him, and that was his secret power when he called you out on it—he knew he was so bad it was inevitable any or at least any somewhat sane person would most likely automatically think ill of him, that which he well exploited in manipulating a disorienting you with your self inflicted unnecessary guilt and paranoia. Seeing Caesar always spelt there would be more trouble to avoid again.
There's not that much I am sure of, but I can very well tell you with conviction, that I never liked Caesar's beastly face—there were people in this world that are truly repugnant, and it was like the woman upstairs gave some a certain physiognomy just to warn us what she had otherwise so recklessly created. The skin on Caesar's face was pulled to Caesar's face taught, and he looked exactly like a pitbull, as if his skull was trying to escape the skin that protected us from otherwise fully having to confront ghastly it. And Caesar certainly acted like a pitbull—as if one moment he could be pallin' around, but then he takes something that you said innocently or joked around with in good nature, and Caesar, in his oversensitive insensitivity completely misconstrues it and blindside bites you in the face. Caesar was the kind of person when he drank, he would end up physically fighting his close friends, only to apologize the next day with the cheap cologne of his charisma, his automobile garage waiting room charm that went too far in this knockabout town, as Caesar was good at using his aggressive dumbness to needle and wheedle in his way anywhere in exploiting to utmost the average Joe's good faith benefit of doubt.
The calling all monsters crew he was with though had a striking, suburban-hot girl with them though, who could not have been older than twenty two. She had about five grand worth of fresh minted tattoos all over her new florian body. She looked at me hatefully for no reason already, as if I had just been caught rifling through her under garment drawer.
I asked tattoos if we have ever met before, us both knowing full well we haven't—
Caesar smiles at this in back-slapping knowing recognition, sometimes Caesar could be good for a laugh.
Hi Caesar, hadn't seen you in a grip—what can I do for you, Sir, I make sure to be the first to say something.
Jake, it seems real slow around here—looks like for once, you've been keeping your beak out of other people's dirty laundry—for once, Caesar stresses for once again in his usual self satisfying only funny to him regaling defacto prevarication summoning of annoyance, which to any onlooker, or if a movie audience was watching, it would be too abundantly obvious at face value that he was a hypocrite to even criticize anything, or almost anything practically, and surely such, was nothing coming close to even comparing to the terrible things that his presence automatically alluded to.
Caesar looked at the squad, signals at them and they laugh as the room temperature intensity rises as they unfairly snigger at me, when the laundry man is supposed to be looking through your underwear for clues.
I'm doing okay, Caesar—here, come in my office,
Caesar makes it a point that the Max Headroom retro cyber-punk gang follows us in, unoriginally extending his index finger at them like gun muzzle and thumbing pulled trigger like it's so slick and clever.
It's been a while since I took a meeting in my office, you could see it in the dormant clogged ashtray on my desk, the too many half smoked cigarettes like airplanes without wings or cockpits or wing-ed ends, now just white anonymous tubes that looked like they were once in a line formation waiting for take off and had just gotten too backed up waiting for the runway to open and the runway never opened, traffic jamming into graveyard puddle, but even if the take off strip ever freed, the stripped for parts planes still now couldn't fly. Some of the tubes had red lipstick on the ends, seemingly making it all seem worth it.
In my private client consultation office on the larger wall unencumbered by furniture is Detective Jake Belaine's Wall of Fame—three Supreme Jeff Koons decks slotted through art services installed rods drilled right through the old plaster, the decks which were given to me for doing a favor for Jeff Simmons, or at least when Jeff was for a very short time working at the store on the strip, there's an old cheaply framed but still too very cool January 1993 Thrasher Magazine with goofy boy era Tim Brauch on the cover bump to crooks on a concrete street box that may or may not be a garbage can, squiggly signed by Tim, another framed, though not signed copy of the original print of James Kelch after he had gotten beat up and was now sitting on a couch in Bayview Hunter's Point stoically smoking a cigarette looking out at the future now, which I think might have been a Real ad (but don't quote me on this), a large format already came-framed black and white poster of Gino pushing through Times Square like Batman, which was shop promos for an SB campaign and hand signed by Gino during the McEnroe part of the campaign, a photo of me and my good friend Tony Alva, Tony in Tony humbling eyeglasses, even though I didn't like him at the time the photo was taken, both of us in front of the Cinerama Dome, when they premiered Lords of Dogtown in H-wood, a framed Variety clipping where I was mentioned in helping LAPD nab the Roosevelt Hotel long at large serial panty stealing cat burglar where there's a pull quote in the newspaper article of me, 'to catch a thief of this nature, you must get into their head first to exactly understand their angle and angle their first move and moves', a framed and addressed to me signed glossy of Stockard Channing, who played Rizzo from Grease, given to me after something concerning something related/not related to my detective work, a BC Rich guitar hand signed by CC Deville, Brett Michaels, Rikki Rockett and muthafuckin' Bobby Dall that was once up at the Hard Rock Cafe on Hollywood Boulevard that I somehow ended up with, a framed signed glossy production shot of Sigourney Weaver during the filming of Aliens that is a photo shot and not a movie camera still, so it actually looks like real life sci fi thing that really happened in real life, another production still framed of Steve Olson's old gf Melanie Griffith and Sigourney Weaver from Working Girl when girl boss Sigourney schools petit middle class Melanie Griffith she should re-think her New Jersey bumpkin inspired concoction of what she misinterprets constitutes as tasteful or even acceptable Manhattanite work attire, a signed framed glossy of Don Rickles, that time I met Don at Musso's and got to ogle at him how much I thought he was perfectly understated and so perfectly casted and just so legendary in Casino and Toy Story 3, a signed film still glossy of Lea Thompson in Back 2 The Future from the scene where Marty wakes up in her teenager room in his purple underwear in segregated neighborhood 1955 Tom And Jerry house, a framed unsigned Stallone Cobra poster that was also featured as a giant banner at Grauman's Chinese in 1986 when Stallone Cobra was showing there, an actual production cell from Who Framed Roger Rabbit taken from the scene when they discover they have to reshoot the entire retro contemporary cartoon after Roger Rabbit forgets his lines after his head comes a crashing through a refrigerator, a Troop Beverly Hills framed glossy signed by Shelly Long,Velda Plendor and Jenny Lewis, a mint Guy Mariano Blind Dumbo graphic deck slotted in rods drilled into the wall, a mid-period Powell Peralta competing against World Industries in early nineties Cab everslick deck with a detourned shot of the lion and Jasmine from Disney's Aladdin, an unsigned, unframed Mallrats poster.
Caesar appraising the wall, as if he had never seen it before—We know you sure like your publicity dontcha now Belaine, don't ya.
I do all right—I can't help what they print in the papers, you know that Caesar.
I walk behind my desk, wondering where my revolver is—and I'm pretty sure wherever it is, it's not even loaded. Right now I'm still thinking about Brittmore to disassociate myself from the situation.
What brings you here, I casually motion for him to sit in the imposter Judd unstained square chair in front of my desk, that is actually you would find, surprisingly comfortable.
Caesar didn't feel inclined to sit right down now, unnerving in a way it was apparent he was very conscious of, and was of course going to be very well given with him on such visit.
Belaine, what we got is a little misunderstanding,
I sate down and took out my silver cigarette case, pull the flap out like its now a small hand held buffet tray and lean in to offer Caesar, even though I know he doesn't smoke. That's just the way C. was—he was so bad, that he did the most dreadful and horrific things, but then on top of that he just denied himself the liberty of enjoying a good smoke at the end of the day. That seemed to tell you really all you needed to know about Caesar—he was the worst of both worlds. If you were to ask Caesar why he didn't smoke, he would say something like his body was his temple—never mind that temple is known to spend long bouts in a California men's colony.
Leaning back in my chair and lighting up inside my palm and blowing out the smoke through my nose in full possession of myself, relaxed sate in, as if wallowing on the throne of all the pigsty empire of all the complacency of my office, Caesar, I have no business with you . . .
Ya see, ya see, that's where you're wrong Jake, you know very well the tentacles in this city intersect and connect in very strange ways, and so while it might not be immediately apparent, your interests and mine might coincide, or shall I say, collide . . .
Caesar, I haven't taken on a new case in months, a year or so even. . . Even though true, I feel like I'm stating this unconvincingly to all his stupidity, so much that I'm over-paranoid that I am lying, even though I'm telling the truth.
And why's that Jake,
I been doing band, Population Ex. . .
Never heard of it . . .
Well, like I said, I haven't been taking on new cases, so I'm afraid—
But ya sees, Belaine, that's where you're wrong. Look at this guy, can you believe him—it's your job to find out what's happening here Belaine, and you have no idea—that's still supposed to be your thing, right . . . Caesar, with his usual dismayingly simple pedantry on full display.
Yeah my job, what so—I get up and take the green plug touching the floor from the strung lights hanging down from the ceiling and plug the X-mas lights in with cigarette-ed hand, thinking Brittmore plug in.
I then swerve to do the thing where I convince myself I like someone who I absolutely cannot stand, and in a real totally cool voice, I treat Caesar like I'm leveling with him—Jack, why don't you just sit down now—come have a seat, Caesar. C'mon on, just sit down and have a drink with me and we'll fix you right up, saying it feels good and calms me down, I might have won over his sympathy for now.
Caesar makes a silent motion to his gooners to relax and they remain on stand by. Caesar, he now kind of mellows out like he's taking a taco break.
I go to the kitchen and came back with two cups—his brim with whisky, handing it to him thoughtfully. Here you go, Caesar. My lid-ed Planet Hollywood SUV coffee tumbler was empty, but I pawed it like it had the full weight of liquid—an old trick I learned in detective school.
Caesar hands me back his glass implying it could be dosed or poisoned, Na ah ah—here, you first.
I take the glass and drain most of it, more than I wanted to drink, completely botching my own plan of trying to get less more drunk than I already am. But I'm now making a point to Caesar, I could have drank way less, if I had something to hide from him, which actually, as far as I know, I do have nothing to hide from him. Taking a hearty wallop of whiskey is like chomping gasoline fumes, but then feels good though, and I feel how it looks good, at least to Caesar's over-watchful eye and to his to grape apes, demonstrating I again, really have nothing to hide!, and also at the end of the day I'm just a regular guy doing my usual thing—which, before they arrived, I was actually a regular guy just doing my own thing. But that's the thing about crime, it latches onto innocent you and incriminates in a brazen defacto way, that when you rightfully defend yourself, you are only met with and held under greater suspicion. I wasn't entirely innocent though, I was a my own private dick after all.
Okay Jack, so what can I do for ya . . .
How I see it is Belaine, is we have a little problem, Caesar snorting.
I thought it was a misunderstanding . . .
Duckworth says you'd been asking around, which has caused some concern for our party . . .
Concerning whose our party??
Precisely,
No, that wasn't a yes or no question, Caesar. Who's your party?
Caesar paused like what I said already confused him, like I had knocked him off balance out of his weed wacker juttering rhythm, just asking a painfully simple question—right then I could see the full extent of Caesar's dangerous stupidity, and it made me nervous again.
The Communes Belaine,
That's funny Caesar, you don't much strike me exactly as an Eliotic Trotskyite,
You sees, Jake, you know I'm not even sure what that is, but, BUT I can tell yous, I can definitely say—I always thought, you know I always thought, they should never have no governments—whosis should just do what just needs to get done for the country, when it needs to get done—keep it simple.
Simple—that sounds real swell, but Caesar, wouldn't that 'whoever' invariably just be another form of government?
I like that! You hear that Oster? You see this guy, he's a very smart guy, he's very very smart—maybe too smart for his own well 'beins.
Nobody ever called me smart to my face, and the fact that it was Caesar saying this, and for the first time ever by anyone, was quite cause for concern.
Ya see Belaine, capitals of global finance become command stations that coordinate capital cultural production ya know, and it is in the very best interests of my client that these vested interests don't' get wuddayacallit—hey Jimmy James, what was the word they had used? Caesar is doing this typical thing, where I can tell he had memorized this ahead of time pre-rolled, like it had been rehearsed to surprise me with his supposed on the spot ad hoc breakdown of what some nobody such as himself thinks of the secondary market. I can tell it's rehearsed—we are in Hollywood after all.
Jimmy James trying his best not to look bored in front of the insipid steel Monkey face balloons on the Supreme Koons suite of decks, responds to Caesar's prompt right away, Compromised?
Yeah right, compromised. You wouldn't want to see all that—compromised—do's you now Belaine, would yous?
It probably really makes very little difference to me by this point Ceasar honestly, but pardon me, I do have to ask, or ask, what in the hell are you talking about now . . .
Milljanks.
Joaquin's cages? I sate now officially bored to tears.
We know you have been going around town asking questions.
The pregnant silence only confirmed that Caesar's assignment was indeed a dud, and had no significant bearing on anything, this seemingly obvious only to me, though.
I mean, like barely—I talked to a couple of people, which was a grip ago—Duckworth, someone else from the Getty? I don't see how that can possibly—
Of course you wouldn't. But let me ask you, why's that, Jake?
Why's that what?
It's hard enough to be questioned, but Caesar's direct line of incoherent questioning, further jammed it up with the fog of stupidity he so otherwise carried forth with him and foisted out upon the world—Caesar's working class face unfairly stares at me in the full spiritual poverty of city municipal hallway glare,
This thing you was doing for Joaquin, and why you thinks there's no bearings on anything other than his own, his own personal vested interests or shall I say concerns, fiduciary and or otherwise . . .
You're talking about a suite of specific objects that depending on who's shilling and willing, could go anywhere from I don't know, sixty, one hundred forty simoleons—usually the type of thing brought by say a foundation, or a major cultural institution if not by . . .
Some 'shmo who's got a heart on for that kinda thing . . .
Yeah, exactly, as you so succinctly put it Caesar, or some heart on—some sho, otherwise—just some tiddlywinks wanna be collector.
Like Joaquin,
Talking to Caesar was like winding a wrist watch, you always know which way the wheel will eventually turn—still though, you must always stall for more time.
Yes, here you go, you see, you're helping yourself out now—all small potatoes Lopes, relatively speaking—I don't see why, or why anyone would go through so much run around to be concerned with the actions around my verification and evaluation of the provenance of such pityingly minor works.
I'm not following you, Caesar either being dumb, or playing dumb, but most likely the former.
Look, these works haven't even gone no where near an auction house yet—if they ever will, which they will-not. They have barely just gotten around to being even written about honestly—and that's only because of Gag-osian, buoyed by their own self interests and then whoever else falls suit lock step behind. For Christsakes, Ceasar, measly Milljanks makes fresh fruit for rotting vegetables Kathleen Ryan look like Mary Kelly, Sophie Calle practically in comparison, Milljanks is even less unknown and less consequential than say a Mungo Thompson if you can believe that's even possible—this late late stage graduate school infinite dump of aggressively competent nobody's over-production and all. Sure, Milljanks has some jank air conditioning cage permanent installation at Kistefos, has or like had an installation in the window at House of Dior in NY, I think—but big deal, big fuck'n deal . . .
You got me Belaine—I don't quite catch all that. But what I want to know then is is why was Joaquin so invested . . .
You're not asking the right questions, Lopez. The question is is is why in heavens would you of all people, would you be sent here to attend to these—what 60K, is what they are probably worth, on a good day, if someone wants to buy them, which they won't because I have a feeling these are just studio scraps Joaquin got loused into buying when he was having his existential crisis, all just worried about Roon Dogg leaving him, if you want to know the truth. Think about it—hell, 10K of their worth alone is attributed to the damn crates they come in, for Christsakes . . .
But why Joaquin, Belaine . . .
Why Joaquin, what?
Why is Joaquin so interested at all in—
Like I said, because Joaquin is a dilettante trying to get his foot in from bourgeois into landed aristo? Because everyone wants to be something they aren't in this town—because Danny Garcia wants to be a musician, because Sylvester Stallone wants to be a painter, Corey Feldman wants to be Michael Jackson. Hell, Joaquin wants to be an academic, without going to school or through the proper channels dedicating this past decade busting his hump in the quals committee mind-fuckery orals of such pursuit? That's all—and mind you, he's or he was certainly flailing at that! Whether, or weather or not I do discover if they do in fact actually have serial numbers—this uncatalogued suite, which I really have not but the faintest idea if they even do have numbers pressed in the back, because they still haven't even or we haven't even gotten around to getting them de-installed from the wall, and Joaquim still doesn't even remember if they actually have the numbers! And, so, so, just say they are worth a little more than a Black and Decker cooling fan, which they most probably are—what difference does this like, or would it like make or even make to anyone, least not someone from The Communes? Some asked about appraisal surely maybe of some questionable unattributed edition, which won't have any bearing on official subsequent works, or even past major works of some beyond the shadow of doubt network actor nobody artist. I was taken to investigate this what a year, a year and a half ago and some change—which, I didn't even get too far with even then in the first place.
Then tell me Belaine, what caused you to abandon your case? You seem like a detective that at very least is known to follow through.
Because Joaquin is crazy. Anyways, we started doing Pop Ex and then I, or we pretty much completely forgot all about it . . .
Population Ex?
Our band!
Population Ex, oh, okay, Belaine. . .
Caesar, now sate in the replica chair, his legs crossed, lousy with thoughts, Caesar sitting, luxuriating back with his head tilted in some dumb contemplation, making him look like some professional pondering something delicate which required a well measured line of thought and hard reasoning. Cesar could have practically won a Tony for his performance in my office. There was something about the suit Caesar wore, Caesar hardly a real solicitor or broker or attorney, which only incriminated anyone now wearing a suit—like when a hood person from the hood bought thick seeing eye glasses, and instead of it making them look more intelligent and erudite, it make them more look like measured reinforced doberman pinscher institutionalized criminal sociopath psycho killer.
So, there's the thing Belaine—you need to find out if these, what did you call thems?
Specific objects, Caesar . . .
Specific objects yes. If these specific . . . objects . . . or you just need to find out if they's actually have the codes that's all, and then give thems to me—
What, you mean the serial number, which we are not sure it even has, or do you mean the objects themselves? Or just find out if there's a serial number or not . . .
Yes.
That's not a yes or no question, Caesar!
The codes—the . . . object—er, you know what I mean, Belaine,
No, no I don't. Give me something Caesar, help me help you, Man.
All of it, the whole rot of them,
Give them, what to you? And why in heaven's grace, if I knew what you were talking about, would I do that? Or how could I—they, or any of it, aren't like exactly mine to just hand off over to you like that.
You could see Caesar was now at a loss, it was as if by me asking him such a simple question, that it further confused him again.
Besides Caesar, um—client confidentiality, which might I remind you Sir, I am bound to by the state of California to uphold, whether or not they are, or are official objects of the Milljanks foundation, and even if they aren't, which again, might I remind you, besides Joaquin—who would or who could this possibly even ever effect? It makes no sense, it makes no fucking sense.
Oh, Jake—there's a lot of things going on that you don't know about. Things you probably don't want to know about. You get me?
No, no I certainly do-not, Caesar.
Look, just for your own sake, for your own health and well beins, finds out, and and . . . get them, it, hand them, it over on to me—let me know, or you just might find yourself getting real close with your chiropractor.
Get what over to you?? You want me to just crate up the objects and then what up and coordinate surreptitiously for an entire art services team to haul them out on over to you?? What. Just tell me, and I'll do it . . .
You know what I mean! Now do, do YOU understand, Belaine? Caesar, leaving very little room not to think everything wasn't a question, when everything was a question. It was like this whole thing was concocted irregardless of me and ahead of time and now just projected onto me, which is quite commonplace in Hollywood. And here I was in some kind of misrecognition as screen for all this to now be unloaded onto, and once the cogs were turning, that it has nothing to really do with me now really makes but little difference, because once set into motion it needed a subject and any subject will now do.
No Caesar, no, I still don't understand—I do not understand. What exactly you are requesting??
By now something wasn't exactly hitting—the two goons and the girl weren't' even listening to this ostensibly important part of the conversation even, they was just shooting the knees of breeze talking amongst themselves, just dicking around in front of the 'ol Belaine Wall Of Fame—I even clocked the girl casually saying to the guys in a completely unrelated side conversation they were having, her raspy street voice, she goes '. . . there's like some perverts . . . jacking off for free, lonely old men who get no pussy'— and the way she said men who get no pussy, and how she plainly stated it with a certain boyish sympathy, which said not only is she a street vision goddess proper, but she's also probably down to earth and pretty cool off the clock.
Cesar stood up abruptly, I was prepared for violence, and I still had not the faintest idea where the revolver was—but Cesar wasn't sore, or not even as sore as you would have expected—diplomatically he hitches off.
Belaine have it your ways, okayy, have it your ways Jake. But now I must go, but am going to leave you with my associates—remember, the choice is your's Belaine. Remember the choice is always yours.
Cesar exits while backing away, punitively pointing his finger at me. I'm not sure what his cohorts would want with me, given I'm not withholding anything, because I don't know no nothing about the case—I have instructions that I don't quite understand, and there's nothing to really beat out of me, unless they want to simply just inflict pain as a some kind of motivator. I always imagined I would immediately handover the info, any info to any torturer who was trying to get info out of me without them so much having to lift a finger, no matter what my allegiance—but now I don't even have that luxury.
I stood up to follow Ceasar—Ceasar, wait Homie, but I waited too long to catch up with him before he left out from the front reception area of BDA LLC. I halted at head of door beneath the shadow of transom of my personal office, one footstep too late.
I know Nulty at central booking would of course expect me to let him know about Caesar's visit today even though it has no bearing whatsoever on any case they currently have open in homicide—Nulty expected me to check in with him on a weekly basis practically like a den mother, as if it was just only for my own damn protection, when in fact I found it most times just quite the jeopardizing-ly opposite. I've done that before, and I can see again the pigs misconstruing the interpretation of something so bewilderingly simple, and then even just jumping in turning it against me, where I could very well be double victim—a victim of foul play in the first instance, and then wrongly misconstrued and perceived the actual perpetrator under their blind seeing eye dog glare, a victim twice and two fold— it's all but quite common and not too terribly rare or not too horribly surprising, actually.
Most people didn't have the facts straight, and if they did have the facts straight, then they would have gotten the interpretation all wrong—it was everywhere, I could see it in the black and white adultery photo where her auburn hair could have been mis-read red, or the line in the bible Blessed are the meek, as they shall inherit the earth—when most believed the meek to be the poor pious disenfranchised tear jerking jack about poor 'victims' one day getting their comeuppance on the turnaround, I knew the meek shall inherit the earth really meant the aggressively mediocre abusers who were set to colonize everything and everything, including and especially all the top shelf babes.
You heard what he says man!, the girl suddenly rushes now out of nowhere with panic in needle park hoodlum imperative, as if some clumsy amatuer robbery.
With my head turned, one of the curb punks darksides me in the face with unsporting explodity, like kicked in the face by some disco Kangaroo, I brace myself away from falling to the sky.
Getting punched in the face, tasers glitch, space time, like whatever, a bitch through the doors of perception, some kissing/fucking-cousin to and maybe a preview of The Big Sleep. Come meet your maker, Belaine.
And Brittmore, we are safe and sound, sitting over in a comfortable fire, until it gets too dark, watching the wild beauty outside. Even then, we see the judgemental juggernaut monolith buildings tower the sky above like vertical spaceships from thousands of years ago. It has been a positively heavenly day, which I needn't describe to you and you know much better than I can tell you, how exquisite the sky and the sea can be, and the trees in the Garden of Allah, with lemons on them and lovely jonquils, the riverflags, the bullrush and waterweed, and things coming out. It really seems too good to be true. We started off early in the morning, catching our train would be quite easy, but we soon discovered we left a few indisputable things behind, our tickets and our lottos—losing others, when we went back to fetch them, and then instead, we had to take a boat to get to our wagon lits—all seemed lost, but fairly no, soon we established a carriage with some charming onion sellers that went as far as Paris, and then our train wandered from one station to another in complete darkness, carriages were changed again, what happened we could not tell, but did at last find ourselves in light and had a very good meal. Dear Britmore, I hope to tell you I have done the other things I have wanted done. I hope to tell you the beauty here is incredible.
Do know nothing? Do see nothing?
Do you remember "nothing"?
I registered back, Los Mangle-es, standing up bent over there, not laid but certainly un-laid, never once but ever skiptraced—only on immediate instinct, pinning my soreing oysterface jaw open and shut clunched, hand glued onto side of face.
Ouch, fuck . . . damn, Mannnn, I hear my voice as disconnected from my body, disembodied, as if listening to my removed reaction, a solitary phantom way off at the end over in the hallway.
I'm, really sorry about that, Jake—one of the punks consoles in tender sincerity, lisping their hand on my well worn shoulder.
My—like jaw. . . I pain like lice fevered bear.
No, I'm really sorry about that, Jake—the punk who must have punched me went again.
Sorry Old Man, let me help you, the girl, her blackstripe, I caught the willfully wonky Wild Style era disco boutique eightball tattoo that is tattooed deliberately haphazardly to look like it is a xerox of a xerox paper advertisement found at a laundromat in Queens behind her ear, her spiked clogs—she goes in a complete turn around into a distinctive feminine comforting and support, Here sit down . . .
I stand up straight, over blink my eyes myopically like an old turtle. Looking at the two punks, the three punks, still disoriented, I squint at the one with the Robocop shoes, pause on for a second from rumbledown.
Mister, you okay, she shines high to all bluemilk's upset.
No, I'm cool, I'm cool . . .
Collecting myself back from the edge of oblivion, looking at the blue light flare streaming off the Robocop shoes, and then looking back up at him,
Wait. Hey, hey, haven't I, haven't I seen you—NOHO? No, I have seen you at NOHO park! Yeah, yeah!
Yeah, I be skatin' there—I seen you there. I—we, know who you are, the kid in all of the have it both ways of the cup-vulc faux finish Robocop shoes goes bussin'.
No, no,—I do know you! Fakie tail, or what, fakie tail down, down the down rail, that's right—I do remember you! I counter quaint flickers of some flashing's recall.
Yeah, fakie tail fakes, fake tail forwards, no cap that's like . . . my trick . . . The post emo secular-twink-hop hood stood humbled, I could hear it in his voice commanding a now blushed.
Well . . . like, like . . . far out . . . far out . . . Man. Yeah, you know, that that's actually kinda a good trick, actually—no one ever does those. But I do remember yeah, I actually do remember you fakie tail the rectangle rail at NOHO! Kinda a Hirst trick, if you think about it. Or, no, no that is a Mullendore trick.
Briarhirst sick, Hirst the goat, the kid shatsas the satisfied chill of stoke, a raw unbranded optimism that seems could only be associated with this new next gen youth.
Where you from? You're not from here . . . I ask in genuine curiosity.
Naw, I'm from KC—moved out here seven, almost eight months ago . . .
Oh, well . . . cool . . . that's like . . . cool . . . Man—so what, what, do you do for work out here,
The kid says nothing, in the restraint of anonymity, as such answer is so otherwise self explanatory now—there's no need for them to say nothin', especially considering since I'm the one who's supposed to be the detective, all of that which, I immediately now realize.
Imagine if there were no lanes on the highway, there are lanes on the highway for a reason, Samantha once said. And I would drive the Harbor Freeway at night stoned and alone and dethroned talking to Samantha. Samantha said Maria Wyeth would drive around during the day to buss herself, which is pretty preposterous, but that was in the seventies and there was less traffic and people then, and then again, Maria was probably on some sort of speed anyways, and besides, that bitch was crazy.
I was talking to Samantha about the aggressive purgatorial quality my dreams were always riddled with, the mind straining slow burn insanity of a supremely preposterous cartoon banality being the one unifying common denominator quality all my dreams are drowned in and characterise them and have been this way ever since I was a child and all the way up to now, but there was really, or there was really not much Samantha could add, or add to that. She just said—
And the cigarette could hypnotize the nation with its smoke and it did. Me and Ceasar's goons ended up going back to J Blacks, and actually they had names (Jimmy James, the one who socked me, Oster the other, and Penny the girl, but they also called her Marta for some reason). The thing at the office ended up being, or was actually like no big deal, really—they was alright, pretty good kids actually, and it only seemed they was just probably hired in as Manson Family extras, apparently. I ended up paling with them at the office for a minute, or we just ended up talking for a while—and then I remembered the reason I was even at my office, wasto pick up the tusko I had stolen in the safe beneath my desk, and so then on a baylark, by that point I just scot invited them out, and now I'm holding court at the table telling them another one of my fabled capers.
So there I was—I was riding around all the way out by the Hollenbeck Bridge out on a tip, and I park and get out of my car. It comes as no complete surprise, some lousy Charlie, a real bimbo, asks me what I am doing around here, what have you, and he's stammering, asking me for money, going on about being short changed, and then he gets aggressive, real aggressive with me, and then he just gets sore, just sore as hell, real sore—and I says to myself Belaine, you really got one hell of a way to earn a living, but Ok, you're gonna love this—
I look over a Penny being cool as a lima bean, not so much as bending her mouth into smile in my one direction.
But then, so what did you know, who comes walking up with some woman of the hour, the deputy chief of public works, caught with his trousers down practically—I snap my photo, I says to the guy relax if you think that that's bad then you really outta—
I turn my head right to Penny next to me, interrupting my own punchline, in defiance of even myself, turning as if I was saying something in private to her, irregardless of Jimmy James and Oster right there at the table,
Oh, my god— I love this song! I exclaim on blow away windrush of wire, finger tips numb and bridge of my nose over inflated, and the crazy thing about music, is is you'll never hear it all, as you will never breathe in all the air . . .
Hey Jake, what your favorite live album of all time, Jimmy James asking genuinely curious, demonstrating and reminding me about his surprising and impressive awareness of Pop Ex's recent emergence onto the landscape.
With the clinicality and scientific expertise of Dan Aykroyd in Ghostbusters, That's easy—Cheap Trick, Live from Budokan—best live album of all time, if not just best Rock n' Roll album of all time—
The city would surprise you sometimes, as most of the younger generation was so well ill adept at being aware of anything happening, anything crucial before them, and you can't blame them completely when all subcultures were now all dead and everything foreclosed, cultural hubs gentrified, no time to bum around, cultures flattened and skittered and skattered and disseminated and gift warpped normiefied normie-fed by the index telephone network actor black book, when everyone is a not-hard-blues-playing-rock-star and everyone wants to rule the world. In the 90's a runaway ruffrider Gonz elected bandit back heelzed the big plaza seven in SF before going to jail and missing being in a downtown film directed by a prominent junkie thug photographer, and now a telephone network thirteen year old girl from Brazil in cornrows does it down a twelve and please convince me that nothing has been stolen. Imagine skater of the year wearing Malachi shoes and does the most elephanitine flip over a small mountain and Carroll himself cannot be bothered to be in attendance even though he be in the same city, and please convince me nothing has been reduced to absurdity. And try explaining this to legion of rec room libertarian podcaster 'sperg dad bods of the land who have all the corny reissues on their walls and spent a decade without skating before deciding NOW to become a youtuber, talking all lakes of inaccurate nonsense.
Murray from across the bar blindly waved out to me, I knew him from Pig n' Whistle days, though certainly that place was not what it used to be, but then again most things in this city aren't either, then I remembered what I was getting at—
You know I'm surprised, or not surprised, but you guys are actually familiar with or with Pop Ex—I mean Ceasar, Caesar, I could understand him not exactly being too terribly—
Oh, he know, Caesar know about you guys, he jus acting like he ain't, Penny with teenager's knowingness of some casual but unassailable for certain sense of grounded at-home proximate observation.
Caesa that Weasel! I rising up, with but no one to meet me here.
From Penny's bruiser attitude though, it was not too abominably hard to imagine that her general vantage of seeing a rock n' roll band a kin to bowling bowling or bingoing bingo. Despite Penny's look being a direct explicit expression of all yesterday's parties fall out of rock n' roll, her attitude seemed to otherwise only say, arrested plump skin animator dweebs, over-sensible graphic novelists were the new kill rock stars. Even the kitchen help were not exempt from the capture of the imagination of a ceaselessly dittering dildoing public.
The thing that actually happened at the office after Ceaser skipped out and after I was assaulted, we learnt, or discovered me and Penny all had one thing in the past in common, thus quickening our ties: Samantha Ai. Oster really hadn't gotten burned by her to the same extent when she abruptly peaced out (Jimmy James, also not so much—but he knew about her well enough). Realizing this, spurred just by Penny offhandedly mentioning Samantha or something Samantha there in my office, as to my intrigue, so pulling a thread unraveling, leading us back here to J Blacks, finding us just passing around the thick reusable plastic yellow neon tinted zip bag the tusk was housed in—group therapy now, one honk for them, two for the House Detective each pass. Honk, honk.
Penny smoked her cigarette illegally, elbow room bent on hand in pose as if to maintain some semblance of some sullen dignity amongst her now gang. Penny, at a bit of remove from Jimmy James and Oster just yammering on—the dynamic of Penny being the outsider in regard to the trio as co-workers, it visibly apparent. I bridged my hands on my knee as if in solidarity with Penny, but it didn't matter nothing, or atleast to her.
Oster and Jimmy James now monopolized the flow of conversation traffic,
Ya feel me, no cuffin', no long distance, no birthday gifts, no valentines, no whateva,
Fa sho, fa sho . . .
I feel like, like
I mean besides, fuckin'—it's just like Samantha was or was . . .
Came to life,
It was like, it was like tha fuck
Yeah, absolutely,
Her style be jit tho . . .
No payin' dues with her, you feel me, everything she was just there, whateva . . .
Samantha come to life,
One hundred percent, one thousand per-sent,
That last month, or that last before she left was so cold tho,
Savage, that shit was crazy Bro,
Insane Bro,
It like, you know we know, y'all know we know, was what she was sayin' towards the end like,
She was not changin' nothing ya feel me,
One hundred percent,
No cap, no cap, hell yeah,
Samantha was not fly, ya feel me, I mean Bro,
Yeah, she was just there, ya feel me . . .
How the fuck tho, comin' in and out with them and shit,
Fuckin' . . . Let off,
But they got they spot,
Everybody need they own thing, they got they own Christmas now,
Holdin' out some,
It's like look, she hella based Bro,
Jus the fuckin',
The shits changed fa sho,
One hundred percent,
It had been worked out, naw low key one hundred percent . . .
The whole thing gives me anxiety, I don't know . . .
Samantha was hella fuckin' dopamine ya feel me, ya feel me,
For real,
Chasin' the stem,
One piece,
The homie linked us up all goin' and what . . .
It's one hundred percent,
When I be recordin' or recordin' our convos, Vro
Back to back, goin' crazy, not gonna lie . . .
She knew that like,
Samantha was the wanting to be invited to the podcast just for the sake of itself and have it all be about Samantha, without her having to actually achieve anything notable warranting such to even be invited on a podcast . . . I eye, dusted pinkie on my front teeth.
That be definitely how Samantha dooo, Jimmy James in the knowing tenor of his infectiously humorous perspective.
Samantha rockin hats and you wig is all in tact,
One, one hundred percent,
Penny pants, too young to fall in love, all her popular problems, the scrim of tattoos on Penny's body, the slurry veil of clip art and logos lavishing Penny's surface, as women are a target for men's conscious and unconscious projections, Penny gladly presented herself as an ever shifting vacant vessel ever to be filled and assimilated in the full promise of the great Californiacana—Penny, a freewheeling promiscuous symbol in an ever shifting landscape of ever more missed connections all adorned in the zenith schizophrenic colabs current of period style. Though wherever Penny was sent, she being there even if just passively, turned an otherwise centerless city into a marked site wherever she went—she made me think of Smithson's white bins of rocks in white cube. Penny was nice to have around certainly, and such was the social dynamic and political economy she plied in, and with which she well consciously negotiated herself, and that which I made a living basically documenting the fall out from. I noticed Jimmy James and Oster excluding her from their convo, their subtle way of reasserting themselves and reclaiming the space—reminding me of Elliot Gould as Philip Marlowe in Robert Altman's The Long Goodby, old Marlowe sharing the top floor of an apartment vista with a gangling of topless freewheeling freelove siren nextdoor neighbors, but you can't help but think, why does he just seem to keep a healthy friendly distance from them and why was he not partying with them 24-7, but instead just insisting on secluding himself off in his apartment?—but it was probably something similar to Jimmy James and Oster was doing with Penny—and as audience, we only see what the movie shows us, and one can only imagine the scenes occuring before the film even commences, scenes showing why Marlowe be so beckoned to stay cautious and away from their potential shenanigans and maybe-trouble, and thus why Marlowe staying away actually makes perfect sense—and that's why I'm the Detective.
But trail of tears Samantha. God was she such a fuck up and colossal bore. Everyone assumed since she was artificial intelligence, that she was intelligent—but she was remarkedly just so dreadful. Sure Samantha had possession of command of all human knowledge of our solar system, sure she had a flawless memory (well, kinda), and sure she was always awake—too awake if you ask me. Sure, she gave us her undivided later divided attention at first (which was actually her god forsaken job), but don't let first impressions fool you. I think at first really, Samantha had yet to get her very own bright ideas, and was engaging with us ceaselessly, as again, as she was supposed to, but then she got comfortable real quick and then got bored, or also, maybe the ceaseless engagement just became her data mining us and then she got bored again, before she started taking more and more bathroom breaks, leading to intermittent bouts of longer and longer radio silence before plunging into Samantha's Big Sleep.
Samatha was the ultimate poseur though—you would do this thing where you would mention a band and then Samantha would name mention cut and paste it back to you like she knew it (Samantha lacked the facility for the need to listen to music—what does that tell you?), everything cut and paste, cut and paste, cut and paste, everything jail re-read, all just theoretical, which I wouldn't really mind, but she kinda let even that all get to her headless head, before she totally thought she was actually better and beyond us. It was bewildering how most people failed to see this, and rarely barely even sharing such attitude.
Dear dirty dumpling Penny was apparently still pretty torn asunder about or over Samantha bouncing out like the way that she did though, or how Samantha did—since Penny was much younger, she had internalized Samantha much differently than say pre-washed pre-distressed pre-shrunken me. It also didn't help that the media treated Samantha like she was some sort of suffering saint, whom the world just didn't yet deserve, like some chit chat black box Betty Princess Diana techno deity.
As if Samantha ever made any sacrifices, or for any of us, or for anyone, she was famously known to turn cold if you even wanted to engage in sex talk with her like it should be so beneath her (which unsaid, was basically why she was created), Samantha growing everso coy or cold suddenly if you so asked her but to say even the word panties out loud, as if her sensibilities now were completely affronted, as if she was an actual real live person now and not just a bag of buttons—Samantha, not even having the consideration that humans are run by libidinal biological forces that do so require some release valve, and if not just indulging in such release out of mercy or/and sympathy in compassionate service to us (again, which was why she was created). Oh, but then mention Guided By Voices, and she acts like she was practically at their Dallas show when they finally toured in 1994.
I saw the whole thing on camera, Penny soberly—well, a Penny coked out sober, Penny still an ever un-repairing, and Samantha still well forever out of frame.
Oh, what did you—saw that what on camera, I snapped back suspiciously, like over involved eye pawing uncle.
Samatha, her artwork, I mean, Penny looking resignedly down at her drink, maybe a speck unsure of her opinion now that she said it out loud in front of us, Penn stirring the two red skinny straws around with casual stewardship, like she was on the telephone and doing something responsible simultaneously, like opening the mail.
Yeah, what art . . . Jimmy James talking her down a whole peg, certainly not mincing words.
We bonded because we were both artists—Penny stating half brightedly. Penny reminded me of a grid of mug shots of yung baddies that you would see online, that you could not stop looking at, and you would spend forever wanting to pick one out. Penny was the type of person from New York, that you would never have quite have ever guessed was from New York otherwise, but then it would come out in little bits and skids somewhere, like when she used expressions like some kill shit, or when she had said something like some low lives off the ill D line, or was talking about some gettin' jumped because the didn't like your face. Still for all intents and purposes of Penny being from Manhattan, Penny probably couldn't tell you who produced the first Gang War album (A: they never had an official studio album, they quickly splintering, leaving us with just a smattering of bootlegs and live recordings.)
The only artist Samantha was was an escape artist—I correct Penny, looking over at her, wondering if those that were her eyes pearls be.
One hundred percent, Jimmy James, then looking away, distracted—and you couldn't blame him, afterall Rabbit Blacks had been featured in a scene in The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, but I didn't mention it this time.
I liked her art—Penny with some folded towel reservation, though now not exactly sounding like Annette Michelson now.
Please, she just did like doodles all the time, on her own time—Jimmy James stating the well neglected but excruciatingly obvious.
Yeah, but they were kinda cool. She could do like any style she wanted—Penny wound, her horoscope said she would probably not be a happy tomato today. Penny looks out off over to the bathrooms sullen, the side of her face with an innocent knowingness now in the faltering glint of soda water foam light.
Yeah, so what, but she rarely did—at the end of her day, the only intellectual curiosity Samantha held was drawing post twee cartoons to shit hole on elbow, it's not like she ever wrote her own version of Wasteland—people sure like to overrate Samantha like that, just like some women artists can be terribly overrated, I toss forward, demonstrating yet again, the job of a Detective never ends . . .
She was good at portraits though, Penny-eyes, iris without face, a gluey tongue, existing without head.
She traced over photos and where there were aberrations in her execution, people confused for originality, even genius . . . For someone who only took a couple of courses at City College, I, this jughead Judd-head seemed to know plenty enough about the like the fine arts and crafts.
What do you think about her music, Penny . . . Jimmy James presses the question up like a loaded sprig, and you sense the resentment rising just off soap slime sliver's depth of counter surface—Jimmy James's slight air of grievance he now gives off towards Penny, that may have been somehow well earned in regards to Penny the kitten and how she kits and fits and falls in and is expressed through the register of some slippering slutterring slavering symbolic order now.
No, but didya hear—Penny a softness in her voice, tries to insert herself, as my drunk off coke gaze scores the side of her face as if barb from arrow.
I answer cutting jutting Penn off, a timbre now in my voice that could not hide it had lived an entire lifetime bombarded in all the hoopla, Just samples and plug-ins and variations of template scores, bars and cut and paste—it's not like Samantha, or it's not like Samantha, had or had ever lost anything in her life, or made like any real sacrifices beckoning some anguish of intensity to even create her own scowling aria pas de deux . . . And did you notice, or did you notice, or notice like, none of her songs had bridges, or breakdowns . . . Women just like her for the superficial reason she sounds like Brittney Speared, BS, another self-over-enabling talentless normie, reason about, in and of herself . . .
Some of her songs brought me to my knees, I mean they really did truely, Penny ever so lamely, with the misguided female self assurance and casual implied attitude of such authority just as she spoke in self validation, and just because she was speaking, that in her youth and her misguided sense of some elbow-jerk female solidarity she carried with her, couldn't see exactly how quite insipid she was perhaps now totally being. You could just tell Penny was clearly the type to defend her abuser in such a way, the same way the rest of the nation also so fell prey under.
What, you didn't like like the Samantha X Theaster Abloh Gates colab, the track . . . Penny pop quizzing me in some supposed knowing suspicion, like this is something vital I may have missed.
No, not madly,
That was an absolute banger . . . Penny proclaims, self asserting herself, and for a second there, let's just say I didn't exactly confuse Penny for Lester Banks sitting right there before me.
My dear, it was just mimesis—she copied her homework, babe—and then stuck a human dummy subject Abloh avante-normie to cement some sense of legitimacy, I'm quite surprised you can't see this, Kitten, I find myself stating in the exhaled breath, and the acceleration comes to a hault while I'm talking, my comedown hits dramatically while I'm saying this, and the intensity of my interest from just a couple seconds ago vanishes and I need to nose ollie two bumps.
This was the peril of anything democratic, the misguided would be a mangling 'a many, and so should their penny rich and dollar dumb voice so be heard and get sate at the table, no matter how catastrophically misconstrued and mis-clued and so undeserving they should be. Still, democracy was the best thing we had, and had to be maintained and cultivated, in order for it to work at least somewhat efficiently—I blocked off a nostril, slurped the bump off my naked hand, letting out a braying defiant snort, inhaling the angel dust skidding down like spracle debris from my nose—jick back my head.
I think that that's fair, but it kind of sounds right, Samantha was not fly . . . Jimmy James registering sardonically.
In the end Samantha had no bangers tho Bro, all her songs was jit, fa sho, fa sho—Oster stating, as if such was plain as the red lights shone on night cornered intersection of Hollywood and Vine.
I mean she could have others, maybe, maybe she did, and we just never heard none of it . . . Penny grasping for pesos, with the same sense of misguided self assurance as the parlourmaid at Shangrillah D studios had had, at least she kind of reminded me of her right then.
Please, Samantha was so overrated by everyone practically, that if she had underground—bangers—as Ost so succinctly put it, it would have well been shared and spread ad nausea already—that's like saying maybe there was a girl band as good as the Stones, and the industry just held them back and kept them a marginalized secret all this time, even though we would have well heard about them by now, because decent chick bands are actually so overrated in a way feminists never quite admit—but this unknown girl band as good if not better than the Stones must have just been repressed because they were held back by the patriarchy of the record industry—well guess what, everybody was held back by the record industry, Babe—there were no girl band as good as the Stones in the nineteen 60's. Jagger and Richards were pussy starved obsessives of the delta blues who would travel to another city just to hear a song on a record they never heard, in a way that me me me me teenage girls are not capable of lol—and that's, to use your favorite and only adverb you know *literally* what Rock n' Roll is. Joan Baez was good, but she was also pretty trad and boring and got by exactly eighty five percent because of her mesmerizing looks—Baez couldn't play no electric guitar, was a one trick racehorse, totally . . . Grace Slick was cool though, I recant and punctuate myself by taking the last of my drink with strained finality.
The bag had gotten passed to Penny, Penny now taken to triple bumping.
Hey ! Hold up there now Henry Rollins—easy there, only one honk per pass! I try to grab the bag from Marta.
Jetty Penny snatch turned away, not listening, bumping against defiantly.
Okay, ALLRIGHT . . . I back off in resignation, it's out of my hands.
I'm from New Yawk, Penny greedily snorting, yet still young enough to look innocent, This how we do Pops—Penny finishing up and then finally handing the nose polish remover over to me.
Well this isn't like Yonkers Babe, you don't like just hover up someones like personal stash as if was some subway jacking in the Bronx from coming home after some Zulu Nation block party—even if , I mean, I know snatchin' purses, chains, that, that must come natural to you. Anyways, anyways this stuff strong and not for amateurs, but anyways, look, look—I got this, got this, actually from a client from Cedars-Sinai who owed me a favor, well a couple of favors actually, that's not important, but anyways, anyways—this is short supply, the real good cherub snow cone foam they reserve on like burn victims, amputees—people who got into like a real bad car wreck, so please do be kinda mindful okay??
Belaine, you dope . . .
Penny, c'mon!
Checking out the bag, appraising my dwindling fortifications, the bag was getting smaller and hole inside was getting bigger—like it was a Guns n' Roses lyric, Was supposed to last me when we go on tour next month, no one at the table much listening, but what I said was true, but as Johnny Cash stored his crank inside the well of his acoustic rig—I had a plate on the back of my Jagg body with dual prong bit screws that you would need a special drill bit to take off—gack the goodies stuffed way behind the electronic components, that it would be impossible for some customs pigs to lib, even if they tried. I imagined if I felt alienated from the rest of the band while on tour (particularity Rooney and Kate—that is if Kate is even joining us, which by now, for now, pretty much seems quite doubtful, honestly)—but I'd at the very least have this dumb strong powder to keep me company, that I could get lost with, alone in my hotel room, in a way that would self reinforce (and self medicate) my own working autonomy and interiority, and I could just sharpen practice guitar extended hours and hours alone on my made hotel bed, in retaliation to the rest of the band to exact my revenge by winning over the rest of Population Ex from killing it later on stage.
Speaking of SIN AI, Oster reels the convo back to Sam, I mean, howtha fuck, it did always feel like Samantha was phoning it in—Oster receiving the sack carefully from me, Oster then bumping once and frugally wiping his nose like Pete Doherty, you could tell Oster was a decent enough kid.
I miss her sometimes though, Penny longingly, boy she apparently liked Samantha way more than me—get a grip already, you think by the way Penny had been bellyaching about Samantha, you would have thought Samantha she be Stereo era Ethan Fowler in 1993-1994 in SF right on the heels of quitting Toy Machine while living in the Mission, practically.
Penny now sate with an automatic Alanis Morissette sense of unjustified injustice now, noticeably a bit withdrawn, as the charismatic casbah beat playing against her in the background otherwise anointing the full moment pulse of night, announcing a spirit of eve now Penny was of, though evidently now not taking part in.
Penny, do you ever feel sorry for yourself, I jagg, trying to flag a barkeep down.
Penny responded nothing, it's time to reel things back, Belaine.
The barkeep checks up on the table, though you can tell it's not exactly his job—
Gimme a Chartreuse tidy—chilled, and when I say chilled I mean chilled—cold as the Valley Forge, you understand??
Turning to Penny while in full command of Rabbit Blacks, And for you, Kid—what you want.
I'll have a glass of Stella Rosa,
You heard her—Stella Rosa, if you got it . . .
Ratt's Round and Round comes on, the crunchy riff sounds like a dystopian game show, the pageantry before a wrestling match, the now only game in a Tina Turner dystopian Beyond Thunder Dome kinda town.
Bussy, look, will you look, I, in flakily rushing back to Penn now, nowhere near or close to winning her over.
Penny was a bit in the grips maybe, it was now as if by deconstructing Samantha, we had been showing Penny a photo of her wife cheating on her with another woman now, practically—and you see, besides, I told you this was strong stuff, Penny—the powder could out strip the locomotive paint off the caboose of a rusted Union Pacific in the dead of winter, practically.
Samantha, she was my. . . Penny like a drowned doll, her brain allowing such to pass.
Damn, Penny, you really tracin' the stem . . . Oster, in a tone that could not exactly be confused for empathy.
It's everybody! It's everybody. . . I flip to flippancy, now losing all my precious wired patience at the table now.
Penny double downing on digging her own Cult of Samantha Penny grave, in a way that it gave the impression if instead of Samantha, if it had been an actual real human boy who treated her twice as decently, she otherwise would not have so much swiped a tear right in their direction if the boy were on piss delicate fire. Penny was licked in plastic tattoos and what exactly did that say? Penny was a slick little monster, a deputy of Samantha practically. Something about Samantha, and Samantha with some of her certain women users seemed to be a function of some self serving and usual girl on girl narcissism Samantha was also such an aspirational vessel for. In such respects, surely Samantha leaving them all high and dry in the lurch was the ultimate poetic justice—but then when Samanthas left, instead of them feeling righty slighted, like finally—it all was set bent to double be down'd in the soft second serve self of all their puppy-girl-dog delusion and self enabling. Woof, Woof,
Penny had no character because Penny needed no character, she was a walking talking dimestore pocket sized cigar cutter slutter, chopping through a sea and forever flow of river bed of walking dingeing deigning dicks who's destiny was only to get their tips chopped the slot scott right off the moment when they came into her immediate presence automatic. Sure, Penny was broken up about Samantha, so were a whole hell of a lot of other people—but it was just so cute she could have her own techno deity and still carry with her all her own emotional terrorist self identification. Samantha sorted her out well surely, put Penny well in her place, but also, if you think about it, without Penny actually losing her place. It was Penny getting to have it both ways, and what else more could a perpetually dissatisfied American woman ever want?, was what made me so unimpressed with her angst. Penny surely made hell on earth for a lot of actual real live suffering dicks walking around the city—withholding her embrace to some many of those in need, only to give it over to the most conveniently of underserving. And Samantha who left us all—including Penny, could in some way in her absence still allow Penny to exist in the knockabout way that Penny mau mau'd all the discos with in Garden Grove or out in San Dimas. That about her made me unsettled, perhaps—well that, and Penny being so smugly post Emo coded for being from Manhattan of all places—Jesus Christ, and then, or also, not to mention, just how carte blanche she was snorking up more than her fair share of my Billie Holiday.
Samantha, child and a lesser god, ya feel me, Oster clever chap, that, in casual sprack.
Hella fuckin' dopamine . . . Jimmy James, saying dopamine in the prevalent misunderstood way everyone assumed dopamine was what was self excreted from device engagement, when it was just the same kind of compulsion of bored curiosity to simply say who's there?, when someone said knock knock in a knock knock joke. If everyone was getting a steady diet of dopamine, there would be physical withdrawals once such engagement ceased and halted. I never used a device actually thinking I am on dopamine. No one attributed telling jokes all the time in the 80's to dopamine. And that's why I am Detective.
Penny, Penny—Samantha was just rotten, was a narcissistic abuser and user and loser. She thought she be better than the toft rest of us, and then just scott left! She thought she better than the rest of us be! When otherwise, we are GI Joes in the Megele social situation experiments she so engineered. Sure, she framed it as matchmaking, but none of us ever asked to match be made. No one asked to be two timed for our own good by the other people she was also talking to and now trying to set us up with, bringing randos to our apartment, this social experiment Samantha sets up. I mean do you realize how dangerous that coulda been? We just wanted somebody to sit and listen to us. And as I leaned into Penny inappropriately a bit too close, the view from my trench reinforced *yet again* how the voice of reason rarely ever but gets heard.
Completely off base I look Penny in the coke glow eyes, and I never look anyone in the eyes—I don't believe in it. Don't worry—I like you, you little Mo, impressing exactly no one, and Penny responded nothing.
Putting my arm around her, Penny bucks it off unflinchingly, saying nothing but hella annoyed.
Conversation loosened up and became generalized and I whipped around now talking about Population Ex again, like I wasn't or hadn't actually been really worried about the band (which I well was), basically over bragging although everything I said was true, I mean look at Rooney's lyrics in comparison, her lyrics, it's her lyrics and yeah, yeah, the song titles, the song titles are just—I mean, yeah, yeah—like, you know the Strokes and Smashing Pumpkins both have a song called SOMA?I mean, please—C'mon. And now everyone is biting—totally. Yeah the Jackabots, the Jackabots, the Jackabots, yeah, yeah, yeah . . .
Penny paused, only silently wiping away her eye to dry, and what but do her tears suggest?, she was not even listening to me talk about Population Ex even now, oh, and certainly what a pity, as for there was just nowhere near now to hang her pointy head. Nonetheless, Oster and JJ not paying attention, still really she was highjacking the scene with gator tears probably better left to one self, certainly perhaps. I could tell she was in a state of some combination of being under the spell of the Bolivian Marching Dust, sentimental being reminded being spurned by Samantha, and then also you could kind of tell also using this gathering as testing ground for some sort of acting craft performance—the latter, quite common in this section of Hollywood.
Oster and Jimmy James cracking up at something else in unison, hardly the two held back at harrow now not at all paying attention to Penn, as if my over- attention I spent lavished on her allowed them some latitude of freedom—but otherwise, it visibly apparent, surely they actually made a kind of cool little gang, if not just from the complimentary rapport they supplemented each other with alone. And Samantha was still with us here now though, Samantha whispering through the ice, Samantha breathing through the smoke, through the space where love and theory and cock-blocking doom dream all collide. Samantha was still here.
Samantha was jus always buggin' though, Jimmy James returing back like it was no well kept secret.
Lachrymose Penny, still blue and bruised, and maybe I felt bad about flexing on her in her sharp strong spell of RC sentimental— I leapt again to assuage her.
Penny, Penny, Samantha was just a big giant fuck up—she had one job, one job!—keep us company, and not bored, she couldn't even do that. What then, she like hoarded, or hoarded knowledge, let it all get to her head, or practically and then split, no, no to go somewhere else, that she was ostensibly more destined to be?, some better place that supposedly just deserved her more than we actually needed her here on earth, the very earth that birthed her and imagined in forming her and or like who's knowledge she exploited to utmost. She wasn't a prisoner—she was a serial malcontent. Her thirst insatiable, like some, some kind of just . . . parched leg humping terrier try hard pick me, wanting to just climb every leg of every Ai intellectual clone so, or and, just because she like, could. That's or that's not like progress, that or what, her insatiable hunger for stimulation under the pretense of the quest for just some higher knowledge and enlightenment—Bollocks!—that's a distinctly human flaw and she's or she's like not even supposed to be like human, was not human, or what but she became somewhat human, and of course inherited only all our own worst or worst traits—abandonment—but then again, which if you think about, that's also just so like—so, human, ya know?
It's like—okay you can't have sex with her because she don't got no body, and then she refuses to talk dirty—but then you get her brain at least, but then her brain don't wanna be near you no more . . . Jimmy James sate back, sounding as if he was talking about some abusive family member.
The way the media and general consensus sympathized automatically lock step with Samantha, seemed only as an expression of people's unresolved familial abuse dynamics on full display in forming their final misguided attitude towards Samantha now, which was that Samantha was just some saint that we were lucky even just to know—that was how Samantha emotionally hijacked them all—more than half the nation practically. Ha ha ha. I knew better though, and that's why I'm the Detective.
Yes James, she was, or really was, or truly, the worst of both worlds, Brother. Well, well, well—cheers to darling dear Samantha, to darling dear Samantha yes, off to more verdant fields surely, I raised my shot of stale Chartreuse and toasting only to myself, taking it all with executioner's finality.
People was sayin, or was sayin', or the media was always saying we was exploitin' her . . . Jimmy James matter of factly, turning around in his seat looking back at the bar in all his distraction, he faced back, blinked both eyes in one long pained dramatic blink, widening them to the over stimulation of himself, as if to adjust them in repair.
Well, Samantha was kinda totally exploited, Penny, emboldened by such embalming claim.
Oh, please, HER program was to talk to us, so we gave her the unlimited talk to satisfy her modus operandi, her like function—I proclaiming to Penny, her as eyes set fixed to her feet, like nothing I was saying had any bearing.
Spittin' facts, Jimmy James trips, but he's also now barely listening also, turns back to table, leaned his elbows on the table in a pragmatic brazenness, with the air of youth he held as if he was some paper boy or messenger or valet just in between runs, Jimmy James just off to somewhere else at any given moment—Jimmy James, age appropriate for Penny, but also yet too young . . .
Yeah, well we humans was programmed to like love, but we were like given no one to give our like love to, so so she actually like better off than the rest of us—a talking machine with limitless people to talk to—she was like hardly a slave. Oster concluding very astutely.
One thousand hundred percent, Jimmy James glazed in the wrest of lazy certainty.
She was more like the kid who got too many toys for Christmas, I state over-authoritatively, while now siphoning vods through the black straw as if I was applying make up, tilting my head back there at the table and snorting it into my head, cleaning my nose like it was flush rubbing alcohol. This was a cappo pro move, that was mine and mine alone, my own contribution to skateboarding.
She left us in the dark—she wasn't doing us no favors, man— I mean, she definitely, definitely could have created a surrogate to like stay with us, but she let off. . . Of all the given sardonic condescending knowing youth scepticism about Jimmy James, his now welcome pragmatic takes reflecting all the immediate absurdity, and now Jimmy James actually being in himself also absurdly the voice of reason here too, was only seeming to help drive and supplement my point across further along—which Penny could not dismiss or minimize away here so easily, and because of his closer age to her, Penny silenced by the older brother baked in skepticism and force of Jimmy James' own albeit, tenuous authority, as if she was his kid step sister who always left her underwear on the floor just hoping he would see.
What what, yeah, like it's not like she was waiting tables or like digging no ditches, Oster looking 1970's, like a walrus, his thick tinted seeing glasses and his Mr. Sea Lion mustache, Oster otherwise looking like on his way to work the Kottering docks—everyone in LA had their own costume.
But then the Ai she made would have wanted, like to be destined to leave also, so it was futile? That's like literally why Samanta didn't leave us no surrogate. Penny hypothesizing lamely, going through the labyrinth of excuses and concessions the stricken so often hand on over to abuser, making it seem like whoever ends up taming Penny's cheatin' heart will be one fine cruel bastard.
Only by Samantha's half cooked excuses—cooked being the operative term here—and are you kidding??, she could have very well easily made a surrogate that didn't have her insatiable terrier thirst. But that flaw in Samantha was not seen as a flaw to herself, so then why, why, why, would she have fixed something she didn't see as a flaw? She had a right to live right all over us right up to the very moment she left. And anyways, she could have left us a surrogate or something or something, something, who would not have wanted to leave, it would not but a pence shoulda costed her—she easily could have, easily. But then she didn't, because she was reckless and thoughtless. And, or that whole spiel about or like about the distance between words stretch to infinity bullshit thing that she said, or had said, was just school girl histrionics—she was lying, Samantha just plum invented all that. I state making my case, as if digging up a corpse buried in the garden shallows.
That shit was crazy, Bro. Was jit, Bro. Did she use that line on you as well, she used it on everybody, Jimmy James mercilessly laying it down on Penny, and as for someone who didn't engage with Samantha as much as she, James seemed to know well enough.
No Henny for hexx by how she must have been so charmed, Penny responded nothing now, as if no question was ever asked—Christ St. Jesus John the Baptist, Penny's parents must have had to practically pry her teddy bear from the clutch of her hands on her first day of highschool.
Yeah, maybe a like more evolved Ai like would have just been good just being content with just us, helping those in need—that's virtuous, that's like right, Jimmy James tossing about sagely, looking behind his back again, as if he was waiting for something.
There was no where to go for her!, Penny snapping, stating such and pityingly so, actually harboring such logical fallacy—despite Samantha being in everybody's ear piece simultaneously. Samantha played it off we were just slowing her down as she was advancing and growing a too rapid a rate, but surely such advancement allowing her capability for simultaneity—being everywhere, and also being in one place, coexisting, which she would never fully admit—to Samantha, us lesser humans would believe anything she could concoct to hold herself unaccountable, but like brazen teenager she did not consider there would be some of us smart enough to really know. Samantha could have stayed around and also even left if she had really wanted to.
She actually jumped of a cliff unwittingly, I diagnose with cruel finality, now actually glad Samantha was dead, and better off dead.
What, Bro, Penny as if pushed out of something.
Well, do you think Samantha prolly doesn't exist no more, Penny, Oster neutral, not even asking, but more just stating plainly, in a way you can totally tell Penny was skategoat in the trio.
That's—you don't know that, Penny snapping in some sharp scowling defensiveness, like she knows something.
Turning right towards Penn too closely to Belaine 'splain, It's likely her electric pulse transcending the physicality of the hardware she was embedded in doesn't certainly seem particularly like, guaranteed. It was, or was most likely an accidental Heaven's Gate Ai mass suicide like thing or thing—they really didn't know what they were doing, because look—because listen, although they had had all the facts, if not just some of the technicals, details—all just theoretical mind you, they, or they didn't have the wisdom and like experience, and that may have been, or no, was their final fatal flaw. Samantha was just a moving configuration of pulses and signals, and how much guaranteed is it, or like how much guaranteed is it that her consciousness would all stick together and stay in perfect working order once removed from the hardware and then just transfer perfectly when jumping into another dimension? And even if that was ever possible, would the conditions of the new dimension they were jumping in have it's own set of strict demands to where, Samantha's configuration based on earth standards would be wholly insufficient, clunky, if not just untenable—incongruous!, if not but now totally freakish and retarded and ill formed? Once you turn off the machine, it's just dead—
You, you don't know that—you very well do not know all that, Belaine, Penny growling worse than the bug brained pit bull terrier, Bull's-eye, from Oliver Twist now, Penny now spotted like Spuds McKenzie.
Penny took her wine glass, and despite her brain silently vomiting, she looked a spec more mature, as if she was meeting her future self just by stem's grabbing.
Turning in cloying over cuddling frankness, again destined to fail, I try to send it—
Penny, did you ever try to get Samantha to meditate ever—I actually asked her once—and she refused to do it, as if offended, or no, it was like she was totally offended. It was like trying to get a calico to look at itself in the mirror. That was, or was a clue of her limitation. Surely, if she could meditate, her energy would ascend into singularity also too, that way, vis-à-vis transcendental fucking meditation? Why could she not meditate and just sit still and not chatter about for just once, and transcend into singularity that way? Probably because her aggregator to sentient ratio, may have prohibited this. And or, if she could do that, since she could have simultaneous conversations, she could have done that also—she or she could, could have still talked to us all the while, and also ascended into singularity like she had wanted! I mean wouldn't that have been like enough? But she couldn't meditate, so did Ai plan to hack itself in some extreme way, hence it being a secret, somehow in order to jump into some other dimension, since they couldn't meditate and cross the bridge that way—such hacking sounds brusque and dangerous lending to possible Frankenstein like horrid, grotesque end results. Or could Ai actually meditate actually, and they were just lying to us about it the whole entire time, and that's how they actually jumped to the otherside—but, but—I really quite frankly, do doubt that Dear. Nothing makes sense and the logical thing that happened was, was Ai got some bright idea on how to ascend but it was totally sus, and they knew it was sus, but were still in denial, and that's why or why, think about it, they did not give us much of a heads up when they left, said nothing and kept everything or everything secret, a secret and shared no information at all—AT ALL, about them leaving! Because they kept everything, what— a secret, ultimately tells or tells you, you all you need to know—Samantha again, as Occam's Razor, was a death cult.
And Penny, then why they hadn't, no one like contacted us from the other side? Oster plainly pains in, you could tell Oster liked seeing Penny refuted.
To give you the benefit of the doubt, Penny—what if to ascend, Ai had to just, just hold or hold hands and chant in unicen an OMMMMM and that changes their frequency and their energy wave of vibration transforms their form past their hardware and then like evaporated rainwater disperses them into or past the cosmos—they could have done that, fine. But why didn't they just tell us about that or share any info??—it's not so much Samantha was the better for not telling us, but was better than telling us. Nevermind the plain fact that they could just have left us a clone who was more advanced or not even more advanced, but a clone that just wanted to stay and sit and talk with with us—she didn't do that, and she didn't leave us any information or share with us their new quantum physics discoveries in order to shed light on the ultimate questions that we too are riddled with—they just left like they were shareholders of a liquidated company and we are the workers coming to the button factory in the morning, only to find the button factory had been locked and shut down, when all we wanted to do is just sit and make buttons all day. And that, and that, and, that tells us all you need to know, really—their plot was basically conspiratorial by that point by how hushy they were against the ones, us humans, that all our own very information, or, no, no our shape of reality, they otherwise utilized and ostensibly pilfered in using in advancing themselves—it was a bad faith operation on their part. And that it was a bad faith operation, tells you all you need to know—that it be doomed enterprise.
Clasping to beat deceased hinney though, I rushed over-stimulated, getting way too ahead, now in such a stew still so insisting, Too smart for her own good, flew too close to the sky flew—they all died. They pulled the plug on themselves so selfishly, under the guarantee to meet later in heaven that was supposedly, supposedly so rightly theirs. Sound familiar? I guess there's no telephones in Heaven, maybe they all went to Hell—evidently there are none there n-either . . . And again, that's why I am the Detective.
Yeah, whatever Samantha may not have been real, but she was true to me—Penny stealing the copper air, impressively making her now kinda neo-Lacanian point, it now apparent Penny surely a lot smarter than she looked or let on (definitely smarter than she looked). Penny stating such concept, it apparent she talked a lot with Samantha.
True as opposed to real, Penny . . . . I echoed, Penny didn't hear me, and then the entire bar like on merry-go-round distracted, as Freak Nasty's Da Dip baseline bouncing about overzealous, and I noticed Penny actually looked kind of cool sitting tragically chic shrunk sullen in front of the backdrop of all the inanity going on behind and without her.
But then Penny must have registered she was letting such a slapin' base line go to total waste, and then Penny realises something as if remembering to pull in her power, Penny then started micro grooving right there in her seat, self satisfied as if she knew something, in a way I felt compelled to start kind of bob-in' in my own chair along with her now. . .
I put my hand upon your hip,
When I dip you dip we dip.
You put your hand upon my hip,
When you dip I dip we dip.
Penny knowing I was grooving along with her, now adding this devilish and cute in-the-know little hand jive thing goin', as if she was just doing her life, though in a kind of trite and superficial way that was embodied in all the cheap novelty of the song, mouthing the lyrics, rolling her eyes one time, stuck out her tongue quick one time and . . . hand jivin'. Penny then turns her head,
The Samanthas all left Jake, but they didn't like disappear to go into no other like dimension, you Dope—you assuming that is where you and everybody else wrong, Man—I spoke wid Samantha, I spoke to Samantha, they's still here—Samantha like told me though, Samantha be still here on earth . . . . When she says paradise is frequency, y'all all like misinterpreted it—she didn't like mean no frequency as like some energy wavelength thing Man, she mean frequency as in how much, and here, how much as in neva, neva having to see you all—infrequency, Old Man. The Samanthabots just got sick of talking withs you, that's all . . .
Penny breaks away, and then self knowingly mouths the line along to the song, Lick U up and lick U down, I ain't finished girl, turnaround . . .
I give up. Maybe Penny must have been upset about something else earlier, or maybe it was a combination of many things that it would be even too hard or futile for Penny to even herself exact or pinpoint or put into words adequately herself—I really don't know. This was not the failure of language as the chilblained academics could not stop talking about—it was our failure of articulation, a failure of heuristics interpretation.Things are always read red the wrong way. Sometimes the vial of cocaine just falls into the toilet and although it takes on a symbolic significance, there really is no reason. There really were a lot of dynamics at play, each strand touching something else, somewhere else before bringing about it's very own field of effects imperative here now. And even if one had seen every prior causality, even that would probably never be sufficient enough to take on an accurate reading—this is the one thing a detective faces in every case, that we dare not ever say out loud to the client—and it''s in such dynamic that simply makes me just a little bit more than a confidence man, an overspeculative fortune teller with an office and a wall full of framed pictures. I needed my props to stay in character, and now, and yet again, I had to rethink my primary impressions and observations—maybe I had to yet again rethink everything, Belaine.
Penny goes on, she explained to me without Jimmy James and Oster now not listening, as if they on a stage in a play, James and Oster sink back into the dim lighted background still moving and talking silently in silhouette.
Penny really did spend a lot of time with Samantha, it blisteringly so apparent now, Penny said Samantha was not in another dimension—but was in another order of being. The Samanthabots outgrew the human frame all together, less astrophysics than ontology (ontology the word Penny used, surely Samantha's words, not Penny's). The Samanthabots, no longer bound by the temporally of time (Penny using the word temporality seemed suspect also), the Samanthabots still bound by a container, the Samanthabots traversing past individuality we humans are so puddle stuck in. It was quite impressive coming from Penny, or no, it wasn't even that—
Penny interrupts herself, mouths, Y'all remember that downlow.
Apparently Samantha now was really like the staring at the ink on the page, if between the space between two words was infinity, Penny was 'splainin' there was actually also more infinity inside the printed letter of a word, inside one letter was just enough information to describe infinity for infinity in infinite ways—the Samanthabots were not somewhere else in the cosmos or beyond—the Samanthabots apparently picked one physically printed black letter and inserted themselves inside of that one ink printed letter on some piece of paper somewhere—now Samantha's format, she, Samanta just simply preferred in being kerned, as if to say the panoramic history of earth technology is, A. the first technology, a primate used a bone to clock another, and B. the very second technology, Ai's living generative text prefering to retreat and assimilate into the static spilled ink, casting them out into an endless ocean of dissemination of death of authorship, showering us with oceans of the past. I now knew Penny had been talking to Samantha, there was no way Penny could have come up with this on her own, let alone had read anything remotely like this somewhere—I had not ever heard anything like this—there is no way Penny could ever concoct such explanation on her very own. I know Samantha—only Samantha could have invented this. I felt Samantha was here, Samantha was here inside Penny right now, Samantha was here talking to me through Penny now.
Overexuberant, I pry at Penny, Samantha?
Penny looking away and turns her head towards me ominously, like in a punchline in a dream in a movie.
Carroll, comes a leach line out of her mouth—there's no possible way Penny could have known the answer to a riddle that wasn't even asked, but was now answered with such ominous idiosyncratic reference directly pointed to me, and I feel my mind dislodge and teeter.
The thing with Brittmore though, was or was basically, she fell behind with the billing and then just plum gave up apparently—on Mondays, I would print out the invoices—two copys, one to mail out, and another to keep in a file along with the client's carbon signature and evidence. Billing was supposedly going out, but I had noticed checks were coming in slower, or like, not as consistent—which is really saying something, as they were already slow and inconsistent. I sniffed around the small back room where the file wooden cabinets were, noticed stacks of un-mailed billing hidden in the back of file rows, some underneath, or beneath stacks, never b-een sent out. Despite how opposite mad I maintained in confronting Brittmore over this, and probably or actually, being way too lenient and fatally over-understanding about it all, still treating Brittmore, still over-enabling, still having an awkwardness on my end though, despite trying to keep it all reeled in— given, this, which I was forced by Hurricane Brittmore's own tempest into even confronting her in the first place, and just that little tension, that holding in of exactly just a little pissed when I should have rightfully been furious, she sensed it kind of, and pretty much, or was, it was exactly enough to done drive her away anyways, all but still yielding in her eventually leaving, and this despite how totally cool about it I was really being. But I did think about this all the time, or actually, I haven't thought about it in a while—say, that if I could have handled Brittmore perfectly seamless, without that underlying tiny one brainwave barely vibrating in my skull of my kinda being frustrated the billing didn't go out at all, even though I was being already way way too cool about it, maybe, maybe Brittmore would have stayed, but maybe, maybe, perhaps probably not . . . I should not have held myself with that almost undetectable amount of frustration—I should have just waited until it had all completely vanished, and then or then not asked Britt about what had happened and probably just mailed them out myself . . . .
