It went from Gluck not existing to Gluck tapping on my wrist.
Do you want bubblegum, she goes, the first thing she ever said to me. It was actually characteristic of her, for her to say things like that: 'bubblegum', or she would say things like 'handwriting', or 'miscellany'. Gluck always said miscellany, I remember.
Upp, mmm . . . well, actually—realizing I should accept her small gift.
Thanks . . .
Oh, no worries Yo, she patted the thin stack of drugstore cash register stand gum stock faithfully, sticks the sticks in her stylishly unstylish grey leather purse, that looked from an airport terminal boutique from the lame-beige Mr. Ropper eighties. The button popped as she secured the flat flap, and the metal links on the strap chain tangled.
I have more, if you want some more later then, Clarissa said helpfully, saying it, with the automatic assumption, that I will of course see her later and that she would naturally, of course be around in short-term-immediate future, because like, why wouldn't she?
More gum, that sounds like a lot of wodge . . .
Well, ya know, that's why I suggested!
Who do you know here, she, garrulously segueing, as if she didn't want the interaction well to run dry or expire, like, as if, she knew no one else here . . .
Oh, no one, well, Meza actually . . .
Oh, Meza!, she exuberantly echoes.
What you know Aron . . .
Oh, no, no, I don't. Why . . .
Because you just said him like you did . . .
Well, no I don't. Well, I don't think so, Carissa pensively, unnecessarily posing to overthink, with blank, charmingly dumb, soft thoughtfulness, a suspicious amount of innocence in her voice—Well, I promise I dooon't . . .
She had on an amish like skirt down to her ankles that no one else could get away with (girls never wear skirts as often and the way they used to)—Scott Baio Happy Days haircut, but where in the back on her nape it was sheared short like a boy. The part that sounds like I'm making up is, is she was wearing the blue Sheffey DC 2's, with her wierdo skirt—you know the one's, the two's that looked like blue Orlando Star Wars snow boots. It was just like, perfect . . .
Those blue Sheffey 2's with yellow aglets, commodity fetish specific expedient, so bewilderingly on point in the now, the Sheffey's explicitly, taunting: you never thought it could be this good, Los Angeles said.
Life was so now for the first time defiant as to reveal itself, as if it was actively going out of its way in proving my imagination insufficient—as if to point out my natural lack of optimism, or natural deficiency of imagination. Gluck was like some enclave in the city I didn't know existed, or Gluck was like an empty Hollywood backlot of New York glittering facades desolate at 5pm on sunny day, or Gluck was like outside brickwalls painted stories high and thick in giant fields of swaths of nuanced modernisty colors—when otherwise my world was mired in poststructuralist graff nihilism squiggles and over ornate tribal letter pollution murals of dead sea self promotion. Gluck was like the girl working the independent video cassette shop in Vancouver. Or no, Gluck was the girl who worked the popcorn stand at the revival theatre in Austin in '88. Or Gluck was the girl that somehow worked at the skatepark pre-amateur store (why do they call it a pro shop, when pros get sent what they need in the mail?), the girl who could care less/couldn't care less about it all like whatever, as she would be a better fit than anyone else in town. Clarissa had a painfully quaint comic book character plainness to her, which was devastatingly, catastrophically idyllic.
I need to go out for a breath of air, you want to walk with me to the store Gluck asked forthrightly, with gamy lotto card exigence, shadow of guard receding.
We were close to the LA subway, but not far enough to use it. Today the sidewalk to the grocery mart rang quaint, as if to say: this is how all commutes should all be. A city collapsing into itself, to where everything you need and want is so close, close enough that your legs can ride you there. Lucky citizens who came upon wet cement, lawlessly scrawled their names and pressed glass beads and pop bottle tops into the doughy red pavement. The sidewalk down slopped into the street and disappeared, and untucked itself from the street onto the adjacent block, the sidewalk veering and pulling itself behind a building into an alleyway spilling charming liminal space between the edifice; I know a place where we can go where we are not known, and in the dark shadowy skiagraphy of late afternoon, it felt criminal not to loiter with more time there.
Before going into the store now, we placed our cigar-let sticks in the complimentary ashtray which was in font of the slim glass frame doors. Clarissa was in a terribly splendid mood. Down the isle passing diabetic socks, nutrasweet paperbacks, aluminum canes, she laughed with an unconsciousness of youth (which I didn't notice at the time). Whatever we were saying, was noticeably framed with her girlish laughter. I even felt deficient not viewing the world through the same lense Gluck did, but it was a reminder to try for this. I felt less evolved because I couldn't squeeze the ripeness right out of mundane, like Gluck naturally seemed to now. The emanating world entered into her senses, Gluck digested it, spit it back out and made the exacerbated and exhausted landscape more interesting than it could ever be on its own. Contrast juxtaposition before Clarissa, as barren as the moon, as boring as Pluto.
Clarissa laughed out loud at something I said again, where I wasn't even trying to be funny, again with that laugh of a girl, the first girl, all future girls of the never ending one single moment that always was, life being once, forever, but time next to Clarissa now becomes elastic, and around her swirls too fast.
She asked me if I knew Mike Crumb, which I said I didn't, but I damn well knew who he was, it all too apparent Gluck was hipper (hipper as demonstrated by incidentally being familiar with Prime's third quarter pro roster, and also to mention—genetically superior, better taste, possessing wiser instincts and holding such an idiosyncratic view even with tiny details that made me question my own slop bucket phenomenology).
At the pharmakon store, Gluck bought I think, bandaids for her mothers' medicine cabinet (they must have been running low), a small brown glass bottle of iodine that looked so old as to be expired, she picked an action figure I never would have looked at from the tiny toy section compressed next to office and school supplies, she picked up an otherwise dull People Magazine that now made People Magazine seem pragmatically interesting, as if there were reveling clues still to be distilled there. The day trip to the store ends with Gluck saying bye to the clerk who rang us up, and I say bye also, reveling in my association with her.
Do you mind walking me home she goes, I'd rather, I'm afraid, prefer not go alone so bewilderingly late in the afternoon.
Upon walking Gluck back, she figured out that it was actually, really way out of my way from where my car was at the footage capture day party we were at earlier, that when we got back to her mother's apartment, she was going to just drop the bag of band aids off, and insist upon walking me back to my car, no I certainly don't mind she goes.
Entering her apartment, her mother was not there. Their apartment was elegantly cluttered, too small, like they had previously lived in a house, but I instantly thought how even their mess was more ordinarily ordered and advanced. Neat stacks of expensive newspapers I couldn't afford, newspaper weekend magazines, a Judd paper table with everything ordered also in neat stacks, like blocks in a city. A worn out comfy L shaped couch divided the space and I scanned their apartment, taking it in.
Hey are you hungry,
No, no, I'm all good . . .
Are you sure, because I actually am now kind o—you don't mind if I . . .
Gluck re-heated restaurant left-overs and nonetheless served us both making the minimal plating look like we were at Spago or Le Cirque, with even a sprig of parsley bought back extending its life, and we ate on the couch behind the magazine table, sitting right next to each other already touching sides, automatically natural.
She: showed concern for my non-existent hunger, shared her and her mom's seemingly port side out left-overs and it was better than I didn't imagine it would be.
How is it she said, while using the remote purposefully and with a previously unseen level of concentration, like it was for a slide projector at Nasa, her hand as high as her face, elbow sticking out, switching the frequencies of the station television. From how long she stayed looking at the images before clicking the clicker, gave me insight into her attention span, what interested her.
Oh, no, its good actually . . .
No, we love Blue Orange Cafe . . .
Yeah, I kinda do now too . . . I think I know that place, but have never been, is it . . . Clarissa now not paying attention to what I said. Gluck didn't hear me, concentrating on the images leaking out from the outside world only set to distract her. The detail of me saying I never been to, but noticed Blue Orange hung in the air like some stupid text, like a Ruscha monotype read in the oxygen by no one, all to her inattention.
Oh, I'm sorry, what did you say, Clarissa reading my mind (but not enough to know what I said, or maybe she just wanted to hear me say it).
Oh, no, nothing, I just thought—
Gluck cuts me off with her shifting back to not paying attention to what I said, distracted again.
Oh, I'm sorry—you never been there, right—we should go sometime . . .
Well . . . we're practically there now, she contradicts what she said, just cheerfully pointing out, also half saying to herself.
On Gluck's couch, at her mom's house, I get the impression what it's like to be like say, I don't know, feel like it would be like to be like immediate family . . .
You don't mind If I watch this . . .
No, no, it's fine, I . . .
You're so bored aren't you . . .
No, no I'm not! Actually . . .
Ok, good—
The silence between us was a silence I was not used to, but was already familiar with.
She's done and puts her plate on the table, I finished way before her because I always ate too fast. I once had a girlfriend who would point it out, when I never before had noticed. Anyways, she sits back right next to me, gives my leg reassuring squeeze.
Gluck squeezes my leg conveniently again later, but this time to get my attention, the first phase signaling all the incidental accidental touches that populate how I exist in relation to her. Can we finish this? And then I will walk you back to your car on the motorway . . .
No, yeah—not at all . . . I mean, I have no where I need to be really . . .
Gluck's not listening to me again now, as slipstream of stimulating simulacra shot through her perma dilated pupils.
Also, which I didn't mention, there was her cat too, Ivy, the character which she already started talking about on our walk back from the marts. The way Ivy populated our convo in her absence there, I imagined Ivy being as tall as Clarissa if not bigger, —like a Joe Camel cartoon character, a live living stuffed animal person thing, no doubt an association from being bombarded by the Camel Cash currency on packages we carried around like pagers.
Gluck's greeting Ivy earlier, filled the small apartment when we first got there. Gluck talking to her in teddy bear voice. For an inordinate amount of time standing there, Gluck led all our attention to Ivy, and Ivy blankly blinked around as if she had no clue what was going on, as if she was a hologram actually existing in another dimension and could only hear us. Ivy neither liked or disliked me, as if the kat wouldn't or couldn't recognize my existence there, because you could totally tell it was so consumed in itself and all the over attention it was used to. But now, though, sitting on the couch Ivy joined us, and she got close to me, speaking vibrations completely out of the blue, reminding us she's still here in the room.
Aw luuuk, Iviez likes Sennn, Gluck goes . . .
We were now Ivy's subjects and it wasn't too terribly hard to let go and accept it, but also, I later noticed that me and Ivy were now actually really both Gluck's subjects in a situation where we were poised in the same position each now vying for the very limited resource of Gluck's precious precocious precarious attention and whatever of what remained of Gluck's expiring gaze.
Gluck seemingly sensing this, even if but at an unconscious frequency, talks about me in front of me to Ivy as if to make me feel included, and this makes me feel all right, though Ivy mostly responds with insect's regard.
At the end of the ad hoc leftovers dinner date at Gluck's mom's house, like right at the end, when we are leaving, Ivy surprisingly swipes over to me, unexpectedly purred good bye dude, while rubbing up against my cheerleader bright white Ludzka I's.
I'm walking Senn back to his auto on the motorway but not to fret, I'll be back soon enough Ivvviez, Gluck sings in her diplomatic Gumby voice, and I can tell she's a good owner, though maybe fatally too good at being a pet owner, maybe this is a reflection of how Gluck treats those who . . .
Gluck walked me back into the American night to my car toy machine now. I drive her back to her mom's. Her eyes glazed with minuet twinkles like the incandescent blur circles in lens focus shots, and she sat there casually in a I-just-happen-to-be-here-thereness, which completely took away from the tv or movie formality otherwise usually occupied in life scenes driving in the car cabin, Gluck sitting there looking far out into the window, like she was just hanging out here, like she was sitting there smoking a cigarette but without smoking a cigarette, even though she smoked cigarettes, but wasn't now. I almost came back into her apartment again upon Gluck's suggestion, then she de-suggested it, running through her train of logic (which, I would later always find myself perpetually contending against). I ended up going back to my friend's where I was crashing at the moment, used his girlfriend's Swatch telephone to call her back upon Clarissa's request, letting her know I got back allright.
II.
Ontologically flow ride shares discursive affinities with the phenomenology of studio practice, and in a certain sense, (though embodied through a very narrow representative cognoscenti), yes, it most certainly is—though no one at this time exactly knew if/how/why. (Idiot Dill tried to put it into words and sounded dumb as hell, and maybe too coked up from all the too much attention, he was/is/will always be receiving—but to give Dill some credit, he did have a vague grasp of this skart concept.) Bands were now epistemologically obsolete and unsustainable in practice and execution. We were unconsciously postmodernist neofuturists, driving around, speeding and smoking tea, listening to the ultimate postmodern music (fin de siècle rap), always listening with the appraising intent 2 use to splice into cartridge montages, for removed play machine dance, through which a very distinct and very personal mechanical unconscious, a new somatic language could be summoned and arise—team as the new band. As rappers where to rockers, we, if only potentially for a span of six or seven tenuous years, could have probably made rappers obsolete (But we didn't. But in best case, if we had been successful we would have actually been able to appropriate rappers while simultaneous throwing them away into the dust bin of obsolescence.)
I made Gluck a Kools belt by lamely slicing the sticker I found where I was staying, pressing it bubbles up to the navy boy scout belt I bought for sixty dollars at XTRA LRG on Vermont St. in Los Feliz. I had been otherwise languishing around, just waiting to bump into Dill (before I moved out here, Dill said to look him up if I came out—look him up how? As I had no way to contact him.), but when I finally saw him walking off Sunset, he was just like oh, hello—a total fuckin' flake, now with the up-river amnesia of, oh he never really, that one time prompted by his own un-solicited generosity 2 taking me under his curls. It was totally that thing where when they are on tour, they are being super nice to you because they are on your turf, but you know once you are out in Cali, they are as lame as everyone else here treats them here. I mean, I was kinda good at a couple of tech moves, but certainly not grotesquely good, but you must know I totally imagined like, totally falling in with Dill, and then his Cali state of mind infecting me, getting me good real quick, which seems reasonable since I made all the damn effort to move out here. Dill considered himself an artist and he I guess was one (Gonz' son), but you know he saw not the slightest meth grain of potential in little me whatsoever (he never once commented on tricks I did, never even ever talked about it—and of course I noticed) and I lived the rest of my life watching him advertise ensembles more talented, but sometimes unbelievably kooky actors and models (Earl Sweatshirt, Tyler the Creator, Carmine Genovese, Fifi Mendoza). And if you must know, I always thought Dill was in the closet, by this particular brand of gay boy contempt-for-me-for-no-reason vibes, that if you've experienced such, you'd know precisely what I'm talking about. Suffice to say, I fell in with Jessee Sorenson and his crew kinda accepted or at least tolerated me, though no one ever suggested I should even try to get on Tree Fort, and I tried to not come off so horny for hardgoods. As lame as the Kools belt was, Gluck actually did rep rep rep it though, but also, she hung out with Guy, AND the Menace guys sometimes and Keenan too though, and even though she introduced me to them casually, they all instantly resented me for being so untalented an outsider who in a spell of blind luck landed Gluck (though tenuously), and I was certain, I was very certain, I knew, they would do anything in their power to sway Clarissa away from me, not to mention making sure I never, never got on any World flowampro squadrions.
At Metropol, me and Gluck held court at the cafe table though. The combination of Clarissa's convo and hookups house blend from Potsdorf made the coffee seemed rigged with some kind of cheap and interesting drug.
And you must know I was real proud to be seen out and about in the mythical city of un-kept promises with Gluck who looked like Robin in Batman and Robin, and besides, think about it: this was certainly waaay better than riding around in a rented van, running cross country trying to hold a conversation with can't-you-just-for-one-second-be-serious-for-once-and-not-be-immaturely-spazzy-and-not-a-condescending-fuck-Mike-York. Being with Clarissa was license to Iller than riding 4 Girl/World/ and even Stereo.
At Metropol, I didn't know at the time, but it was like being F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda before I knew who they were—Zelda ridding the rails, F. Scott in Paris cafes trying to keep Zelda tame and away from all her fatally flighty and treacherous whims. Like say, Zelda bouncing with some kinda clueless greeseball who played flameco quitar (and to think, crazy Zelda picking such sod over F. Scott too!) I wanted Clarissa all to myself, though. I wasn't going to share Gluck. And also, having her mix even with Scott's gang, I immediately discovered would not work either—she would trail off with one of Scott's rando friends (like flat earth Deglopper), spend an uncomfortable amount of time talking with them visible and alone, even openly making plans for everything and anything in their convo, anything that in the slightest stoked Clarissa's ritalin fueled whims. When we were around Scott's gang—I became invisible flame boy. Not that I needed attention like television eye, I really didn't, but Gluck's attention was beginning to dry up like the gulch under sixth street and 1-35 in Austin post 2004, and quick.
Potsdorf was always behind the bar at Metropol and I was actually super friendly with him, and that's even before I started showing up with Clarissa. Maybe if he would have been a skater, I would have even hung out with him outside the Metro, but I was so intent on my am-plan, I really had no room for nothing else (Well, no room for anything else besides Clarissa, and actually, when I was not with her, I now honestly just didn't feel like skating, and kind of barely skated now.) Potsdorf seemed totally okay though, totally seemingly unthreatening to the ontological status of me and Gluck, and like, it was actually a relief ya know?, someone I didn't have to worry about, which I duly noted and did think about a lot, thought about it, when I should have been out skating or looking for jobs (and not smoking weed secretly behind Gluck's back, (as she had taken a vow of celibate sobriety). And besides, why would I have to worry about Potsdorf? Potsdorf had long thick wavey heavy metal is over hair, like a member of fifteen seconds ticking Squelching Trees, holding onto the heroic Mongolian mane, that for some reason the hip dumb girls from West Hollywood and Sherwood Oaks and Badlands liked, and he was obviously at first glance painfully behind the times, not to mention behind the times especially for LA. Potsdorf was the type who was probably elitist about not exhibiting any cultural fluency, such self assured pose absolving him from not having to actually cultivate any forward sense of what was going on in the slightest, in what is the easiest city to do such in. And then, also, I can't think of anything that's more trying harder than spending hundreds of dollars and premeditative hours inking your dumb arms to look like the movie Aliens. But you know girls really liked Potsdorf though, even with, especially with, the trendy trying-too-hard-misguided-sense-of-anti-avant-guarde-biomorphic tattoo sleeves. Potsdorf wore an Izzy Stradlin' phunk hat over his hair too, practically never saw him without it—I wouldn't be surprised if he wore it in the shower.
This was a couple of decades before I published Aesthetics Theories Vol. 1—my deliriously self reflexive media & cultural critique exegesis that made Foucault look like Tito Jackson. You see, unlike art historians who studied periods of historical avant-guardism occurring before they were actually born (that, which they were purportedly experts on)—I had actually really been in the historical period I was covering: in terms of really, actually, say, like, I don't know, going through it all, for instance, the (neo)avant-guarde neu dadaist/society of spectacle Debordian détournemont goofy boy faze of '91-'92, which was quickly exacerbated and accelerated into a le rappel a l'orde clean era, only to become ensconced into the fin de siècle of decadent nylon basket ball shoes anti-art tech formalism. Potsdorf probably had a Soundgarder tapestry in his room, was anything but an immediate threat.
Plus Potsdorf was real nice too—like this host to me and Gluck, an ancillary character serving us like a waiter or maître d' like Lady and the Tramp dinner scene enabler, you know what I mean? I mean, you just like, got the feeling that even how he interacted with me and Clarissa behind the bar, that through his casual attitude and demeanor towards us, it like, reinforced and confirmed me and Gluck as couple. Like someone actually, in this going out of it's way in an otherwise cruel to be cruel city, kinda saying, you guys just look great together!, like saying, using 'y'all' back to me and her: 'y'all' as in like 'you and her', like, Senn Dogg and Clarissa Glucksman, like two action figures sold together in the same toy machine package.
Temple of the Dog wailed over the PA at Metropol, despite otherwise Café Metro probably being the hippest coffee shop in America (even Western Europe for that matter). Metro seemed unofficially in an official way, associated, associated with informal invisible chords to the museum systems and art wold lineage of the city, consisting of say LACMA, PAM, Ferus on La Cienega, Artforum (before Artforum moved to NY), there were even Dan Graham-like partitions up front at Metro. I saw Jack Goldstien there once too, I even saw Lee Mullican with his son Matt Mullican there, Hamersley also, and even bad boy Billy Al Bengston used to lamp there, Bill Bengston, being as conspicuously flamboyant as you would imagine, because after all, Billy Al low key owned this entire goddamn town.
Being seen with Gluck was like being with a CDE-list celebrity no doubt, even the owner of Metropol, Sam Dargus, knew her, and you could tell Sam was charmed by Clarissa (well, as much charmed as Sam was capable of)— I at this point have never even talked to Sam yet (he was way too hip for me at this point), but Clarissa was friendly with him in a casual non-threatening way. You got the feeling she could easily start picking up non-advertised no job application shifts at Metropol, or she could be the nanny for his seed and, I should have tried to get her or Potsdorf to maybe get me a shift or two there, because I needed a job and somewhere to go to get me a little time away from the pad that was still meter ticking to expire crashing. There was no way though I could have preempted any guile that which I had not possessed, to even work up the nerve to ask if they needed help, especially how much I already was hanging out there too much already. There was a coterie of local heads who famously worked there at one time or another, who were fondly associated with Metro—Metro made the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich seem like Mel's dinner in Mayberry, and yet they also had random T-dogggs work behind the bar too sometimes, who didn't quite fit, kinda like all places tend to do. But again, Potsdorf though, was super nice though, made one feel real welcome walking in, a very rare place in town that towards an outsider was inviting.
Me and Clarissa were no amateur smokers. The cafe was a reworked South American/Pacific Islands artifacts art gallery—garbled concrete floors, walls painted crisp jack o' lantern orange, a very specific dark lime green exposed brick wall across, which had small late industrial age rectangular windows lining the tops of the walls near the ceiling. If we could, we usually took the table in the corner, which felt like we were sitting sequestered in the corner of an exhibition, right near the well lit bad bad paintings.
I was talking to Gluck about Wes, and she was listening, she could be a good listener, and could ask questions, as if in order to challenge to get me to consider aspects possibly overlooked. I found I wanted to tell Clarissa everything, revealing things I may have never told anyone, and talking to her regarding such things was liberating. Though really, me telling her everything about me, was my way of hastening an intimacy and hopefully getting my hooks deeper into her and in the end, all the things I revealed to her, really made no difference at all whatsoever. Not only that, I quickly began to realize she gave anyone and everyone that same level of listening and consideration, and it just so happened I was with her and she only now did so with me. I had but no deeper regard that I felt I should be entitled to, and to make matters worse, I would find her being even more frightenlying intense towards random dude strangers we came across.
I don't like actors, Clarissa commented almost obliquely. I understood precisely what she meant, but also wondered what would precipitate her to make such a specific theoretical claim. I wanted to know more, but I didn't press. Again, mostly everything I said to her, was my pathetic way of little me trying to wrangle her closer, a vague type of emotional blackmail jail, that really had no effect on her whatsoever. But say, if I was less forthright coughing up important details concerning me, I probably would have had a tad more of her keen interest and fascination directed towards me, maybe. I know she was friends with one guy I met once, who you should have seen, who was severely damaged, and emotionally stunted and held back (and kinda dense if you ask me) and this sod was always in some stupid trouble of his own stupid devising, and Clarissa would talk about him with such reverence and concern and such deep regard that only bilkeringly withered me down and down again silently. But Clarissa saying that she 'hates actors' was a bit rich coming from her, seeing she would later visit and then incidentally move to NY while visiting, and be cast as a character of herself in a film made by the guy who took the photo for the video tape sleeve from the first Toy Machine video, Heavy Metal.
No totally, I hate actors, I said totally grasping for needles, even though I really was indifferent.
I mean what do actors do when they wake up first thing in the afternoon —'I just have to act. I have to act today, or I can't feel like myself', I continue, desperate as hell.
Yeah I know right, tootally, Clarissa saying blankly, blinking green smoke out of her mouth and swaying it out of her face with her free hand. She held her cigarette like it was a pen—it was her thing that she did, which it gave her an air of responsibility. The way she smoked made smoking not only seem safe, but even practical.
Like why can't you just use your life to like act in, you know, like an applied art, why do you have to be an actor in a movie? I mean I get it, we all want to be in movies, that would like be great, but we can't. Why don't you write lines alone and then just act them at the right moment for dispatch in real life on the outside? Me taking it too far, just jockin' real hard!
Well, I don't want to be in movies, Clarissa, immediately sternly snaps, sounding like she was getting sore.
No, I know, I'm just saying like 'we', like everyone in this country or something, you know?
I veered our convo back to another of my impromptu therapy sessions with Gluck about listing my grievances with my old friend Craven again, Craven this one kid I used to run around with. We use friends to talk and talk about the same things again. But, I was relaying again that one day, or actually no particular day at all, just out of nowhere (and somewhere) Craven stopped contacting me, ominously severing all ties, leaving my uniformed sense in his wake and again, for apparently no reason, un-precipitated by any argument between us. He had been writing some experimental like script of something barely resembling anything (which I didn't really get at the time), a skeleton of a script, and somehow he got cream and then resources and then other people to help him make a short movie shot somewhere in Temple over the following summer. It was all real peculiar and happened quite fast, but I just accepted it no big deal. But then Craven made a second, much better movie, conspicuously casting a cacophony of coastal city glitterati, which he had gotten fresh with success in contact with, and he even started working and even associating with the legendary figure from the late nite show from Zoo York now. Then Craven's movies just really started taking off, and increasingly functioning as like, these curatorial exercises of what and who Crave imagined he always thought he should rightfully, eventually be surrounded around and associated with. And I was the only one who could see this, nobody else could read this (or wanted to), and when I would try to explain it to people, they would say I was thinking about it perhaps a bit too much, poor boy. But I really wasn't! I knew 'new' Craven. Not only would anyone not agree with me, but it all also now seemed just so exacerbated in the parlance of media, like, into being even more stupidly obvious and now just so utterly offensive and off putting to me, when I was just trying not to even think about it. I mean sure, get left behind, whatever, but am I the only one who can see the hypocrisy of his New Yorker Magazine intelligentsia new life construct persona he now had going on? (he's from Dallas), which now everyone, everyone else is just exalting, the entire country and film 'community' is now so celebrating? I see Craven on the Z Channel, and he now pompously wears a trying-way-too-hard costume of Tom Wolf suits and they are interviewing his new colleagues, and no one fails to say just like what a nice, reasonable down-to-earth visionary Craven is. I mean, yeah it's pretty easy to be nice to the ABC-listers before you, but what about those normal old people who have nothing to offer you anymore? It all made those ascendant figures just all look like total phonies, total showbiz, and ever more clear just really how it all goes. I mean look how petty cruel and passively stingy Craven was to me (I would have loved to be involved somehow in a film, especially since I was going no where fast and wallowing in the reeds). I had done absolutely nothing to make him hate or detest me, and I still had no one to tell this to. I just had to live with it. And then now I have to see, see people in just absolute raptures, bragging about Craven's new grand, over-wrought adderralian detailed children's fantasy version of the world, Craven's grand narrative re-drawing of the capital of the solar system—forging his ultimate take, how he sees how it all should be, which, well does not include little me, and the fact that we never had a dramatic incident or giant argument, leads me to believe Craven probably didn't really ever like me anyways, was probably disgusted, most likely embarrassed by my very sight of association. I was just being myself (to which, now I overanalyze and pick out precisely when and where he must have taken silent notice). Years later, I would learn, Quentin Tarantino had someone like me also, some poor friend who he was friends with before he started working at Video Archives, and I often wondered about this nameless sod, who I now seemed tethered to by invisible umbilical cord. Like Tarantino's ex-buddy, I was just there when there was no one better else worth hanging out with apparently, before QT comes into his pure cinema/pure Hollywood auteurist sensibility, as like Craven discovered he had the power within to architect his own lens of schematic Pernod drenched manual typewriter Salinger vistas of frazzled debutantes reeking of old world charm with oafy dudes who have night gown long hair and small Elvis Costello guitars, edited walking in slow motion to Grace Slick.
Gluck was looking away, like she was looking for something, blowing smoke like spitting our sunflower seeds.
Hello, are you like even listening?
What, no, no I am . . .
Well . . .
I mean, I don't know what else to say . . . I mean, I kind of liked Naked on the Beach, apparently not knowing what to say, she coldly adds.
Oh, well so that's all you have, you can add . . .
Well, he wasn't a skater right . . .
That's hardly the point!
I dunno, you said you only hang out with ska . . .
Well, that's now, that's like here, not in Rodrigo, I mean TX . . .
Well, maybe its not about you, have you thought about that? Maybe he's just busy, I mean we all out grow each other at some point and . . .
Less enthused than deserved, I could feel Clarissa's response rooted in something else, the co-dependent (where really, there was never, nor would ever be any 'co', only, just a 'dependent' for me,) confidence un-reciprocated, now adding insult to the recollection of a former major existential insult I had reprised yet again unprompted, in sorry attempt for rehashing the story (again to her), as to magnet yield more solidarity beckoning towards bread crumbs of intimacy. (It seemed lately, everything I was saying to her, was all in the service of what it would illicit in her, and there's certainly nothing that great about doing this.) Yet now, my grasping for benihana's, my foot planting on the platform for anyone's cheap cheer, was now backfiring. Had there not been some turn in her, yes, all of what I said, could have, would have, been deconstructed by her offering, reevaluating out loud and from her perspective, with the impartially accurate onlooker's distance, and me leaning yet again on how I was once close to Texas Craven, who was essentially now pop tableaux, how I would have otherwise at least gotten credit for demystifying this figure, and in turn was not only associated with all this, but she would see I called it out more accurately than anyone else around. Gluck's passivity rang her way of saying, she wasn't at all much taken in at all by it, she's bored now, all in the face of such information about me (which now I've ever the more cheapened out) was pathetically the very best thing I had going on for myself, my association of abandonment by this now central figure only to recollect in this foreign city, the capitol city where everyone leaned so hard on whatever calling card they brought here with them.
I mean, yes that's your sorry situation, but why not use it somehow to . . .
Use it somehow? I mean I'm out here am I? What do you think I'm doing out here??
Gluck just smoked and blew out self righteous sunflower seeds of smoke, unimpressed again and with her lip coin-pursed, like the convo wasn't getting heated at all (actually, just I was) and you could tell it now seemed in her screen of vision, precisely just this type of behavior on my part that probably stirred Crave away from me the first place, but Clarissa wasn't cruel enough to point it out, or maybe she just did not care to now bother either way.
Yeah, but have you been getting any clips, Clarissa added with a cruel sobriety, the voice of someone from LA, that just by her knowing what 'clips' was, announced itself now that she was actually the ultimate judge, representative of this better closed of from me world, of that which I was proving myself insufficient ambitious outsider in, here with all the other world's collective ambitious wannabes, and all of us contending with the collective regard that, real talent didn't dare spoil itself by being ambitious. Real talent didn't care, and was actually annoyed by any attention.
I been practicing my dick off!
Yeah, but have you been getting clips.
No, I haven't, I've got no one to film with, I say too defensively, apparent now to the both of us, and that which we both know is a lie, because we both know Tommy Budjanek is a skater and a filmer, and like even, why can't I be an industrious skater slash filmer now?
Keenan never practices, he just gets clips, Judge Dread Gluck says lashing at the ribs, signaling that I was flailing and failing about in LA now, and this is worse than any reprimand from a parent ever could be. But what was so bewildering too was, was not only did she know World campus was A-team, was the micro industry standard, but she well knew they didn't like me because of her, and now apparently she now regards me in such a diminished way illustrating that pressure flipping the scrip comment, kind of revealing that she was kind of was like, actually on their side the whole time, or even now veering firmly back on their side.
I get up to use what little power I have remaining, as some show of strength and decide to leave her there.
Senn, wait don't go! Aw come back, Gluck with a sound in her voice that she was back to normal.
As tumultuous distemper of troubled and turbulent phantasies came to brew in this immediacy, pointed to everything that has ever been wrong, ever been wrong with me, which I couldn't escape from the here, now so for off and away at sea, I was appalled. I knew I was being a baby, though. I should have walked back to the table, but didn't.
Oh, just get up and leave, that's what you're gonna do, Gluck's NY accent now coming out, making her sound simultaneously charismatic and entrenched in the other side and further away.
I drove fuming, darting in the red haze of tracer break lights, back to the place I was crashing. I stopped at the store and bought a yolk of beer. You know why they say 'heartbreaking'?, because something catastrophic happens that ruins, casts a shadow on simply everything and for always, and makes any possible verve un-imaginable, and thus the enthusiasm with which 'heart' is associated, has been scrubbed away. Arriving back to the spot utterly in the heart of wretched distress, my boy wasn't there, and I lock myself in his bathroom, with my boy's girl in the living room in the next room, and in the locked bathroom I start beating off right away. I came fast and was soaked in a dew drop from a needle antidote of crack cocaine like euphoria, I think: I don't need Gluck or, no, no maybe it's not unrepairable and will maybe be just an argument we had, and maybe walking out was the thing to do or not actually so catastrophic, I'm such an idiot, no, it's okay—aware that in just a few minutes this seeming remedy of a re-set will fade. I'm gonna get drunk and talk it out with my boy's girl tonite, but I can't smoke weed, because I will wiggg out.
I will be in the bar with my head on the bar . . .
And that's basically where the story ends. Even though I left Gluck stranded at Metropol, it was precisely just the autonomy that I needed to demonstrate, like, you know, define myself and my boundaries with her, no capitulations. What can I say, girls need you to stand your ground! It ended up precipitating into a test! It shows them that in fact you are a Man, you are strong and will damn stand up for yourself, and in turn they can see you will be strong for them when they need you to be, and they know you will or can in turn protect them. And what can I say, its a tough love kinda deal and she all but came crashing back into my arms. Shortly after, I started picking up warehouse shifts at Xtra Large, then also hand stuffing inserts for Grand Royal and Mo Wax, even fell in designing some flyers for X-Girl on the side, Me and Liquid Sky Gluck getting a cute and inexpensive apartment around the corner, and then she took her fateful trip to New York, Chloe like forced me to audition for this dumb part and I think I got it but I don't know, I just want to come back, I miss you and no, go go, do it, this will be a good thing for you!, I'll still be here, and besides I think it's good for us to be apart for just a little while, though I miss you dearly too, but I been spending a lot of time with Dill now actually and he's such a kook and I've been can you believe it actually been storing clips away in Soc's drawer, clips which I didn't even plan on getting and they finally really actually kind of accept me now, I'm getting a surprise 101 ad (which I had no idea when I was designing—Natas at the last minute throwing me a photo I hadn't seen of me at the pits and saying 'stick that one somewhere in there'), which would turn into eventually jumping to 23, jumping to Workshop (with Dill), and of course retiring into HOCKEY, and also, Danny Garcia never existed, but when Gluck got back from the movie after making its critically lauded debut at Telluride, we got married (she asked me!) in a ceremony in the hills overlooking a majestic Valencia tinted ocean shimmering like digital Perrier gif of Tumblr, with just our close LA friends, or our real friends (some New Yorkers too), and what can I say, she kinda became like, I don't know, my like, like, like, my Deanna Templeton, there in the background unsung (well, before, years later, the articles in Vibe, Spin, Grand Royal Magazine, Cabinet, Index, New York Times Sunday Magazine, The New Yorker actually revealing her vital role as confidant/second brain, instrumental in guiding the arc of my so called 'career'—'I never had a plan' she reminded me to say), Gluck my confidant and emotional support animal, standing in the shadows, doing the things that I just plainly had no talent for, shopping, cooking, paying bills, buying me socks, me always drinking to get drunk (I always thought of the dynamic between John Gregory Dunn and Joan Didion and we actually kind of reminded me of them), but then also, Gluck stared making these real weird precarious Olga De Amaral fiber like assemblages she showed at Alleged, which turned into a full time job for her, and then she even showed at the big Deitch show that traveled and then was picked up by Mary Boone (who was actually such an amazing person, really good to Clarissa) before jumping to Gagosian LA, Gagosian worldwide misfire and then landing cozy at Suzanne Vielmetter in LA. I actually didn't mind taking a step back now, ya know, and like actually supporting HER for a change, and so then we can now do things we always like really wanted, ya know?, we could now afford things we never could afford, like the house in Connecticut, and I could focus on raising our son, Channing, because family is actually literally the most important thing, and the Connecticut farm house where Ad Rock and Kathleen Hannah would come to visit us (one night, veering towards middle age, Me, Gluck, Hannah, Adam all randomly, unexpectedly took and tripped on this Paul's Boutique effectstasy ecstasy they smuggled up here with them as surprise, and no, no, I'm not sure I'm up to this, and come on, it will be fun, and okay, okay, and life wasn't over yet and there was still a rolling roving outlay of Clearly Canadian spritzer vistas ahead, and this life affirming beautiful experience of darting tinsel flash trip only reminded us and embodied such), but in Connecticut me and Gluck could both finally have the space we needed (Clarissa could be really grumpy when she worked, and as mean as a gun dog) and we had the freedom to work remotely (her NY representation now Susan Inglett), also sharing this old tear down drafty derelict barn, which she hated at first, but now began to love, which Clarissa converted into a studio/storage and crate space, and she even collected detritus from the inside to incorporate into her next show, made Chibachrome prints of shots she shot of the inside—documentation always being an integral and germane process of her studio practice and where now, I finally had an indoor mini ramp!
Lonnie Anderson, Telly Savalas, and Hulk Hogan are for Lita Ford sequels only
The Chevron logo is satanic,
Actors must make, give us ideas on how to act and we wear all the leather Confederate biker sex hats,
And every Christmas I spend Christmas time pinning about the Penelope character from Trading Places.
Blunt Handrails up to the bark at the moon, moon and
Ollie away from your family, into the Ozzy Ozzbourne wilderness as interchangeable cogs as the renters of stadium seats . . .
Leave your Tom Hanks family behind for the attention of Tom Hanks strangers,
Grind waxed water pipe down to end of ocean's depth and Jamie Thomas yourself a Jamie Thomas libertarian pool table rec room
And just imagine how much better it would be if Jamie Thomas smoked cigarettes,
As celebrities fight for subjects, and can never be friends with each other.
We used to play a game as children, one of us would pound our first on the other's open palm, and then pretend to pull an imaginary invisible sprout from the other's hit palm. Because the pounded palm was buzzing from getting hit, you were supposed to feel the phantom spout being pulled out of your hand. It kind of worked, but didn't. But when you are a bored kid, do you remember being so prone to submitting to imagination?
Clarissa, coffee, Craven story again had me coked sprack to ear drums in (like) a major way—I excused myself to the bathroom and when I get back, Potsdorf was sitting in my chair next to her—he was taking an informal mini break from the lull of the counter, but I didn't think anything of Soundgarden Potsdorf because despite him 'technically' being higher on the scene cream totem than me (by proxy of working at Metro)–I was slouching towards, or at least trying to make headway into what was after all a fully un-tapped West settler neo-avant-gardist subculture he was barely aware of, which even though we weren't able to really frame or articulate it yet, was actually in dialectic dialogue with the historical avant-garde of early twentieth century Europe and North America (this, well before our practice would be discovered and hijacked by chillblained lame stream not-skaters who are now skaters, into becoming assimilated, desecrated, decorated, bastardized with the help of spectacularly reified computer processors, in the next future century).
I sat down from the empty chair across from the chic waif flux precarious symmetry of Clarissa. They were talking about Fellini, who I didn't know about at the time—it sounded like pasta and misguided reverence, the way Clarissa exuded in saying the name. Fellini. For someone who hates actors, Clarissa is really chirpy talking to Potsdorf right here, and if you would have been standing right there with me, you would have totally thought the same—it was that obvious. Lamely grabbing what would be a pleasureless cigarette from Clarissa's Camel's sitting on the table, I unconsciously do my best impersonation of weary F. Scott Fitzgerald on Zelda stand-by.
The world didn't yet deserve the couple I fancied us being. Clarissa was more popular though, and there were plenty of things she knew that I didn't from living in LA (but she had a small stint in Montclair), NY, the year abroad in London, all those misfit details from living somewhere that one couldn't gleam any other way than being low and heavy in the mix and I'm not talking about some corny Laurel Canyon scene either—me and Gluck both couldn't stand Joni Mitchell or Jackson Browne.
But the way she seemed to regard Potsdorf now though, in his far sighted/near sighted hoi polloi register with which she could still see something interesting there, made her seem simultaneously more advanced by virtue of an egalitarian open-mindedness she never failed to demonstrate, and yet also, like, she really didn't have a pay wall for talking to kooks. That I had three pairs of Daher twos, otherwise a source of pride I kept for myself for maintaining such things, made me now feel shallow and superficial. Potsdorf probably thought about new shoes once every other year. Potsdorf knew who Orson Wells was though (but then again, who fuckin' cares??), and I didn't (Clarissa was aware of this), and even though Potsdorf was one of the less tuned-in employees at Metro, he was still physically, tangibly through pedestrian onlooker's regard more inside the scene clout, when my self regarded relevance was mostly invisibly theoretical to the real world (Clarissa was aware of this also.)
Potsdorf sprang up and I was still so bothered because it had all taken a fast turn. Now I had to casually playoff it, somehow finding a way to reacting now on the fly to him finally getting up, without me exposing anything. Around this time, my instincts were to fatally play passive and nice to this kind of casual aggression—I would go along with it, in front of the girl, while getting johnny-blocked with her passively (or actively) encouraging such blocking in front of me, me thinking if by me playing nice and indifferent (but also in a certain sense clueless), it would be the best defense, and the perpetuity looking-to-trade-in-a-used-car-situation-thing that one in this town would seemingly always have to contend against, would soon be over to pass. The reason I'm getting nervous right now just writing this is, is because the remedy to the situation is not necessarily one just reacting the opposite and countering with aggression passive or otherwise, because one could then be accused of being easily jealous and insecure (never mind the situation was inadvertently stoked by the whoever girl and john-blocker, for one to rightfully sense danger. Sure, one could be accused of being over-sensitive in detecting this, but one is still sensing something perilous is there nonetheless. It's not how it's commonly misconceived that by one being good at detecting things, it automatically means the situation does not exist—which is always the common go-to deflation logic. If there was actually nothing going on between the two, then maybe a threat wouldn't be ascertained at all? But otherwise, its just the worst of all worlds, one is thrust in a certain compromising situation and by reacting as a situation would call for, one is getting unfairly marked for slaughter. When a girl calls a guy jealous, it's easy to automatically look towards the person being preemptively called out, rather than thinking, if she's calling him jealous, that signals she may be the one putting him in the coffin all the time.) What I think the general rule would be (given, every situation is its own unique set of circumstances, and anyone who prescribes grand narrative absolutes is most likely a bit thick, though rules of thumbs are helpful to keep in mind, when paralyzed in indecision) is: call them out casually like a big brother, as if giving a little sister shit, in a way you're not like totally freaking out, but in a way they know you're smart and cool enough to read between the lines (I've noticed it seems girls are better at doing this, like communicating, because you know, guys hold everything in.)
You can have your seat back old boy, Potsdorf goes.
They-call-it-a-scene-I-call-it-disaster Pots says he'll call Gluck. They were talking about Fellini when I arrived, because as I was in the washroom, they made plans to go to New Beverly to see Nights of Horse Flesh. This revealing itself after Shane gives me permission to sit next to my girlfriend and 8 1/2 is over wrought and boring anyways.
Clarissa knows. She's looking, eyes pointed past the frame. And my body knows, at Potsdorf the man who pretends at Clarissa's hand. I'm shivering drowned in a puddle of all my own discontent the day could possibly bring.
Clarissa asks me if I'm okay, with delicate clinicality of all knowing doctor, well aware of exactly what I suffer from at her own doing and her own hand, probing for a response if only for her own vague mix of amusement and concern.
Ahhh, I say convincing neither her nor myself otherwise.
That I know she senses it, but my denying it in such a way only clearly defines that the-situation-is-collapsing before us right here now, a marking of the door of plagued house, a marking of the moment of cascading collapse attributed to say, my stolid feeble reaction, as opposed to what was actually them going on and about the table. Though, I should have been better than to loose my tongue, I should have been, could have say, been that the better off, say countering a casually plainly stating in the fashion and style or example of an older brother's contempt: 'What the hell was that?'
You're bothered me and John are going to see La Strada . . .
Blows, she says innocently, though it still smoke rings with executioner's finality, and an extravagance of trick which evil presents itself as good.
Well, you can come with us if you want!, Clarissa inviting me on their date.
Staring at Clarissa now, was like the fifth time hearing a song you become addicted to, right as it's kicking in, body craving the next line, rushing towards the chorus . . .
Got nothing to worry about bay-beh, she says in a way that comes across as I've got nothing to worry about like, say, right this second, but there's still an intoxicating quality in her voice which also signals I may definitely have something to worry about later.
And also that she had to air it out, call me out on all my unconcealable malcontent, was a real aetiological down sizer for me too. Paused baffled, I just didn't want to be so petulant, no, but saying nothing ended up seeming now but such so the more nose blunting into perilous quicksand. I'm nervous writing this. I've re-lived this for scores, and besides, it seems any better equipped reaction would have not changed anything anyways, besides. What pick up artist relationship coach didactic fails to pick up upon, is that nature cannot, can never, will not, can never be changed. And one is only if but extremely lucky, when nature can be but only somehow mitigated, if not all but retreated from completely from whence one came. You can't necessarily control someone through ostensibly more well dispatched paratactical actions towards them now, no. Weather is inside us. Women are wild won. Insane wild nature.
Something had happened when I left her there, this marks the turn, and the way I would be treated from here on out. From here on out, I could have Mctwisted a live street rail in a black and white ZOO YORK ad, and Gluck would probably be like, that's soo great! I'm so proud of you! Okay, bye, now I'm going to New Beverly to hang out with Potsdorf.
Gluck two years later went on a trip to New York where she was approached by Eamonn Bowles on Sullivan St, and was encouraged right on the street spot to audition the next day at casting, which was actually at the same building as Harvey Wienstien's in Tribeca, but was still being distributed through New Line Cinema. Originally, upon Bowles' urging, Gluck was to audition for the lead role as 'Hilary' in Kids, because now Mia Kushner, who was originally cast, was kicked off location for her and Soleil Moon Fry (Solei, who was originally the girl who had the most lines at the Washington Square location scene, in the scene where she's berating and goin' off on Casper in front of his date) both showing up to the location hung-over from horse. Because Gluck could kill standing still, murder sitting down, she was quite poised for the lead, and then at the very last afternoon before shooting, Ione Sky (who had just come off of production of 'Gas, Food and Lodging') materialized from out of nowhere, and landed the Hilary role, fate sealed, and because of Ione's performance (or Kids' reputation), Sky went right to work with Witt Stillman, in his next coming of age film that mixed Fourier's socialism, a lot of indoor cigarette smoking, a bevy of precocious Upper Eastside parlor games sprinkled between major coming of age conversations, Tango on Debs.
Clarissa also started running with her old pal Pam now, Pam who the first time I met her, I was instantly confronted by her striking Jane Berkinian Babylonian radiance. Pam wearing a haute bourgeois zip up flight suit, the Taladega mistress barely acknowledged me, like she knew something I didn't. So much to the point that, along with Gluck's new passive attitude towards me, made it defeatist in conducting myself in front of them, and serrated us into tube rides into different worlds now. And I never talked to Pam, I just saw her in passing. Pam had an imperial beauty, she was the opposite of Kant ,where Kantian aesthetic value recognizes itself in and embodies or equates itself to morality—Pam's blond screen was impenetrable, fascistic in its cynical nature, Pam, of rabid beauty naturally drawn to power structures and authoritarian punishers, she embodied LA better than anyone else (well, besides Gluck). Pam, in all her hyperreality there, a readymade viper like an early Richard Prince image materializing right up front in the wild. Pam, the flipside of Gluck, though they as opposites with just about the same level of power and you could tell they like titans clashed against each other in the rip of past but otherwise now, Appetite for Destruction Inc. were back together again, running about the town like twin blenders, leaving trail of tears streams behind their path, a wake of broken bodies and glass shards decorating all the collateral damage they entertained in the science of every kind of misconduct.
I called Clarissa on the telephone landline to her and Ivy and her dear mom's—I remember it was a blue Monday, and it was my only one thing to do, I waited around for the day to pass until the moon was most the moon, into late afternoon night blooming. Clarissa's mom, who I could have loved like my own mother I decided pretty quickly on, now answered the telephone.
When Gluck and I first met, it was Gluck going out of her way to make immediate plans now and love me two times tomorrow and the week after, and the abundance of things to do in the future. Now her calling me to go to Metro was now so screwed down and slowed up and stilted in the hunted sky, gaps between our worlds growing further away. Intervals being now greater now between the short cheap precious little time we intermittently now spent together. ILL housed, ILL advised, and no longer us alone, and now random new and old people coming thrown in with me in the mix.
Clarissa went to Metropol, her mother told me helpfully.
Knowing Metro was infected by Potsdorf, like a swarm of bees in the courthouse, I desperately still ran over (as if quickness could even by this point help but at all quell matters). But here's the thing, when I got to Metropol, neither she nor Potsdorf were there. I mean did you ever notice they don't sell butterfly nets at the drugstore?
I futilely called her mom back from the pay phone in the hallway to the bathrooms. Clarissa is not at Interpol, did she maybe by chance, I don't know, perhaps, like, walk back, while I was coming over to meet her. Did I have plans with her? No mam, I didn't, its just that I was trying to get in touch with her . . .
Months later Regina heartlessly told me Clarissa cheated on me with Pots and it sounded about right, the immediate searing electric shocks of imagining her with someone else had eventually abated though, and instead, I was left with a somewhat manageable general sobering defeat.
The Dyrdek three's, the decadent Vader Kalis nylons, the carefully curated green Gio Estevez Tristate Projects (post)minimalist scribble t-shirt I had on, not only condescended to where I had found myself cast now, but also reflected that same better world that which did not want me there, which I was sorry fool for going out of my way to obtain and 2 try to participate in, and being formerly, dumbly so proud 2 rep, and I was always too dumb to ever get what I wanted.
A few years later, Potsdorf comes into Simple Pleasures, the café I was now working at and he mentioned Gluck in passing, with a now guy-to-guy solidarity saying, yeah she sure was crazy wasn't she?, and it was all so cruel, as even now I was insulted when he called Gluck crazy and steaming in heaps of contempt for him and from whence he came, retreating then to the back cooler, still protective, still devoted, and with no one to tell.
III.
Long icicles line along the metal frame of the Modernist window to my small apartment in the assisted living quarters in the artist colony. The Kunstmuseum came, installed a Robert Barry on the wall in the living room near the hall (a loan completely un-precipitated by me) and to be quite honest, I could go either way about Robert Barry, or any Robert Barry for that matter, but the words float in the picture plane of the blank white background, and there's a moment when you've lived with the piece long enough, that now my mind imagines invisible words breaking out of the work and sifting through the air like conceptual ghosts.
The word FAME floats upside down—it reminds me of Laurence Wiener, kind of. I think of what Schopenhauer said about FAME—the desire for fame is permanently rooted in a man's mind, and like all old quotes, this seems facile and overarching. I mean, exactly what man's mind is fame permanently rooted in exactly? Everyman who has ever walked the earth's mind? Does this include women? And surely this was written well before Carroll. I mean, have you seen Carroll lately, it's pretty clear he has way long ago become tired of the best years of his life.
I seen Carroll lately, though. A lot, actually. I mean, he's like still around—he actually lives in the adjacent building over in this very same assisted living quarters of the swinging art colony. He comes by my suite at least three or four times a week, still never of course ever wants to talk skateboarding, and he looks completely, shockingly so different—but if you look at him sometimes, you can still tell there's a bit of the old him in there somewhere, you can still catch a glimpse of old Mikey sometimes.
On the lacquer and iron Judd shelf installed on my wall is a framed photo of a girl I knew when I was eighteen. This is my piece: Untitled (2077), Judd with framed photo. And that's it. This is my art, this is who I am, this is, like, what I do. Carroll comes by, and he picks up the photo totally disrupting the installation, Carroll coldly looks at the photo of the girl I once knew, but then, he never says anything, though I can tell he's intrigued—at first it was just something I noticed, but now he's always pawing at it when he comes around.
It's funny though, it seems like I become friends with people at the down slope of their notoriety. You can just imagine, that they in the pitch of prosperity, like Carroll would totally have had no room for me mentally then, it's pretty clear of that, but especially with Carroll.
Carroll comes around and just wants to talk about art with me now, it's pretty funny, ever since he got admitted to the colony up in the mountains, he's NOW interested in being an artist, and to which I never fail to remind him, that it's way too late for you old sod, and he heeds not my advice.
Did you see what that Ericka Beckman went for at auction, Carroll tries to open up conversation. I can tell that he's deliberately mentioning a lesser known Pictures Generation artist to try to impress upon me or engage me. I can tell he's been just boning up for this discussion all week in his apartment before coming to see me.
I don't pay attention to auctions, you know that, I say immediately grouchy, immediately annoyed . . .
Well, no, it's just interesting, fascinating really—one fifteen and one, Carroll proffers, as if in this sphere we are somewhat veering towards peer like equanimity (which, we are most certainly not), Carroll using words like fascinating, interesting, intriguing. Oh, do just give it up old horse . . .
I mean, how much do you think the Barry would go for at auction . . .
My Barry. I have not the faintest idea, nor have any interest in such matters . . . . . . but probably low twenties, twenty sixteen, it just sort of depends.
I go into my bedroom, and get an ancient copy of a Deanna Templeton photo book I recently absorbed.
Hey, dude check this out, I found it on the pulse, handing it to Carroll.
Carroll grabbed the book with a visible amount of interest and then when he saw the name, he just held it for a few seconds, looking at the cover as if it were a gremlin egg, says nothing and just sits it on the beer table in front of him. And that's the thing about Carroll, he's only interested in art, if and only if it comes from a node of what constitutes an officialized, traditional transhistorical arts system apparatus. I'll kind of give him props though, because he doesn't bother looking at Hyperallergenic, like ever, and he just came upon such attitude by his own instincts (and by hanging around me), and it's actually kind of impressive seeing the same staunch tech-formalist criteria being applied to his studies.
What, you didn't even look at . . .
I just don't care, Princess Carroll defiantly, then leans into the back of the couch like a rock star waiting back stage about to perform, letting himself get sucked into the upholstery, sitting sunken back like a small child.
Well, her husband just happens to be my all time favorite painter, I say with relishing authority.
You've got to be kidding, Carroll, exuding a nerdy pragmatic sensibility of connoisseurship.
Yeah dude, Temp . . . me with a fortifying triumphant tone of finality.
Favorite painter? Of all time?
Yup, pretty much . . .
Ok, you need to like, be real careful with what you say now, I'm going to let you just walk that one back . . .
No need to, chap . . .
Better than Bouguereau . . . Pollaiuolo, Thomas Lawson, Blinky Palermooo?? Carroll barely knowing who these people are. Who does he think he's fooling?
I let a silence take over for ten minutes arranging trinkets and the decorations in my apartment, and then finally I break up the lull . . .
Hey Carroll, did you ever skate with Bucky Lasek back in the day?
Hmph, Bucky Lasek, Bucky Lasek, that's pretty rich, I should say . . .
Well, I'd love to sit and chat all day old sport, but I'm afraid I have an appointment pretty soon . . .
You know at this swinging assisted living center they always still say chasing strange, but in your case, the strange never ceases to chase you now does it, huh huh huh, and in the lilt of Carrol's voice you can hear middle-schooler revenge of the nerds from Daly City Mikey in there.
Not wanting Carroll to have any more information than he doesn't need to have, No, No, just an interview, just for the, just the catalog . . .
Ale knocks on the apartment door, its Ale.
Come in! Come in!, I say sounding grouchy as hell . . .
Heyy Senn, how are ya, you doing okay?? Are you allright? Ale showing over concern in a way that makes her seem more entrenched in my general situation than she really is.
Yes, yes, I'm fine, just . . . bored, just terribly bored, yes, yes, come in before you catch your death—I not making sense, because the hallways are climate controlled, but I feel useful telling Ale what to do because she's so young.
Ale is working on her dissertation, though I don't remember her advisor approved thesis. But it doesn't matter, I'm her dissertation, and that's all I need to know.
So hey, I got this new stuff, which you're just gonna looove. She takes a small bulbous opaque white ceramic container that looks exactly like a small Sharon Engelstein sculpture from her sack purse. You can tell the container was cloyingly chosen with the artist colony in mind, this kind of unimpressive selection applied art superfluousness always typically gravitated here (I've seen it all), as the colony is a god.
Agent Orange! Ale announces.
Agent Orange . . . no, no, yeah, I think I heard about it on the news, immediately getting real serious.
Ale unscrews the white porcelain notched cap, loosens her Star Wars utopia mechanic's vest, opens her blouse, pours the candy orange powder onto her mammary gland as it stains her skin.
Come here Papa, Ale commands.
In nervous paranoia I scoot the Earline Grey-like chair towards Ale for no apparent reason, in making me feel a useless usefulness in anticipation, Sophie Tauber Arp-like woven rug bunches up on the ground. I lower to put my arms around her back, snort the dust off Ale.
Oh, I forgot to close the door, Ale inconveniently states, while I'm snorting on her . . .
I pull away, push myself off her, immediately bending over backwards head upside down, so nothing falls out my nose, and you can really tell I've been to too many festivals at the colony and on the circuit . . .
Straining . . . Upppp . . . who . . . cares . . .this . . . is . . . my . . . ulll . . . life . . . with honking nose voice.
I pull up right side standing up, concentrating on nothing, looking for something eight feet high in the empty air, then suddenly my nose feels off.
Oh my god! What is . . .Oh god! . . . Oh, god! . . . Oh, uuur! . . . .Whattt . . . Desperately holding my nose, even though it makes absolutely no difference, because the cataclysmic pain is all inside.
Oh god! . . .Ahhhhh, god! . . . What! . . What did you! . . . Ahhhhh! . . . I! . . . Oh! . . . My! . . .U! . . My!
What did you!
What did you do!
What did!
Try not to die on me old man, Ale without a grain of sympathy.
No, no, but, oh, it's . . . Just . . . It's . .
Ale screws the cap back and puts the container on the dinner table, near the kitchen, with the assurance of hospital nurse.
I'm clawing my face, tearing marks on my forehead and cheek . . . No, no . . . I'm fine . . .
I sit down, and still in pain, immediately get right back up and pace the room, with nothing else I can do. I can feel it in the veneers of my teeth.
No, no, I'm . . . Fine . . . Fine . . .
I'll be fine . . .
I'm . . . Going to be fine ok . .
I collapse on my knees onto the woven applied art.
Okay, okay, get on with it already! Ale indifferent.
No, no, I'm cool . . . I'm cool . . . Just give a . . .
Whatever I put up my nose, was by nature not supposed to even get near my body, let alone touch my insides or tissues. There was something lethally industrial about it, like roach bait run through an air conditioner and then smelted with sulfur. This is how a slug feels when it crosses a salted road. If it wasn't for the deadly, knocking upon heaven's gate pain, it would have had that garden killer taste that was otherwise so perversely delicious.
Then suddenly I feel, I feel, absolutely, absolutely, terribly, like, real splendid. The spell of pleasure and beckoning euphoria I'm now cradled in now, was well, well worth the pain, any pain I just survived, and if anything the pleasure far out cried the end of days pain.
Pretty good huh, Ale with a clinician's non-emotion, as cool as a priest in a dark suit.
Ale sits on the couch and I scoot closer to her in the Earline Grey chair. Ale, all too consciously, conducts the interview process with an apparent institutional procedural, which besides having works on loan installed on the walls of an apartment that's floor plan looks like it was laid out by Michael Asher, through Ale's demeanor I can still feel the administrative aura of the museum leering inside my home.
Okay let's start. We can continue where we left off, but first there's a couple of quick questions I don't want to miss. Ale gets up and adjusts the camera so that it's floating in the air more on me.
Okay, so you said that you actually did meet and work with Mulvaney, right? How was he?
A real bastard.
Okay, okay. What about Fuseli?
Oh, him? A bit thick, a real bastard.
Collidge?
A bastard.
What about Scott Pellman?
Oh, him. He could fuck up a cup of coffee.
Really!
Oh, god yes. He could fuck up a cup of coffee that already had cream and sugar . . .
Totally. Okay, okay. What about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Clarissa Glucksman?
What.
Clarissa . . . . . . Glucksman.
Who?
Glucksman. Clarissa? Clarissa.
What can you tell me about her . . . You knew her when she was filming Kids.
Ale is crafty, I always forget how smart she is, but this blindsides me, just railroaded me really. I was not prepared to think about this, especially not out loud in such an official capacity. Not even today.
No, I don't, I mean, I didn't . . . I just don't . . . I don't . . . know . . . I mean . . .
Oh, come on! I waited to mention her! She's the last name on my list!
I get real quiet now, now blue as hell.
I mean . . . I . . . Don't . . . I just . . . I mean there's nothing to tell you, really . . . I'm of no help, I'm afraid . . .
When you're tripping so hard on X, there's nothing you can do but lie down. I get up and Ale's face is thinking. She looks disappointed, even sad. Her sadness connects me even more to mine. It connects me to an new extreme desperation. Retreating to retire in my chambers, I then making a hesitant jerking motion, stopping myself from walking to my bedroom.
I go to the kitchen table, grab the Agent Orange container from the table instead.
The moon waxed like a disk, proving that the earth was really flat. It was a cold night up in the Sierra Nevada mountains tonite, but we were safe and comfortable inside in high modernist building of the utopia of the most vertiginously exclusive art colony. The window beamed a very specific yellow hue of a very specific designed light that looked an absolutely natural and yet also un-natural Bauhaussler metropolitan glow against the dark blue mountain scape, and it hit the river running yellow.
All right, Ale, you better unbutton your blouse . . .
Okay, so what do you want to know.
I mean, I could give you questions—I mean, I have questions but . . . However . . . I was thinking, was thinking, I thought, just thought, well, was interested in maybe . . . getting your impressions.
Well, she flew to New York specifically to audition for Kids, I remember that. She loved actors and was obsessed with actors always. She was going to originally play opposite Penelope Ringles. I was actually real supportive, just super supportive. Ya know? I said no, go, go, go. This could be a good thing for you and all . . .
Ale wasn't writing down what I was saying. I usually embellish details or just straight up lie when getting interviewed by scholars, you know, to keep it real, to keep them from getting too wise, and besides, I like the idea of academics bumping heads over the most trivial details in the future, getting no final resolution, well after I'm gone.
You dated her briefly, almost four months, two months before she . . . Ale shooting back coldly, letting me know she's done her homework.
Dated!? There was no dated! I was her boyfriend! Pregnant with indignation bursting piledrivers through the seams.
Are you sure about that? Ale was sometimes too smart for her own good. She was playing with me, but I was fuming too much to see through the exhaust now.
Okay . . . Boyfriend.
Yeah, boyfriend. You ever have one of those, Lovely.
I've had a couple, Ale looking smugly at her notes.
Well, she had a nose and throat issue, a thing. Ya know? That's like what happened, that's all I know. After Kids was Last Days of Disco. She had a nose and throat thing and retired from being . . . Still lying, still so mad at Ale, I can't even look at her now.
It was stomach . . . Ale corrects me. She had a stomach issue, which was a bit of a personal revolution for her, because it like started a new diet, health and wellness . . .
Health and wellness, if Ale could only hear herself, she sounds like every other, every other, I don't know, like every other damn writer, or no, not even a writer! Every other bloody journalist in this crashing bore of the world. It took, or it takes a lot more than factual details to like be a real writer you see—to be a real artiste! It takes guts. Bloody guts and that's just something I cannot teach these kids, I mean I try, god knows I certainly try, but . . .
Okay a stomach bug, she was a stomach, I resign, no longer feeling like fortifying my shivering bulwark. I'm not having any fun at all.
Well, how about I start asking YOU the questions for a change, since you're now so keen, lets see how you like it!
Ale gives me a significant look, but that which still contains patience somewhere in there.
Okay . . .
Okay, what . . .
Okay, ask me then, ask me the questions . . .
Ale now had me stumped. Almost saying something, I stop a first word from leaving my mouth . . .
Again I almost say something, but stop it right from leaving my mouth futilely again . . .
Okay, okay, okay, well, then you tell me, what was, what was . . . Clarissa's favorite color?
I have no idea, Ale not knowing the answer heroically.
Blue! It was blue!
Ale starts writing in her diary.
It's blue! Her favorite color is blue, and actually, it was our color . . .
Your color? What do you mean by . . .
Yes!
Your color, like . . .
Our color, it was our color!
I don't reckon I follow you . . .
Our color. Color.
Ale faring nothing.
When you're with somebody . . . like, when you're close, or, like when you become close . . . you, I don't know, you have a color . . . Its just a thing you do . . . Like the lyric . . . Annnnd donnnn't forgettt ourr colors blueeee . . . What do you mean to tell me you never done that?
Oh, like a song! Like a song, but its a color.
No, no it was our song, the color . . . blue.
Oh, that's really cute! I want a color!
You can't have a color, you don't get to have a color. You just can't, you think you just can . . . I stammer annoyed.
No, I mean, like your color.
Well, you just can't have it, you can't choose it, it just has to . . . It just has to . . . I don't know, happen . . .
Oh, no, no. I know! I bet! I'm sure it does!
The convo had run out of e-juice, had rusted dry of speed cream. I'm pretty sure the interview was over by this point.
Hey, I got an idea, Ale suggests.
An idea? Oh, I know you have a lot of those.
Why don't we . . .
What . . .
Our color . . .
What do you mean . . .
Why don't we have our color . . .
I mean that's just silly. That sounds silly, okay!! Do you know how silly you sound right now . . .
No, but we could . . .
Okay, okay. Okay, then, if you're just so keen on having a color then . . . Then, then I guess . . . Maybe . . . I guess . . . I guess, we . . . Could then . . .
Well, what's our color??
Hmm, umm . . . that's a good question.
The only sound at the moment was tiny dust flakes of human skin hitting and gently bouncing as it lands on the late late late (neo)postmodernist furniture in my assisted living suite, my tiny apartment which looked like it was designed by Peter Rice.
Scanning around uselessly, it suddenly comes, occurs to me . . .
Agent Orange!
Epilogue
Ale and I lay on top of my still made bed in the blue dark, like we had just got done from a short sprint. Ale is married, but it's okay, it's different, it's much different now, so different, you wouldn't believe me, or you'd be pretty astonished. In the future, all men lucky enough to actually be married to the catastrophically few extant women around now, all had to share their wives now. It was the custom of our global village tribe—and even the sharing married men were considered extremely wealthy in the new biological economy of scarcity—women were like diamonds thrown into drawers so to raise the value of those too few still available. And if you don't believe me, you just wait and see.
You see, I proved the river never moves, it only sits in the ground like a plant.
And most circles aren't built, they only with draw themselves. I proved that too, you know.
I was able to slow down the f stop, slow down what it was like to fall out of the train in slow motion and remember it back all so well, I can describe it slowed down in a new way, with previously undemonstrated clarity, with new observation of discovery of detail of the new unseen.
But it's not over yet. I still have more here, listening to the lonely mountain wind sing, here with Ale, Ale, the plate onto which the chemical reaction occurs.
It's all just so . . . so weird, isn't it? I say optimistically, on my back staring expansively at the ceiling like I'm looking out onto the dessert starscape.
What, what is? Ale asks softly in a hush, really, actually wanting to know, Ale still reliably as curious as she has always shown herself to be.
I don't know . . . All . . . All of it, I guess. . . All of it is . . .
Yeah, yeah, it is, it really is! Ale exhales with a worn out, but hopeful resignation.
What do you expect, Ale dismisses, not wanting an answer,
What are you going to do, who are you going to be now, she asks finally after a bit of silence . . .
I don't know, I don't know . . . That . . . . I can't really say . . .
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