I know all the songs that were ever sung, all the words that were ever said
Could it be when I was young someone dropped me on my head?
Jason Lee publishing a photobook of Galveston was fantastically pedestrian trex, but whatever—the personal lens through which he discovered Galveston all on his own merit, enough so, to begin such kinda jejune project of taking merely competent film photos, unearthed absolutely nothing new for us, or for any of us. Maybe it unearthed the surprising amount of people who came sniffing around to the book signing—of hundreds of people (three - four hours in line to see him), a mere sliver being actual old scene heads in attendance (if there were even anyone else besides us, and also our buddy, who owned the skatepark who, also brought his entire immediate family and who were further up the endless line). And of the flash mob in attendance, comprising mostly suburban beach city/bay city populace, who must have, who indeed had access to network television (My Name is Earl) and were apparently intrigued enough to materialize at a signing in what was practically a Shriner's mansion off Broadway to see movie star. There was a woman alone in line with us, a fan all the way from Dallas who brought with her all of his previous already signed photo books with her to show him. It was strange and weird, but we all there are strange and weird. The photos of Galveston were just stock slock beach house imagery, but done with integrity, though you could tell, clinical art when maybe, perhaps we would be ravenous for the human when art was the only place we could find an irrational, sensual release, from the over deterministic patriarchal rationalism that his photos seemed to embody. For instance, they also had no editorial subjective bent powering the images, not like a Larry Clark or they were not like Jerry Hsu or Deanna Templeton or Richard Kern and even Dill. But even as super fan, why would anyone who was not skating from say '90-'94 have any interest whatsoever in patronizing purchase of such victory lap coffee table autograph book besides enthusiastic us? And consider, I went through my Stereo beatnik phase in high school, went to art school in San Francisco influenced by an illusionistic art skater model Stereo once purveyed, I was a skater then and have been since this whole entire goddamned time, and even I had none of his photography books. That being said, we had about six copies of Galveston, we bought to his table to sign. Jason Lee is probably, unbeknownst to himself, a mere functionary, a predictable subject (and not as it would seem in the Foucauldian sense, the Object). He's not conscious of Barthes death of author of inevitable gravitated magnet of Galveston Island, confirmed only by the function of publishing a simple photobook of architecture in Galveston—Galveston was always going to publish a book about itself, exactly like Jason Lee's book, even before Jason Lee started taking photos. And I, the stretch of sand the sea never reaches, as well, am exactly like Jason Lee's book or much worse—by my moving to Galveston in the wake of felo de se career suicide, was exactly the same thing too, it was the same thing too also. Although I myself made the decision to come out here—beyond that, what it was, was really, was Galveston bearing pull like stone tide by moon. Or may I, might I add, the utter futility of Galveston is just so Zombie Stereo—the ghost of once major city, that would, which would, end up becoming decimated by very bad weather, and lost to the strands and sands of. . . And don't think I don't know coming out here and writing about Dash makes me garden variety simpleton, but might I, may I, remind you, nowhere does it say being a good writer and complete nonce be but separate propositions (and in some great and famous cases, they are actually but one and same.) Still, I don't have too many terribly bad things I want to say out loud to the public about Jason Lee. He was jolly, and all but too accommodating to every cluster who approached his signing table, in Princely way, which he seemed so in tuned to our general insanity (as well as his) historical great expectations pull of the island of it all. Jason pulled out the one man show for us all certainly, really did give those who came to see him the absolute full degree of himself, which is enchantingly admirable (It did though, remind me of the Abramović, The Artist Is Present stunt at the MoMA.) He talked to us about fanning off on phoning Hensley. It was practically on the level of like visiting Betty Page for skatedogs irl, to tell you the truth. And he was acting, invited us exactly three times verbally afterwards to 'have beers afterwards and just talk skateboarding'. I know it was three times bought up and precipitated by no one else but himself, because I remember saying over enthusiastically 'yes!' three goddamn times. (Of course he never called Z from when Z wrote his number down for him, but such hypothetical was the most charming thing that went down in Galveston that day for me and also ever there!) I planned on not talking at all, but then quick found myself then off naturally saying, communicating to him: 'Visual Sound was beautiful', 'They don't make them like that anymore' and I also said the whole affair was 'Avant-guard', though I don't think he heard that part amongst the interaction with me, Z, and R by that time. There was in his very characteristic manner, how he told us to 'now fuck off'', right at the very end of his otherwise very generous interaction with us—that last squinting shed remnant of the archetypal Jason Lee John Wayne of Skateboarding once in lifetime ago hip-notic West Coast Uberhipster first street generation Video Days Gen-X Pan Am Stereo of SF Mission pueblo Modernism bauhaus of City College photo printed Stereo ads in black and white of Thrasher Vibrating Cosmopolitan Splendor of it all Downtown San Francisco and staring at me all right to the eye, when he took off his spectacles. The very tail end remnants, to think, when the last time I met him was the World Demo at Memorial City Mall right after Video Days came out a long long time ago—then, Jason Lee, at the absolute zenith of hipness, writing a postcard to his girlfriend and hiding her address he had written on the postcard with his hand, drawing a cartoon figure that had dollar signs for hands. He came out of it and was now and here in untethered to land, had tale end shed remnants backdropped in elegiac ghostcard city of lost promise, which now all but promises only its own subtle illusionistic schizophrenia, made mis-connections.
I've been coming to the office four days a week, though I haven't had any real leads in almost two months. Looking out of the window from five stories down, gives desolate downtown a sense of being some mock up—a facsimile, an idea of another more bustling, more prosperous version of the city in an historic past, giving way to the flimsy 80's beach towel t-shirt shops on the seawall that are also so empty in the commerce of their unconscious postmodern. I don't understand the economics of how the telemarketing office sustains itself you know, but you could say the same thing about practically anything really, and everything else on Galveston Island.
Thom, scammed over his phone by someone he's never met. I explained.
If it is or seems dicey for you to end up together—well, ya know, it's probably, indeed most likely never is going to like—be. I mean isn't that how real life is?
Thom didn't respond, as if he didn't hear what I said. But it was like the Adorno quote, I suppose: life is so rife in contradiction, that making any rules is quite preposterous. But also, Thom's mind, conditioned to what diet of thinking it had already feasted itself upon and ate itself upon. Thom's eye's glazed and dazed and grazed off at something imaginary in the distance, was barely listening staring off at the voided space. It was quite easy to do that here.
Also, there was Adorno's negative dialectics, which could seemingly be applied to most things: damned if you didn't, and most certainly doomed if you did, though in Galveston, amid all the queer and quaint little streets and blue and pink and yellow houses in the historic neighborhood off Broadway ghostcard—it was, there was, a certain soft, almost inert Kitsch doom.
Between the limpid peach Shasta of eleven o' clock mid day, up until about five thirty, the position of the sun and the shadowless gale of day, generally just rakes out an uneasiness—so much, that being in the telemarketing office feels like refuge now. It's easier to feel just slightly more secure in this barely a functioning proper office space, but feeling protected, ensconced somehow, reassured by advertisement copy of the past, which could only seem not totally preposterous only to citizens of the past not steeped in today's media evolutionary consciousness. The futility framed yellowing advertisement posters for promotions that don't exist anymore for incentives that never really ever existed, the pamphlets in a cracked clear acrylic holder, the mixed pens and pencils in a holder on the desks which seemed brought from someone's home, a dry marker board never used, all are and all were scored marred vectors of the beach slum commerce.
We cold call proposition for pvc lawn sprinkler systems for mostly beach houses with generated lists—pvc pipe samples attached to a plaque hangs on the wall uselessly in the call office. We also sell, serve a service for shutting off moldering septic tanks for beach houses, and we also quote for services, brokering for installation of connecting device into the city's updated island line sewer.
Regina is at the bar right now—she works there full time. I live with her in an extra room here in her beach house in Terra Mar. There's nothing remotely sexual in our living agreement, and in the mornings, I way my bike from extremity of Jamaica beach, out over east towards downtown out over to the office, as the glare of the telemarketing Galveston Island sun blinds my eyes on ride.
I keep a file inside the Office Depot desk I sit at, of clipped comic strips that I started collecting. This kind of thing is too easy to come by, particularly in this old used bookstore I discovered off the Strand. Anyways, I just got some good ones, some real good ones. I have a rare ten panel Archie comic from '51, when they experimented with running as a serial in the Chicago Tribune, and which for some reason, was shortly aborted. I have an array of old Syd Hoff clippings, that are of course originals, some even featured in his famous 'Opps . . . Wrong Stateroom!' anthology. I have a raft of more modern Farside's that were clipped from weekly in Seattle, like, before Gary Larson got big. I got 90's Tom Tomorrow's, some Groening's Love is Hell.
Anyways, Regina got me a couple of shifts at the Rail. The Rail is an outpost kind of bar on the strip, technically, the only hip bar in Galveston now, or it's supposed to be at least, the only bar that you could depend on walking into anytime it was open, was the concept, and where they were playing like Joy Division or something at any given moment—songs on, that otherwise smoke your meat and steal your brain, and is free with the price of bottle. The idea was, was, that when Houston eventually would explode in density of population like Austin, there would be a bar in Galveston, that would be like something for the hipsterunoff, something like what you would have found in Austin maybe, perhaps, I don't know, fifteen years ago maybe, okay??
Regina looked like Jeanne Tripplehorn. She was single and before I moved in, she was living at the beach house alone. Sometimes one should veer and ere with caution of a woman of this kind of beauty living alone. Like Adorno, though not always, but sometimes. But Gene was real great to be around, and she was hilarious, super smart, maybe too smart. I don't know, but I liked riding in the car with her to the grocery store, walking the desolate isles before close, hanging out every night, and she was even going to get me a job at the Rail.
I remember she said when she moved in to the beach house, she found crack stems from the previous person who lived there. This initially threw me off, as such a statement implied she would not be crack smoker, which is a total crack smoker move. I sometimes, though not all the time, base with her in the beach house at night, with the din of dim beach light surrounding the house, ocean gulf void silently shimmering in the background. Here, the gulf was like a lake though, there was actually no wind, no seagulls, practically no sea scent even. When she would invite me sometimes to smoke hubbas, we would usually or sometimes end up having not problematic sex, and it was no big deal. We were or remained unattached untethered, and the next day our just friends boarding relationship resumed as if nothing really happened.
One night I said to Regina:
Ya know, women, not like all women, but you know what I mean, like girls treat music like candy, they really do. Like, candy is candy and candy is good. Splitting hairs is beside the point to a woman— it's all good, because music in itself is good to them in general, right? Men are different, we feel the need to buy the goddamned album, as if not doing so would be a personal failing. For girls though, music is beyond qualification . . .
I could feel Regina listening in silence in agreement. If she would have had a counterpoint she certainly would have expressed it.
Regina said she remembered a lot about being a child, she remembered candy being enough. That's what she actually said, she said she remembered candy being enough. Then I realized Regina's capacity for memory was much sharper, seemingly vastly deeper, so much, she seemed almost to live on a different plane of consciousness, as if memory is deep enough, it's causes so extreme, one exists almost more interdimensionally. Too late it occured to me, that that could have been part of why Regina was so laconic all the time, but I still don't really know.
Candy being enough, I do remember candy being enough . . .
Gene had the character of Saturn, the spirit of Venus, though in Galveston it was still land of broken astrology. I didn't fall in love with Jeanne because I was still so uselessly in love with Lash. And what a missed opportunity, I often think. But it was probably not really available, either anyways, really. Maybe because Regina knew my distress, she knew I didn't have the capacity to be spellbound by her, so I was nothing to immediately have to worry about. Jeanne had had it better though, but there was certainly something—some trauma, a past, or maybe an ongoing depression, years of prescription pills maybe, an abortion, an adopted child perhaps, something irreconcilable that she just had to live with and never mention or think about ever again, some tarnished angel quality about her. It was something else though—I don't really know, but certainly there was something still bruised all about her, that she took in silent heroic stride. Regina was complex though, but she never hinted at it ever at all, or even bought anything up like that, unlike what I was otherwise used to with every other rocket girl so self centered around ceaselessly harping about themselves, their problems all the time. Jeanne was like vertigo stairwell of walk up in historic apartment building, when, where you looked down, you could see all the way down to the ground through dizzy morray labyrinth of steps and where exhausted. Her room at the beach house was neat and sparse and she didn't live in useless clutter like most other girls. There was that pragmatic wisdom reflected through her, but maybe I'm just a slob and over analyzing. But even her bathroom was filled with the least amount of bathroom products, as if it existed on soundstage.
Regina was like the lyric from Heaven is a Truck, from Pavement's second album Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. There was a line in that song that I pondered ever since it came out, and could not quite decipher. Loosen my dress, tie me up just like all the rest. Tie me up just like all the rest. Tie me up just like all the rest, was an off kilter lyric, that I was always a bit perplexed by. Was it SM being pervy, SM in a rare display, a rare expression of him being transgressive. There was something in a subconscious way, that I thought of getting tied up in bed, linked with the moniker SM, but such conscious connection was at the very edge of my perception. I lived this whole time, thinking it was the freaky Pavement lyric, whatever. Then one day, over twenty years later, stoned and alone in my apartment. It hit me. Loosen my dress, tie me up just like all the rest, meant, was closer to meaning tie me up, like running errands, because girls always did that, girls always had you run errands. A girl got you all tied up when you were consumed by them. You tied me up. And that certain switch that was flipped, just blew me away. Of course Stephen wasn't talking about getting tied up in bed—that was a misconstrued meaning I bought to the lyric. Tie me up, like running errands, like being involved with a girl, was the meaning and it was just so spot on for what Stephen would say. It was so pure Stephen. It was like that revelation was the closest you could get to Stephen and his sensibility and I was stoned and was taken for a second, I'm afraid, because I had lived with it for so many years since high school.
Ron and Travis are standing by the empty bar as I walk in for my single shift this week at the Rail. Headhunter V1.0 by Front 242 is bleakly playing to vacancy. This is a song that is usually bleak in an affirming way. Now it's just dustbin of culture bleak. The parry for guests who are never going to come futility of it all, makes any significance the song ever had become nulled—just like everything else in Galveston.
Travis and Ron don't acknowledge me, don't say anything when I say hey. Ron does me a favor by somewhat civilly (which only seems civil when compared to being otherwise shunned all the time) telling me boxes in the back need to be unpacked, as if he's doing me some huge fucking favor.
The first thing I noticed about Travis and Ron or Ron and Travis, that first time I came in for interview, was I immediately intoned that for them to land a job bar backing about, in such an unlikely place for Galveston, the Rail, was that it was quite a boon for the both of them—an unlikely come up for the vehemently un-hipster beach background bumkins of the both of them. Instead of admiring me for my former vocation, they were immediately, silently like, what are you even doing here. In my case, upon Regina's urging, she thought it could be kinda great or like cool to bring me into the fold, seeing that I'm ex-pro, or former, former super am, and maybe I could lend an extra vener of cred for the bar maybe perhaps, I could add a sort of Kilowatt Max Fish Lolas skabar dimension to atmosphere.
So why are you not skating anymore, Garcia, one of them (I can't remember who) asked once. This was basically the krux crescendo of all of our interaction the entire time.
Me and my photographer, or rather my photographer and I, broke up.
You couldn't just get another photographer?
Yeah, why didn't you get 'nother photographer?
Without a photographer faithfully by your side, gents, I'm afraid it's extremely difficult for one to pro. Or at least in the sense that I was. Well, I mean people do do it, but it's, was not ............it just wasn't available to me okay??
But why didn't you just like find someone else?
A good photographer is about a scarce as tortuga's teeth—so much, a good one can live rent free in their skater's head, as well as in his spare bedroom for well as long as they want . . . A skate photographer, or an exceptional one, really is worth more than his chub weight, is a lot of things in a lot of situations, really. Sure the industry operates on an everything is replaceable working philosophy, but then again, that's how, that's precisely why, precisely why you get videos like YEAH RIGHT or Roll Forever.
Travis and Ron or Ron and Travis didn't say anything, both thinking against me. It was the opposite of how Regina said nothing.
One of them gave vibes by the way they were talking, that I was indeed a fool, lacked some kind of common sense to just go onto something insipid like companies they didn't know about, but would have myopically suggested, Chocolate and Real, like I'm Kenny Anderson for Christsakes—Kenny Anderson, every simp's impression now of skater tout court and I do well know this.
I was right about all that I had said though, but I had festooned the wrong weight upon my filmerless predicament because I was really deflecting, or not deflecting, but I was certainly not willing to address to them at least the real reason my plan-b was G-town, had been Dash.
Lash was the sin of, or no, she wasn't a sin, but she brings to bear the sin I committed, or my deficiency at least, like Lash always reminds me, always makes me feel absolutely obliterated when I think of Lash, that I just get so embarrassed for myself. It was like the sin of using your favorite song, picked only by you, on your video part and once it drops, only then you realize it was completely inappropriate and insestuous in and of itself, and hi-key self defeating, and not only do you hate seeing your fav song to your idiotic own video edit, your promo edit that you well so now such sullied, and you just well now loused up the whole thing, botched the entire affair up real fine, ruination by virtue of you going out of your own stupid way in which what you thought, was otherwise the very best move you thought you could ever make. And that's why it's better for someone else to pick out your song for your video part, and have it be better as un-likey version of you. It doesn't feed on itself, and it can be opened to hitting—in some unexpected way maybe, and that's how your part becomes banger. I think people can tell when your part feeds on itself, when it's too incestuous, even when they aren't conscious of it. Your part is not banger when you self edit it to In The Mouth of Dessert—trust me on this.
So no, I'm not blathering or sidestepping the issue about Lash (which, I well mentioned and brought into focus all on my own, anyways). What had happened was, was I ordered Lash flowers, two orders accidentally, from a flower store, Crimson and Clover in Baltimore, where she lived. You see Crimson and Clover was the Shondell's song from Andrew Reynold's Baker part—this personally for me, AR's part was an important document, important document not just of Andrew Reynolds (the greatest street skater of all time clad in black leather), not just of the place in time that he expressed and concretized, but there was specifically one line, there was just this one line in that song and yes, the line was, was, okay, it was, that line, yes where it goes, it might have been that line, you know how it goes, it goes, where it goes, my heart's such a sweet thing. I'm not embarrassed to say that, and that song, that entire goddam part made me feel that way, weather or not my heart being a total sweet thing was totally accurate. Though it made me believe my heart was, is that. So by ordering transcontinental over telephone Dash flowers at the shop in Baltimore, named Crimson and Clover, I was expressing the ultimate part of what I thought I myself was. And this, Dear Reader, was even more dangerous than using your favorite song in your video part. It was beyond humiliating, and the fact that Crimson and Clover in Baltimore botched the order up real good and brought her two orders at two different times that day (which I was charged twice for), was some fate even well worse than anything I can ever think of. That was why I quit, that was the catastrophic end of my career and why I'm shipwrecked in G-town now.
And the steam whistles of Galveston no longer sound downtown
I'm a bobbysoxer in hicktown now
Drunk as a lord, whole earth, somewhere else, island tethered by 45 highways
And I can't get off of you now
You, a Sexual companion of lunar spirits
And we had out-stripped ourselves again
And I never forget, prospective suitors will never fail to seek a reposition
Dasha, sly as a child, restless and careless, furrows radiating from her lips wDash guillotine gaze, fluttering back and forth like ambigraph
Lash is like trying to trace wavy tangling light rays onto the bottom of bumping bubbling burbling swimming pool with pen
Dasha was violent as Schifano monochrome
She, explicitly hyperreal, slightly perverse built for internet face—simultaneously disarming, immediately threatening, though perfect once you became adjusted
And I, initially bristled the projection of her projected surfaces reflected onto us and people hated her online
With rapier wit devouring those of proxy—someone threatened Lash online, immediate knee jerk response was to write them I dare you to just come to my apartment and kill methen—and I was so immediately impressed by the posture or pose (like the scene in Casino where Deniro gazed Sharon Stone throwing up rack of chips to air). It was, and no one sees this, or no, no, no one knows this, or, I don't mean like know this, but Dash quasi performative writing reminded me kind of of Chyssie Hynde, like, it was like in Morrissey's autobiography, he was saying something, something like when or about when a fan accosting Hynde came saying 'You used to mean SO MUCH to me,' and how Hydne shot back ruthlessly, sprang sparing no intensity to her tracker/stalker in only a way a woman can: 'Yes. But I don't now—so fuck off.'
That's why I quit skateboarding.
The small buildings in the small downtown anticipate people who were never coming, there are no girls here, only a giant empty taffy emporium that busks itself. And all stop lights are poststructuralist, don't you know— meaning the colors are arbitrary and exist in a closed system. You can substitute the stop light colors and they do the same exact same job in the exact same way, no matter what colors are used. But the stop lights are even more poststructuralist in G-town, though, I can't quite figure out what makes it so, but maybe it has to do with a certain rock bottom reality residing below the surface here.
Maxing the deck with Regina on second story. That part of the beach house facing the ocean, the side of the house looks like hull of ship lit to night.
Regina had the landline coming in, wire though the crack between the trim and the closed porch door, talking on the telephone. She got off and put out her cigarette, cleary thinking about whatever as she crashed the drag.
There we sat Nas faded as night progressed, we listened to soft drink hits on the radio, close to utopia and the stoplight off not too far from where we were and where there were no cars on the lanes, switched signals to no one.
I was always sensitive to not pointing out attractive women either irl or media images, when I was with a girl. It just seemed so, it just seemed so disrespectful. I mean, it really did. I was always considerate, I was, I really was! Girls always did with me the opposite, though—never failing to point out right to me, at me, casually but purposeful, who was hot either to them in media images or irl. I'm not traumatized by it, I'm just saying, it was really kinda rough sometimes, it was like this force of happenstance casual brutal, but I'd just have to not react and take it and keep face . . . Even when K and me were just hanging out as friends, I was in Austin, she was in Houston, I hooked up with another girl, but I didn't want to tell her about it, I just couldn't bring myself to tell her, and I mean, maybe I should have, maybe I really should have, but I just didn't want her to know, it made me sad and it felt funny, and that's just me, or not me, but . . .
I pause drunk, like in a revelation, though I've mulled this over in my mind too many times. I never had a way of putting it, but now I know the term—castration.
Or female castration, Regina deftly adds.
No, yeah, totally, female castration. I was never, I was just never prepared for battle of sexes. I was just so naive. It was like Momma never told me there would be girls like that. I'm still naive. I still am so naive. Idealistic. I'm idealistic or I just still carry the idealism right to the end with me no choice. Not as crutch, not as safety device, nor as wishful thinking, but it is wishful thinking. It was. I mean it just is isn't it. All but, as my general instinct towards viewing the world, or like world, the you know, world I would want to see. I believe in the miracle at very last second. That holding out was actually the right thing all along, and right all along. What it was, was though, that, that I was kind of right, at least in my own weird way only I could see, all along. I believe that, I want to believe that. The games beauty plays in certain circumstance, or no, no, not in circumstance, but always, it's always and could be a function of, just a function of the preconditions such beauty demands and all, and also, and that's fine, I mean like what do you expect, I mean, maybe, maybe, it's formed somewhat by the cumulative effects wrought onto beauty casually everyday by society itself—I mean, yeah, yeah, the effects on beauty from society's reaction, reception to beauty could have, no like totally does, most certainly does have something to do with it.
Well tell me then, tell me, what's your love language, Gene goes.
What's my Love language, I don't get it, what's what. . .
Love language, you know. Everyone has love language. You never heard of that. Some people are like, some people, giving receiving gifts is one. Or spending binging time on the close, is theirs, or might be theirs. . .
I don't, I'm afraid, I'm afraid . . .
Sure, sure you must, everyone must have something.
Never had luxury.
Oh, well so poor, then why's that.
Why's that is is because, that would require enough autonomy to be able to get what you asked for. No, not even that, it would require you the freedom to insist upon or attention span from someone else or ask for that. There was never, there was always never time, or just never time, just never time for that, I'm afraid.
Well, if you were able to receive, what do you think.
That's like asking someone starved to write recipe, for something for them if they had nothing to eat, if they even wanted to eat by this point, I mean jeez Gene. It's almost quite cruel to even ask by this point!
No, no, I DO understand, Regina lighting another cigarette pensively.
What's yours Gene . . .
What's my what. Gene blowing out in low voice, that comes off with a practicality from blowing out the smoke.
Your—what do you think, your language. Inhaling and handing back cig with unintentional measure of confidant's conspiratorial coordination to Gene.
Regina sat with cigarette polluting between her fingers, her hand resting on elbow smoking hand right to level of her face, looked out across the highway and didn't answer.
love is the saddest thing when it goes away
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