For Carbonite
The element of pathology in Body Art reached when hopes was its nadir in 1969, when the Viennese artist Rudolph Schwarzkogler amputated his own penis by degrees, one segment at a time, while a photographer recorded the "event" for posterity. Schwarzkogler later died. —Calvin Tomkins, Off The Wall: A Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg
Claude Lévi-Strauss has long taught us to see a myth as a set of variations on a significant theme, often as a fundamental contradiction in a culture that the myth serves to ease through its spinning into narrative.—Hal Foster, Prosthetic Gods
Are you afraid of someone alive, are you scared to death because you've never been naked with a good looking man about town? —Morrissey
Henry was talking about a girl he contacted on the backpages of the L.A. weekly newspaper, said he's a 'legman'. Henry saying, sounding precisely connected to some sense of ambient historical, antiquated 1930's Depression Era Los Angeles, even though he was from 1976 Daly City after all and, and, that was like, totally Henry too though, think about it, I mean—he was always just like that.
In L.A. it was helpful to keep rejoinders ready in your vest, and black beast bête noire Sanch was real good at that one too—once, when we were out, he heckled some random tall man twice his age who had long silver hair. Sanch, unprovoked, said the sixties called and wanted the hair back. The Vietnam war, like I think ended ya know? you can cut your hair already. That was actually one of the funniest things I ever witnessed in L.A., which I’ll totally never forget and both of us laughed.
The Terminator skull on Henry’s pomo promo deck was smiling but it wasn’t happy—and it never was. As much as I’m extolling Henry, there’s absolutely no winning with him though. He never ceased to make fun of me. A bashed ego, blinded insights, a little anatomy, torn screens, missing parts. Such his attitude, such his demeanor, and he stands at window or porch, an ambiguous outside-in station, an interior that inhales the indoors.
I moved out to scrawny Boyle Heights, but when I first got there, I accidentally mis-signed my second rent check on the wrong line for what I didn't realize was on the very last check in my checkbook, making the certificate useless, and then I couldn't even find the box of extra checks now from the move. I could feel the impossibility of Los Angeles before I arrived. My bank was far back East and I'd have to order more blank checks (and certainly not for free, and certainly not in time to make rent), so I ended up just getting evicted.
I stayed for that first month I paid upfront for, but found another apartment—a converted garage apartment way out in Echo Park/Rampart area, which was kind of ropier than the otherwise Karate Kid run down apartment complex I just gotten stricken from. The garage apartment in Echo had other redeeming characteristics though, but the quaint quick click clack sale details of the garage conversion masked the dreary, barely habitability dint of space—think about it: the charming upon first sign funky mosaic floors would sweat or sometimes like sweated, and then there was the bedroom space that had two window units (one in a window, another installed into the wall), and then the thin, hardware store carpet that came sold to cut from isle bale and was the only buffer from the rude concrete floor. The makeshift kitchen was in a concrete slate gray cinder block wall corner, and one of the walls had this Mayfair scrim single shangle rusted industrial window—a comforting retro vintage readymade window, which you could totally tell at one time could be buckled out open, it could once be held open by a now rusted and now unusable attached chained stick for the better air of L.A. past to have moated in through.
Currying a garden of Eden is no longer possible here refrigerator—moving in, I cleaned the frozen, godless crump particles from the crevices of the perpetually cold shelves when I first moved in, disgusted with the appliance and with myself even.
I was getting boards from Heaterz, or, actually, I got a package from Heaterz back home once. I was real apprehensive about contacting them though too, I mean, I was sort of just apprehensive about telling them, like, that, I just wanted, or just wanted, to move out there to try to like get something, ya know, like going—but I procrastinated, I procrastinated calling them, and I was also just so afraid like that their response would spur me to not come out, or not come out at all, so I decided I would come out anyways, and then call, and you know what?, if they weren't interested, like if they weren't interested, the hell with them, ya know?, and at least I would already be out on the coast. I had a move L.A. hadn't seen yet, it was called the San Laredo Shimmy Kick and I knew it would be infectious. I surprised the TM, Ludy, when I called when I drove in—right then I realized, I really should have called before I came out, because of the weight of immediacy heavy that was brought to bare on my part. His was but the sort of casually demoralizing halting non-response though—immediately giving me the feeling, this, that this sort of dynamic, was all quite de facto, all too pervasive in this opportunity destination riden region. Before hanging up, Ludy even not so much proffered even but one lead—he didn't even suggest anyone I could at least link up with. Suffice to say, Heaterz didn't exactly have much of a direct street to am onboarding program.
It was real jarrying moving out and down there, though and I always thought about the movie title, Down and Out in Beverly Hills now. There were so many funny basic things for myself I would now need to procure for myself and now, and like immediately. I was alone and had no protective surface, and couldn't make myself up as I had planned. I was a walking flesh bag of needs, a castrated subject, a spiritual pauper now really, and, or, but, I was so overwhelmed, I was just so overwhelmed with it all really, and now I didn't even feel like skating—which was not a good sign.
Most acid dropout stories involved moving out to Cali and just bussin' around inspired, sleepin' on floors anywhere and architecking street tricks off from like that, like in the usual model of heuristically beckoning a lead up into becoming, into arriving, as ascendant agent in making minor innovations into pre-established teleological street skating progressivism. I fantasized this would ostensibly bear the fruit of say, yielding print feature that also included, like say imagine, incidental media of my new winner's prize fantasy very fine future for sure L.A. streetwear-smart now girlfriend. I imagined a discrete unposed photo in the feature of me and her, both of us looking indifferent in different directions, both equally curious and charmed by the world in equal measure, looks of wistful contentment, children of The New Deal, and both of us dressed at the height of supply side. But now, it even seemed like such a grand luxury to be even sleeping on skapartment floor even, and that I had no access to this was absolutely lethal in a way that I actually wished I actually knew someone at Lethol (a board band I used to talk bad about back home all the time). Now I pinned on Lethol, thought a lot about it, even envied, sometimes now admired the now seemingly So Cal Indy prince Aron Yeager, which is kind of insane. Anyways, at least sleeping on the board co's silkscreener's floor way, I could have sleep onto the floor for free, sell Lethol joints to eat off of, Lethol sleds to buy toothpaste with, and so then, I wouldn't have to get a proper dead end job, which, anyways, if you think about it, it wouldn't even be enough to really scare by on, and which in turn, would be so debilitating for my practice, where it was otherwise crucial, so very crucial, I would need concentrated, protracted effort, just limitless hours just to get one stray clip featured in the video quarterly index. I wasn't talented. I remember when I first got out there, I went to skate seventh street alone at around 7pm on a weekday, there was no one there, I levered around for about twenty minutes and then left.
Also the thing about Heaterz was, or what it was was that Heaterz was, or like would have been a good tertiary company inroad to say, say try to garner some kind of general exposure from, or, and, no, maybe just then, to, think about it, spring heel Jimming that onto a nice secondary tier distributor, like, say, an XYZ. The other thing was, was I was not exactly as Davis Sheridan in his eponymous tennis novel, Cauliflower Coffin, described, as 'rampling savant'. Not only was I not skate savant, but I didn't even have a regiment of extreme and freakish idiosyncratic discipline now, with which I could latch onto now even to move myself forward here. No Aon, no BOT, no Picasso, or Amoco or Board of Trade, no Daley Plaza.
The opaque Ocean Pacsun wind could pierce rows and rows of perfect perforated hole-punch holes through my bones whistling it into its own crumbling collapse.When wandering out around about Venice though, I would too needily stare off at the freak scene and see the people, but then gazing cast out at the salt horny ocean, I could be comforted by the infinity the ocean so directly alluded to. And the ocean was a mirror, a portal reflecting the earth on the inside of itself.
Filled with a new variety strain of longing though, I also insisted on stringing virtually any misguided or unnecessary guilt to any insecurity I was now stricken with (even to insecurities that didn't exist until I got here) and I must say, that that's just about the worst way to land anywhere. I just started waiting low money desolate weekday lunch shifts and can't-go-out-on-Saturday-night-in-order-to-wake-up-for-early-Sunday-morning-Brunch-slots. I didn't even drive to work now, I just rode the bus, was indifferent to the extra time because otherwise, I really had nothing to do. And even jobs in the indentured service industry were real hard to come by here—way worse than invading other's skate spots. Waiters were worse to each other than the customers—seating sections were like ocean side property practically, like they were Brasco mafia blocks in 1979 New York, seating sections as stored chunks of capital in the seductive skyscrapers you were never allowed to go into, and in L.A. everything was taken. And then, I simply just refuse to mention the default antagonism of all the idiot waiters, and how it was just so hypocritical in a way, that they were not aware could maybe, perhaps, I don't know, blanch what little humanism ostensibly sits at the center of the off hours artist aspirations they may have been so supposedly supporting or that they were so claiming in supporting. And with most, or all artists I came across casually now, I was on my best behaviour for a change, and I acted now with a good faith towards, but it was as if they could smell my self deception but they thought it was active outward deception, and never spared to spit casual venom right back at me, and then I realized they were actually all bad, the artists were all bad people and bad artists, and you still wanted and sought out their approval—but now I know all art here, that I saw first hand, was all so really sinister. I still skated, but it was more to pass in my freetime now—some continuity mimesis, something, anything, just to approximate some sense of back home—I had run into the sand pits, anything worth advancing on a skateboard by this point would seem silly past the original impetus for what in the first place attracted me originally. The now baroque and rococo state the treacle of tech formalism had descended into had caused me to reach a critical crisis in my practice.
I also reassured myself that I was still in a place where I could find some alternate avenue maybe, some kind of venue perhaps, to which I could get in on some overlooked and maybe nascent ground vista. Maybe in some other sphere, I could self-develop myself, because I was still out here, or I was still young enough to figure something out after all. I was going to comedy clubs, doing a spot of writing, maybe thinking I could, I don't know, maybe, perhaps find a writing partner and like, write like scripts, a script, or find a way to somehow sell material to no material stand up comics at the clubs. I imagined writing lyrics for soon to be signed or later signed rappers, or like cook up readymade songs (Brill Building stez!) to fashion to sell to record companies—like, for instance, legend Orlando Laplanche and his legendary song writing partner Tull Zellwinger in New York, in the mid to late sixties.
When I got tired of going to the comedy clubs, I sometimes drift off in AA meetings—you know, maybe to try to meet people, maybe not the best place, I know, but I don't know, maybe I could hear some stories there too (which maybe I could later use), maybe develop an ear for dialog, maybe meet a dime. Maybe I could take what someone shared in a AA meeting, and then sell it to a comic for money, and get paid so drunk people can laugh at what a person in an Alcoholic Anonymous meeting had shared.
There was this one ruttish Russian, Charlene, who I would end up talking to before or after the meetings a couple of times. She could run the print off a wrinkled dollar bill, had striking straight dark raven villain hair, a non-problematic bleached peach stash. Her opal iris had exploded like a sun turning to blackhole, as if it ate up what was left of her scalera. Maybe she could seem to have some sort of sour attitude too though, to go with it all, all which, all what, made me surf some vicious thirst of grudge like I'm riding cold and overhead up the coast at Maverick's. Charlene stated right away she wasn't an alcoholic—she only went to the meetings because she was stuck on this slightly older Aries named Blake who was there (I knew Blake was Aries because Treena had mentioned it). I think Blake, or no, I do know, I'm quite sure Blake slept with Charlene—he was popular among the Century City AA young people's group, and he was always onto next, always chasing strange ways. The bad, bad news with Charlene evidently, was to get her, you have to win the AA group, the other bad news is once you win the AA group, you won't really want her anymore. It would probably take me a good five to seven years to get to where I could monopolize or show off at meetings a little with the small pull of my personality, just enough to establish myself and not to mention wait out for popular people who don't like me to relapse and leave too, and, but, by the time that happens, I seriously doubt Charlene would still exactly be there in the wings waiting. I knew all that stuff about Blake though, because people were pretty much always just saying this—Blake was quite infamous for being a real beaver dam architect. Blake was apparently a real Baudelairian pick up performance artist, but what no one ever says about pick up artists is, is it only works for some. Sure they, who were able to reel Sea Bass en masse, usually had to have some innate internal tactlessness, some lout louche loutish persistence, a very real lack of overall self consciousness or just general consciousness all together, or think about it, not to mention, even any moral social sensitivity— and they also couldn't be too good looking either. Picking up girls and skateboarding were both about erasing one's identity. The lack of conscious sensitivity was probably crucial for being shielded from and not utterly totally demoralized and coke can crushed from the mandatory safety in numbers rejection methodology and inevitable self humiliation most likely required for all this. And even if you did all this, it could still be quite perilous—it was always just so dicey. If one really thought women were less than though, women picked up on it and in L.A., it always seemed to work in that guy's favor.
With twitchy Charlene though there were quite hardly sparks flying, and, but she was some Social Oyster chewing the whelks, and she needed to be seen, she really did, and I certainly can't blame her, though I got the feeling immediately, I felt immediately, being around her could be something not too far from languishing whilted in front of razed thicket in thin of the den of death winter, practically.
I don't remember how it happened, but one night after a meeting, Charlene and I ended up making pains to meet up another day at this just slightly lame, ticky tacky, clubby coffee shop way out in Pasadena, or as us locals refer to it, 'Dena. I once heard General Patton was from Pasadena, but we weren't exactly meeting at Ciro's here now. But I waited and I waited for her there though, she eventually arrived. Charlene sat at the table flushed, then it was like she was gamely and quizzically and suspiciously at proctor's desk in in-school suspension, a hint of child like precocity smirk on her mask, or, as if some imaginary audience at home was watching her on screen—every interaction in L.A. was open game for the performative. But then what happened was, was not too long after she arrived, like, not too long after she just got there, she just saw some of a group she knew at another table across the dining hall, and Charlene went over there for a really rude amount of time, and then Charlene comes back, and then breathlessly says she was going to just go hang out with them.
About two years later, Charlene taps me on the back at the comedy club venue bar, Spellbinders, where I was otherwise innocently out and about. Nothing good ever happened at the comedy club. I ordered a drink in removed and maybe active passivity defiance to the AA credo, flexing some limp delusional self sense of autonomy to the very restrictions from which we had been previously acquainted. Something like this, may have been signifying my emancipation from Charlene's burdensome presence also. So with feigned nonchalance, asking her if she wants one also, she says no, no, she's straight anyways, and there's something especially cunning, baffling and powerful about someone who is naturally sober on their own who goes to AA meetings.
I had read somewhere, when mosquitoes mate, the male exerts a hormone, and as a result, the female mosquito no longer wants to mate because she only wants blood and female mosquitoes only mate once. Charlene must have been real bored to stumble onto me again though, she certainly seemed just about as circumstantially enthused. Charlene was like a bad foley artist, obscene like the over sound of cash being rustled while counted in a movie.
Though it was something I wasn't smart enough to verbalize at the time, Charlene had the advantage of sexual intelligence—Charlene was sexually smarter than me. That doesn't mean if we took an LSAT test with only sex trivia questions, she would get a higher score (which, it's possible she could score lower). But really, sexual intelligence revolves around desire and need. Intelligence becomes lost when one has no options. Coitus involves an exchange of power—the woman who otherwise rejects everyone they come across, gives such power to the one she ultimately takes on. And sometimes even, when you land a woman, you still will get the feeling of your own subjecthood, like they aren't even really kissing you now even, more place holder-ing you, and though you are bestowed her selection momentarily, you may be only there to settle the score with the last sucker, until something better else inevitably comes up, which it always does. It's like that lyric in the Menace promo, they say sex is a weapon. Anyways, a girl with a catastrophically low level of general intelligence can still effortlessly be more sexullay intelligent and almost always are.
Charlene cracked the passenger window, her Pavonine sweatshirt was scrim for the shed light and leaked shadows projected off the moving street to spill upon and linger onto now.
Charlene, was the type of girl who didn't necessarily tell her mother the kind of company she keeps. Charlene was a spoiled young brat and she thought she knew it all—she smoked mentholated cigarettes and she had a three way in the hall. She is the anti-artist par excellence, she turns animate bodies into inanimate statues—see me and Henry. And the reason I am regaling this story to you, Dear Reader, is, is that, that this entire episode must have been so traumatic, that it was actually stricken blacked out from my memory this entire time and for years. The very last thing I had remembered was the comedy club, but the rest of the night, up until it was triggered very recently, all came flooding back to me, and writing it down now is my slightly traumatized response to such defereded and baffling uncanny realization. And I know for sure the black out wasn't related to alcohol—I figure it is, or was, or must have been, all but the trauma of the defeat concerning, emanating from Charlene again, and my poor body was just wanting to protect me this entire time. I would hear stories of skaters trying something so gnar gnar, something their body would subconsciously and consciously not want to go through at all, so the subconscious kicks in and erases any evidence of the pov of going through the utterly frightening trick, in order to protect itself, and so then, the skater only remembers the roll away. I was so stricken by Charlene, that my subconscious reflexively erased the entire night altogether though, and twenty years later it came back to me on a gull, activated when I randomly heard Gun and Tear again and also by something else.
Driving to a skatepark used to feel like driving to casino, but I let myself stupidly feel cool that she was tagging along with me to run funky crime errand to World scion, Edgar Losser's private indoor facility that was used by band members on his label—this was off and private and away from the invaders, the gate crashers, the snoops, the kooks, the clueless self entitled parents with a misguided presupposition that skateboard production somehow owes to conform to some supposed consumer protection and level of service they think they have an automatic right to, but which is completely antithetical to the rougeish aura and rough trade that made skateboarding edgy in the first place, and btw, if you run a shop and aren't actively heckling your need-to-be-put-in-place-customers-who-will-inevitably-emotionally-highjack-your-generosity-and-spit-it-back-in-your-face-eventually-and-attempt-at-normie-cool-guying-you-in-the-parlance-of-all-their-hoi-polloi-attitudes-in-your-own-shop, you are doing a grave disservice to what was once an autonomous subculture and definitive GDP Western peak cultural export, this, at the excuse of supporting your family that none of us care about.
And going to a skatepark, but especially the World facility, was some, was just this real intimidating decorated shed—you were gambling with the performance of your body predicated by the waves running inside you, and also, one's gambling also on the hostility of its club's members, which surely, most definitely, and always effects performance. The player knows best, that winning the street course, also involves winning in approval of proshop. Despite my bumbling response on the way to World Zone, Charlene may have been right though, sometimes hard work and determination could pay off, but for some and for most, sometimes it was all quite futile and hopeless and pretty much sometimes under extreme conditions, even complete waste of time, but really, at its best, the beautiful and benevolent thing skaters sometimes understood quite well about each other, and was generally accepted was, was you got what you put into it—unlike most things in life. Though, there were skaters that no matter how much time they put into it though, they would never be that good (like me) or, but maybe they could be, but they never fully gave themself up to it, like how successful others lives led so naturally into series of conditions which better foster such level mastery—or sure they could still be generic-good, but success in this sphere also relies on constant, hypertrophied, freakish, practically bathos levels of well placed and poised (and sometime even posed) workman-like innovation, exactly like bodybuilding. Freud said something about man being of prosthetic God, but when he puts on all his auxiliary organs he is truly magnificent, but the organs have not grown on to him and they still give him much trouble at times. To get good, you had to erase yourself. You really just had to be a straight up supa-freak who never stopped rolling around on the ground, in order to erase oneself, to recalibrate one's instincts for the un-sustainable in the long term demands that were predicated by compulsive libidinal hypertrophied progression, which in a way, really also reflected a pervasive and outsized, misguided, extant modern day testosterone restlessness bonfire of teenager boys. World was different because they ran their teams more like bands though—that was the difference, which their legacy, that which is now all well acknowledged catalogued and documented, is but not even close to be even really reified or really even ever co opted because pretty much everyone in the industry are still sports motley crue of Tony Trujillo tone deafs.
Los Angeles is a city of invisibility. Invisibility is a form of disappearance, the object absent is its populace, the majority of its citizens are cloistered away in the conurbation of emptiness, and all as well also straining to see. People walked on the side of the roads like extinguished suns. Solar cult emblems would fade from novelty, though empty icons didn't necessarily always get snuffed out, and some all but still yet remained.
Charlene was going on as if talking to herself, the way she communicated was as if by seemingly letting you listen to her secondhand. Those flowers are unstable, you have wild flowers, but you have to keep scorching them. With wild flowers you can change the color, the way summer fires do. Of course it’s not permanent, because wild flowers are unstable, you have to keep scorching them.
While coolerator Charlene sat passenger, I thought for a second, she in a way practically seemed to add resale value to the Blazer just by sitting inside, but then, guess what? just when you want to bestow praise and admiration for someone in this city, she pointedly goes, You on any teams, in some stereotypical, cynical way, signaling the prevalence of skateboarding culture here—an almost given localized defacto pedestrian hipness she had had, implying that by her asking me this, it was hipper than my answer would be. As Charlene was raised in media town, she was like the magazine talking back to you.
I was, I mean, I was, but I haven't been much—I mean, I have been krooked coming down off hubbas though lately, I know that much.
What?
What? Nothing.
Well, that's too bad, didn't you share once in a meeting about being, getting 'paid flow'
No, yeah, yeah it's fine, no, like, it's good, that's all, it's all good.
But what Charlene didn't realize was, was ware bussing gack to leggg Henry Sanch was actually, kind of, and if you think about it, better than getting supported to be on a team and way funner in a way that worked better, or just was well suited, or better suited for me at the time. Any dance troupe could only support a few ballerinas anyways, no matter how bad this grown man wanted to ballerina. And I watched some recent clips of Henry, and I could sit satisfied, just knowing my grains were inside, coursing through his body, the powder invisible inside him was definitely a part of his documented trick too, which to say, is a whole hell of a lot, a whole heck of a lot better than I could have done all by myself at the time.
Charlene blew out first pink neon drag with charismatic amount of sunflower seed spitting resolve, but looses up, I figured it out. You know my whole life, practically, really, I heard people say, people just always said, always saying oversexed, or like the term oversexed, or when they s-used the term oversexed, I thought, I just always thought it naturally meant they had so much sex, I thought it meant, I thought what it had meant, is, is it was coming out their ear holes practically. The other day, the other day, I learned, I mean, you know what it was actually, it actually like means or meant, was, what it actually illustrates is is, like someone, someone or someone who was always too fixated on, you know, s-e-x, you know what I mean—the s-e-x is actually too much inside them. She's oversexed. Not over sex. She always thinks about sex, it means. There would have been no way of knowing this, just by analyzing the word or like phrase, which I did and I was or was wrong. I mean wouldn't there be, or like, there would actually be, or maybe there really were, would havta still be context required to understand oversexed.
Charlene held her cigarette like magic wand, with researcher's air, like any overly self interested foxy detective taking break from the mysterious case of Jughead's missing crown in Riverdale, I don't, I can't ever, even remember anyone ever going, or no, I can't remember anyone ever saying in AA, in AA no one ever like said, you need love, you need love to make love, but I'm just saying, I know they never did. They did or do rely on their proprietary little AA poetics though, like one drink too much, a thousand not enough.
Actually for me, six is enough.
I know, right or half measures availed us nothing—which is clearly not true. One can go to meetings and not work the steps and still stay sober, which a lot of people seem to do. That's a half measure, that's certainly availed something.
Right, but, which according to AA, you need direct contact with the maker of the universe to stay sober, and even that's never a guarantee. AA is like the opera, people just go there to see themselves cry in public.
Charlene veers off at the hills in the background, like aristocracy on tour, You can tell they added the relationship with god part into the steps to cover all their bases.
I wanted to make a remark, but I held back, which, now thinking about this twenty years later and that in theory, I should have made or said something smart alec, which theoretically, would have established an autonomy or strong will (like with Treena's precious Blake) that is required to colonize cruel heart and mind like hers, but I also had a not able to put into words kinda feeling that that would not have quite worked with her either, because, a) by then, it was probably way too late with her to establish such a new adversarial dynamic, b) such constructive sexual frisson can't really be faked and girls can sense and intuit inauthenticity (I'm basically a nice and naive guy), c) although Blake's take-no-crap, no nonsense attitude, which is actually a regressive trait and not really a sign of maturity or enlightenment, but was nonetheless a map to winning Charlene's brain gallop—again, there were several other factors that supplemented that of his ostensibly "sexy" attitude, like where Charlene was emotionally when she first met Blake and the perma imprinted imprimatur impression on her, which made with his careless carefree (read insensitive) surf daddy metal guitar playing demeanor, and also, there was Blake's popularity in Century City AA young people's group to contend against, and also his long hair, and d) that Blake was distracted in his popularity, and probably only desired Charlene oh, and only but a fraction of what I so did, his take-it and/or leave-it attitude cruelty, though left unsaid, communicated to Charlene that he thought was better than her, which is, or would be, a defining unresolved issue and riddle, that would, which would, cause her to always come back, and which very well will command her sordid respect for him to make herself available to him again.
But I thought, I know her Blake probably never said any poetic rubbish like you need love to make love in a meeting, it gave me pause, caused me not to respond for about one millimeter second, which sent tiny invisible signals train tracking back to Charlene's box car of stimulated paranoia.
What, Charlene goes, now just sore as hell, in a way that is unwarranted, in what's now becoming her more increasingly tiring obstinacy.
What, what
You're thinking something, what are you thinking about
What, I'm not thinking or not nothing, nothing in particular,
Yeah ok, well, I know you've must have just envisaged something
Oh, ok . . .
You know how I can tell, you know how I can tell?
No, how.
Your nostrils, your nostrils flare out when you are not talking to me
What remains of what began as jaunty drive, gloomily spins us further down La Brea, past the jutting neon of an historic second floor dine and dice emporium called Florian's, but real life was a cartoon as dreams are cartoons, a monstrous Unforgiven billboard loomed in the crazy and docile sky.
You like Clint Eastwood? Clint Eastwood, he— I think, would have, he would have not liked AA, if he was like, or our age. There's a, just this libertarian, like this, this, upstart drive, or like impulse, with it all, you know with that, and, you know what I mean?
The ash of Charlene's cigarette hung too long, like a thermometer reading indicating all else she neglected in her life. Charlene wasn't so much not listening to what I was saying, as simply just not acknowledging and probably keeping loose record. She certainly didn't have to worry about her body language betraying how she really felt. She stared out the window of the moving cab, looking out at the movement blur of sidewalk, as if looking for an exit. It then reminded me, brought me back to our encounter years before, which until then, I kind of almost totally forgot about or repressed, but now I starkly remembered, I totally remembered now, and I remembered it clearly now—silent panic set in, I had let myself walk into this yet again.
Clint Eastwood embodies, Eastwood— he, you see, he, are you—listen. It's just, or think about it, think about it, he embodies the ultimate, just this like advanced American like, archetypal male, you know? Even his eagle face looks look like it should be minted on coin practically even, you know? But, but well, because society, I mean, think about it, society in in the like seventies or like seventies, ya know, has simultaneously just advanced, advanced, but not to deny it also regressed in a way, I mean it has, it really had but that, that only serves to the advantage of the mediocre, less than mediocre, and you can totally see the Clint Eastwood character cast as, or he was some de facto outsider or outlier. He's so advanced and evolved, the contemporary society colonizing yokes don't understand him, his methods, or they don't get him, and if anything, they are hostile towards him and he becomes dismissed as unstable, or brazen, even dangerous. I mean he is too self serious, he is dangerous, but, but . . . it's only when, it's like only when, having no choice, or like no other choice, or like, like little recourse or whatever of using his unorthodox methods against some looning stagnant society, can he at least be the most effective, get a bit of what he rightly deserves, though you get a feeling at the end of the film, it's also still too little too late and at great cost and the cycle will have to begin again at the beginning of the next film. It's no wonder Clint Eastwood would be so fiery against the heat waves of affirmative action, I mean, I'm not too terribly, exactly like, I mean, I can't quite say that I'm not in the least too terribly surprised.
Hell of a certain lunar star, I was beginning maybe to not like her again. It might have seemed like Charlene wasn't listening, but then she goes, she snaps back surprisingly, or actually not so surprisingly, It sounds to me like he's so focused on his so-called unfortunate predicament of being self perceived, self martyrdered as underrated, that he fails to see, or no, even fails to empathise with people who are actively disenfranchised, he just lobs them in the same sweep of the inept, mediocre, so really, to Eastwood, with him victim becomes double victim.
Working the steering wheel and the mechanics of driving, has never seemed so trivial now, it's action now neighbor to emptiness of performing while not being watched. Wavering pathetically defensive, Well, he may see equal opportunity, equal opportunity, for like, for those who can, I mean think about it—rise up through their tenacity, or smarts, I mean inventiveness you know . . . like disciplined rigour?
Charlene sies, she relaxes in a frank candor now. But in a way everyone works hard, not everybody, but most do, the difference is hard work doesn't pay off for everyone, there's absolutely no way it ever can, because rewards, situations are limited, real limited everywhere, even in places where rewards abound, like here they're limited. Some people could potentially be in such a bad situation, that they could work harder than actual quote un quote successful people, but lose harder because they were performing under worst conditions, or even subsumed in quite perilous conditions actively working against them, you see?
I wasn't exactly sure what we would do after, but the I've been waiting for the summer all my life of night was still wide and open with possibility, humid like the hyperreal sweating beer bottles on the Michelob billboard promising for sure it's gonna happen tonite night. I felt momentarily maybe there is still possibility for the Frankie Avalon gods to might have smiled down on me, sometimes the world surprised you pleasantly and at this time I was so desperate for something, just anything, I may have naively held on to Charlene meager trail of succession of empty signs I placed too much weight into—but, the invisible thread was still attached to her chest at least, guided her here through space and time, led having her still sitting in my ride now.
That I had moved out here years ago, couldn't find my way into the micro industry of the production of hard and soft goods bearing what was for a hot minute progressive media forms, that which basically everything else was downstream from pop culturally, and I had instead segued, or no, adapted myself to the comedy clubs, but was now even going to extraordinarily sell synth to Sanchez of all people now, was to me some success in the face of constant succession of endless parade of hopeless situations social and otherwise, that which my very off-brand past life of third-city had been so fatally mired in. But really, my paultry progress in the face of hopelessness could ever seem so diminished, or it's appearance of progress was threatened against Charlene wisened and jaded girl perspective from growing up here, and to have to bear plaintive witness to all the putative promises and all the lack of realized promise, the disappointment of this town for everybody. Charlene had a realistic, world weary intelligence, which silently made me seem and feel like some superficial fool for even moving out here and rightly so. That capitalism, society, culture, whatever, had advanced (or regressed) to where it was now skateboarders of all things who were scampering for slots in their version of moving West, speaks to a bizarre Debordian society of spectacle extreme cultural fragmentation, in which I felt a sense of longing when I looked at a magazine at a photo of a much then cooler monoculture Keith Richards in the 70's with his pre-post punk spiky long hair, commanding and bending culture at that time and place of more advanced past. If I wanted to be au courant in skateboarding now, I'd have to wear sweatpants and a tank top and sweatband and wheelie on a concrete lilly pad, edited to a song recorded over the phone by an inmate in prison. No one on the streets tried to look like James Dean and if they did, they got it all wrong. The version Michael Snow Alien Workshop, that I really wanted to ride for, no longer existed by the time I got decent enough and moved out here, and when Workshop got jump started again (before it got really bad), slots would be filled by kids from not Cali, but the East Coast, who were equivalent to MIT computer lab Mouse freaks, who instead, slept on the streets and skated to live. Girl was on its way out—sure Girl would become popular for the next two decades in its self-bastardized version of itself irrelevancy, colonized by people who didn't fit and incels who definitely weren't Jovontae Turner. But on the other hand, in my long family line of coming from nowhere, in this catastrophically cluttered world so, that I would be drug valet to Henry Sanchez, in this point in time, was micro niche extraordinary and that's something Charlene wasn't impressed by, didn't feel the need to give due credit for, if only just a superficial conversational nod, because with her, it was like you were always in trouble, or inevitably on the way to being in trouble with her.
It was such disorganized world, even the fashion sphere was catastrophically, the new normie faux-vanguard Frank Ocean afro-futurism shirtless leather vesters, the People Magazine Us Magazine globo-homo normie-ordinary, misguided to point of being mired in over the top overproduction value of too too many resources, the cheap expensive CSI New York Star Wars leather jackets, the decadent cheap looking Hummer spec Dubai Fendi roof top skydiver sunglasses, the over indulgent and emotional landscape of ritalin driven instincts of gay-normie designers who wore sweat pants and sweat shirts as an overt flex when really they could not pick out a pair of jeans to wear to save themselves, and whatever, so whenever you actually wanted to defend something by urging it was actually fashionable, it was automatically associatively held in retroactive perpetual blanched contempt, by self assured, self satisfied pragmatism of left side of the brain functionalist boy scouts. Skateboard isn't fashion, skateboarding isn't fashion is all the ignorant, misguided and self satisfied Tims ever said now. And a ten year old girl in sweat pants and sweat hoodie and energy drink hat is the hoi polloi's Hensley of '89. That the fashion world was objectively so held in contempt (and rightly so), it caused a backlash of anti-fashionist attitudes and such tendency would become prevalent twenty years from now, and gave an ocean of normies who just started skateboarding a red carpet to wither away any and all innovations and cultural currency of what had been once a small and autonomous somewhat fashion forward Planet Earth jeans (Early Planet Earth Jeans, not Planet Earth Clothing) wearing subculture, a subculture that at one time had ads and videos, multimedia integration, which were some weird zenith of cultural production for a string of about five or six very good years. Brand assimilated sum greater than parts riders reflected a certain not able to quite put into words sensibility and attitude, buoyed by whip smart and sometimes very subtle forward progressive graphic design and video editing reflecting something abstract but unnameable—a board band should articulate something mysterious, abstract and unnameable. But—think about it, that these handful of board companies used a small village to almost accidentally, so successfully articulate that what had yet to be so lyrically expressed and embodied in such compelling way. Board co run as a band, which is something that Autistic Hater can't understand—whining about Beatrice is like complaining about Arthur Kane not being a good enough bassist for the Dolls, when what the Dolls embodied was a raucous ragtag protopunk pomp and sensibility, kinda like, exactly like what FA does. To think digital culture has dwindled and fricasseed autonomous cultural ecosystems so, that someone, just anyone, who is so narcissistic to user-generate film themself for days giving what are otherwise painfully obvious takes sitting at their desk in front of a computer, actually thinks they are more a head of the curve, than actual like real All City legends, who like actually have like actual real life experience, and like actual experience actually making things like actually happen—like AVE (he might just be a bit relevant, don't you think?), who does and did btw give Beatrice the nod of approval, is all really quite well beyond preposterous. That SPOT, with what you would think would be the last hold out for a real crack cocaine industry contest venue, would wither into total sell out anti-aesthetic Johnny Come Late Lululemon normie corpo entities that any and all desperate to be sponsored or have no standards at all aspirant ams, flock to and reinforce such outsider anti-aesthetic entities into prevalence, and now you have state sponsored communist super toddler gymnastics coach skaters up on their hard post blast and the only sensible thing for me to do is buy 140$ emoji jeans as some kind of general recuperative effort now.
Tawny bleach faded hair Henry opens the locked hours door to the warehouse finally eventually, after I had been banging on it for a grip. He's wearing a tank top, which is uncharacteristic of the established classic goofy ceasar boy look he embodied so well in his rise to prominence in the legendary video Black Parade. When someone has a perfect look, and sully it left to their own devices, well, that's totally L.A. Although, I could not have seen it at the time, but I sensed how Sanch was dressed now, I now can clearly see he represented a general and pervasive and subtle at the time, or at that time, anti-aesthetic fissure—the beginning of a break, where the once autonomous subculture aesthetic begins to fracture by taking on even more pedestrian characteristics and more chillblained-lamestream populist fashion or in such case, Footlocker non-fashion.
Already 1/1000th of a second in with Charlene, and you know Sanch notices and of course never misses a detail, What's up player, condescending as usual, taking on the same subtle insulting weight, arrayed in it's only at face value politeness. The steel door self closes slow, lingering behind us from one of those commercial hinges attached to stickered rectangular metal box on the head of door.
I was praying on the way up there Carroll wouldn't be there—anyone, I mean anyone but that maniac Carroll. Carroll, Sanch and with Charlene in tow would have been some situation—too too precarious for sure, and would likely wind up unflattering for bottom of totem me no doubt. And have you ever been heckled on by your heroes? And how would you think that would inform your related practice? But Sanch was saying something, something like Carroll has mono, or Carroll got mono, but he totally said it in a way, just how, as if one were there, or if you were there, you could totally tell Sanch was projecting some atmosphere, projecting this atmosphere of prevalent and given board co team like promiscuity or some due process female attention, and you just know he wanted Charlene to hear this now—a success male promiscuity, which only attracts more promiscuity, that by inflating appearance of demand—Carroll got momo—which if you think about it, was precisely the kind of business and company model World kind of operated under. The girl I lost my virginity to, once said she wanted to fuck Carroll.
Landed tricks come in like sets of waves, predicated by the internal rhythms of the body, Sanch mathed years, and years later sitting on stage during the Q&A panel with David Remnick, Lance Armstrong, Alex Hay, Dana Spiotta, Anthony Vaccarello, Retu Mukerji and Henry Bellafonte at the New Yorker Magazine festival.
But long ago, when he was young and recklessness, Henry acted like he didn't crave affection, and Sanch relished in a certain sort of de facto antagonism, a productive working man's antagonism, and that to which he could harness it's violent energies into engineering thentofore yet to be rolled out minor miracle rampling rollicking arrays of magic tricks of cycle surface surfs. And now he's being all genial in the summit of his success at the NY'r Festival.
SANCH was HOCKEY now though. And Henry in some indescribable and abstract way became a vessel so readymade reflected in the noirish Manson murder Cali is dead freakscene scene beach ghetto that raised all the gen-X children of a lesser god Carpenter HOCKEY narrative which announced itself so cold now: Henry was grindhouse slasher, streaked in blood, with his platoon killing the bleak landscape refugee underpass spots in a land where downtown became common-less, public space all but foreclosed. Henry butchered up careers chop chop headz rolling, at the detriment of all the auto-piloted zombie heritage brands, where Jason Lee was insane, Julien Stranger may as well be Stacy Peralta now, Ed Templeton became his father Brad Dorfman, to the blues riff montage of Tommy Guerrero playing more wailin' gigs in the Mission than the entire Mo Wax roster put together.
But I still think Henry's just like anyone, I mean he did actually seek affection. It was just never addressed or at least ever really mentioned in his presence, but this affection was obviously gained from observer's direct response fueling his peninsula city brawny bawdy tenderloin beef braised body moves, his arch methods aimed like archer's arrow through to fourth dimension and when he rode skate, the board never once touched the ground.
Henry never taped a sponsor me. Henry's sponsor me tip sheet was just him being born in the Bay Area, and then quickly taking and adapting machine toy unto readily available public space, earning him a word of mouth local reputation, unto which a new, discursive field would open up and emerge and flourish, and here, with Henry, where Henry's proprietary new methodology would be invented, realized, crystalized out and adopted by the greater world—Henry was Clement Greenberg to Gonz as Picasso, and you could never tell him anything. And Carroll, a Kid Koala like evil nerd 5th Beastie Boy was the Steve Jobs of skateboarding, that a third or fourth rate populist Brazilian pop culture treflip into Balsanaro crooks nollie inward heel out of the crooks, could never replicate or even understand, no matter who much Portuguese auto tune they pumped into their evolutionary phone book generated skate content.
This is a true story, but when I met Henry, Henry wasn't yet GTM blacklisted, and he was skating Los Feliz in the middle of workday. While he was incidentally rolling past me, I accidentally landed my own invention in front of him (crooks late back pivot out)—and then, Henry, wild and senseless like nature, reacts by over clapping and flapping like evil cigar Roger Rabbit stogie bird, flinging onto situation the notion I was trying to impress him by skating good, like, like, I actually planned, or was even able to time to land my k-grind late back 80 nose pivot on the ground off the kindergartener bench, which his heckle clapping me was so deliriously absurd and bewildering idiosyncratic on his part, and preposterous really, and it was impossible to try to even set the record instantly straight in the reeling L.A. school yard moment. You felt this was a certain extent brutal quality characteristic of this place—a pervasive, looming injustice that actively seeks out the innocent (the cost and toll for moving to imperial city)—hackles raised Henry heckling me while he was rolling perpendicularly past my trajectory on his own accord, and I remember thinking to myself that there really was absolutely no winning with him. I did smoke him out though later, enough to create enough familiarity not too shortly after, and him granting me the privilege of eventually running illegal errands for him now.
But once though, at Kibbitz, he randomly said to me, like once, totally incidentally, out of nowhere—you know what he said to me? And mind you, this was right about when I became transactional friends with him, I remember Henry, in rare glimpse of friendliness, he goes, he just goes to me, Henry says something like—Infinity is so big, the numbers go backwards and sprawl behind you, and right then, like right then, I knew Henry was, really was like the real thing, was like an actual, some actual megalopolis Rimbaudian enigma.
But here's the thing, you're an idiot and you really don't know anything and that's why I'm here to explain it to you. You tend to tread in and into sea of tin eyed stans, who only all but feel validated and buffeted by all your lazy mind mid decrees of admiration for the pony riding Tiago yokels of the desert city in the here and now. Yeah, right, no, no, I get it, you don't need to keep explaining and, yeah, yeah, totally, right, like no, good for you, no, yeah, I kind of like already know or like knew. But, if Gonz is Picasso, and Henry is Clem, then that makes Tiago a gluttonous outsized, tactless kitsch Dolly Parton streetwalker marionette. Wow ok, you like Tiago, what an eye. But, and you see poor sod, Henry invented the actual move (ssbts) and the easy to like Tiago driven taken to toddler fits hip hop is dead but dominant teleology vs. its actual Invention holds mas weight to the skate illiterate new comer who skates better than Kosten in '99, and that's something you cannot see because, in relative terms, you just actually just now joined the conversation and gifted hater is bewilderingly cringe. Tiago is progressive anachronistic bugman zombie tech. He never went through it with us in real time in the West, nor probably never or ever could consider, I mean think about it: the Pappalardian retour à l ordre disavowal of tech formalism that died with a) Keenan Milton drowning in a pool helpless while others were there watching b) Guy's "comback" where now he looks bizarre body chemically castrated c) Tech formalism also died with the Gonz infusion of and in Dill's Photo part or d) All the above.
I'll answer that for you: e) you really just don't know.
Skateboarding is a different kind of masturbation, and skateboard videos are a new pornography, and skateboarders are the new pornographers. The phatic image of SOcal pornography production morphed into hobbyist's spectacle of surf drought vehicle clips that Sanch was then head now, and when it came down to it, I had an innate referential respect for it all too though, and for all that, and that that was in the end, the bedrock of how I dealt with Henry, no matter how terrible he was, how actively difficult he made it for you. It was easy to think it was simply all a test, but, you see, the constant disrespect, the river of rudeness never stopped, nor would it ever, and quite certainly he didn't have to do that.
I noticed Henry used to bring girls after hours to World Zone when I'd rendezvous with him out there. He though, now used legion to practice, perform, film, practice guitar with and party on. I used legion sometimes, but mostly to hold and receive a small fee for incurring the liability of its possession in transport.
But here's the thing, I realized too late, what Henry really meant when he said he was a legman, that Henry just usually went out with stocky girls (stocky like him), who incidentally had skinny legs—skinny legs being their best feature on the frame, so it shifted his focus, in a way he was in a sort of unconscious denial, tricking himself into believing he was a 'legman'. It was no wonder his ears perked up like that when I brought Charlene in with me.
But even the weight of small time cottage industry definitely changed Charlene's gait, and you could totally tell as she was now walking in front of me in the hallway, which I had to practically be in denial about in order to keep my level head to steady the sense of my quickly wilting delusional optimism.
Charlene walked up the postmodern street set onto a faux brick bank that had an old world patina sludge moss painted on its surface, her foot was on an out of print Todd Congelliere slurpee bear sticker, and she tactically lit a cig standing on the slant.
She looks like a 14.75 wheel base, but I bet she feels more like a 14.25, Sanch rasped slightly hushed but definitely not hushed enough, at me, and like right beyond Charlene's earshot and I try no to look appalled that he's talking about my date.
I walk over to the fun box where Charlene is as if I'm lost.
Charlene takes a break from not paying attention to me ever since since we got to the park, That look on your face, what's that look on your face?
Oh, nothing, it's nothing, I was actually thinking about, what, something from earlier . . . Ethan Fowler od'd at the Viper Room?
Henry, hearing out of context tail end of what I just said walks near, and intrudes and ignites automatic simplistic response, which is obnoxiously part of his established brand, Instant Karma's a real bitch ain't it, he brays in misguided overstimulation and not even making sense now, blunting an inaccurately focused pomp, despite the cause for outcome of Ethan, wasn't actually the result from an actual very concrete direct and real cause and effect party causality—Instant Karma didn't factor into any of it. But by Henry's logic now, say if at random, I decided to push a half empty glass of water off a table and have it shatter—to him that would have illustrated 'Instant Karma' despite the broken glass' fate having nothing to do with the glass itself, and everything to do with my completely unrelated outside compulsion to shuv it onto the floor and love is on its way out.
As a pedestrian transforms into figure of ascent, a certain set of cultural conditions manifest in which one economizes off a proprietary skill or talent in which a situation can be exploited, and some have more idiosyncratic talent than others to gain Juice (some situations require less talent than others)—which explains, no matter what small achievements and gains I may make in my personal goings-on-about, how many books I inhale, I will never ever outflank someone like Sadat X and the avalanche he rode in of the cultural conditions that will never be available like it was to him. And I think Henry abstractly knew that or was aware of that, but could definitely never put it into words.
Henry was different though, maybe he was like the Rage Against the Machine slogan: Anger is a gift. Sanch was able to invent new 4D lever roll variations for propelling himself through arc space and filching into variations of craft landing into different lock positions onto quasi-utopian architectural components. He was in a time and place, to where the field was wide and ripe open for innovation, and he was even given an actual stage—that pavilion stage at Justine Bateman Brian Herman Plaza from Hokus Stoke-us, with which to foster and practice in utilizing pop and torque dynamics off a wooden concave machine. It was well known that Henry's short fuse and take no gruff attitude, fueled his wreckingball methodology of complete destruction and streamline fevered annihilation—but it was not quite known if the anger also came from being short, hispanic and from a lower socioeconomic background, from which the fire moves that he invented was a very real response, and inevitably a total and very real threat to the entire industry (a threat to, including to fellow minorities, Guy and Gonz even) to such coldly severe the trauma and emergency conditions right back to everyone now, the same categorical emergency zone that young Henry may have experienced coming up, or even growing up.
In the current year I'm writing this, that my skill level is now about the same as Henry's now, only now speaks to how fast culture rolls, and to the catastrophic effects of reification into the exhausted guitar neck decimated by the greasy fingerprints of pluralist greater public.
Charlene was taking in the tour Henry gave, in a way where her intrigue seemed apocalyptically misguided or misshaped, and definitely disproportionate to the otherwise jack shack cabin practice zone for the World label summer school rejects. Sanch was showing Charlene the suite of decks strung to the wall of the vestibule. The series was color separated silk screens of hand rendered illustrations of Bernstien Bear characters détournement, ironically rendered, and without permission, to convey transgressive seedy and now exhausted countercultural motifs. The care bear assigned to Henry was the young daughter bear (even though Henry wasn't even trying to be like Carroll—Carroll had a Plan-b graphic that had Daphne Zuniga's Spaceball character Princess Vespa everslick), the Berstien Bear who was depicted in exaggeration, the whispilly drawn bear frazzled and exhausted from playing too many head shop video arcade games and smoking too much bearijuana—which was in a way, kind of an allusion to his compulsive drive trailblazing activity at JHP EMB.
Sanch was showing Charlene more of the promo heaterz, Sanch making it a point, saying it was a product of his design—he actually said that, it was a product of his design, despite Sanch not knowing how to draw, or use rendering software, or even being involved in any of the parts of the actual production process of gluing and pressing and cutting the sheets of stone hard ply maple. But even at a distance, I could see through the lense of Charlene's intelligence, that everything Sanch regaled to her registered as kinda silently preposterous. She had her eye glasses I love on now though, and it's unintentional, probably kind of intentional weapon against the heart of what resides at the essence of my make up, and Charlene said nothing, but was still listening to Henry.
Actually worse than Carroll, Tim walks in, immediately eyeing Charlene with Henry near the broken handrail. Tim is or like was straight edge, and my presence there only signals the delivery of the designer supplements that Tim doesn't want around the camp, that which I may have supplied around to his teammates. Despite being straight edge, Tim still managed to be one of the most disgusting people in the scene, though. Decades later though, I actually like Tim now—but at the time he comes in, he of course doesn't acknowledge me and goes over to Charlene and Sanch, as if Charlene was with Sanch now, and nothing Charlene does at this point in her body language would make Tim think otherwise.
But you can't just pro off from operating in a practice that operates mostly as a clinic—that's what I realized right when I arrived and those extraordinary hyper real moments of intensity that skateboarding of excellence requires, also comes from a general flexibility of approaching some wanderer life into beckoning such dramatic rollerskate situations. Henry never acknowledged my skating or me even being a skater, I mean, yeah, sure he kicked me down flow here and there—big fucking deal—whatever, but you know he never talked to me, or you know he never talked to me or talked to me even seriously in regards to my practice, and I always thought how that was so thoughtlessly disrespectful—him never acknowledging it, I mean like whatever, like me being a serious skater didn't exist or couldn't exist, or didn't have enough room to exist next to all his virtuosity—Sanch really was a little man, but anyways, besides, and which, by that point in time, honestly, I really didn't care—I couldn't care less, because if I cared more, then that would mean there was more less to care about, but, it was all that, just all that, looming in the background as a primer like gesso, in prepping the plane for laying it on real thick again like they always did—that combination of Tim not even acknowledging me yet again, and then him going over to Sanch in their usual tiring insular fraternizing manner. Like Nazi's taking over a tiny town and capturing the intrigue of the prettiest peasant girl in the township, who they will surely make exception for and she will let them, in insult to the entire village and all the boys who grew up ever liking her. Just so lame. And the land we know, was their narrative now and now my Charlene gets casually vacuumed into assimilation with these disparate clowns from another world, who now con-join with her—I should have known better, but how would I have ever? And I wasn't even disappointed by this point, I was somewhere even beyond that by now that may have cure'd into a distancing indifference, which I can in no way accurately put into words maybe, I mean, but it was repressed in the now and would be deferred for the future, but I'm not sure what exactly caused me to black out like that, I really don't know when exactly I blacked out—but you know what I would have thought contributed to the blackout in such a subtle way? I would think it was the phenomenology, like this small flourish moment pov of seeing Treena just over there with Henry and Tim in all its casual brutality banality and now like how she was there with them surveying the moment together, and I think that that would have probably blacked me out and maybe blacking me out so hard, that it caused me to posteriori black out backwards in the space/time continuum, blacking out the entire night all together, or like whatever, whatever that was called, whatever it is called, where you black out retroactively, the whole night altogether gets erased up, only for me to remember being at the comedy club before Charlene even came there, which, that was, was the last thing I would remember. Like I said, you would think seeing them assimilate Charlene away from me so naturally the way they did, may have been the very limit to the strength of my perception—you think that would have been the very last straw. But no, it wasn't, I think I remember, I remember it, I actually now do remember the last thing, oh, and it actually gets much worse.
Freak Nasty was playing off the expensive and cheap jambox, I put my hand up on your hip, when I dip, you dip, we dip, lascivious lyrics, ringing preposterously and anointing the city of Lost Angeles, the entire West Coast, as unserious and silly and everyone hearing the song was incriminated also. These were all our sins now.
Sanch, bushy haired and baby faced, in his flippint obnoxiously laughy teenage voice, The more tricks you land, you better believe the more tricks you gonna land—
Charlene reeling it back suddenly, now unconsciously revealing her foolish self, absurdly taking what he was saying all serious, and we all become dumb when what we want is right in front of us—Charlene obvious horny for clout. So you're negotiating . . . that's how you negotiate completing skateboard tricks with yourself, Charlene saying yourself though with the usual condescension though, with her brand of open air mocking intent that girls usually feel free to do, but, and you know, especially Charlene. But it's also so absurd now how she's even stooping down to talk about the minutiae of the mechanics of skateboarding with Henry. I mean can you even see yourself right now??
No, yes, maybe, naw, don't listen. Don't listen to me. I'm not just talkin', I'm just talkin' about . . .
Oh, you're just talking, I see, Charlene snapping back suspiciously, she was always suspicious but now also she was kinda being way too antagonistic towards Sanch now right off, even more so for even her natural sarcastic demeanor. I'm taken a-struck by such display. Even though I was young and dumb, I still somehow could tell Charlene's condescension towards Sanch was a direct threat to me though. She never did that with me, or anything like that, and on the contrary, with me, she was just mostly quiet, always withdrawn, usually distant, always ready to defer.
Statistics, yeah, I guess you could, like, I guess you could say that, like science right? Henry with his now segued into resigned, relaxed beer voice. He loosened up, not being his perpetually condescending self for now, where otherwise usually everything he said rang in double entendre.
I have a feeling you just aren't talking about . . .
You just had a feeling I just was talking about, about what
Do you know Jeff Simmons? It obvious Charlene evidently had been holding back the question this entire time now, waiting just for the right moment to make the connection of their common acquaintance.
Oh, Jeff, I know Jeff! Jeff is a straight up pimp. He da gimpy pimpy
Charlene sat silent, speaking nothing, letting Henry's last thing he said just hang in the air dumbly like it was. This was not a bug of Sanch's personality, but a feature. He got way too much attention, and so his concatenate temperament changed and became more and even increasingly exaggerated. First, it was him being reserved and faux humble when getting props from strangers, and then it became always controlling the conversation wherever he was, then it was him being so coked up on attention he was always self indulgently trying to be funny, like constantly, and like all the time, and now he was at the last phase—that it wasn't enough to indulge himself this much, his new thing, the new thing Henry did, was being as dumb and silly and being addicted to miming like he had severe neurological damage in a way that was somehow cute, and that was basically now just the mode he pretty much always operated under.
Charlene delayed, in casual incidental hectoring, that already is assuming some already too early familiarity with Sanch, and was a tell, Did you just say . . .
What, what, pippy gippy? Sanch trying to be cute again,
Ok, ok, I think Charlene's impressed Henry okay? I'm like here for a reason, let's just get this over with. How much you want.
Charlene mean and hard like a bullet, goes over to Sanch in the office and conspicuously sits right up next to him, while he's using my condenser to liquify the dust. My pathetic anxiety feeds on itself, spinning me out like how marijuana hits after drinking kamikazes all night, this now here hits in a way where I must somehow brace myself, this time I can't play it off or act my way out of this. Charlene was sober, but now she luridly profiles next to him, with visible keen interest now in what he's doing—and I cannot escape the immediacy of the moment. My stomach has taken over, and I've got a catastrophically misguided hard-on now, I'm turned on in this sick, very distinct sinister, degenerate way, as if Charlene is, was cheating on me, even though there is nothing to cheat on. I'm physically titillated in my body knowing it's being betrayed, like how your body ahead of time knows it's about to do coke, and my body is getting off to it in some wretched perversity, and it all marks a low I thought I was not, never capable of. I should have left, but I thought, I may as well dose with them to curb the lovesick. I think the shadow of escape has just cut me off at the pass.
Come on, have a tune up, Henry offers to me in a soft, delicate, tutelary way that makes it seem he's actually for once looking out for me, for my best interests, even though he's simultaneously establishing he's going well full speed ahead in betraying now all my own dear interests, because Charlene is his just prize. And how easy it was for Sanch to be so delicate and so soft now for once, it's just real easy to be so pleasant when he knows he's about to get what he wants and I'm not impressed, and then seeing Charlene then letting Sanch inject the hot liquid into her arm now was sight beyond pornographic, really bummed me out, as if there is ever but nothing more compact than a crack.
Charlene ended up staying with Sanch and sober Tim, and I must have left alone again, lost now in the black out labyrinth of my own desire.
In the skateboard funny papers, there were the well known accounts of Sanch catastrophically committing career suicide because his girlfriend had cheated on him with his boss, World owner, Edgar Losser—which, between choosing Edgar or the girlfriend, Henry, to say the absolute very least, should not have opted out of the former. There were many, many girls on the edge of the tamed land, but there was only one Edgar Losser.
Only after reading a poem, a poem I randomly on a lark came across, which was actually her poem, it was her poem or like, was written by Charlene, Princess X, and then it all came back to me. It came back to me and I put it all together—the girl I had subconsciously blotted from my mind, but who I now unexpectedly remembered back now, who had now activated herself back to me when I saw her poem, summoned itself to be all put together then—I figured it out, it was actually that same girl who must have become Henry's girlfriend later, and that sounds about right—I mean, that does sound right, so then it was actually the Minotaur Charlene, that girl from AA, who caused Henry to abort himself from World.
When I saw that poem published in this one quarterly, Rebus, it said Charlene Mastersen, and I actually never learned or got Charlene's last name, but reading her last name there for the first time, it made sense abstractly in a weird way somehow in its relation to her, the way sometimes last names do—it all came back from the poem and from the oblique association drawn from her last name, conjured by just reading her name now, and I immediately knew, I like knew, I knew it was her, that totally was, was Charlene. The strained, traumatic feeling in my stomach and crotch sank again and set back in a slightly, similar way, or exactly like that automaton physical feeling from being cheated on again. All those repressed and latent memories, that whole night of Charlene just then came runneling back in traumatic eruption.
This kind of confusion is also at the heart of the surrealist aesthetic: the signs of past trauma are mistaken as portents of future desire; and they appear as if by chance, even though they are already there as so many readymades in the unconscious—for how else could they be experienced as uncanny, as familiar-yet-strange?
Culture
Makes you antique
Shouldered values smolder
Beliefs birth traditions
And your language breaks up against body
Written with a keyboard with two A's
Beckons song of thrush &
Forces spume foolish magical thinking
Clutch of eggs slips shadows
Of heat waves sifting through the leaf litter
Deaf medical deer
Big decaf second hand measures seconds first
Born and raised deaf
A dear person varies from person to person
How when, level and sever the sit variations
The only thing that lasts is the cruel laughter of the harem
I want an online oracle,
Because now I only have ear trumpet
Hearing
Handshake
Ditto Flash
When meeting
Brief convo
Deaf
Meeting hug
Defer convo
Attention petting
Hearing vail
Deaf culture
The shoulder tap
The hand wave
Flashing lights
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