Rooney said when she takes cocaine it's literary, and it had to be just about funniest thing anyone has ever said in LA, Roon Doggg—trying to just sneak that little one in like we wouldn't notice, forcing her own when she even didn't have to and so unnecessarily, that's what was so hilarious.
Chapter One—But what the Bible leaves out is God has nothing to do with ever becoming God, or God ever being God—and if that was included there, the nihilism of such statement could cause it all to collapse into itself practically, as the Bible, along with everything else, would disappear like the family members in the photo in Back to the Future,
Rooney jacks collect, came all the way out from PA, all I can say, she's a sharp little girl and as was was everybody's' darlin',
And all the stones erupting out for the stone crossing of Rooney, in this town, and in this town here, where I'm the leper with the most pinkie toes left.
But she was a Toy in blood slash-tongued bird though, a swooping black little finch—Rooney, I mean Rooney's knuckling take was—or Rooney's take at least, was was skateboard videos was worse than pornos she says, she said, because at least in pornos you got to see real live naked ladies at least, and then just about everything she said seemed true—a wispy, a raspy, that wisened eternal LA teenager attitude of knowingness about her, or like stil embedded within her, that she absorbed like a satellite, growing up.
You hear what she said in the telephone conversation, still rattling in my head. I always had to go to Roon Dawggg. I always had to go out to Rooney. I wanted to, or I did hear her, or Rooney, and it's all now just . . . What I'm saying is, she does what she want's and she wants what she sees, livin' her life life she's number one.
Joaquin though, was the only one to diagnose my condition very accurately, the condition I was in, or really in—Lacanian linguistic subjecthood Joaquin says, blown Santa winds split neon and fractured apart by advancing and expiring symbols and signs and language, left behind in grave ontological displacement, unable to communicate or identify, left all alone at edge of freeway incoherent—
But this city, you know, runs on this magnetism that of imagining being next to people, being next to certain special people, like, should bring one luck—I was the opposite, people called me when they had a problem that had begun to get too big to continue to deny. It's not much a noble profession I suppose, but the two timing economy in this city was one of the very few things you could rely on, and someone's got to neuter the kitten. They don't call it L-A-X for nothing, it was a city of ex's. My name's Jake Belane, I'm a private detective.
I always suspected Neil Blender was dilettante. Suffice to say, I am pretty good or am pretty good at what I do or, what I do—sure, there have been a few snafus every now and then, here and there—that's just ontologically smoked into the vocation. I'm just saying, but I'm just saying, no one was ever really fooled me or ever really fooled me here, and that's something I do notice and reassures me that for once I'm maybe involved in something that kind of works. I mean, what reason would I have to exaggerate this, it's not like I really care that much.
I know that when two separate witnesses give accounts that agree on every detail, you are listening to a lie. A good detective, you know, also knows sins, true sins are neither ironed out by science or art, and they can be predicted. Co-dependents anonymous calls it D-day. And it's of those churchkey stabbings I flick and flip pictures of, a painfully useful new pornography, that you can only show to one person.
And when you get to be as old as me, you get to see the point where you have met and exhausted all the possible variations of people.
And there are three types of kittle cats: the ones that you can't keep off the street that come up to you and everyone else that are over friendly that it makes you feel cheap but you still don't care or do care, there are ones that are ceaselessly scaredy, and then there are the ones that look at you with old cold disdain for the imposition of you just happening to incidentally exist within their frame of view.
Guess which one Rooney was.
But I always says being a detective is a lot like cheap trick hustling pro-am porno promo street tricks for cheaps—the more tricks you lands, the more tricks you's gonna lands, though, there is always certainly going to be some rough and tumble somewhere in between. Tricks a trick to it, every trick a mystery—you may have something locked loaded, but by the next day, it doesn't quite work, inoculated by the trick to the trick you had all but figured out yesterday, and tricks a language, and language is a virus and that's probably why I'm such a good detective.
West drowning down Hollywood boulevard rumbling in the late morning McDonalds playground light of old LA, the rusty '74 Porsche 914 grinds down from second to third the way she always does. People don't drive stick anymore. Driving stick keeps me sharp and in control, it's a reliable insurance precaution for all the drunk driving—my drunk driving—besides it's a whole lot cheaper than paying a monthly premium.
Los Angeles' Glen Danzig carrying a box of kitty litter in the supermarket parking lot form of governance, was Dictatorship of the Heart, juvie it is jammed, and then Los Angeles will always come sluttereing eventually, always eventually incriminating itself—like when a child smells alcohol on a grown up's breath—the smell of irresponsibility of authority, which had a certain commanding stateliness to it, like policeman's after shave—and that's just LA sometimes.
The part of West Hollywood I was in, I remembered I had forgotten where the opening Keenan Milton line from Mouse was and before heading towards my appointment, I drove around trying to find it, driving around in circles a couple of times and then gave up.
The generic green metal city traffic sign Laurel Canyon Blvd North sends me up its wending way. An appointment with old Joaquin—we weren't never on the same teams, (We were both at that point taking Lennox though, but I guess that doesn't really count.) But a veritable lifetime ago I would bump into Joaquin out on the European summer circuit a couple times.
Los Angeles has a real big problem with stray cats though—that street mating population catastrophe, causes real problems, especially with, or in regards to property damage—spiteful kittles pissing on the foundation of your house unsolicited and causing major long term, like structural damage. I didn't see any stray cats out here in Lauren Canyon though, or I mean Laurel Canyon.
Before I met Joaquin, I first saw Joaquin silver knighted in am check out in an old Penthouse Magazine. In sized mid page spread, one of the Murphy twins was tripping up one of the old green benches sideways in old Union Square in San 'Cisco like it was a gang bang with old Joaquin too horny grinding all up it—which, in the freshly thatched pre-Eastern Exposure Girl era, wasn't too stylish of a move in the then au courant (but was still sick, though)—it was all kinda too NorCAL, though. Anyways, the curious thing about the photo, or the thing was was was that the little funk hat that Joaquin had on, or it was a new kind of funk hat we had no yet seen, made out of a progressive new plastic foil like futurist Marin County camping material, framed by just the right length of hair peeping Tom out the edge of beanie's ledge, in a way kids these days still can't get right. We still think about that one. One of his quick strike answers for what he does, or did in his spare time was something like, "hang out with girls, lamp kill", which, at the time seemed kind of wild to see in a magazine or any magazine, if you think about it. I remember the entire checkout really made me feel I was missing out on something in the swinging porno industry of San Ran Risk Co.
But in Europe on our free time, Joaquin was the only one to decamp to accompany me going out to the precincts of the museums. Joaquin was more committed vivacious informed than me in such seemingly supplemental interest, any time he could very well be counted upon to even get me to see more than what otherwise went well beyond my satisfaction or museum fatigue—Joaquin really would go the distance. Like two hungover hobos resting on the riverbed, we had long protracted walking conversations about art, women, art and women, women and their relation to the landscape. We saw Asher, both didn't care, no brooding over Broodthaers—to me it all seemed mouldering dated, more related to the harmonica wheezing European art activity and history around when the work was made, that I could then-now not really ever relate to or really care about, honestly. We were repulsed by the blimey Guy Richie vogue of conjuring tattoo'd pigskins, but it was the large cube of hardened vaseline resting on the floor that had human bites chomped out of it, holding both out our overstimulated imagination when we reached for it.
Joaquin over inspecting the cube, If turnin Turin tricks could ever be so easy, we'd have it made Baby—Sweet Judas Iscariot, it's got to be five o'clock somewhere—I'm parched, could use refreshment,
Joaquin approach to riding, all background a blur of holy speed, brave and ambitious courageous in a slightly out of touch way, but loaded so much really heart—Joaquin was a robust stout pragmatic, tackled more into a tranny like basis of orientation how when he hit it mostly frontside, all which informing how he directly sieged the post postmodern props in the demo orgies. His massive hard giant rides, though almost kind of then-now outmoded, were always a crowd pleaser though, everything in the fight of flight, the climb towards, and they did point to something lacking in my then flashy ZOO assassin Boba Fett plastic tech corner formalism, which although more stylish and then-relevant (but trendy), always made me intuit that Joaquin may have continued to carry on something essential still, that in a way, although a bit boring then-now, was still grounded in some kind of front side fifty fifty guild-like workman integrity, which and that which, I avoided like the all very hoopla Nofuct I radio'd video three years prior.
Always label whore, another network actor just tweaking and tworking-making variations to miniature moves to tarry off early nines Bay Area tech giants—catching variations of variable varial moves maybe they didn't get around to filming quite yet or that never made no edit—my variants, loose change tokens, sops, that I could somehow scuttle around to try to capture before someone else inevitably filmed them all. Joaquin and I were both old Television kids, but Joaquin more retained the old mini ramp north tail-grab idealism of nine-one inside himself, and I remember having no room for it then-now.
By 1996-97, I was ultimately ready to march off the cliff of Babylon following princess Carroll (at the bottom of such gulch I am currently reporting from now), and although such MC Carroll sensibility was the only way to go back then, really, and to which is certainly a direction I ultimately will never really regret—walking with Joaquin in the arcade, I was now-then self conscious, I remember feeling ever so slightly decadent then, or real wan, like superficial—my practice was progressing unhealthily a too rapid a-pace in it's own cutting corners loss of resolution progression, cloned of self dictating operations and all unrealistic expectations (unlike Carroll, I didn't get to get groomed on tranny at home to get pump'd on everyday), so that whatever my practice was then-now seemed grounded on a foundation that was becoming more piss and anemic by each swiss mogo push—the direction I was headed was becoming straight jacketed, guaranteeing all my own self extinction. Too many randos getting too good too rapidly and so ceaselessly also too, invading my trick routine psyche, had deleterious effect on my practice. It seemed at the time, or, it was at the time, I didn't really ride anymore anyways, I was just interested in turning tricks with too tight axl without even turning, not loose as a drunk loose goose, and didn't never spend enough time on top of any available tranny for one. For two, the only thing I ever thought about at the time was finding kiss ledge, any ledge, I could kate without interruption for at least an hour (finding such a thing in the wild, impossible then, and still now even). And three, well three,
Though I was always on lookout for some joint, some latest joint from juke to jammy, some for next am scram pro promo soundtrack orgy edit of it all, too gad about, and really, if you think about it, such was the very best thing probably going for me then.
Me being hipper than Joaquin then, clearly was only a somewhat accurate assessment, bc to my suprise two years later, he would write some warble screenplay for a quasi-documentary narrative film, More Bad Vert Days, where fucking in the graveyard angel headed hipsters, howling on their knees in apartments cooking spoons off West Hollywood dose, baked indy Thomas Lawson directed, when at that point advanced beaux arts artists were then making very pained forays into film—Longo did it, Schnabel too, Barney, Cindy smoking Sherm, whatever, but, Joaquin's script was pretty funny actually, but also kind of dumb, and also not that good, but the casting really was what carried this party movie trawmpling along— it immediately became quotable video store shelf fav.
White teenagers posing on the streets in fashion that could make Peter Berlin look like innocent Dutch boy Puritan in comparison, so shocking flocked audiences in Telluride, spurring a writer or some writer in what now seem like such simpler times, that this was according to him 'A WAKE-UP CALL TO THE WORLD!', some cultural apocalypse now or whatever, which really what now in comparison, just seems like a quaint heroin chic street wear American Graffiti Indy.
And remember lines,
Stab Valentine flipper, stop Money Grip—You gonna die shirred blood blender blood, wasted 2 eyeballs Money, all sideshow by seashore,
Or remember the dumb smart Mary Beth character before shooting up in the cataract blank of gen X glade, Where does all the electricity go, she laments before she sends it up, but it's not really the turning up that is so shocking, it's just the look of banal wonderment that comes across Mary Beth's face that seems so unexpectedly disarming and honestly, kind of cool still even now, how it just goes against the narrative expectations of what the audience was potty trained on at the time.
Though not able to appreciate it then, I will say in my professional opinion, Lawson's principal photography for the film stills have really aged quite well, or really good, in way maybe taken for granted back then, or at least by me—all but now all but bewilderingly totally lacking in the mire of Loews home improvement section styled LA now.
And when the young tender hooligan protagonist in Joaquin's film finally convinces the young girl and she resigns register, lusts herself further back, even though Lawson was the director, I intuited old Joaquin right there behind the central lense of cyclops eye—and that was the first time I had a sense of watching like a film through the director's eyes, or had some sense, or a real keen sense, at least now of what a director even like did. Before that, whatever it was a director did do, had all been just vague as hell—like whatever it was a comptroller or DA does.
Suffice to say, antied up as I grinning in the swatch of fool now, I know real good what a DA does,
But even before I first saw Vert Days in the theater, I devoured all the press, I imagined, had a sense of Joaquin finding himself now mired in what I imagine some triangulation of more advanced worlds. Joaquin running in other circles now. Or Joaquin even, if not yet tangled up in some dark Dionysiac LA of Arcadia, then eventually—Joaquin eventually getting caught up in the LA where Eros and Thanatos are sick-of-each-other bedfellows, Eros and Thantos slashing blood, spilling seamen in Bacchic blossom, Hollywood Babylon—Joaquin pretty much stopped skating all together a while back though, was now on a side of LA I rarely or never saw.
It's not that Joaquin was necessarily some sperg prodigy (like Carroll), and anyways, we were so late in the century that a hermetic practice asperger's prodigy could no longer capture the imagination of a nation that's attention span became more splintered by the nine milli. The audience no longer like cared about your 100,000 hours of guitar practice and alternate tuning neck mastery. Depth and elegant subtle, replaced by made for normie by normie novelty of all production contaminating and hogging the nation's entertainment psyche. Indy and DIY now wasn't even safe now from the pork barreled fingerprints of the hot dog finger'd, fingering of all what should have well been gate kept all along. Jason Lee lost his grip, Mike Vallely no longer in Kill Uncle T, Templeton had sleep paralysis, and Jim Thiebaud's too many tattoos was a sign that something was definitely gone wrong now.
And to think, it's funny, as much as they announced the apocalypse of painting with Warhol—Warhol still had to maintain a strict and disciplined full on studio practice of stretching sails and sails of perfectly taught canvases, and then all the rigorously mediated silkscreen images, that now all seemed so old timey and institutionally quaint.
It's like Joaquin's funk hat in his check out—that's all culture really would have room for now. Joaquin didn't even have to trick or trick or make no videos. Joaquin just had to promise something intangible—that something hard to describe, and he was able to stumble into the right time and place and economize off it to the very fullest extent seemingly—which if you think about it, that's kind of what turning tricks is, or atleast was. It also helped that he had a superior intuitive aesthetic sense and sense of humor beyond most people—but he was hardly a genius, or maybe Joaquin was a genius. Chris Burden for his master's thesis, locked himself in a locker for five days with only two five gallon bottles—and it was really safe to assume that all the love songs that could ever possibly be written were all well written by now, for someone to have to do such a thing now. Maybe a genius now only had to project something abstract and intangible with novel superficiality to do whatever cultural work there was even left now to do.
But a little less than ten years ago old Joaquin began to work lot less frequently pretty much—not so originally going from over-successful pseudo artist, to not so original property administrator, or some sort of landowner designer—I could just imagine him blowing lines off an unwaxed never used surfboard sitting on a construction renovation horse for his private beach beach house. Joaquin, reduced a whole lot less production now, owing to time taken away by now managing architectural reconstruction projects, gutting and somewhat like rebuilding his Laurel Canyon digs right off the cliff apparently, remodeling his un-used music studio all the way out in Burbank, doing something with his barely functioning shell store clown down out off on Fairfax—superficially venerable labors of rearrangement so absorbing him, then cloistering him off for years now away with his now actress wife-boss, Rooney.
Joaquin lived on Outpost, starlings murmuration seemingly as is Rooney's want—I could see her pov gaze, actually I noticed what her gaze saw since stumbling upon the Dorito tortilla chip foothills and chille powder cost-a mesas. And to think Rooney, cool as Vandermint—and to think a girl like Rooney, the type to make one harder than quantum physics written in esperanto—skate videos was worse than pornos she says, for Chrissakes, and the photos I take now are much worse, no—even lower than that. Most of my clients, all my clients were men, and in my office I kept a box of Kleenex right next to the room temperature Muscatel, I maintained a superficial topical humor with the confiding frankness of bartender in fashion forward way that they well paid divvie extra for when I handed them the oversized glossy black and white murdering photos I printed out in my own office dark room—their woman, all our women, touching God with someone else.
Joaquin surprises from behind in a splash, seconds way too late in intercepting the house worker—like it was some kind of SNL skit. It immediately apparent he was still nicest ever, an absolute prince, but I got the immediate impression nice became maybe somewhat enabling in the close affairs of how he may have conducted and managed his hacienda. He ushered her away in an it's all right Hon, don't worry, I got it, no necesitos aydamente right now, and I'm automatically envious the help got to see Joaquin this way every day. Although the way he is treating her reflects how he will in turn treat me, I still have little patience and am immediately annoyed.
Well, ring my friend, I said you'd call Doctor Robert, Jake old Boy!
Joaquin looked as expected, as well worn in by years what would do, looking best forties, Joaquin still looking unmistakably Joaquin, though. He really looked good actually, and I'm not just saying that. His too busy doing nothing to shave beard face, long Cali freakout hair. Joaquin had some precisely random exotic swim trunks you just know he got from somewhere, which I didn't recognize, was also wearing a lame Crailtap shirt, like it was laundry day or he had simply quit trying. Though now he even looked more like from LA sky micro-dose talk soup of cosmos in riding rubber plant tubes on the river Styx permanent summer father-frame way, even though he wasn't dad. Joaquin, wild-eyed and over self actualized, like a sunflower grows wild and unaccounted for on its own ledger, made me feel like I was also on endless summer, which I kind of was.
Just think, I hadn't seen J in over a decade, Joaquin had demeanor of old hip priest now, did real well for himself since though, that is, while I was living off locusts and wild honey.
Jake, viga, every adobe casita on the coast you know gotta need a good retablo for his bóveda, a real fine one, but this retablo estas mas pequenas para el this ole bóveda.
It was a big white empty room with a red metal loop like thing on the ceiling, something that I could not discern if it was an architectural component or art—maybe that was its point. The room was almost too big spare though, almost too white—but then again, in LA, there was no such thing as too white—fourth wall all finish fetish glass from seam over streaking seam, overlooking the content in itself canyon letting summery blue daylight all in. Housed on the wall to the right of view where three pristine aluminum box outlines, installed at chest height and spaced apart with measure.
Joaquin defensively picked up some bound book on the floor that looked long overdue, scooped up the inky black blue jeans like it was the first time he did anything in a while, an LA Fitness tank top, an empty styrofoam cigarette cup all on the floor of otherwise pristine room converted into gay gallery. A rubber hair tie remained on the black runner floor, I picked it up for him helpfully.
Joaquin unoriginally looks out the window with a feeling of unmistakable unfulfillment, bites the window ledge, as if to say to someone desperately, give me your vowels, give me all your vowels but give them to me with all your consonants—Joaquin's eyes, like two used tire lots now, one would naturally think he with such the splendor and grandeur of his immediate surroundings, that Joaquin would have had to practically go well out of his way to find such disillusionment—I had a feeling that this was the aftermath of such going out of his way search.
The butter in the breadbox, I mean really, Joaquin scanning the floor, muttering to himself, annoyed by the small mess.
Want this? I proffering hair twisty band to Joaquin.
Oh, that's Roon Dawgg—you can have it if you want, or no, no—here, here, I''l take it . . .
A pair of dirty panties went seeping peeping like a dead dove senselessly out the jeans now, Joaquin hugging jeans against Joaquin's chest, looking like, as if he was otherwise responsibly walking family back from beer day at the private beach.
That we with wisest sorrow should think of them, shroud of vortex, holy cloth,
Distracted, like all the wealthy on cue taking their paranoia all too seriously, Joaquin was looking at the room wearily again, as if it was prison gas torture chamber, when what I said registers him tinker's late, What, oh, no yeah—
What or what can I say, bigamy, bigamy is is, like just having one wife too many, monogamy the same, I always says . . . My rehearsed line I always try to say like I just bounced it out.
Oh, stop—
I was just funnin' you . . .
Well, it's not—or it's not that, that's not why or why I called you over . . .
Usually when someone needs my services—
No, no, no—I reassure you it's not that, old Chum—I just need, or I need you to—look, come over here, Jake—
The nickled and stained box frames smugly hugged the walls as if there was a giant magnet on the other side keeping them bucked up and bolted on.
Pray you undo this. Look on this, look there! Joaquim in regnant scorn.
Wha.
You see these—my babies . . .
Looks like window unit cages they used to use for . . . old timey high rise apartments, rises—
They are—or were fabricated to resemble such—Henrietta Milljanks, and that's no accident.
What Henrietta or the art?
Jake, can you be serious for at least once in you're life—this is important . . .
My serious professional opinion Coach, you either need hire a real good head shrink or fire your interior designer, or maybe both possibly . . .
Joaquin paces himself back all too serious like chess tournament prodigy, holding his chin in exercising whatever passes for patience in Laurel Canyon. Dear Mary Mother of Teenage Jesus,
Okay, okay—Milljanks, yeah—No, I think I seen something like this or something about Jewish Museum, read about. You know hadn't actually like been to a museum since, well since old Dolores dragged me to Paris in—
Joaquin clearly wasn't listening, haunted by the metal box outlines as if he had just finished studying for some big oral exam.
I may use next video—or Jake, you see, these aren't just . . . minimal post minimal pieces of un-nicked stained aluminum that you just wanna lick with naked tongue—I mean they are, are—but it's more than, tha, see?—material forces that program the space—what's . . . that's what it is!, no, the notion, or the notion of artist, of artist not so much as, as, like, maker of things . . . per sae, no, no, no, but artist as shaper, shaper of discourses—though, in this case too too insufficient in a pluralized too many artist discourse of the overstuffed, over self assurance of the plump skin Gen Z artists the academy blurps out onto us like normie AM waves from sausage churn, that these boxes, or do express—and we are left with, we are, are these empty, these post historical window unit cages—shells really, but most exquisite window unit cages at least, that make Koons' vacuum cleaners now look like De Kooning now practically . . . They are . . . utopian . . . and also . . . dystopian . . .
Dystopian, right. So what's the problem.
Well I tell you's what's the problem, El Presidente . . .
Joaquin gave me the low down. He wasn't seeking my services for no pictures of Rooney infidelity. You got the idea that in kingly way, he was all too resolved, all too aware in, used to knowing that dealing with the Queen of Diamonds takes a certain strength and resignation—something only a real sovern could ever really handle or pull off. I mean, just imagine trying to serve up regicide to Rooney with her infidelity photos—she'd scat the room leaving you fool losing doubly. Sure, the first loss, infidelity—that was not necessarily one's fault, but to then self incriminate yourself the fool because of lost composure, exposed weakness—cowardice—of that, was a sort of double indemnity one is left with alone into wallow eternity and forever.
The real problem apparently was the company Rooney now kept. Marco, from the artist commune, who she may or may not have taken to boudoir—which wasn't the point, but the point was was Marco—for Joaquin, Marco, he was always just making quips, or small quips, always playing tiny little cheap pranks and superficially undermining the otherwise default good faith largesse good Joaquin automatically bestowed unearned upon him. Joaquin said he knew some real peasants were born real peasants, beyond the circumstances on scorched earth they were bought in—some people were truly poor in spirit, he said out loud in confidence now.
Joaquin leads me to the third cage on the far right, puts his spectacles on, gets down on his knees and sits his face obnoxiously close to the piece, Ya sees right here . . .
I'm afraid I don't quite, old Boy . . .
The aluminum, the ever so slight isotropic discoloration,
I—it, I mean it looks the—same?
Joaquin again sore as hell, Trust me it clearly is nottt—
Do ya think, doyathink maybe the other two—they closer to the wall window, or that the other two are—blanched by the sun? It is like, like a greenhouse in here?
No Belane, that thought never occurred to me, Joaquin offended, as if my statement alluded to less desirable conditions of the very gallery space planned of his own design.
The light levels for the sculptures is perfectly fine, not scultures—objects. Joaquin correcting himself all needlessly and over informed,
Right—objects.
Maybe I was unconsciously striking a drinking pose, because right then Joaquin takes me to follow him back to what passes as his director's office.
You know, Joaquin, they say it's the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch—
Joaquin not listening, And on that note whatcha like a drink, Jake,
Usually don't start this—early—your my only appointment today though—oh well, it's got to be eleven thirty somewhere . . .
Jake . . .
Whatcha got—
I got Zamora, I got Galliano, Strega, Peter Heering, Rocher, and this . . .
What's that this?
Ponche.
Is good?
Ponche is all I ever drink, my friend,
I'll take what your takeing . . .
Well god bless ya Belane, two Ponche comin' up—Francesca! Querres ver la ventana en el cielo. Francesca! She can't hear me . . .
Set em' up Charlie, and we'll shoot em down, Lieutenant,
That's the spirit, Jake,
Joaquin hands the drink to me, straightening himself out with overwrought formality, What shall we toast to?
To Roon Doggg?
No, no how about—'To the clouds we share. . .'
Ooo, it's quite a bite.
Stuff so strong it will have ya liftin' shimmies out the the party host hamper even if you still your girl's at home—
Valhalla seems near at hand, Comanche Commander,
Yeah, and it goes down real slow, like a first thing in morning Tia Maria. There's no liquor in the land that can stop your brain from a bleedin', but at least we can try . . .
My insides a bleedin', we try,
Joaquin well oiled up now and over exerting himself, No, no, no, no—new vidyas, new videos, lemme tell you, is these days are crass, crass, just dicksucking, dicksucking celebration edits, every last one of them—all dicksucking footy down to the very last . . .
No dark parts yeah, or intentionally dark parts , at least—could be kinda cool—I know . . .
Could kinda be cool?? Whatever, no, no, no,
Joaquin's tirade, now on a roll, he had his tinted spectacles on now looking like a mogul or semi retried gangster, Heaven forbid, podcast positivist frame of mind HD edit, the general post shoehead normie narrative—ordinary shmoes running co's, and the industry wonders why it can't seem to make cream now—Ha!
Oh, my god yes,
Joaquin was surprisingly in tune with current industry minutiae, at least more informed than he was back in the day.
Jacking with your entire body compulsive onanism, the plot of every video—Johnny Plimsole doing cartwheels b-sides, yeah, yeah, yeah—Balls! Joaquin casually spitting something onto his thumb like it was cuspitor, punctuating the conversation now on a roll command.
Joaquin had late afternoon Sade playing off the ceiling speakers in his office, sucking my soul inside the moment, we stood looking out at the horny saxophone canyons, it was all rather terribly splendid.
Offering Joaquim a cigarette, he looks at the enticements of the pack, his hand up near his shoulder, dandyish pinkie in the air.
What you got there Belane . . .
Capital W's mediums. . .
You must not want to live too long—death on the installment plan they call it—I'll take one . . .
I think that's what they call it in AA . . .
Those damn fools—all of them, the whole rot lot . . .
After all the Ponche was as drained as the Hetch Hechy, Joaquin said he was now going to take out his special reserves—hand choked mescalitos stored with dead snake at bottom of bottle, which he had in an old timey shoe shine kit that looked like a prop from an old western—for some reason probably hidden in there. Some ceramic nubby thumb made cups materialized, Joaquim says the ceramic paint is unsealed and definitely not safe for use of consumption, but once I take a bite of the mescals, the cup will indeed be the very last of my worries.
Joaquin regains himself from his own distraction, A video is about, you know what a video is about Jake, a video, a real video, a good video, a real fine video is about finding, discovering utopia—well, at least it should be—I want the Kasai fake orientalism, the charming Chinatown takeout box, even if just but a mirage—
Joaquin interrupting himself, Okay now, no toast! Let's do another toast!
Okay to what,
Killing girl films,
I'll drink to that—
I was thinking about Rooney the entire time, waiting for the right time to where it should seem incidental and casual I would ask about her without suspicion, she clearly was not around—I could feel her not at the house.
Hey Dudemiester, so where's Rooney at?
She not here, the question barely seeming to register to him, Joaquin onto his next point.
You know Jake, sometimes, I wish, or I wish, you know what I wish, I wish . . . I had become a lawyer,
Ofcourse, why wouldn't you—
Oh, now be serious—no, no, I'm serious, Jake.
An attorney.
Yeah, I mean, there's something, there's just something about law, there's a poetry in legal writing,
That's certainly one way, or one way of putting it . . . Studying the pulpy Rachel Harrison ceramic sake cup.
Well I suppose it makes very little damn difference, anyways, Joaquin woffing the drink as if reflexively drinking to his own self extinction.
I know I shoulda stayed making fucking movies anyways, Balls . . . Joaquin looking down nodding.
You or you should put me in one of your movies,
Oh, Jake you don't want to be in no pictures,
No, I do, I do!
You are talking to me about serial numbers on the backs of hanging air conditioner racks Joaquin—exactly what the hell is going on . . .
Joaquin gets up for the war chest of liquor, right like right out of movie.
Joaquin now as if he was Ted Kennedy drunk steering in the Oval Office, heroically sips from his glass, It don't matter that. Because it also doesn't matter weather—if he is or is not pulling a little prank on me sees—Marco is from or with the art communes out in Barstow, ya know.
What, the Mmunes?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and they are a real nuisance to say the very least, but I hate to say it, and the things they are doing out there, are unfortunately worth noting, I'm so dreadfully very afraid.
You said this, this is Rooney, Rooney's friend—do you think she's in on it?
Joaquin patiently drains his glass like if it was a responsible cup of water from teacher's lounge water cooler.
Rooney, as any woman of her magnitude has a madness of the heart and all the territorial pissings disloyalty and appetites, that also so unoriginally goes with the territory, see?—that I can handle. But no, no, no, I know she wouldn't be in on it, that's' not her, that's just not her style.
Well, lady shame a gangrene enthusiasm, but only in attitude, now? I say in skeptical affirmation.
No, no, no it's just. Rooney was married, Rooney was married when we first met, though soon to be divorced, that's all.
Joaquin lights up cigarette, I take it from his hand breathlessly.
Joaquin goes over to the black of window, looks away away from me at the black of dead of void as if he was far away on imperialism's death star.
Marco makes a fool of me, then I might be out of business in more ways than one if you catch my drift.
He turns his head back at me from the glass wall with knife plunger's smile,
If I can thwart, but, but, if WE can or can prove this fool, then it will be delicious Junior, real delicious.
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