Polarity: Chapter One

(A small sample from "Polarity", slated for publication sometime after the new year. Two more sample chapters to follow.)

Javier Guiterrez jumped from sleep. An adrenaline rush pulled him from dreamland and fuzzy headed, he peeled his ears. He could not be sure what sound had roused him from slumber, but he’d been dreaming about breaking beer bottles with rocks. As a child, this had been a favorite past-time of his. There had been little else for anyone, grown or child, to do in the little border town of Madera, Mexico.

Were those footsteps he heard, crunching on broken glass? Cursing and mostly naked, Javier rolled out of bed and started lacing up his heavy work boots. His penis kept trying to flop out of the hole in the front of his boxer shorts, but so what? Whoever had the cojones to break into his house could have their ass broken while staring down the barrel of Javier’s formidable Latin chorizo.

He made a furtive trek down the dark hallway with long, quiet strides. Images of some gringo putting his filthy, leche colored manos on Javier’s 35” plasma screen television raped his brain. He had sweat and bled to buy that television. Pinche bandidos. They would get a nice surprise.

Olivdé me pistola

Shit. He had, hadn’t he? The .44 with the long barrel lingered in the drawer beside his bed. Hell with it. His fists worked very well. He would tackle the puto and beat him silly, then get his gun and shoot the bastard in the face a few times. And if there were more than one? No. There would not be. Javier’s faith in God was strong, and he knew the Christo would not put any test before Javier that he could not handle. He worked too hard, and God respected that.

No matter. The sounds of burglary--

No. Not burglary. Pure devastation.

The criminal bastard busied himself with breaking Javier’s things, evidenced by crashing sounds of some blunt object against glass, his television, and Javier heard the unmistakable spray of another person pissing.

“You stupid shit,” a voice said. Javier recognized it. “Cut that out. That’s evidence. They got DNA testing now and there’s plenty of that in your piss.” The speaker had to be one of the men from the crew he had just used to finish the roof on the house of the Fire Inspector. What was that man’s name?

The light came on.

“Looks like we got us a guest,” Bob Aames said. Javier could see him now, a tall Caucasian man almost tan enough to be burnt sierra, and another guero holding his diminutive pita in his right hand. The pita leaked dregs of urine on the carpet.

“Ben,” said Aames.

Javier felt a hard pressure on the base of his spine, where the stem joins the neck, and a muscle back there did a twitching dance; something exploded inside Javier’s head. The lights went out.

2

“C’mon, Javier. Wake up. No se meto conmigo, motherfucker.”

Javier began slowly coming around. Aames gave him a light slap across the face to help the process along. Javier jerked his head to one side, trying to get away from that heavy, strong slap. He coughed, trying to speak. “Por que? Quíen coño te crees que eres? Me escupa en sus pinche cochinos!”

Aames grunted, punching Javier in the left eye. Javier first saw the word LUCK coming toward him, then heard a sound in his head like chewing crackers, but felt almost nothing.

“Quit speakin’ that fucken mud tongue,” Aames said. “You know English.”

“Maybe he don’t habla,” the man with the pissy little pita said.

“Oh, he fucken hablas.”

Javier began to pray in his mother tongue. He did not care about his things any longer. He petitioned the Mother and the Saints that he may keep his life. He would replace all the things these low men were breaking. Things did not matter, only life mattered.

“Quit it,” pissy pita man said. “God don’t save people without a green card.”

“That’s right,” Aames said. “No hay tarjeta verde, no Hay-Zeus.”

Javier could see the one named Ben standing with his arms crossed, his feet touching Javier’s bare toes. The stern giant stood still and silent, a towering mountain of muscle and sinew. Javier could not look at him. Instead, he regarded Aames.

“You ate dinner here, Bob,” Javier said. “Somos fumamos mucho mota juntos, mi amigo.” Javier said this in Spanish because he knew that Aames could also speak what the redneck bastard had only moments ago called a ‘mud tongue’. Javier did not know if these men with him enjoyed a good loco smoke. He only wanted to remind the man that they had enjoyed one another’s company.

“You ever read Machiavelli, Javier?” Aames asked. Ben chuffed, and smiled.

“No. Who is that?”

“Yeah, boss, who’s Makavelli?” Jack asked. “I thought that was a Tupac record.”

“Jack, shut the fuck up,” Aames said.

“Ye of no education,” Ben said.

“You know, I didn’t think you had,” Aames said to Javier. “Had you, you’d have been a bit more selective in choosing employees.”

“What?” Javier said. “We were friends.”

“Beware of flatterers,” Aames said. Turning to Ben, he made a slicing motion with his right arm.

What did that mean? Were they going to cut Javier’s throat? “You don’t have to kill me,” Javier told them, knowing it would probably do no good.

Ben advanced holding a very large serrated cuchillo. Jack began to laugh, and Javier prayed, hoping his prayers were louder than the fat man’s peals of laughter.

3

Aames leaned down and whapped Javier upside the head. Indignation came to Javier first. Damn this angry white man. Why did he have to be cruel? What was this horrible murder going to solve? Ben busied himself with wrapping Javier’s legs to the thigh in duct tape and the air reeked of gasoline. Jack carried a red container, still half full of the flammable liquid the gordo had just finished pouring in the living room, and down the hallway.

“Should I do the sink?” Jack asked.

Without taking his eyes off Javier, Aames flapped a hand at Jack. Damn this angry white man--all these angry white men.

Ben finished his work with a final yank on the roll of tape; the motion made a sound like the ocean being ripped in half, and finished the trussing with an efficient spin around Javier’s ropy thighs. Aames reached into his pocket. He removed a four-inch steel lock-blade. Showing the blade with a wrist flick that made the action stiletto fast, he asked Javier, “You believe this thing is legal?

“It is. Not as long as my palm is wide.” Aames held the blade along the length of his palm to demonstrate. The fat child of a weapon would cut flesh.

“Ben, get his legs up. Jack. You found everything I can sell?”

Jack looked unsure.

“Well, git at.”

Jack went down the hall, throwing the gas can into the living room as he walked. It bounced off the carpet on one plastic corner somersaulting back over spout.

“Noisy ass,” Aames said.

“Please.” Javier said. “Do not do this.”

Ben snaked a slab of arm around Javier’s gray one-leg. “He ain’t too proud to beg,” Ben said.  

“Ah, well, they never are.” Aames bent at the knee, approaching Javier’s bound legs with the knife.

Javier reared his legs back, hard enough to bend the strong tape, and he used his well-conditioned thigh muscles, lean and wide from carrying immense weight up ladders for hours a day, to try and rip free of his bonds. Ben came with him, stepping back with one leg and never letting go with his impossible arm, he planted his immense boot squarely into Javier’s crotch. The whole works, perineum to penis were squished into Javier’s coccyx, and there was a pop! that Javier feared more than felt, so he did not scream. He began to choke.

A fire licked cold along the back of his ankles. There was a pressure against his tendons, faint and rapid, followed by a slick wash of warmth--sangre--wetting its way underneath the tape. But that didn’t matter. The tape was just a tool. A means to an end. Javier knew the face of death approaching. He had seen it enough in Mexico. No more outs showed themselves; one had to have feet to walk.

“Adios, coyote,” Aames said. Javier accepted the gift of his clarity, a clarity seen best behind the eyes and wearing the shroud of El Dios de la Muerte. Jack flicked the chrome wheel of a Zippo, holding it close to Javier’s closed eyes and Javier, sick of seeing the Grim Reaper’s ugly visage, opened his eyes and glared defiantly at the flame. 

“You can get off his balls now,” Aames said to Ben. “He ain’t goin’ anywhere.” Aames sighed.

“All right, Jackie, light ‘em up,” he said.

Coming Soon: A Quick Tease

Should I give it away for free?

Hell no. Not the whole thing, anyway. I would, because I have a generous soul, but dammit, I need money. It's not that I'm greedy, no. It's just that while the better part of you were getting drunk and fat on holiday goodies I sat and ate a middling brain stew. How to do this, that, and the other thing? When will this and that happen? Waiting for the things, the lovely things that are soon to come my way, and the longer the wait the greater the weight. If this is true I wholly expect to be flattened by the advent prosperity. In the meantime, I am but a humble beggar begging not money but gainful employment. Due to this position I would be a fool to give away this precious piece of my soul for free. Perhaps later, when this position is no longer mine I may.

But I promise to give those of you who are good enough a tease. A little tickling of the bellybutton, eh? Something to get the saliva going (or other, less talked about fluids, heh heh) and the pockets burning. It is said that if you want to sell something you have to act like you don't care if it sells, but I've never been one to fake anything, not even orgasms, and I won't be starting now. I care if it sells. I don't care if you like it, but I care if it sells.

Ah, piss. Come on now. Don't get all tarty on me. It's not like I ever said I wasn't a complete and total bastard. I've always copped to my blackguard's heart. Before indulging your certain huffiness, know this--it is GOOD for a crime/horror writer to be a bastard. Being one, I know how they (we) tick. I also know most people want to know how they tick and more, what it feels like to be one. Everyone wants a bite of the forbidden fruit, and anyone who says they don't is worse than a bastard, they are a liar. They want to taste but in safety and without consequence. That's fine by me. In fact, I'm in an enormous hurry to give the people what they want. There's nothing I love more than satisfying the more carnal, meaty desires of others. That gleam in a person's eye when their darker needs have been met is far more euphoric than any drug. Trust me...I know. I have eaten the fruit and dealt with the consequences and overcome both and am well-qualified to provide that taste to quell craving, that scratch to the itch, and all without worry of any consequences because for only a few measly dollars you, the lovely reader, will be able to eat of the fruit all you want in the comfort of your own home and without ever having to lay eyes on this particular devil.

Even better, I guarantee you will not have purchased a lump of shit. Fiction, yes, but not a lie...never a lie.

I'll be dropping by sometime next week to drop these promised few thousand tiny, dancing spiders on you. In the interim make sure to watch out you do not drool but if you do, please collect it and send it to me at:

My Name
Lucifuge, GA 30752

Sleep well, kids.

The Grand Hunt For Success

I signed the contract for publication of my first novel, POLARITY, today. Funny that I should publish a fiction novel with only a few short story notches on my belt...many said it could not be done. Shows what they know. But, I suppose that is what haters do, yes? They tell people that dreams cannot come true because their dreams never did, or maybe they didn't have the balls to follow their dreams and thusly wish to break the balls of anyone who dares to fly. I would hold a hate for the haters but why? Without them, I may not have continued my drive to finish this novel so I could stuff it down their fucking throats. Funny, now that I have signed the contract and have published the novel I don't want to shove anything down anyone's throat. I thought I would but I was wrong. Instead of egotistical I feel oddly mellow and relaxed. I am filled with a strange sense of good will I have never had before.

It goes to show you never can tell.

Contract or not, I still have to find a job, and that's the rub, yes? Stuck here in the middle of nowhere where the town is about a mile long and the jobs are few and I've applied at damn near all of them and also, lovely enough, lacking a car, this is not the easiest of things. So, haters, consider this a bone thrown to you. Now that you can no longer hate on my dream you can hate on my status as a broke fucker. God forbid you should find someone else to hate on and no longer drive me toward success.

The grand hunt for success is a road one has to travel and that road is paved with haters, small-minded bastards with nothing else to do than judge another person's capabilities.

Dreamers, keep dreaming. One day your dream will come true and you can laugh as hard as I am laughing now. Fight, and never give in. Hold above all things your faith in yourself and your dream, because if a low-down scoundrel like me can make good, anyone can. Don't worry about whether or not you deserve to make good--success isn't based on moraline bullshit, it is based on accomplishment. Deeds, not promises. Put up or shut up. Don't waste your time telling anyone what you're going to do, just do it, and don't feel bad if while you're in the process of getting things done you find yourself driven to set fire to the mouths of the cowards. Use that. Use the hate thrown your way to push harder, stronger, faster...when your dream comes true and the haters are still hating you'll realize what I am feeling and you will love it.

Haters, please, keep hating. Please. After all...you are the gas that makes the engine run. Since all you cocksuckers really want is a medal, consider this your medal. It's a giant middle finger upon which you may sit and rotate. And while you're listening to any record or reading any book know this: the artist already knows you because the artist has already fought you and won. So who is the real loser, or, in the immortal words of John Davis, while not eloquent, they are still succinct; "WHO THEN NOW, BITCHES?"

To those who believed in me, thank you. I hope to spend my life enriching yours. It's what I have been called to do and I'm going to bust my ass to make sure I don't let you down.

Notes From the Dirty South

The dogs are evil. They roam around without a leash and any poor bastard without a vehicle has to carry rocks. The yards are full of broken cars, trucks, farm equipment...this is not a joke. Or an exaggeration. The accent is maddening and charming all at once and spins the brain of any thinking person like a psychotic Cuisinart. The people are polite to your face and cannot wait for you to turn your back so they can gossip. They are church-goers, banjo-pickers, pill-popping hypocrites. And, as I said, the dogs are evil. That fact makes me fit right in. If not for that fact I would not fit in. I understand the dogs, but not the people. The people are stupid and the dogs are evil and the dogs have an excuse where the people do not.

It's a strange trip living in a land where the animals without thumbs are more intelligent than the animals with thumbs. The things we do for love. What can I say? My wife wanted to be near her family. Point of Fact: she managed to escape the derka-derness overwhelming the south. Hilarious how the rednecks in this region insist they will "rise agin'". How the fuck are you going to rise again if you can't even pick your nose without an instruction manual? Funny; twenty miles north of here, in Chattanooga, the people are 2000 years more sophisticated opposed to these dingbat moles inhabiting Trenton, GA, Dade County, USA...or as I prefer to call it Police State County, USA.

I'd better be careful. I could do time for writing that in this county.

Is there a point here? Does it matter? Try writing anything on the fly in the Dade County library.

Well. More notes to come. And yes, my novel will be coming out soon friends, and that is NO JOKE. The dogs are evil and so am I or so they say; lucky me I don't give a shit what anyone says. If I did I'd be working as a shoe-salesman (or sales-PERSON, if we must be politically correct...which is the fault of the north) instead of a writer. The writer is not allowed to care what anyone says. If the writer takes a minute out to give a damn about the spitum dripping from the mouths of slack-jaws or even the more pretentious high-speech of the nine-inches above-the-power-tie people, including those with vaginas who I fully believe will, in ten years, not be called women but "people with vaginas" thanks to Mitt Romney and his binding comment, heh heh heh...no we cannot care, us writers, what anyone says or we turn into bastards or evil dogs and end up living in the land of Nod and Sod.

Forgive me if this article is a bit out-of-sorts. My intelligence is fading. I'm turning into a southerner.

Just kidding. I LOVE IT HERE.

The Truth Behind the Lie

"Sometimes the law can't be foller'd no way," said Pa. "Not in decency, anyways. When [Pretty Boy] Floyd was loose an' goin' wild, law say we got to give him up--an' nobody give him up. Sometimes a fella got to sift the law. I'm sayin' now I got the right to bury my own Pa. Anybody got sompin' to say?"

--John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

So what are the grapes of wrath, anyway? We have wrath, which is a cardinal sin--something the Catholic church would kill a man over, not God, per se, but the Catholic church--and grapes, as we know, are tasty fruits that can be fermented to make a completely okay thing, even according to the Bible, an okay thing fine to drink and allow a man to forget himself. Laws beget wrath, because they demand a being live in a way that someone ELSE DEMANDS--a sickening thing. As William Powell said, as I was taken from my home for defending--"This country is ruined by stupid old men making laws they don't understand."

Now we have television shows like Jersey Shore or even Ancient Aliens (sorry Harrison, I love Tsoulaklos too, but goddamn, COME ON) distracting us from the truth. We have a real enemy in North Korea and another real enemy in Iran, and assholes want to bitch about the folks on Welfare? You short-sighted stupid fuckpigs! Those assholes on Welfare, as you call them, have had to fight their entire lives while you sit back on your dumb asses and watch Family Guy. Who do you think is going to save your soft-handed privliged ass when the shit hits the fan?

It's not going to be the coward who knows nothing about hand-to-hand combat or weapons usage.

Think about that the next time you talk shit.

Portrait of the Artist as a Complete Bastard

In this article, I may use the word “you” many times. By using that word I am talking in the proverbial, meaning not “you” the reader, but “you” as in the type of person that strikes me down day by day. If you fit into that latter category do me a favor and piss off. If you fit into the former category chances are you’re here for one of two reasons—first and foremost to be entertained, which is my main charge as a writer, and secondly to learn something you may not know about individuals such as myself. Before we begin, know this beyond a shadow of a doubt: I do not feel like I am above any single one of you, I am made of the same matter as every other human being and I did not ask for these thoughts and feelings, they just exist. To those who are bothered by this notion, I ask you “why”?

Do you never consider that perhaps I envy you?

We all have dreams, we all have goals, and for the most part I seriously doubt those dreams and goals include being the foreman of the local peanut factory. Those who are have nothing to be ashamed of, I merely find it dubious that any child lies in bed at night with their whole lives before them thinking “Gee, wouldn’t it be wonderful to be the head snack-packer?” Honestly if you did I feel sorry for you and you may want to stop reading right now; these words to follow will piss you off. If you did not, I hope you read on because I would like you to get in touch with some of those old hopes and feelings again, the ones that made life itself feel like magic rather than a shit-filled conundrum.

Since I became sentient, probably around the age of two when my grandfather Paul Ladwig noticed something different about me and started teaching me how to read easy words like “exit” and “stop”, thusly graduating me one year later to Dick and Jane books, I felt as if there might be some appointment ahead of me, a task or charge, that I was, if you’ll graciously allow, elect. For years I lived an up-and-down roller coaster quandary between being competitive in the brains category and terrified of the physical category. While others played football, I studied. I was that nerd who always raised his hand in class and suffered hundreds of ass-kickings at the hands of incipient cavemen after school. Words and books and drawings, sometimes all mixed together in the glorious form of the comic book gave me aid and succor while I licked my wounds.

Years later I got sick and fucking tired of these cocksuckers kicking my ass and I began to fight back. I did not join football or any team effort, I became what they now call “emo” but what we used to call gothic. And I did not fit in with that group either. I fit into no group at all. So I figured. This was not true. It took a very long time—far too long—for me to realize that I fit into the category of the Artist, and never ye mind the canvas. Words, music, drawings, shit, I did it all! And FUCK anyone who didn’t like it! My attitude was, and often still remains “Say something, motherfucker! Talk shit and see what happens.”

This is where the point comes in. I think I have spent too many words already on explaining how I went from fat, terrified nerdy kid to complete and total honest-to-spheres bastard. I mentioned earlier that I envy those who are, shall we say, normal. Those who dress for success and punch a clock or earn a salary and drive a decent, if not luxuriant vehicle and have more than likely followed all the rules or, in the worst case as far as I care, kissed the pre-requisite amount of ass in order to achieve what they consider and achievement. They have houses and families and probably bowel problems due to the sick fucking fact that today’s world is based on a credit system where no one really owns anything except for an illusory take-life-for-granted exit from life’s great truths and can bury their heads deep, enjoying that Satanic ass-fucking they take every single day without feeling real pain.

Either that or they punch a clock to struggle and put food on the table because they have a few sets of eyes to meet once they return home, eyes that trust above mouths needing fed. Young eyes that sit in a classroom listening to some overgrown fuckface who is supposed to be a teacher droning on listlessly while they should be planting the seeds of growth and goal in the young mind. Older eyes that hum and clean and do laundry and keep house or more, go to their own eight to ten hour task to help put food on that very same table. Eyes that should dream. Eyes that once dreamed. Eyes that may have lost their luster but not their love.

Those, I envy. I envy them because as long as they wake up on time and do what they’re told and try not to think too much they will get by, I hope, without the bank foreclosing on their homes or repossessing their cars and the like. Now, if I’m an artist, a writer, being paid at least every so often to do what I love, why should I envy those people?

There’s a thing they do not understand. It’s the type of thing anyone who feels that calling (and if you feel it, I don’t need to explain it) and responsibility to something further, beyond, not necessarily more, but definitely much more daunting. The calling to entertain those people, not ignoble, who dip through their daily lives. The calling to make their lives easier. To make them laugh, love, share, or even by fuck scare the ever-loving shit out of them so they can remember what it was like to be a kid and think the devil lived in the laundry basket when really all that lie within was a bunch of smelly clothes. For me, the responsibility is to the great group, to YOU, the reader, to give you a thing to read that will make you feel just that much better in the morning when you wake up and have to face down some fuckhead Vogon who makes three more dollars an hour than you do yet somehow thinks he/she is Tony (Collete?) Soprano.

In order to do that I have to face down things most don’t even consider. First, I have to rip my fucking skin and bone wide as if performing a self-autopsy and stick my soul to your brain via the page (or any other canvas). Secondly, I have to struggle to avoid all negative thought and lack of faith lest I bumblefuck my karma and not spin the quite tangible yet fickle and delicate creative mass of the universe—to please God, if you’re a Christian—into finding me worthy to entertain you. Thirdly, I have to deal with your (remember, proverbial you) heckling and shitting on me because I don’t punch a clock or have a set home or any of those securities you take for granted. And lastly, oh lastly…I have to find a way to answer you when you ask “Why don’t you just get a job, loser?”

Why? Because I do not NEED to GET a job. I have one.

It’s called saving your ass from the conundrum. It’s called making sure you don’t get bored. It’s called making you feel as though you are THERE when one of my characters fires a bullet into the eye of his asshole boss for talking too much shit and then following the murderer (and is that person, really, a criminal?) as he/she makes moves to escape the law. It is making you laugh. Making you cry. Making you realize that nothing is promised, there is no taking a single damn thing for granted. It is, at the end of all, making you feel better about the things you do and the people you love by nailing my heart to your eyes.

And it’s the hardest fucking job in the world.

Why I Hate Politicians, No Matter the Party

“We know that—all that. All that. But it’s not us, it’s the banks. A bank isn’t like a man…that’s the monster.”

“Sure, cried the tenant men, “but it’s our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it’s not good it’s still ours.”

“We’re sorry. It’s not us. It’s the monster. The bank isn’t like a man.”

“But the bank is only made of men.”

“No, you’re wrong there—quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it…it is a monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.”

--John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

This is still true today. After almost a hundred years, this is still true. Why? It isn’t even because of the fact he fact that the Bank is a monster. It is because the People, who are supposed to be strong, worship the folding God and are terrified of the monster, but they do not have the courage to fight the monster. Most men do not even wish to fight the monster. They bow down and suck the phallus of the Golden Calf Bank and swallow the semen with fervor and gratitude.

You disgusting bunch of tie-wearing fucking cowards.

I hate you all.

Would you not rather stand up for yourselves and say “I’m not taking this bullshit anymore!” Are you going to let the media rob you of your guns, your only defense against the banks and the politicians and the whelps who work for them and just lay, open-legged, spread eagle while the bank, the politician, stick his vein-ridden cock up your anus? Does that sound like a good fucking time? You pathetic, puerile, terrified little shits are already allowing them to fly drones over your land in order that they can watch your every move—I’ve seen the fucking things for myself—is this what you want? Is this the land, the Constitution your forefathers fought to protect?

It is not.

And any cowardly pile of smegma who lays down and allows this shit to continue deserves what they get. The sad thing is this—you piles of dick cheese are in the majority because you’re so scared of losing your toys. Bunch of children. See, that’s what puerile means—childish. You are childish, with your iPhones and your iThis and iThat and all that pathetic bunch of tripe that means absolutely nothing—the push of a button and the laugh of a bastard and all of that shit—literally ALL OF IT—is gone.

“Life, submissiveness, hypnotizing the ignorant, a little boy’s best friend is always his mother.”

Chad Grey said that, talking about Ed Gein. What he did not realize at the time and more than likely does not realize now is that he described the times as they are today—we as a people suckle the teat of the toy-giving politician and actually listen to the cunts when they scream about the folks on welfare without realizing that the politician him or herself LIVES OFF OF WELFARE! WAKE UP FUCKHEADS! All of you assholes who are bitching and moaning about everyone else aren’t realizing this one important fact—while you judge one another the politician laughs at you for playing right into their hands while you pay taxes on your hard earned paycheck so these suit-wearing cunts can sit around and do absolutely nothing to help America! STOP HURTING YOURSELVES!

Stop hurting yourselves.

Let’s take the fight to THEM.

What "Bad" Is

I was lying in bed after doing my katas and lifting weights, trying to relax by reading Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” for the thousandth time because I love that book when it struck me that damn near everyone in my life knows what “bad” is. I don’t mean bad as in “he’s a bad guy” or “this is a bad job” although both are pretty close. I mean bad as in life. How life can be a complete and total motherfucker, skinning your ass every single time you try to make a move for yourself. Some people find Jesus, and I guess that helps a little. It has never helped me, but it helps some, and that’s perfectly fine with me. Some people find drugs, and that’s not very good, but I can’t judge because I certainly used the poisons long enough. Others whiskey. And yet others use judgmental behavior, calling their fellow humans pieces of shit for not doing this, that, or the other thing.

It’s that judgmental behavior that makes me sick to my guts. I know a lot of folks that know what bad is but there ain’t a single fucking one of you that knows what it meant to live in the Depression, the GREAT one, not this half-assed Obama-driven pile of phoniness we live in now. I see folks—I won’t mention any names, but I see folks—who went years without a job finally get one and after three months start talking shit about those who don’t work. Granted, a lot that don’t work don’t want to, and yes, those fuckers ought to be skinned alive and their goddamn laziness-perpetuating President along with them. But some folks out of a job do want to work and can’t find one because they don’t have an address, or they don’t have the right clothes, or they have a criminal record, and they’re not lucky enough to have Mommy and Daddy take them in until they can find one.

You judgmental piles of shit ought to take something into consideration—you do NOT have it bad. Not yet. You’re going to soon enough, but you don’t. Just wait. You fucks will crumble like cookies because you have no clue what it is like to have to drum up work for yourselves—to callus your hands swinging an axe, to dirty yourselves cleaning gutters, to pound nails, to cut grass all fucking day with some geriatric cunt yelling at you because you accidentally missed a single blade thinking about how nice it will be to finally, after twelve hours, get home and have a beer or smoke a joint, or to sum-pump sewers to pay the rent on a trailer that always floods when it rains too hard. No. You folks who have never had to do anything like that don’t know what “bad” is.

I write my fucking balls off in order to stay away from “bad”. I’ve done bad, I’ve done my time, and I’m fucking sick and goddamn tired of it and it still isn’t over. I’m sure I’ll have to flip another burger or swing another axe or crawl into another shit-pipe before my ship comes in, but that’s okay with me, I’ve done it before. And I don’t judge anyone. My scales are all broken. Why the fuck should I?

So the next time one of you cowardly cocksuckers tries to say something clever, know this—you’re NOT clever. If you were, you get paid to be clever by writing words, even if the pay is just a pittance. I’ve been paid for it…have you?

Riot at the Plasma Center

The NABI Plasma extraction center in Chattanooga opened at eight in the morning. Needing cigarettes and booze I showed up ahead of the crowd on this fine morning. I think it may have been around 7:30 am. When I pulled in to the parking lot I noticed about three people ahead of me. No big deal. I figured I would not even have to sit through five minutes of whatever over-played movie the workers would haphazardly toss into the DVD player (usually THE SIXTH SENSE), causing me to hate previously loved films. I parked the car and lit a menthol, watching the street breathe and bend around me. The Amnicola bridge’s laughter rang in my ears as traffic babbled insults while rushing by, jealous of the fact that I had reached my ddestination and it had yet to.

Oh yeah. About twelve hours earlier I had dropped some six or eight hits of microdot acid and the shit still worked hard on my system. Everything felt groovy, and that was fine with me. I smoked and got my head together. When finished, I got out of the car and pitched the butt because the ashtray was screaming at me that it could not handle the taste of smoked cigarette any longer. Fucker. I asked it what the fuck it thought it was built for and it gave me a raspberry. I shook it off and forgave the ashtray—after all even inanimate objects can only handle so much of something that sucks. The car cried as I shut the door, telling me it was Japanese and had no business being left alone in the south. I told it to get over its goddamn whining and proceeded to the queue.

Rewind. You’re thinking “What an asshole” aren’t you? Well, fuck you. I was only 23. I didn’t give a shit and I thought maybe I was providing a public service to all the poor burn victims needing a digital bath. At least this way they may have had a little fun. Don’t blame me. Blame the center for allowing me to pass the drug test. Worse, it makes me wonder now how many people with West Nile or Syphilis sold their plasma.

Back to the story: I blinked hard to try and set my vision straight because the three people in line had begun merging together and growing, stretching into some fucked up crack head Nyarlathotep. What kind of bastards were they? Moreover, what kind of bastard was I? No. Just blink hard. Close the eyelids and take a few deep breaths and come back from the effects of this horrible, dangerous drug. What day was it? The sun had yet to rise to the height of heat and an Elder God waited for me at the gates of phlebotomy. My shoes barked, the pavement asked me to stop. Turn around and leave this ghastly place.

“Hey man, you okay?” a large black man asked.

“Huh? Where’d that goddamn monster go? I need the Eye of Hastur.”

“What?” He laughed. “Boy, you crazy.”

Indeed I had not seen any fictional monsters, only the smiling and affable one before me. He stood at least six inches taller than me and must have outweighed me by over a hundred pounds. Muscles bulged. Used to being taller than everyone around me at over six feet this fucker made me feel like a sewer rat. We talked for a moment, both noticing that the line of people waiting for NABI to open had grown to the length of a legendary serpent. Thirty or forty people shuffled their feet and smoked cigarettes, bitched about whether or not the center would open its doors.

Then, the cobalt blue Nissan pulled up. From the passenger seat, the manager asked me around a cloud of cannabis whether we’d all mind waiting a little longer so she and her co-workers could get some breakfast.

“Sure,” I said. Bring me a fucking McMuffin.”

“Rob, you funny,” she said. Yes. They knew me. And they drove off. An hour later they came back. By then we were all very angry. I almost forgot about the drug racing through my bloodstream until I saw some lady reach down into the bushes and pluck a grasshopper from the ground. She crunched on it.

No. Dear happy Christ. Perhaps it was time to leave. The cobalt blue Nissan returned and the workers emerged from all sides, pushing past the babbling crowd and opening the doors. As we filed in behind them, the manager turned around and told us we’d have to wait another ten minutes before entering the building proper but that she’d turn the air conditioning on to make it a bit more comfortable. She unlocked the door and the bastards went inside, leaving us to rot.

“Hey, wait,” I said to the manager. “Can we get a bonus or some shit for all this waiting? It’s like, ten o’clock.”

“You a trip, Rob,” she said.

“We’re going to fucking riot!” I said. She laughed, knowing me a bit of a clown. Sure, I was half kidding. Unfortunately the crowd did not realize that. Before I knew what had happened the people were howling “riot” and “bonus” and pushing past me, beating on the doors. Holy fuck! What had I done? I felt like Dr. Frankenstein. Was it the drugs? I assessed that it was indeed not the drugs, these people were fucking pissed. The huge black man knocked me out of the way and made to kick at the glass door.

Shit.

“Wait, dude,” I said. I knocked on the door. The manager came back.

“You have to pacify these goddamn lunatics,” I said. “They’re going to break down the doors.”

She smiled until the large black man pushed me out of the way and balled up his fist. I’ve never seen a woman unlock a door so fast. The horde smashed through the door like a group of French Revolutionaries screaming for Marie Antoinette’s head. I slid through them and ran to the sign-in desk, climbing atop and using the one weapon I did have—my voice—to quiet the mob.

“We’re in! All of us will be hooked up to the Matrix but I’m going first! I need my money now!”

It didn’t help.

The manager grabbed my shirt and pulled me down. I cackled, at least I think I did, and she shoved something into my hand and in no uncertain terms told me to get the fuck out.

Everyone else looked nice and calm. Had that really happened? I left the center and got into the car. In my hand was a twenty dollar bill and around my right arm at the elbow a nice little stretch wrap to staunch the blood from the plasma extraction needle.

The moral of the story is: Never give plasma on acid. You may end up having a nightmare.

A Night in Elgin, IL

It was a desperate friend who got me into the shit. Let us say he needed some fast green, the folding God, not Buddha. So I did a little something-something to make sure it happened for both of us. That old platitude about a friend in need gets me every time. I may be far from Romney as far as money goes, but I do tend to have a share of dollar bills in my pocket garnered through various methods. Since I’d already taken this guy in a fight I had pity for him. Plus, he’s a drug fiend. While I am not, I used to be, and I understand the pain. I figured fuck it—why not walk down to Hooper’s Bar and hook him up? Shit, pay it forward.

So here I am, walking down the street with my green in pocket, making my way to pay it forward when so many cops roll down Braeburn it looks like the goddamn Chicago Pig Brigade. My dick shriveled from the size of a dollar bill into an eraserhead…damn, I had no idea what these authoritarian cunts were after, and by past experience, it is usually me. There are some who know me who may dispute this. Go to www.blackbook.com for my extensive criminal record. I’m not proud of it, but it is there.

Tonight, I did not matter. Good.

I made it to Todd Farm road, and noticed that damn near every squad car from the EPD had stationed themselves at either end of the road, sporting sniper rifles, Glock 36’s, and fucking who knew what else. Johnny Law owned the night. I dipped in to Hunter’s Ridge apartment complex, pushing through the six inch gap left between the gates as per usual. My brain worked. What was this? A gang war? Sting operation? Certainly it had nothing to do with me or the—

Wait. Fuck you. I’m not admitting that in public.

Anyway, I continued to walk and heard PAPAPAPAPAPAP! which is quite a familiar sound to me, having lived on both 136^th street in Chicago and also East Chattanooga. Did I saunter, ballsy-like? FUCK NO! I RAN BITCH! What would you have done?

You see, Chicago, as much as certain southerners would like to drawl about how it “ain’t shit, bubba” happens to be the MOST violent city in the fucking country and in the top ten most violent cities in the world. I can barely walk down the street at night without some jackass fuckface talking shit. I ignore most of it, but there have been occasions involving pairs of scissors that I have no intention of admitting. Anyone who wants to dispute this can come for a visit. If the Mexicans don’t kill you for looking stupid chances are the GD’s will.

I hate this place. It’s always fucked up. People get killed here all the time. I’ve seen dead bodies on the side of the road. So many that now their fake-looking waxen eyes do not faze me in the slightest. So you safe little Dade County people and Lookout Valley people keep this in mind—this fucking place is HELL. You know what I’d love to see? A Chicago cop versus a Dade County cop. NO CONTEST. The Chicago cop would fuck that Dade county cunt up so fucking fast the little shit wouldn’t even register what happened.

Still, I intend to move back to the south because I’m sick of going to sleep to the sound of gunfire. Only East Chatt, North Chatt, and Brainerd can halfway compare to the shit that goes on around here. Chicago is a fucking CESSPOOL. Even the cops are dirty. They’re the dirtiest motherfuckers on the planet and very likely always have been.

Sleep well, lovers.

Jaden and Girlfriend

So, I read this bullshit in the fucking news...this dumb shit (or is it) about Will Smith and Jada Pinkett or whatever her goddamn name is not telling Jaden to clean his room since he's a "little adult". Now. That. Is. An. ARCHAIC WAY OF THINKING. That's how people felt about children in the early 1900's when psychiatrists were called Alienists and kids could get short beers.

I bet Jaden is happy.

That means he can fuck the hell out of his new starlet girlfriend and free-form blast up inside her and have a goddamn kid. Good. We need more Will Smiths in the world so we can produce more HORRIBLE FUCKING FILMS! So Jaden, here's to you--FUCK HER BRAINS OUT! Until she can't move. Pop her cherry, her banana, her fucking eyes out, impregnate her with countless hordes of super-half-talented-wannabe-actors so we can watch more complete piles of shit like AFTER EARTH.

Christ, what the FUCK was that anyway? Was that Will Smith's idea of "I'm an environmentalist and want to make people think about what they're doing." Really? Okay. So here's my question. Where the fuck is your rich actor ass going to live while the rest of us perish in ignominy? Fucking shithead.

Come buy a house in Elgin and I will show you, Will Smith, just how "adult" children are. If adulthood is connoted by maturity believe me, kids are not little adults. Every single day I walk through Elgin and hear little kids, maybe ten at the oldest, calling each other "nigga" and fighting their little asses off. Shit, I even had one buck up to ME! Now, I just laughed because honestly...a forty pound kid of maybe 3 foot 6 versus 6 foot one and a half and 220 pounds of I-Lift-Weights-Since-I'm-Bored motherfucking mean jailhouse bastard is no contest. I laughed and told him his daddy ought to spank his ass.

"I ain't got no daddy," the kid said.

What a fucking surprise.

Will Smith, Jada Pinkett, all you actors and your fucking kids know DICK about the REAL world.

Enjoy your money and stop trying to influence the REAL parents out there.

And Jaden...do what I'd do at your age...FUCK HER BRAINS OUT!!!

This fucking mudball makes me more and more fucking sick every single goddamn day.

Serial Killers: The Infamous Famous

 

The serial killers’ impetus is under scrutiny more today than at any other point in history. There are many television shows dedicated to murderers in general, but the highest ratings go to the serial killer. In these shows, there are those who argue that these sociopaths kill in order to become famous. While this argument may hold some water, it is like a boat with a hole in the aft section; it will not float for long unless there are people willing to scoop out the water and plug the hole. Instead of “water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink” (Coleridge, Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner) it is blood, blood everywhere and many a drop to preen. To say that serial killers kill in order to gain notoriety is akin to saying the bulimic vomits because vomiting is fun. Turn that line around and you get the truth. Bulimics vomit to stay thin and stay popular while serial killers kill because, to them, killing is fun. Media attention is just an incidental thrill. The killer kills to kill and would kill whether or not mass media existed.

Any thinking person knows that vampires and werewolves do not exist, not in the mythological way. Vlad Tepish drank blood and implaled tens of thousands, and Elizabeth Bathory bathed in the blood of virgins. They did not do this to be written up in the papers, for there were no papers back then. Woodcuts existed, sure, but not mass media newspapers giving killers clever names. Neither one of them ever turned into a bat and flew away, though Tepish did escape. To go back further, no printing press existed in the days when Tiberus threw people off of high cliffs for fun or when Caligula raped senators’ wives and had them impaled and infected with syphilis. These lunatics killed for the same reason anyone kills—power.

As time passed, the serial killer did find it fun to cajole the police. Jack the Ripper (or H.H. Holmes, if you prefer) sent the police many notes on his British vacation and did the same thing while he killed in America, masquerading as a doctor with a brilliant castle in the city of Chicago. He began killing, as many serial killers do, as a child, when he was Herman Mudgett and pushed a young friend off the top of a hayloft in New Hampshire. Older, he gassed and gave acid baths to his victims, many of them from the World’s Fair or The White City, as it was called at the time and he never said a word. The one time he did leak out was to Marion Hedgepeth in a Missouri jail where Holmes was being held for fraud. I believe he did this because he had become bored.

However, they do enjoy their games. The Zodiac played games with code. John Wayne Gacy played games by not only being an incredibly upstanding member of Chicago society, but also by allowing the police into his home for various dinners—one of which would lead to his getting caught. Jeffery Dahmer played games, but only with his victims. Had he not zoned out on alcohol at the wrong time he may still be alive and killing today. Albert Fish played games—sending letters to the families of his victims, most notably Grace Budd, talking about how succulent her flesh tasted, and bragging that he did not rape her. The one thing these killers have entirely in common, other than that they are obvious sociopaths is that they did not write or cajole to make the papers; they did it to fuck with the police. (Though in Dahmer’s case, he only fucked with the cops once to save his own skin.)

It is not the serial killer using the media, it is the media using the serial killer. The media gives the killer clever names—Zodiac, Green River Killer, The Butcher of this, the Strangler of that, and, let us of course not forget the lawyers who write entire books about how awesome they are for putting killers away, like Charles Manson. You have to wonder what motives lay behind the writing of Helter Skelter. Factually speaking, historically speaking, the serial killer will kill anyway, regardless of media attention. For me, it is the media and the novelists who exploit the killer and not the other way around.

So, that being said, who are the real assholes?

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: The Elk of Much Wampum

Previously published on MARSocial.

 

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson meant the world to me. I did not have to know him personally to be his understudy. I had his words at my beck and call. First enamored by the idea of him after watching the film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, I picked up every single one of his books  from the library. I remember that two mile walk with an armload of big books, thinking I should have brought a backpack but smiling because I knew the ache in my arms would prove worthy once I feasted on the words. The first book I read was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a no-brainer for you, dear reader, I’m sure, to have predicted. I consumed this novel in about ten hours. After that I backtracked to the beginning, Hell’s Angels. If you want to know more about his works, read them yourself. Don’t be a barnacle. I can feed you my opinion on the works but the pith within must be gathered on one’s own. This isn’t about his books. This is about the man and why I love him so much.

The day he committed suicide my brains may have well been pasted on the wall along with his. Shock, horror, disbelief, rage, sadness and more scrambled my thinking worse than a hit of bathtub crank when the news of the Ace GonZo dying at the moment when we needed him most, when a brat president was waging war on a country in order to appease his father and anyone else who enjoyed slapping him on the back, including the Bin Ladens. To my generation people like Thompson and Jon Stewart were the heroes and the ones to watch, not the swine on Capitol Hill. Knowing now what I did not know then, Doc would have given me a taste of the long knuckle for being so naïve.

At twenty-seven I ought to have known better. Instead of mourning and then beginning to think clearly I opted to throw jack flags and conspiracy theories about his death to anyone who would listen. “Thompson never would have gone out like that!” I’d say. “He’d have ridden a fifty caliber shell into an oil drum to make a statement. It had to be the government or some J.P. Fatback with interests in Halliburton angry at the comments made about 9/11 in Kingdom of Fear! Or a rogue cop gone mad at the fact that Doc made a mockery of the police in court, not only beating their case against him but even having his guns and drugs returned! He was not just a scribe! He was Scarface with a pen!”

I was wrong. Tragically, he did end his own life in much the same way as Ernest Hemingway, acting quickly and without question. Why does that make more sense than what I thought as a young man? Thompson saw too much. One of his first rules had always been “Pay Attention” and eventually his acumen brought him to his knees. For when a person, moreover a writer, pays close attention to media trends, no matter how banal, and does this for a great deal of time they begin to see around corners. Not simply be able to think around corners, but see what is coming with the eye of a prophet. A few proselytize as if wearing a magical sandwich board and ringing a bell; I myself agree with Thompson. It is just logic, logic built like muscles via hunting down the subtext lying inside everything. And the poor man, grown old and tired from all the years of taking every move to the absolute limit could no longer stand watching the country he loved so dearly slip through his fingers like a threadbare silk power tie. He could no longer abide knowing many of his friends--such as Richard Nixon--were downright criminals.

I describe him as part Edgar Cayce, part F. Scott Fitzgerald, and part Studs Terkel with a generous dose of the Tazmanian Devil. His second wife described him as a “teenage girl trapped in the body of a mean old man.” Perhaps both are true. Watching Thompson in his documentaries, he is alternately gentle and vicious like a dog that will bite but would rather lick. He once wrote a letter to a young boy who shared his first name that read; “Never forget you come from a long line of lovers and warriors.” He braved the wilds of Argentina and lived dangerously in Puerto Rico to write for The San Juan Star that constantly held out on paychecks. He risked his life covering Vietnam and the Chicago Seven protests to help Jann Wenner make a real magazine out of Rolling Stone. He took severe punishment and a beating from the Hell’s Angels to write the book about them so he and his family could have a house of their own, Owl Farm. How many men stack up to him? Not many, regardless of his suicide which I believe was brought on not by some Man In Black but by that ability to see his own irrelevance sneaking up on him with the very dagger he had created, the triumphant fist holding a peyote button. Toys and the dumbing down of a generation by these smiling morons on the television…they are still smiling and they always will and there’s not a blasted thing even Thompson could do about it.

He may well have been wrong. We shall see.

A Final Note: The day he died, I grabbed a black sharpie and my acoustic guitar and wrote on the soundbox: HST-’37-’05 and added my favorite sentence of his, one from The Rum Diary that, to me, says more about his thinking, life, and attitude than any one of these words.

“They would finish their drinks and file quietly into the night, like a troupe of clowns at the end of a laughless day.”

Rest in Peace, old Viking. You proved it, at least to me if no one else. The pen really is mightier than the sword.