"Dude, we're a hundred short on rent." Sean nervously rubbed his hand over the buzzed blonde hairs on his head. He started counting the pile of money again, kneeling on the floor in front of the rickety table by the couch.
Tigger was sprawled across the couch, unusually calm and quiet and reading the latest edition of Maximum Rock and Roll. "My band doesn't play another gig until January. Sorry."
Bean was in the kitchen. Amidst the stacks of dirty dishes he turned on the gas stove top and lit his cigarette, nearly catching fire to his goatee in the process. "What about Pickle. Can't she just ask her folks for the difference?"
Sean threw the last bill on the stack with the frustration of knowing his earlier math was correct. "No go. Her folks left the country for Christmas. We're on our own this time."
Tigger sprang from the couch, becoming his usual blur of energy. "Did you say a hundred short?"
Sean instinctively dodged to the side in an attempt to miss the flailing arms of his room mate. "Yeah. Six hundred bucks. Bean and I cashed our unemployment checks, Pickle spent her allowance on a stack of records, and your band doesn't play again until next year. We're screwed."
"No, no, no. We're not. Do you know what six hundred bucks can buy?" Tigger's bangs fell in front of his face and did a little dance on his chin as he bounced with excitement. His friends just stared at him waiting for the answer. "I can get us three sheets of acid. We throw a New Year's party, my band will play, Pickle can get her boyfriend's band to play, and I bet we can get Groin Lever to play if we let them headline. We invite everyone we know and tell them to bring all their friends. We let the skaters downstairs in for free and then sell acid to all who want it. We can DOUBLE our money."
Bean plopped down on the couch and nodded his approval. The worried hand was still rubbing over Sean's head. "Great, but your connection is leaving town tomorrow, the busses have quit running, and we don't know anyone with a car."
Tigger suggested, "What about a cab?"
"Eats into our profit, and we're running tight as it is. And if you pay some cabby to keep the meter running while you run into someplace and come back out, he'll know you were scoring, and a lot of the cabbies have turned narc." Bean let out a stream of smoke that seemed to add a silent exclamation point to his statement.
The thin arms of Tigger stretched to a bar across a doorway as he started doing pull ups. He never did them to keep in shape, he just always needed to be doing something. It helped him think. Sean and Bean were motionless in the living room, trying to come up with their own solution.
The latch moving on the old kitchen door broke the silence of the room. Pickle was home and she had somebody with her whom the crew had never seen before. The guy was huge, seeming to drastically shrink the size of their spacious living accommodations. They were used to the new punks, all dread locks and dirty clothes. This guy had on a black leather jacket with spikes so big that on anyone else they would have looked ridiculously. Chains crossed the back, narrowly missing the portrait of Sid Vicious. Most peculiar of all, was the brown suede cowboy hat that perched on his head.
"This is Jay, an old friend of mine. He came into town to meet a friend at Dance Party, but they never showed. Can he crash here tonight?" Pickle turned on the stove and was careful to keep her multi-colored dreads away from the flame as she sparked up a joint. She handed it to Jay, who promptly took a large toke and held his breath.
The trio broke their reserved stance and welcomed the new comer. Tigger was hot onto something. "Hey man, you got a car? I need a lift to a friend's house to pick up some tapes." He discreetly turned his back to Jay and picked up his jacket and the rent money, stashing the funds in a pocket.
"Uh, yeah. You need to go now?" Jay passed the joint back to Pickle as Tigger bounced out the door. Jay popped a Camel from his pack and sparked it up with a Zippo from a pouch on his belt. "I'll take that as a yes."
"I don't normally like to drive stoned in the snow. You're lucky I only had one hit." Jay walked up to his car, unlocked it, and pushed the button to let his new companion in.
"You drive a Camaro?"
"She's a 1989 Firebird. Bloody Bitch Red. Her name is Stella and I'm teaching her to fly." He turned on the ignition and the stereo blared.
Listen"You like Ministry?" Jay pulled away from the house into the snow covered streets. A fresh layer was being added at a quickening pace and the whole city seemed to sparkle.
Get this
Nobody with a good car needs to worry about nothin'
You understand
I think I do
Listen
Get this
Nobody with a good car needs to be justified
"Yeah. Ministry's cool."
"This is the song that's going to define our generation. Every hippy can remember where they were when they first heard Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band, right? Well, our generation will remember where they first heard Jesus Built My Hotrod. It captures the essence of what we're all about and the times we live in."
What are you talkin' about?"You understand? He's talking about the quantum nature of our reality. The past is forever obliterated. The future is a mystery. And the present is a never ending series of unpredictable events that start as a mysterious future and quickly turn into a fogged past."
Where you come from, is gone
Where you thought you were goin' to, weren't never there
And where you are ain't no good unless you can get away from it
You understand?
Tigger was starting to get into the whole thing. The car rang out with stereo, Jay and Tigger, all shouting along.
There's only one thing left for me to do mama.Jay's cigarette butt flew out the window as he floored the gas, sending the car into a mini-fishtail in the fresh powder. Tigger, who always considered himself one to live on the edge, was starting to question the wisdom of asking a stoned punk rock cowboy with a muscle car for a lift in the snow. He took a GPC from his pack and focused on giving directions.
I got to dinga-ding-dang
My danga-long-linglong
"Park here and I'll be right back out. Shouldn't take more than a minute." Of course Jay knew what was really going on. Nobody needed to get tapes from a friend in the middle of the night. The only thing he didn't know was what kind of drugs Tigger was buying. The bunch seemed like a stoner crowd, so maybe he'd get some pot out of the deal. During his hiatus from Kansas City, Jay had missed the flow of high quality substances that ran through a place with such a central location in the country.
He never paid for drugs. Food, car rides, maybe even a pack of cigarettes here and there to keep his benefactors happy. It seemed like a strange twist of karma for him. When he first wanted to try pot, he went out and bought a dime bag, which his friend Isak promptly smoked. "Man, you smoked it all? This was gonna be my first time getting high." Isak had registered utter shock that somebody would actually pay for drugs the first time around. So he took him to a party, shared the story, and everyone there proceeded to make certain that Jay inhaled much, much more than he had purchased. Ever since then, he never seemed to be able to buy drugs. People just gave them to him.
"Thanks for waiting." Tigger bounced into the passenger seat.
"No tapes?" Jay flashed a conspiratorial grin across the car.
"Uh, no. He loaned them to his girlfriend. I'll get 'em later." He went to fish another cigarette from his pack and found it empty. Looking up he saw Jay's hand in front of him, holding out his pack of Camels. "Thanks."
"He's doing WHAT with our rent money?!" Pickle was turning red with anger. Her room mates gave her the whole run down of their plan. "I can't believe you guys." She stabbed out her cigarette and reached for another. Her room mates went to speak but she cut them off. "Listen, I'm not mad about the drugs, or the party, or any of that. I'm pissed cuz you sent my friend off with Tigger on a drug deal without telling him about it. And he smoked part of that joint, too. What if he gets pulled over and ends up in prison because his passenger has a bunch of acid on him, huh?! HUH?! I mean he drives like a maniac as it is. If he knew, he could have toned it down a bit." She reached for the purple bong on the table and took another hit.
It was Bean's stash, and he hated when she acted like everything belonged to her, but now was not the time to argue. Everyone in the house relaxed when they heard the front door open.
"Jay! Did Tigger tell you it was a drug run?" Her room mate's eyes went wide behind his fogged over glasses. Pickle's eyes were narrowed and her face scowling back at him.
Jay took off his cowboy hat for the first time that evening, revealing a bright green mohawk. "Never said a word about it. Didn't need to. Tapes. I mean really, guys. So what is it?" A moment of silence filled the room before Pickle blurted out the answer. "Acid? Ooo, what kind? Let me see." Tigger reluctantly took the sheets from his jacket and tossed them onto the table. "Ahh, Piggly Wiggly. A friend of mine in KC calls it Tiny Toons cuz he swears the pig looks like Hampton. I don't see it. Good stuff though. Clean and potent."
"Listen man, I'm sorry about not telling you. Have a ten strip for the trouble." Tigger was already breaking out the tweezers and a little scissors. Pickle was handing him Bean's bong, and Sean was in the corner with an exacto knife, a glue stick, a news paper, and some photos, assembling the flyer for the upcoming party.
"Hey Pickle. I picked up a new CD today and haven't had a chance to listen to it yet. Mind if I stick it on on on on on on on..." He hadn't taken any acid, but the fatigue and pot were combining to play tricks on Jay's brain. He watched as a pair of black and white striped poles extended from beneath Pickle's black skirt, then broke into a dance which moved her to a side room. As she reappeared with a box on a handle in her hand, the multi-colored twisted snakes on her head darted their tongues out to tickle her lovely unsunned face. He glanced down at the CD in his hands and now questioned the wisdom of purchasing an album that had an insectoid like priest on the cover. It had come highly recommended and he said so as he handed it over to a hand reaching back towards him from what seemed like two impossibly beautiful bum cheeks stuck to stripey sticks.
"I think he's zonked. Jay. Jay. You still with us man?" Bean's mohawk of flaccid noodles bobbed into view as Jay nodded and pulled his legs into the lotus position.
"He's probably really tired. He's been on the road for a few days now." Candy colored rainbow haired beauty extended a finger and touched it to the handled box.
Jay prided himself on being as gracious a guest as possible, so he tried to pull himself together for a bit. "I think the time has come for me to just listen for a while. Feel free to talk and I'll interact as I can." And so Pickle started telling Bean all about the people she met at Dance Party that night. Bean pretended to care. Jay smiled away on the couch, amused at how obvious it was that Bean wanted to fuck his sexy little room mate. The album seemed decent. He wasn't sure it ranked such high praise, but it certainly wasn't a waste of money. Then the title track came on.
Choices always were a problem for you
What you need is someone strong to guide you
The voices around him floated away and he found himself being sucked into a musical montage coming alive around him. Soon the room was also blurring, replaced with a vibrating blackness which embraced and smothered him with love and anger. This was beyond Jesus Built My Hotrod. That was the song of his generation. This, well, this was something else entirely. A lot of people wouldn't get this. The lyrics, yes, the lyrics seemed simple enough. There was another message here. Some message hidden in the music itself. Some pregnant potentiality wanting to burst forth and free the world from its self imposed torture. Can you really swirl in circles so quickly that it seems as though you are standing still yet seeing all around you? Were these insectoid aliens supposed to be here watching the reaction and taking notes? Who R U?
As the song ended and he re-entered consensus space-time, he lit a cigarette. Pickle gave him a peck on the cheek and said good night. He saw Beans face flush with, what, jealousy? Yeah, something like that. Sean was still cutting and pasting. Tigger had bounced off to his room to have a phone conversation with his girlfriend. Damn, this place was dirty, but at least the insectoids had gone. It would have been hard to sleep with them watching.
Jay let himself out in the morning while the others slept. He headed west, out of the city, to hook up with his high school buddy, John Doe, who had spent his time after graduation as a hermit in a small shack on the back 40 of his parents' farm.
"I ran into Pickle at Dance Party and crashed at her place. I guess they're having a little get together for New Years. Wanna go?" Jay was using the tweezers and scissors from his Swiss Army knife to cut the ten strip in half, and then divide one of those halves in half again. JD stuck his tongue out and accepted the two and a half hits of blotter, the sacrament of the insane.
"Why not. I need to be around people for a change. The sheep are all so negative and mocking around here. Nothing but BAH! BAH!"
"I envy you, man. I wanted to take a year off, but my parents kept pushing for me to go off to college, and I caved. If this is anything like the shit we got in KC, we should have a pretty good time. Wanna go see Aladdin?"
"Nah."
"No, you said it was 'BAH'. You really have spent too much time around the sheep."
"BAH! We'll party New Years. Let's just sit here and talk tonight. I haven't seen you for fuckin' ever."
JD was always a wild man, and Jay had worried that the hermitage might have mellowed him. His wavy, wiry hair still gave him that insane look and as the acid took hold, the giant pupils just added to the effect. He was going off to college next fall, off in Utah, to become an engineer. Math was his passion. While they both had studied art at a special magnet school for the last few years, JD knew that it had just been a way to escape from the backwards hicks at his local public school.
You are broken now but faith can heal you"Most people are no different from these sheep. They run around in herds and whenever they encounter something new and strange they go 'Bah. Bah.' The man who built the Golden Gate Bridge had no engineering degree. He was able to design it because nobody told him that such a long suspension bridge was impossible." JD grabbed the cigarette from Jay's hand and had a drag.
Just do everything I tell you to do
Deaf and blind and dumb and born to follow"It's weird. I both admire and hate them. These are the ordinary everyday working people. They get the work done that needs doing. I don't know if I'll ever be able to do that. And after work they go out to the bar, have a few beers, go home, and watch TV. Their lives are so simple, uncomplicated. Me, I feel the need to question everything. Why this? Why that? Can't things be another way? Just take a look at kids and the way they always ask why, why, why. You can ask it for fuckin' ever. Eventually someone says 'because'. When that happens you can either accept that things are the way they are, or set off on your own to dig deeper, trying to answer the why's for all eternity. Each answer is merely a prelude to another question. Give that back."
What you need is someone strong to guide you
He has needs"Believe me, when you're surrounded by 'bahs', it's good to hear the 'whys' for a change. And it'll be nice to see Pickle again. Is that a giant mantis on the ceiling?"
Like I do
We both want"Why?"
To rape youInsert riotous laughter here. It lasts far longer than it probably should, but, hey, that's the way it goes.
"Hey Jay, I have a confession to make."
"Yeah?"
"I like Nirvana."
"Yeah, me too."
With the lights outJD: I thought you said it was going to be a get together.
It's less dangerous
Here we are now
Entertain us
Jay: Well, it is smaller than a rave.
The pair entered the house now dubbed the Lake Street Sanitarium. The place was packed with all the seedier elements of the youth subculture from around the city. There were skaters, punks, goths, metal heads, hippies, and an overabundance of that new crop of more socially accepted freaks, the alternals of the grunge movement. As they made it to the third floor where the band was playing, the stairwell was lined with gutter punks; dirty, smelly kids who rebelled against their parents by refusing to shower. They were all wide eyed with acid and wanted to hug all who passed. It was a gauntlet.
Having made it through the olfactory assault, the two found Pickle in the kitchen while her boyfriend's band blasted some song about overthrowing the government. "JD! Jay! You made it!" She threw her arms around both of them at once and squeezed herself into them. "The party is a huge hit! Tigger has already sold two sheets and we have more than enough for rent. That means the last sheet is for friends. Want some?" The trio made their way to the rear bedroom where Tigger was serenading a group of college girls while playing his acoustic. "Tig. Where's the acid?" His head motioned towards a desk where the better part of a sheet sat along side the tweezers and scissors. Pickle halved a ten strip. She placed one half on her tongue and gave JD a deep soul kiss. She then repeated the act with Jay. "I've done that with a few people tonight. I figure if I keep doing it, I won't have to take any myself and I'll still trip pretty hard." She then bounded out of the room, leaving JD and Jay to exit awkwardly as the group of girls seemed barely able to keep from leaving gooey puddles on the floor while swooning over Tigger.
"It's too loud up here. Let's hang with the skaters downstairs until the bands are done playing." Jay led the way back down, hugging the wall along the steps to allow newcomers the rapture of the smelly gutter punk love gauntlet.
"Jay. That room back there. Is that Uma? Oh my god, it's Uma!" JD raced to the back room, nearly causing a skate accident in the living room, and tackling Uma with a bear hug.
Isak was there, too, downing someone's codeine medicine while holding a joint in his other hand. Jay tackled the blonde junkie and grabbed the joint from his hand for his own use. The tall Norwegian landed a weak jab to Jay's side, forcing him to exhale prematurely. "Did I ever tell you you're a total bastard?"
Isak toked the joint and answered in a raspy voice of inhalation, "Yeah. Pretty much all the time." He passed back to Jay and exhaled over his shoulder as he gave him a sloppy kiss to the side of the face. "You should shave. Your going to chafe my lips."
JD had released the shaved head of Uma long enough for her to catch her breath again. She was more beautiful than he had remembered, with a soft, curvy figure and one of those rare, round, feminine faces that actually looked good with a septum ring in the center of it. Did she ever take off that leather jacket? Who cared, it looked good on her. "Damn, I didn't think anybody would be THAT happy to see me. Let me breathe already." JD just squeezed her tight again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
Whoa, yeah, there it was starting to kick in. That fast, huh? Well, they hadn't had much to eat that day.
Isak dragged Jay into the living room to meet some friends of his. He closed the door behind him as he left.
JD just kept hugging Uma and the more he hugged her, the less she seemed to mind. So he hugged her some more. The two sat next to each other on a mattress in the middle of the floor. A desk lamp aimed at the ceiling washed the room with a soft light. He squeezed her again. Damn, she felt good. Her body slid closer to his and he gave her another squeeze. Her hand reached down to cover his as she turned to face him. It felt as though she were pealing herself away. Then her hand moved his to her thigh as she leaned in and touched her lips to his. How long had he been out in that shack being a hermit? Damn!
With the lights out"It's the quantum nature of reality. The future only exists as potentialities, that which may or may not come to be. The past is a fog of memories easily rearranged and rewritten." Jay was trying to explain his favorite pet theory to Isak and his friends.
It's less dangerous
Here we are now
Entertain us
What are you talkin' about?"You're full of shit. The past is solid. What has happened can't be undone." Isak always did like a good fight.
Where you come from, is gone
Where you thought you were goin' to, weren't never there
And where you are ain't no good unless you can get away from it
You understand?
"No, check it out. The past is only real in as much as it influences the present. If everyone really believed the American Revolution never happened, we would find ourselves behaving in a way that reflected that. It's the same as if it never actually occurred because the effect it had is gone." And this moment will never happen. Not this way. I am rewriting it in my mind at this very moment. Oh my god, Isak is so dense sometimes. Is that a mantis smoking in the kitchen?
"If my parents stopped believing they had a child and tried to act like I didn't even exist, I'd be able to provide proof to the contrary. Birth certificate, news archives, history is documented. Damn, dude. Your pupils are HUGE!"
"You're buying into the history myth. What you said doesn't work because different parties are trying to enforce different versions of reality on each other. The government's version as expressed in their documentation is only valid because we give it validity. We create our own reality." And this conversation is escaping from me. The acid is starting to go a bit strong to keep this up. I think I need to lay down. Time to end this conversation.
"Damn, I can't talk this shit with you. You are tripping hard and talking nonsense." Isak hugs Jay and kisses him on the cheek. His eyes are like a thousand mirrors reflecting different facets of reality in a disco globe array throughout the room. "I love ya, man. Later."
Wow. That was easy. Did I do that? Say yes. Sit at the center of your own conspiracy. Sit. Yes. Sit. Hey, that room looks fairly quiet. Sit there next to the black angel. "That made a lot of sense. Wanna sit and talk for a while?" Wow. I must have done that, too. "I'm Angel." A black angel is talking to me. The mantis is still in the kitchen. Seems like I should say something.
"I'm Jay."
Oh yeah. Wow. I can't believe she's doing this. Whoa. Yeah. My hand is up her shirt. How long without human contact? In and out. In and out. Reality is both in here and out there. My eyes are closed but I can see the sparks jumping from my finger tips as I feel her skin. Uma, you are fantastic.
Where you come from, is goneUma takes off her jacket, answering the riddle pondered earlier, or was it later?
Where you thought you were goin' to, weren't never thereJD's hand slides under her shirt to cup a supple nup wup fa-boom. It's like the electrons are dancing with each other, jumping from body to body in a free exchange that results in a sum total greater than the parts intertwining and wining and dining together for tea four two three zero one five.
And where you are ain't no good unless you can get away from itUma's hand tugs at the tattered belt around his waist as her head lowers to bite a bit of body boogie bang bang baru BAH! What's that giggle for? I'd say it's love but love is forever and this is right here right now what I have always wanted and what I will never have but I'll be damned if I'm not going to try for something a little better next life around.
There's only one thing left for me to do mama.Meanwhile in the alcove, the black angel is joining in the chorus of the AmerAsian Blews. "It's cold in here. Do you mind if I sit closer?"
I got to dinga-ding-dang
My danga-long-linglong
Jay was out of his mind, but I am taking up residence there for a while. "You know I'm tripping my balls off right now, right?"The angel blushes. Wow, shows how sheltered the lives we lead can be. Never seen a black angel blush chablis shebang boom BAH! She leans over and kisses Jay on the cheek. How sweet smelling perfume of sweat.
"Angel, have you ever fucked a total stranger before?" It's bold. It's brave. It's almost guaranteed to send this pretty young thing running for cover in her psychic bomb shelter. Danger. Danger.
"No. But I've always wanted to." Did I do that? Am I creating my own reality again? Hmm, might as well go for tit for tat for give a god a loan. "You've got a condom, right?"
We can danceHey now, is that really appropriate right now? I'm the punk rock cowboy. What's this 1980's shit? Turn it down. Tone it down. Yeah, I'm digging this scene a hell of a lot more than arguing with Isak figgy Newton pudding pop parade pow wha? "Of course."
We can dance
Everybody takin' the chance
The safety dance
Pickle is wandering around asking everyone if they've seen Jay and JD? Where? When? What? Why? How? Who? Has anyone else noticed that mantis taking gravity bong hits in the kitchen?
Tenpole Tudor asks who killed Bambi? JDuma is inside the box and doesn't need Schrödinger to tell her/him about the state of the pussy. The born again angel is walking with the devil may care.
Deaf and blind and dumb and born to followNine. Nein. Vi half nut scene dem.
Let me lay my holy hand upon youEight something dark and sweet while she swallows it black hole sun. JUmaxD out on reality right before the overload.
My God's willSeven pairs of insectoid eyes coming creeping into her bedroom. Pickle has given up on finding her friends, feeling frisky she follows her fuck fiend.
Becomes meSix six six sex sex sex fun fun fun trip trip trip.
When he speaksFive-Oh! Five-Oh! False alarm, they're going next door.
He speaks through meFortune has smiled on the best of friends, but all will cum to a bitter end.
He has needsThree Bean, Sean, and Tigger are toasting. Their asses aren't yet roasting. A plan worthy of boasting.
Like I doToo far gone in the moment to care about anything else. Oh! God! Yes!
We both wantOne arm raises a black iron bar high above its head. The mantis is done preying. Poor, poor Pickle.
To rape youThe ball drops. It all blows up, one way or another. Just another failed Apocalypse. See you next Rapture.
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