I know why they tell ya to wear a mask when you’re walkin’ around this place. Not just to protect yourself and others from COVID. But you don’t even need all the booze to make ya hurl when ya walk into the bathroom. Converse splash in the puddles around the toilet with painter’s tape ripped from it. Watch the liquid run from your heel to return home to the puddle on the floor. When you kick the toilet flushed. Or at least attempt to flush. At least the sink’s got runnin’ water. Probably where the 25$ fine for leavin’ trash in the hallway goes. Maybe we shouldn’t be cleanin’ up after ourselves. Billy Bee asked a buncha people to go in on the studio when everyone else bailed. You can find YouTube channels dedicated to people squattin’ in this building. There’s no soap in the bathroom. And accordin’ to everyone else. The rats are big enough and smart enough to be guard dogs.
Nobody knows whose foot went through Bubba’s face. And the skateboard is missin’. But we found a full script of gabapentin in an empty room. The walls vibrate in the halls from bass and reverb. And it smells like the dispensary that just opened up has a lotta potential suppliers in the building. We find trees growin’ through brick walls in people’s basements. “Whip-its make the tinnitus sound sick!” Billy Bee drones. They say poppers are just your brain askin’ yourself what you’re doin’. The things we do for tone.
Ian Mackaye’s face is split in half by the fire extinguisher we don’t know how to use. And I didn’t even know was fuckin’ there till we projected this movie on the wall. Heathcliff the Big Cheese mocks the straight edge asshole while he says the scene wasn’t where the show was. The scene happened on the curbs. Brannon talks about spendin’ the day collectin’ beer cans to buy a Burger Thang. Three burgers and a pop for a buck fifty. How else would twenty year old kids survive? I mean. Mangosteens scare the shit outta me.
The Guilty Undertaker plays the honky tonk. Sings about sittin’ on their couch. Trippin’ balls and watchin’ their cat. Got the house shoes on. Walk down the block and pick up some Boostan. Old timers and moonshiners drunk on their porch start conversations. The self-aware horse microdosin’ ketamine is passin’ a joint to the wild turkey terrorizin’ the street cats. Trees are spray painted for doomers. And the baby boomers turn away in despair. “Suspension is a luxury.” They tell me tossin’ a backpack in the trunk before we drive eight hours to the March on Washington. You’ll only blow a tire in the Florida of the Midwest. But the telemarketers for Jesus don’t get the joke.
“You’re livin’ the twenty somethin’ year old’s dream.” Baby Audobhan the Mad Organ Grinder laughs to me. Learnin’ how to do protest audio. Takin’ a Kerouac inspired deadend to find the America they told us about in high school. Curtis Mayfield moans the elevator music in my head. Eatin’ Adderall like Flintstones gummies. But still the only pill I choke on are vitamins. Shit. Half the time I don’t even remember to brush my teeth in the morning. As I’m typin’ this I’m thinkin’ I forgot to. But I’m livin’ off unemployment. And sellin’ plasma to fund Santa’s Workshop.
“Ya know.” Drag the cig. Baby Audobhan the last pure one of the scene that hasn’t visited Joe Camel’s tar filled oasis. “God and Santa aren’t much different.”
Joe Camel is probably hooked up to a ventilator in a death ward in El Paso right about now. Won’t see an exorcist to declare the time his energy leaves his body cause he doesn’t have insurance. He probably hasn’t exercised in ages anyways. Mitch McConnell will tell ya he had it comin’ when you run into him in a deadend in Pan’s Labyrinth.
We spend so much of our lives runnin’ in circles. Tryin’ to weed whack and smoke enough grass to get through this hedge maze. But when ya eat three hits of acid the Verve’s “the Drugs Don’t Work” loops in your head. We spend so much time tryin’ to connect. Tryin’ to feel part of somethin’ bigger than we are. But at the end of the day we all go it alone. Even the doctors won’t be there for us when our consciousness implodes in the familiar feelin’ of DMT. Yes. It seems more apparent than ever that we’re all dyin’. I can see the energy slowly escape mine and all my friend’s bodies. And each day it seems closer than ever. The day my friends assume my naked body replacin’ my shower curtain is just another case of sensual self-loathing. Not realizin’ it wasn’t an accident I forgot to put a lemon in my mouth. In case of emergency. Do not revive. Shove the twenty three year old fetus down a K-hole in your brain.
“We have narcan?” The Doomkeeper asks frightened. He sees all us tightrope walkin’ between the Twin Towers. But this is the first time we’ve ever had a safety net. They say don’t do anything the person in front of you understands. And only the Guilty Undertaker understands the dreadful joy of findin’ a half gram horse in your camera bag.
Drop the blocks. Crunch the numbers. Play the apps funded by the ADA. The toaster is cookin’ on the open flame of the stove. Razorblades spark in the microwave on David Bowie’s star of fame. And a bowl of Count Chocula spoils on top of the snare drum. Look outside the window while I hit electric nicotine. In any flavor your childish tastebuds can imagine. Watch the donkeys and bluebirds dance in the alley to “Girl U Want.” Oh mama. Don’t tell me this is the end. Stuck with the Florida of the Midwest, Devocore blues. Shit. Sounds like somethin’ that would even scare off Bo Diddley and John the Kangaroo.
There’s somethin’ calmin’ about Adventure Time though. I don’t know anyone’s name. But do we ever learn who anybody is? There’s somethin’ calmin’ about the way the end credit song can trigger a dissociative episode. “Come along with me…” My eyes shrivel inside my skull. The donkeys and bluebirds and twenty three year old fetuses fall through the K-holes of my skull. And I can watch myself. From my vantage point spinnin’ in the rust orange piss of the toilet. Not understandin’ what my own body is doin’ in front of me. Maybe those straight edge, third wave ska kids were onto somethin’ more than checkered fedoras. Because the scene isn’t what happens in all the Instagram stories. The scene isn’t an homage to Bob Dylan. Jack Kerouac. Joe Camel. Or John Fuckin’ Brannon. Check it out! The scene happens on the curbs. The scene happens in the K-holes of our skulls. It happens in all these moments we see the energy drainin’ from each other’s bodies. Bone marrow turns to lines of baby lax and amphetamines. The twenty dollar bills unravel into ratty old ones. They say the scene survives on the same fifty bucks exchangin’ hands.
The scene happens when we realize our friends are doin’ things we don’t understand. So we don’t know how to save each other. But we can see the reflections in the ways we destroy ourselves for tone. It’s a sad reality. And maybe that’s why it’s so hard for us socially awkward and mentally unwell people to make friends. Connect. We know we’ll never get outta the hedge maze in the Shining. Even if we buy an automated typewriter. We know the reason we love free jazz is because that chaos is the elevator music runnin’ in our heads when we turn our brains off. We all know no matter how much we start to understand each other. We still gotta drunk piss alone in a taped off toilet. Nobody even there to hold our hair back when we puke from the meltin’ pot of our consciousness. The unflushed toilets. And all the alcohol we can find to sanitize our insides.
