WHOLE 30 Day One: Sausage fritatta for breakfast. Work. Coffee. Kale/Chicken soup for lunch. Workout: 29 reps of 130 lbs., 50 push ups, 50 sit ups, 25 squats w/ 15 lb. bells, 20 biceps w. 20 lb. bells. Ran 4.8 miles. Mango slices. Sunflower seeds. Kale/Chicken soup for dinner. Felt ok but hungry. Have to learn to deal. Miss sugar more than booze, just like last time. Must stay strong!

Stick 'Em Up! (Chapter 2)

This is one part of another older Steeple Chase exercise.

A couple months later I saw Jerry, the guy who peed in my mouth, at a bar called The Maple Leaf. Ironically enough, there was an Expos game on the tube, which I kept my eyes locked on as Jerry and his wife pulled up stools right next to me. I saw him out in my peripheral vision, noticed him staring at me with a big smile, took a big swig of my beer, and gulped hard as I remembered how I practically had to use his piss as Listerine that night. The thought of his urine cascading like white-water rapids through my gums was enough to make me want to spill it right there on the bar. I held my vomit in my throat though, having developed a fear of public restrooms recently.
Jerry kept his eyes on me, and smiled big, revealing his huge horse teeth. My eyes started to water from watching the television screen so hard. The game wasn’t even on anymore, it was some commercial for Canadian tampons.
He ordered a beer and said “Tom right? Remember me?”
The jig was up.
“Yeeeaaahhh, hey there Jerry...” I said, still adamantly staring at the T.V., “How’s uh…well…yeah…you know…”
“Great! Just great, Tom! I just opened my own restaurant down the street here. We’re called ‘Stick ‘Em Up!’” He chuckled and slapped his knee, “familiar words, ey Tom?” He slapped me on the shoulder and I edged my stool away from him.
“See, we’re a theme-restaurant…I don’t know if you remember this night in particular, Tom, but when we met, we were, well, we were in a little bit of a-uh, well how should I put it-“
“We were drunk and pissing into a trough, Jerry, and then we got mugged,” I said, letting my teeth show as I made eye contact with Jerry.
“Right, well, lemme tell ya, Tom- when I felt that cold steel pressing against the back of my head I had a moment of revelation,”
“Oh yeah, Jerry- a revelation, like the one I had when your liquid waste turned my face into a Jackson Pollack painting, yeah- that’s when I realized I wanted to become an artist!” I thought.
“See- Oh excuse me, Tom- this is my wife, Laura-Jean,” Jerry said, leaning back his gigantic body to reveal the slightly less gigantic body of his wife.
“Hi, Tom,” she said, as she sipped on a Bloody Mary and summoned a slutty smile that probably hadn’t been used since she was a freshman in community college. I had to wonder if Jerry ever pissed in her mouth. I shuddered.
“Nice to meet ya, Laura-Jean, hope you keep this guy on a short leash- HE’S OUT OF CONTROL!” I said, punching Jerry a little too hard in the arm and almost falling off my stool. How long had I been at this bar? “I’ll have three shots of Jack Daniels and another beer,” I told the bartender.
Jerry chuckled and rubbed his arm, “Uh- well, anyway, Tom- Stick ‘Em Up! serves only the finest in Tex-Mex foods, we’ve got all kinds of pictures on the walls of famous tyrants like Billy the Kid and Wyatt Earp, you know- but here’s the best part- all of our staff are dressed up as Bandits! With bandanas over their faces and everything! Boy, I tell ya- business isn’t exactly booming, but we’re still in our first month. I tell ya, Tom, I’m so glad we got held up that night- I’ve found my calling!”
At least I think that’s what he said. Before he had said ‘Wyatt Earp’ I had downed the three shots and gulped down the beer.
“Sounds great, Larry” I slurred.
“It’s Jerry, Tom, and I’m glad you like the idea! You should stop by- it’s just down the street here off Klondike street. The best and only Tex-Mex food in all of Canada, I believe. We can’t get you the entire meal free, just can’t afford it, but I might be able to work out a free basket of chips, for uh…an old friend,” He said and winked at me.
“You got a fat face, Terry,” I said, drooling on myself, “Why’d you pee on me?”
Laura-Jean giggled and peaked up behind Jerry’s Mountain of a shoulder.
“Does he pee on you too?” I said, falling off my stool. I lost control of my legs and landed face-first in Jerry’s lap. My shoulders were trapped between the bar and Jerry’s massive legs. My screams of terror were muffled by his thick Levi’s. My arms flailed as I tasted his piss once again in my mouth. How many times was I gonna have to deal with this guy’s junk? The white-waters were rushing through my mouth once again, and this time I couldn’t hold it in. If you’ve ever thrown up into someone’s lap before, you know that there’s really no room for the vomit to spread. I almost suffocated as I spewed regurgitated alcohol right into Jerry’s crotch. I was finally able to breathe when Jerry’s stool tipped backwards and he fell to the ground.
He jumped up, his face beat-red. Laura-Jean immediately started drying his vomit-soaked crotch with bar napkins. The bar crowd got quite a kick out of this and were beginning to gather around us.
“You puked on my dick, Tom!” He screeched.
“You pissed in my mouth, Jerry!” I retorted.
He stepped around Laura-Jean, who was squatting at his crotch now, and piling up used napkins at his feet, and came towards me. He extended his hand.
“I guess we’re even- How would you like to be the new night manager at Stick ‘Em Up!?” he asked with a smile.
I sighed, spat a "God damn it" at the floor and shook his hand.

Igtolerance

Two aspiring Klansmen stroll down a dimly-lit alley way. Suddenly, one of them stops and begins to violently punch the brick wall beside him. His friend restrains him, saying "Ennis, stop! We're fine. That's just a shadow. Wow...you are really racist!"

Chaos

10/'04 - This is an excerpt from a parody our Fiction II class did of Gogol's short story 'The Nose.' In the story, the main character discovers a disembodied nose that he attempts to return to it's owner. My story is about a goth kid who finds a wrist.

Chaos crept into the kitchen where his mother was cooking dinner. The secret, deathly personae he tried to exude at all times was announced loudly by the clanking of his ridiculously long wallet chain. His mother turned around from her pot of meatloaf and jumped.

“OH! Jeremy…Christ, you look frightening,” she said, grasping her chest.
“Thanks…but I’ve told you a thousand times, Martha, it’s CHAOS!” he yelled.
“Well, Chaos,” she said with a laugh, “my name is ‘Mom,’ and I was perfectly fine with you calling me that for the past seventeen years.”
“Whatever…I gotta go,” Chaos said with forced apathy.
“Wait, Jeremy,” his mother pleaded, stepping in front of the back door. She held his arms, having to avoid the rows of metal spikes that he had sewn down his sleeves. “Why are you doing this? This isn’t you. Is it because of that girl…what’s her name? Fanny?”
“Sally!” Chaos yelped, his voice cracking at the mere thought of her.
“Well, whoever," she said, returning to the stove, "you know, I don’t appreciate this life style, I’ve been against it from the beginning. I was in college when the punks started showing up. Nasty bastards with their home-made piercings and spiked up hair. I don’t want to see you go down that road, Jeremy. One time some kid named Piss just ran into our sorority living room while we were having a party and puked all over me! Then he just ran out laughing!” she said.

Chaos wanted to laugh but he had forgotten how because he was so fucking goth.

“Look, that’s not me,” he said to her, “I don’t even drink anymore.”
“Well you’ve started that terrible band that practices in the garage…what’s the name, Shallow poop?” she asked.
“SHADOW WOLF, Martha!” he screamed. Chaos heard his father shift in his recliner from the living room where he sat watching a football game with increasing volume.
“I was also around when Ozzy Osbourne was biting heads off bats and snorting trails of fire ants up his nose!” she complained, “I know what goes on in the music scene, Jeremy, and it’s despicable.”

Before the word “despicable” had even left her lips, something small and pink jumped out of the boiling pot and landed on the kitchen floor.
“Oh My God!” his mother exclaimed.
Somehow, a piece of flesh had found its way into the pot where Chaos’ mother was preparing the family’s meatloaf for dinner that night.
“Is this your idea of a joke?!” Chaos’ mother screamed at him, “Is this some prop for your fucking band?! You get that out of here right now! Don’t come back with it!”
Chaos quickly picked up the flesh, wrapped it in a paper towel covered with farm houses and flowers and exited through the back door.

As he approached the Fast Stop at the end of the street he took one quick look at the terrible burden that had been given to him. It resembled a pork chop. The skin was delicate and soft. He stopped under a street light and took a closer look. It was a wrist. He could see it now. No hand or arm to accompany it. It had been severed from both by someone with a very steady hand. He swallowed hard and his spine shook.

He approached the trash can in the convenience store parking lot. Just before he got there, he saw the red truck pulling in. The same red truck that he saw so many nights full of the same drunk assholes looking for a fight. How did these guys always show up at the same time he did? It was getting to be routine by now. Before the driver could even park the truck, four or five of them had hopped out and were running towards Chaos.
“What’s up, faggot?” one of the clones called out.
“Whatcha got there? Your mom’s douche? Man, you are a homo,” said another.
Chaos didn’t say anything, just opened the paper towel to reveal its contents.
The one with the popped collar puked at first sight.
“Oh, you are one sick fuck,” he said in between heaves.
The others moaned and turned away in disgust.
One of them spat in Chaos’ face and delivered a hard blow to his cheek. The wrist flew out of his hands and into the alley way. Chaos' elbows hit the cement hard.

“We’re gonna have to beat your goth ass a little bit harder for this one, aren’t we shitbag?” said one of them.
“You are a fucking steamed shitbag, bro,” said the one who was still puking.

Just then the clerk, a young woman, ran out of the store, crying and yelling at them in broken English to 'run off!' Directly after came her father, the owner of the business, carrying a large sawed-off shot gun and screaming in Arabic.

“Oh fuck, let’s fuckin go, dudes!” yelled the popped collar. Within seconds they were all back into the truck, flipping off the scene as they left.

Chaos slithered over to the wrist and picked it up just as the young woman came to help him up. He quickly tried to hide the wrist but was found out. The woman gasped and covered her mouth, praying quietly to herself. Chaos looked up, faced with the barrel of the owner’s shotgun. In his best English, the man said “You have to go now…LEAVE!” Chaos jumped up and continued to run down the street into the cold night.

Floating in Oil

8/'04

peeled back the label
found in an empty arena
full of plastic catholics
buried in coffins.
saw mother mary falling down drunk
escaping imagination and infatuation
cradled in shotgun confessionals
beheading the kentucky bottle.
married in the month of May,
flowers floating in oil
wrists bending backwards
falling in open spaces
left where my eyes fall out
soldered a new wing on my shoulder
gathering the rapiers and swords,
slicing.

Goose

9/06/05

The three of them sat in Goose’s basement, waiting for him to get back from meeting his dealer. There was Eddie, who stalked the basement tiles like a hyena on the prowl. Digging his fingers into his ears and spitting on the walls. Eddie used to be a professional skateboarder, but blew all his sponsorships when he got injured and hooked on opiates. Then there was Gillian. No one had ever really figured her out. She wore “x’s” on her hands, as if she claimed straight edge, but would convulse constantly. She was probably still in high school judging by the school girl’s uniform. Either that or she was a stripper, no one seemed to know or care. Gillian kept quiet and concentrated on de-pleating her skirt. There was Keith, the b-boy master. Keith was from the streets and he never let you forget it. He danced to old hip hop songs for money to buy smack.
“’Aight,” Keith started, breaking the silence that had been choking all of them for several minutes, “Where’s our boy Goose?”
Gillian shook her head and sighed, keeping her eyes on her skirt and sitting on a beanbag chair in the corner. It was raining outside and she would glance up every now and then to the small window to see if Goose’s feet were trotting by.
Eddie attempted to keep conversation saying, “Man…that guy’s always…just…late man. He’s always…late. I gotta work pretty soon; just wanna…get a little…before I gotta work.”
Keith sighed and stood up from a folding chair. His jacket- gigantic, orange and bubbly- dropped down to his knees. He fiddled with the huge gold ring on his middle finger.
At all times, but never at the same time, one of them would have their eye on the door.
“Wait…” Eddie said, “Let’s get outta here…”
“No, man!” Keith yelled, getting desperate.
“Why, man?” Eddie said.
“We’re waitin’ for Goose, man!”
“Ooooh”
Just then, the door from the second floor opened, and someone started down the steps. Keith rubbed his hands together and licked his lips, saying “Alright, alright…”

The three of them stared with wide eyes at the door. Suddenly, the door burst open to reveal Goose’s mother. She carried a basket of laundry and frowned at them. She shook her head and offered a careless “Ya’ll waitin’ fer Richie?” and turned to the left, walking to the washer and dryer.
Keith sighed again, balling his hands into fists and shadowboxing towards Goose’s Mom’s back as she returned without a word and went back up the stairs.
Suddenly, Gillian let out a brief, high pitched squeak as she pointed up to the window. Keith and Eddie turned quickly enough to catch a glimpse of Goose’s Doc Marten’s, the leather of which was adorned with the Union Jack.
The basement door burst open and the pouring rain was heard briefly as Goose slammed the door and came down the steps. He entered, his Mohawk soaked and bleeding down the side of his bald head like a black eel. The water dripped down in pools off his leather jacket and flooded the cement floor. He glanced around the room quickly, not attempting to make eye contact but rather to see who the hell had let themselves into his house.
Keith spoke first, “Hey, man…need to buy a few hits.”
“Yeah, well…” Goose started, grabbing a towel and drying himself off.
“Yeah man,” Eddie followed, “I gotta go to work pretty soon…gotta buy some hits.”
“Look, the guy didn’t show up,” Goose said with a snarl, “I think maybe the cops got him.”
Gillian hugged her knees and started sobbing quietly.
Keith erupted, “What?! He didn’t show up? Well what the fuck are we supposed to do now, man?”
“Fuck if I know, man…have a cigarette, chill out,” Goose said, offering a smoke from his pack.
Keith grabbed the box, crushed it and threw it in the litter box sitting in the corner. He grabbed Goose’s collar and shoved him against the wall.
“I don’t fuckin’ smoke man. I shoot up. And when I can’t shoot I suddenly get real pissed off at little white boys,” Keith said through his teeth.
Goose sighed, seeming bored to death with the extremely angry man who was threatening him. “Look man,” he said with a slight grin, “I’m sure there’ll be some new shit real soon…besides, who’s the motherfucker whose been hooking you up for months? The Goose, baby.”
Keith stared deeply into Goose’s dilated pupils.
“You piece of shit…” Keith said, backing off Goose and turning to Eddie, “This cracker shot all the shit before he got here…He’s high as fuck.”
“Aw, man…that’s…that aint cool, man,” Eddie said, pacing nervously.
Gillian suddenly jumped up and ran towards Goose, tearing at his face with her nails and sinking her teeth into his neck. Keith and Eddie ripped her away and she fell to her knees, gasping for air between sobs with Goose’s blood dribbling down her chin.
Goose fell to the ground, grasping his neck.
“Shit!” Keith yelled to Eddie, “That bitch pulled some Nosferatu bullshit right there! What, you think you can get the smack out of him by suckin’ his blood? Straight trippin’. I wanna hit, but not that bad, I’m out…” Keith threw his hands up and walked out the door.
“Gotta…get to work…Not cool, man,” Eddie said, following Keith and glancing back at Gillian, “Not cool.”
Gillian and Goose sat staring at each other. Goose was speechless, bleeding, and grinning from ear to ear. Gillian remained emotionless and crawled towards Goose. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held him in a tight embrace. She stroked his wet hair and cried into his shoulder. Goose just grinned and bled.

When Good Robots Go Bad - Chapter Two

4/07/05

We had shown up two hours late to El Torreon, where we were playing one night during the summer of 2001. Those two hours and about four before them had been spent constructing our cardboard robot army. Needless to say when Brian, the manager, saw Chris, Flannery, John and me trying to sneak by him while carrying gigantic cardboard boxes and trash bags full of junk he was pissed.

“You guys are two fuckin’ hours late!” he yelled, sweat gleaming on his forehead. We really didn’t want to piss him off, but we were young and incosiderate. What could we do? El Torreon was the only club in the city that still allowed us to play. Several other punk venues were weary of us after hearing that we “incited riots” and “started fires” regularly. Being banned from two clubs in St. Louis had given us a reputation back home in Kansas City.

“We’re really sorry, Brian. We’ll play a short set” we begged, running by him.
We rushed to the back area of the club to get ready. We were pretty excited because there were about 200 kids there. People who I had never seen before. Our cardboard army, consisting of several boxes spray-painted silver to more resemble robots, were worn by about seven of our friends.

“Okay,” I coached one of them, “When we start playing, you just go nuts. No one will fuck with you, you’re a robot!” Bad advice, but we all knew what was going to happen.

Other props we used included a fog machine, which dispensed very large amounts of synthetic fog from a plastic skull with glowing red eyes; several balloons shaped like aliens (or ‘metroids’) with cardboard teeth taped to them to be thrown out over the crowd; and fake blood. Lots of fake blood. Too much fake blood.

We played a form of fast punk rock called power violence. At the time, not a lot of kids coming to shows really knew what it was and we used that to our advantage. We could fuck up entire songs, all playing at different speeds and ending at different times and no one watching would know the difference. We were a live band. A so-called ‘gimmick’ band too, I guess. People came to our shows to go nuts, and tonight was no different.

We had difficulties with El Torreon's sound guy because he always wanted us to play on the stage (imagine that!). We had tried it once, but none of us really understood how to use the monitors correctly so it ended up sounding terrible. No one in the audience minded, but we did. We asked to play on the floor right in front of the stage. We liked being mixed in with all the chaos.

After the first band, who were actually playing in our place, had finished so we started to set up. We didn’t need any kind of sound check; all we had were three vocal microphones. We started our set. After our short introduction, our secret weapon emerged from the back room.

A giant, twenty-foot robot, comprised of two refrigerator boxes stacked on top of each other and taped together, about ten feet of metal tubing for it’s menacing tentacles, and two of our friends inside the thing, running it around, Flintstones-style. The Robots eyes were spray-painted a piercing dark red. All in all, it took us six hours to create our masterpiece, and about two minutes for it to be completely destroyed.

At first, the audience seemed shocked. A lot of them had come from the suburbs to see what a “powerviolence” band was all about. I’m glad that their answer was a giant cardboard juggernaut coming right for them accompanied by four kids who could barely play together.

We started a fast song and the robots all went hurdling into the pit. The giant had a few moments of glory circling around the pit before the kids started to gang up on it and pull it to the ground. As the towering monster started falling, I remember feeling a serious sense of dread. It was so tall that as it was falling it took one of the club’s large, plastic light fixtures with it. Thankfully though, it landed clean on the floor and no one was hurt.

If there hadn’t been any more than five kids at this show, I’m sure we would have attempted to do the exact same stunts. That’s just what we were into at the time. The band progressed musically from this point into something that can only be described accurately with a dumb name like ‘Crust Funk’. The music stayed original until the end of the band though, that's for sure. The robots and most of the stage antics (besides the fog machine) were phased out over time. The only reason for this was that we were spending way too much energy on showmanship and not enough on musicianship. In hindsight, the best thing about this band was that we always did exactly what we wanted to do without fear of criticism.

We were allowed to play El Torreon again only because we got a great response and we cleaned up after ourselves. We are forever in debt to Brian and Allison Saunders for this! Thank you so much and sorry about the light.