WRITHE & SHINE

(Due to some interesting new developments, I have decided to postpone further episodes of the "BANG THY NEIGHBOR" series for a little while. Fuck it. I feel like going back to New Orleans...I have to write where the muse is, and we have unfinished business there...I promised you all the truth...and now that time has come. I believe this is a tale you have been waiting for...)

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WRITHE & SHINE : THE MEANING OF LIFE & THE MORNING AFTER

PROLOGUE:

“It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is slightly greased.” —Kehlog Albran, The Profit


Having never been there, I certainly never expected to go back. But this liar was now a liar in wait—as I wearily twitched in nervous ticks as my worn watch nervously ticked, anticipating the hour that Mark the Drunken Master and I would leave for New Orleans. Of course, lying did not make me a bad man—sex, drugs, and rock & roll did that; being an asshole also did not help. Indeed, I left again for the very first time… Perhaps I should explain:

For Mardi Gras 2001, I was set on some doomed 11th hour roadtrip to New Orleans, invited carte blanche by Rick, an odd, muscular yuppie I’d just met. With demon glee of all I’d missed these past years—those swamplands of the soul that whispered busty, spicy winds assuring southern swelter, voodoo helter-skelter, pale-fleshed/black-hearted vamp-tramps, Cajun queens and Cajun cuisine—all swore in wish, stereo dreams to reacquaint my tongue with tastes it had forgotten. Proclaiming my gospel like the angel of what had fallen in this fallen angel’s lap, I collected favors from friends like I had one week to live, and left surely shafted co-workers short-shifted. Horny to rape with grammar’s cock anew—twitching with repressed creative energy—I hoped to spawn new articles and legends from it all. Friends with webspace offered to post it all online. Things were indeed looking up. This much was all true.

Here it gets sketchy: just two hours before I was to leave, my phone rang with Hell’s Bells—one of our travel-mates had been arrested. Travel-mate #2—our apparent benefactor—was still willing to go, but only if Rick was still game. Sadly, Rick was all game—the “imp” in impossibility—and no longer wished with the same lamp. He had met a girl, you see. Only two hours before departure…I was finished. And so it would be on that weekend, that one man would be laid, and another would be screwed.

But more serious issues than party favors existed: I had procured an awful lot of true favors that I could never repay. Many friends made notable sacrifices for me to make this damned trip. Co-workers traded shifts like musical chairs for me; even my manager—weary of my fitful begging—bent the rules so I could go. If any caught wind of this misfortune, no one would ever go to such lengths for me again. I swore vengeance against Rick; and I so needed to write something… Then I got a truly wicked idea…

In fact, about 23 pages of wicked ideas came to be called “Peaceful Sleazy Feeling.” In this, I could exercise my creativity and smugly avenge myself—in a way that hurt none: Few in my circle knew Rick anyway; his “partners” (Carl & Jesse) were sheer products of my imagination. Yes, I planned to reveal the truth all along—but not until I tested the credulity of my readers. It was quite a tale I was telling…

Now it gets funny: The story was a hit, making rounds far beyond my usual readership. Strange magazines took interest. But to quote my own story, “I swallowed first my coffee, then my pride.” I freely confessed the truth to all that wrote me. I may have conducted a mischievous experiment on my readers…but I was an asshole, not a huckster.

Weird things were happening: People would not believe me when I told them not to believe me. The only “lie” I moved any to accuse me of was that I had lied about lying. Many believe I am lying now—that I am lying about not having lied about having lied...or something. I began receiving e-mail like the following:

“Dear Gabriel, I’ve been reading since Sensory Assault! I love the new stuff…[blah blah blah]…I just want to offer my support and say that I totally believe you. But why are you saying it didn’t happen now? I just can’t believe that.”

“Dear Mr. Zolman, [blah blah blah]…I trust your word. I never doubted you one second…[blah blah blah]…So why do you mislead people into believing it was all a hoax?”

“Dear sir…[blah blah]…It was so unreal so as to convince of its reality…you wouldn’t joke about…[blah blah]…We know you don’t just joke around…[blah, etc.]…Hoax? Doubtful! You must be joking…”

The joke's on all of us, I'm afraid. But wait—it isn’t over: Many events that I described began to occur—and this phenomenon continues. Randomly-chosen street names and guessed-at city details turned out to be dead on. Also, note that the story’s supernatural pieces were largely drawn from unsettling real-life memories of my own haunted youth. I have rarely had to face such things in recent years—not to say it never happens, be it a flashback, sleep paralysis, or a maybe something "out there" after all... Long dormant, it returned often after my 1st draft was completed. This I swear. Worse, the experiences felt “tailored” in ways—each “attack” strangely mirrored each that I described. Forces That Be were reviewing my work. Then, to further sink my grey-matter Battleship, Mark the Drunken Master invited me on a real trip to New Orleans…and this would also be paid for, if necessary. My brain hurt.

Soon, I would have time to sort it all out: I lost my job. Ironically, early “PSF” drafts contained the line “I would be back on borrowed time when I returned.” Even erased, it was prophetic. It was The Bomb: a radioactive glow of despair—village-sweeping mushroom clouds of unanswered questions and unpayable bills—wrought to blister my blank stare and blinking eyes with poverty. Yet I was unmoved. It all spelled financial disaster in all caps, italics, and underscore, but I felt strangely liberated. Every brain cell bloated with projects I now could finish, books I could write, and those I finally had the time to read.

One item sought refuge in mind scant hours past dismissal: En route to elsewhere, we had stopped to see Keith—a mutual acquaintance I rarely saw. He was always uncommonly kind to me—yet I barely knew him. He had fixed my guitar for near to precious nothing…and never complained that I rarely returned calls, or went ages without paying. I was just so short on time…

He greeted us in bitter absinthe pallor, different than I recalled: bearded, grizzled and sad—still utterly nice, but as if his joy or very life had bled away in streams. Grieved, I wondered if others had taken him for granted as I had. I stammered sorries; but he was just another kind stranger, denied the time to be a friend—all for an employer never satisfied by anything. I left renewed, with intent to invest some newfound free-time in those who deserved it, and all I had neglected.

Recently, a friend felt slowly pressed to powder beneath the burden of a home wrapped more in mortgage than in wallpaper. I offered to fix the place up to sell, and show prospective buyers through. In exchange, I had access to a computer and workstation, situated in an upstairs hallway corner. Thus I existed, circa 2001.

Preparing a home to be shown, and then showing it, are two endeavors best left with one delegated. People only dropped by the house when I was at work on it—with no grasp of words such as “appointment.” After repulsing fistfuls of yuppies with cascading irrigation channels of sweat and evolving, sentient armpits, I kept extra shirts handy—so I would be less the creep when crept up on.

My sales pitch was fine-tuned—years of drama, church and retail taught me how to work an audience, and how to read them. Thus, it puzzled me when one such “audience”—a priest with some clingy female associate—seemed reviled by my every word, frequently dispensing odd, piercing stares.

Floundering, I attempted friendly chatter about various religious texts we had—I was very careful. But no matter how I tried, I grew more anathema by the moment—as my guests grew more unsettled. As priest and mistress strutted snottily outside, I was enlightened by window-glare reflection: 1.) I’d forgotten to change my shirt. 2.) The shirt read, “Jesus Loves You! But the Rest of Us Think You’re an Asshole!” Oh well; they didn’t have any money, anyway.

Battle-worn from a bent and blurry day of reading weird e-mail and shopping “PSF” around, I beat the withered odds—and managed to impress one moneyed couple who’d bless us with pleased and eager presence. Then, giving my usual spiel, I referred to our alleged “attic ghosts.” The Mrs. shook her head, sighing, “No…no. There’s nothing up here. I’m very sensitive—I’d know.”

“Really?” I inquired, “Did anything in the house catch your attention?”

“Yes—over there,“ she pointed, “It’s like something horrible happened—I feel violence, wicked and sad—Something malevolent is produced there.” Hell’s Corner just happened to be my work-space.

She seemed open-minded; I described the vile vowel movements of my numerous insane projects, even my top-secret Weird Jihad project. “I think angels or spirits are unhappy with something you’ve recently done.”

“Yes,” I muttered, “I’m sure they are.”

She asked, “And what do you plan to do about that?” “Keep busy: As long as my sick thoughts offend the Unseen around me, I am surely in the company of angels. But if it offends none, then the Devil may be near—because nothing offends him.”

As the couple departed those already dearly so, I sneered in long, rude gazes into the Abyss—that Black Vile Hell behind the modem—muttering, “Malevolent? Oh, just wait. The angels are unhappy, the natives are restless reprobates; and the Devil just got DSL. So watch, be still, and pray—Take up your cross or take off your coat. For I will write; I will howl; I will play—and fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.”


TO BE CONTINUED...


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