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Practice last night didn't exactly go as planned; the intense humidity seems to have warped Dave's guitar neck beyond playability, as he was veering wildly out of tune halfway through a song. Given that our songs are all around the one minute fifteen second mark, that's a pretty bad scene. So we gave up, yelled at each other and I went to the NJ Transit station to catch the train home from South Orange. Unfortunately, I had just missed a train and they take their time comin' that late at night. So I spent an hour lying on my back on a bench up on the train platform, listening to a couple break up and make up and break up again down on the street below. Eventually it came and I rode into Hoboken as an enormous half moon hung low over the city.
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Damp, moist, swamplike heat is all over the city - there's front page articles in the New York Times about exactly how bad certain areas of Manhattan smell as the wave of summer humidity washes over them. The sidewalk itself lets off odors; hundreds of years of vagabond piss locked into the concrete finds fragrant release, the ghosts of a thousand bladders let loose to wreak havoc on innocent nostrils. Down the stairs into the subway the smell intensifies, as if you're descending into the very belly of the beast. But that smell is history; that's the residue of human civilization, our pisswater slowly and steadily alkalinizing everything we touch, writing our names in the snow, forever.
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I want to quit my job. It's not like it's a bad job or anything; as a matter of fact, it's pretty sweet considering that I don't do much and get paid pretty decently and it gives me the time to do this and that like the this and that you're reading, but I'm just - I dunno, dissatisfied. I'm getting to the point where I really no longer want to spend eight hours a day doing work for other people; I want to spend my time on my things, but until I make that big sale (or a whole batch of little sales) I'm not going to be able to do that. Sadly enough, the real problem seems to lie in the selling; people keep telling me that I've got money in these things, but I don't know how to tease it out. Any ideas?
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One of the best things about spending mornings at the shelter is the subway ride home, unbearably sweaty and covered in dog hair, saliva, dirt, paw prints, tiny bites from puppies, and love. I'm always a disheveled mess when I step back on the L train with the new wave hooker hipsters of Williamsburg, all skinny ties and vintage tees. Not that I'm not usually a well-coiffed fashonista myself, but there's something realy satisfying about being dirty these days. Not the dirty as in Rasta dirty or distressed jeans or junkie dirty; I'm talking dog dirty, and dogs wil never be hip.
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New York's a magical place, it's true, but somehow I think it's at it's most magical in the crazy twilight hours, three or four in the morning, a few astoundingly strong drinks of your preference in your belly, wobbling home through the fog of drunkenness. The lights of the city bend and shimmer in the summer air, still warm and moist even in the depth of the night, and you find yourself in mysterious parts that you've never visited before, parking lots and construction sites and deserted back streets and everything shines with the same hyper-real luminosity. Everything is weirdly and strangely beautiful , but you can only take so much of it and eventually you throw your arm around the waist of the person you're with (you, you, you) and decide to take a taxi.
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People change, that's part of life, but when you watch somebody changing for the worse right in front of your eyes it can kind of throw you for a loop. Case in point: me and Ryan had to stop by Marktastic's house to drop something off last night before practice. Now Mark was at one point going to be the drummer for the band; Ryan helped him buy a kit and set him up with lessons and I was psyched to be playing music with some of my favorite people in New Jersey. But then Mark started working at the movie theater and all of a sudden he didn't care about the band, didn't care about his old friends, didn't seemingly care about anything anymore, and we had to scramble to find a new drummer. When we went over there last night he was hunched over his computer, doing his best to ignore us. It made me very sad. Come back, Mark Howland. I know you're in there, somewhere.
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It's not raining. Great googly moogly, it's not raining and I'm heading out to Jersey with my banjo on my back and we're going to finally get back to rocking out and it's NOT RAINING! I really don't even have the words to describe how elated I am at the end of the worst streak of meterological bad luck I may have ever had. Off to Hoboken, Ryan picking me up in front of the toilets on Frank Sinatra Avenue (and how gaymo is that, dear reader?), and to his basement with Friggle and hopefully the drummer for R A W K rawk!
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It's getting hot in here / so take off all your clothes, sings Nelly, and Christ the boy's got a point. It's summer and the brain inexorably turns to thoughts of doin' the dirt. Part of it's due to sleeping in the nude, I'm sure - during the winter, ensconced in my fuzzy robot pajamas I don't feel all that foxxxy, but when you're under a sheet and soaked in sweat, there's something about your own presence, your own physicality - and of course, I mean my own etc etc here, pardon the projecting - that's kind of dirty. It's sweat, I think, that does it - that weird, unique smell that everybody has, clinging to their skin, making itself known. It's summer.
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When I was living in Seattle at the 1717 house, I went through jobs like Kleenex. I got fed up or fired all over the place, from my night job opening envelopes and dealing-with pee-soaked checks at the phone company (please, don't pee in mailboxes, people. It doesn't do anybody any good) to packing cheesecake at the bakery to feeding the giant check sorting machines while high on LSD in the secret inner sanctums of the bank. Job to job to job with little lacunae of food stamps and panhandling between them. But once I hit the big town, that evaporated, and it's long-term committments punctuated by long-term unemployments - three full-time jobs in the five years I've been here. I wonder why that is?
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Busy like a bare-bottomed bumblebee with his stinger in the wringer as my bossmonster heads off to the Europe this afternoon, leaving the office (at least partially) in my hot little hands. I can hear him in his office recording his voice mail message right now. But that's not the least of my pots on the stove ont his manic Monday - got an appointment with a new web design client this evening, that should be pretty swell, and then to the drawing table to bash out some strips for a couple different homes. Slap a guitar in my hands so I can work out some songs for the boys, while I'm at it. And then, to bed. Only a few more days to spend in the bed that's not mine - I gotta make them count.
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Haiku: A three legged dog hops down Bedford Avenue dragging me behind |
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I'm in Prospect Park with a frosty cup of Red Hook and a light buzz on already, the stage of the bandshell being loaded down with Lambchop (yes, the band, not the puppet)'s acres of equipment. It has been a beautiful day, replete with barbecue and beer and perfect, just-warm-enough sunshine, and now the sun is setting over the bandshell, the sky blossoming into purple and black as Brooklyn slides into another perfect July night. I tip back my plastic cup and hear "K. Thor Jensen?" I look up. It's Kattya Marritz. I haven't seen her in five years, and the sun blasts out of sight.
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Good Goddamn it's pouring down rain, and of course I have my guitar and my tiny tinny practice amp specially calibrated to make that aluminum can fulla rusty nails sound that I want and it's monsoon season in New York City again. I was supposed to go under the river by the PATH train to Hoboken to meet Ryan and the boys so we could finally practice but once again somebody calls it off and gratifyingly it ain't me this time. I leave my equipment at work and head back to the place I'm housesitting, of course wearing a white T-shirt, of course with a bag fulla artwork, of course soaked to the skin. I stay in and listen to the rain and Kraftwerk all night.
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Blood. For some reason when I crouch down to tie my shoes (which come untied a hell of a lot), when it comes time for me to stand up again I plant my fingers like a track runner on the ground and push off with my arms as I stand. Unfortunately, the sidewalks of New York aren't as clean and free of debris as one would like, so yesterday afternoon after I tied my right shoe, my push-off garnered me a sharp chunk of glass in my right index finger. Blood immediately began pooling on my fingerprint, dripping down my palm. "Ouch," I thought. "That's a lot of blood, there."
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Can anybody suggest excuses I can use to take every afternoon off for the rest of my life? I certainly don't mind working in the mornings when everybody's asleep and there's nothing to do but once the sun reaches its high point in the sky I want to be outside, I want to feel the sun on my skin and the wind creaking the spikes of my hair. I want to be on my bicycle. Maybe I can get some quack doctor to say that I have a vitamin E deficiency or something and need to spend at least six hours a day outside. Maybe I should just start taking really long lunches. Maybe I should just quit.
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A lot of girls were looking at my crotch on my way home from work yesterday. It's not like the pants I were wearing were exceptionally tight (I certainly own tighter) and it's not like I was sporting a mammoth unmanageable boner as I perambulated the sidewalks of Brooklyn. Maybe it was just the summer wind, blowing through us with dirty thoughts - I was certainly looking at more than my share of round asses and barely-contained breasts myself, and so were the people around me, our eyes tracing complex Kabbalistic diagrams across each other's erogenous zones, point to point to point and then I guess we all go home and jerk off. Not that I did or anything.
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Payday, where does it all go? Down the tubes of records and comics and books and drinks, the quad-siphon of my checking account. There's a little more left each time around, though, a subtle silty accretion at the bottom of the barrel, nickel and diming its way to a stable foundation for me to hopefully stand on my own feet upon. Money - the root. Would love, love to find some way to exist without it, but unfortunately down that road lies living in a disused subway tunnel or an oil barrel slowly filling up with rain. More like I'd love to find a way to live without worrying about money; the nag nag of overdrawn and rubber-checked worry thankfully silenced as I stay well and truly within my means.
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One of my favorite things about New York, paradoxically enough, is religion. I'm not a believer myself, fairly obviously, but the astounding panoply of faith in the five-borough area is enough to sway any man. Some of my favorite things in the city are church-oriented, and today's Giglio festival is one of them. Based on an obscure Catholic tradition from a small town in Italy, dozens of men march down the street jointly supporting an enormous, five-story tall plinth decorated with religious imagery that weighs nearly five tons. It's an astounding, bizarre spectacle and one I try not to miss. Plus, you get to eat zeppoles.
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Sunsick, woozy, gleeful and beery to be alone in a house, sleeping on a bed again, my God what a relief and a change. I had forgotten how it feels to be able to sprawl. Someday soon I can be this open in my own house, surrounded by my own things, how I miss them. Someday soon you all can come over.
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Haiku: Drunk, spooned at your back Why is your belly warm? It's the Andy Capp's Hot Fries |
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I love housesitting, especially when I'm homeless. I get all the pleasure of somebody else's furnishings, posessions and leftover food without actually having to purchase any of those items. And I especially like housesitting for Tom and Leela because their home is very conducive to cartooning, with drawing surfaces and inspiration in every corner. I almost feel guilty for not drawing while I'm there, but sometimes I'm just too drunk to hold a pencil and I just have to lie on the couch making little grumbling noises. If you're reading this (and I hope you aren't) - everything's in good hands.
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I remember the first time I saw Revenge Of The Nerds - I must have been eleven or twelve, because we were stll living in Tukwila. My mom rented it for me and my friend Ryan to watch as I was ever so certainly a nerd back then, and we sat on the couch eating the snackables and watching the Tri-Lambs eventually find love and acceptance - until the part where they're spying on the girls changing where the screen is filled to the four corners with pubic bush. Mom leaned hard on the fast forward button and the couch was lit red with blushing. Tonight it's screening for free outside at Hudson River Park, and that's gonna be one huge multi-story bush.
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Every time that I'm supposed to go out to Hoboken to play with the band, it fucking pours down rain. Today's storm was so intense that I left my guitar, my amp and all of the pages of my book at work for fear that whatever I was carrying would be irrevocably waterlogged. I high-tailed it to the train station, my satchel tucked tight against my white (and no mostly transparent) T-shirt, my nipples peeking out like curious moles. The subway tunnels get extremely moist during storms, and descending down the stairs didn't help the state of my garments at all. And, of course, when I get off the train at home, there's nary a cloud in the sky and the birds are all laughing at me.
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Work. After four straight days of not doing it, the attempt to shift back into productivity is a grinding one. It's obviously not like I'm a jet-setting man of importance or anything, but I've become accustomed to both recumbency and drunkenness during these last few days, not to mention gratuitous amounts of sunshine. So basically what I need to do is convince my boss to move my workstation out on the windowsill and let me install a chaise lounge and a wet bar. We're only on the second floor - I don't think the occasional fall to the street below will hurt that much, especially if I'm drunk.
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Good morning, dogs, excuse my lope and squint and wreck, hair still teased up with a pressed-out flat from where I slept on it. Good morning, Archer, please don't pull so hard, my arm spinning in its socket as this immense tank of a dog takes off down the street, the clopping of my Converse soles as they hit the ground ringing off of the dilapidated warehouses of Williamsburg. Good morning, Socks, let's take you out on the street and show you off, hope that somebody decides to take you home soon, you want to run too so I let you, careening behind you yelling "Hot soup comin' through!" at other pedestrians. I've got dogs here, people! Good morning, Brando, rickety and arthritic, so pent up with joy to be outside that you walk too fast for your legs to carry you, jittering at the end of the harness with a big, dumb broken smile on. Good morning, dogs.
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Oradell, New Jersey, under a tent in the back yard, with me and mine in our Sunday best a day early. One of my oldest friends is getting married today, after what seemed like dozens of perambulatons, fits and starts, the wedding is finally under way. My friends are smart and they keep it short and sweet, sweet like honey as vows are traded, wine is drunk and champagne corks popped as the new bride and groom hie away to eat their first bites of food married. Dean's girlfriend chews him out gently for drinking a Corona during the ceremony, but I drink seven of them afterwards. I am stupidly, exuberantly happy, riding aloft on a balloon of happiness. Congratulations, congratulations, congratulations, I feel like yelling, to all of us, for getting here and getting back and waking up every day in a world that still makes days like today possible.
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There's something wrong with my throat, I think, althouh gape-mouthed examinations in front of the mirror reveal none of the telltale white dots of strep. I don't know what it could be but it seems intent on killing me, or at least making me exceptionally cranky. During the day I cough a time or two, nothing terrible, but the instant I lay down to go to sleep I start hacking and wheezing like I've been smoking unfiltered Pall Malls since I was in the womb. Nothing stops it yet - not hot tea, yogic circular respiration or crying into my pillow - I spend whole nights scraping my throat raw, begging for sleep. I'm going to take a bath in NyQuil and put my hair up with Vapo-Rub and see if it makes a difference.
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Colored fire, on rooftops spraying kids bicycle in figure-eights down in the street. Cold Hoegaarden sweating in my palm the cuffs of my pants catching under my heels. Buzzcocks on the stereo because I put them there. Explosion sounds, sulfur on the air, and then it's over OK, we're leaving, OK. On the way to the bus Tomas' bottle of Bombay Sapphire springs a leak. |
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Wet air, melting down on my arms, my chest, my back as I slog through the streetswamp, from AC to AC like islands in the salt sweat sea. Summer's barely started to kick in and I'm being reminded of exactly how thick the hot soup of Manhattan can get. When I was growing up on the West Coast, when I'd hear the phrase "It's not the heat, it's the humidity," I'd always wonder exactly what the hell it meant. And, of course, now I know, my entire body limpid and white with tepid water. I am constantly rehydrating myself, trying to make up for the pints of sweat trickling out of my pores. The constant transitioning between outside mire and cold snap of climate control is doing some strange things to me - half yeti, half gill man, what kind of monster have I become?
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To do, to do, to do, the list is long today, need to convince the bossmaster to let me slip aside early to run down to B&H so's I can pick up a dual deck VCR for a certain project that will give you boners for miles, my true and faithful. It's a crowded week, thankfully tomorrow is essentially Friday, but the four-day weekend is itself full of things to do and get done to. Of course, there's pyrotechnics on Thursday as we get another year of being Americans done, but then there's dogs and parties and beers and probably a couple million things I'm forgetting - Tom's wedding! Can't forget that one. See what I mean? My head's packed so full right now I have to cart it around in a wheelbarrow.
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Yesterday afternoon I took a nap and then I took another nap, the weekend's blast of events having drained a lot out of me, but today I'm still exhausted, a creak in every bone and a pull in every muscle, the inside of my skull fogged over with cobwebs. I'm not the young man I used to be, able to bound out of bed fresh as a daisy even after ingesting all manner of poisons. My quarter-century is catching up with me, I think, and I'm certainly not going to give up going out and having a good time, so it looks like I'm gonna have to get used to feeling like this for a good long while.
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JUNE
all content (c) 2002 k. thor jensen