โWriters, in essence, are professional word tamers;
if the words walking down the lines were living creatures,
they would surely fear and hate the penโs nib as tamed animals do the raised whip.โ
โโโโโโ Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, The Letter Killers Club
โโโโโโโโโโโโโโเซฉ3เซฉ
PHARMA CHAMELEONThe day my mother decided it was Over with my father, sheโd come home from work to find me, in infancy, crawling the carpet surrounded by a variety of pills.
Youโll note Reader that Iโve not called them random pills, because โrandomโ has taken on a NEW Meaning in our CURRENT times, which is DE-CIDEDLY non-random.
They were, however, Random Pills, literally, Like Literally random pills, in the sense that at the time โ pre-Internet, canโt just Look Shit Up โ it was apparently common practice to play โpill roulette,โ which is to say that youโd meet up with Other Folks at bars, parties, whatever, and it was โYeah man, the blue ones make you go up, the green ones make you go doooooownโ-level user reviews followed by a hand-off exchange
โโโโโโโโโโโโfor some red ones
โโโโโโโโโโโโโโthat-that-that-that
โโโโโโโโโโโโโ make you Really Trip
โโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโ and some
โโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโyellow ones
โโโโโโโโโโโthatโll get you SO HORNYโ
THE GUESTI had a friend Iโd let stay at my apartment.
Sleep on the couch.
I didnโt charge him any money.
He didnโt have any.
So that worked out.
He didnโt work.
I barely did.
Three-hunded-some dollars, then.
My share of the rent.
Split.
Center of the city.
Halfways with another friend, who supported the notion of the couch friend.
We were punks.
Of a luxurious sort.
โ
(And the etymology of โextortโ
occurs to you)
Easy enough to scrounge.
Lax enough to slack.
Do a gig here or there.
Or if you dare:
Beg mother.
One stab or another.
A hustle here, a hustle there.
Little hassle.
Fuck cares.
CAUSAL ENCOUNTERSOne night we sold an aluminum rolling desk to a large-laughing woman with gimmick glasses in the parking lot of a grocery store at 3 AM.
It had been listed on craigslist as โAlien-Smashed Desk (Guitar).โ
Sheโd thought that was hysterical, and gladly paid our asking price.
Forty bucks? Fifty?
Who can recall.
Pizza money, really.
The desk had been battered and dented with the body of an overhead-swung Telecaster some weeks prior.
The culmination of a noisy recording session.
A final clang.
Climactic.
We loaded the desk into her van.
Rolled right in, beneath the glow of late-night security lights.
The exercise had the general air of Suspended Group Sex.
We didnโt do that, though.
Didnโt get down like that.
You could have a lot of fun on craigslist then.
I got a gig on there once as a bar ambassador for Molson beer.
A dozen or so recruits sent round to sportsbars dressed as hockey players, in full gear.
Pads jerseys and all.
I donโt know if anyone watches hockey now, but at the time they didnโt, not in Ohio.
We were Bluejackets in a Scarlet City.
Patrons at the bars thought we were actual NHL players.
Weโd work the room while one member of the crew was tasked with standing in front of a hockey goal.
Drunks took wild shots for prizes.
Score and itโs a free T-shirt and drink specials.
Miss or get stopped by whoeverโs playing Bootleg Brodeur and itโs โAwwww fuck, man!โ
And your buddiesโ scorn.
HAW HAW HAW!
HAW HAW HAW!
HAW HAW HAW!
It was a different time.
Another gig I handed out packs of cigarettes for free.
Deathโs ambassador.
Got the job pretending to care about jam bands during the interview.
Naming off acts whose songs Iโd never heard to some half-stoned college boy.
Widespread Panic! Government Mule! The String Cheese Incident!
โYeah, man, yeah.โ
Information Iโd absorbed from years flipping through records.
โYeah man, I love all that shit.โ
Picking up vibes.
โYeah, man.โ
Giving impressions.
โYeah.โ
Put-ons.
Gimmicks.
Suppositions.
Summon-a-sucker โ
Stooges, fates, acts.
BANG
BANG
BANG.
Itโs all an act.
Always has been.
Take that for what you werenโt.
m.v.d.
JQD
๐
