She is the crazy person about to get thrown off the bus. Read her her Rights. 7/2009

     She leaned up out of the backseat and handed me the ashtray. She leaned into me. 

     "Take a moment to remember this," she said. "Soon it will be over and you'll want it to happen again."

     I leaned into her. "I've already noted it," I replied. Then I let my eagle fly out the window.

Eat a good breakfast; you're gonna need it. revised.

"Eat a good breakfast. You're gonna need it."

"What did you learn, Crystal?" She raised her voice to me like a cocksure mother as she was getting into the Driver's seat. She had sunglasses in her hair and a Red Bull in her hand. I was in the passenger seat. It was midnight in Los Angeles.

"What did you learn?" she taunted me again. I was her four-year-old son for a second but we were on amphetamines.

"I don't know, Ashley. What did I learn?" also cocksure.

We were en route to O'Connell's Pub for Cocktails.

"Don't look people in the eye. Jeramy taught me that years ago." She said it with her head cocked to the side the way that only she cocks it with a Big-T.I.P. sensual smile. Oh, and those teeth.

When she said it it sounded like it could have been the ultimate wisdom but I didn’t believe her. A maxim for the times I guess but I didn’t trust it. I wanted eyes.

 She lowered her shades to cover her eyes and we were off again down Pacific Coast Highway. It was midnight on the western edge of America and we had missed our plane. We didn’t care. We had better things to do. We wanted More. We didn’t want any less.

225 words

Vital Vernal

     There's pink cocktail down my back from shoulder blades to ass-crack. We had an accident. And there's a paper-plate in the bathroom sink with soggy bread and a cigarette butt. There's a hollow bone on the floor between the toilet and the wall. And Vernal Vodka on the tile. Hallow bone. Marrow has been sucked out. You can hear the slurping in the kitchen. My skin is sticky. Shrimp salad all over the toilet. There're too many sous chefs here. Some tragedy happened and it's only 11:44pm. Melon is dripping off the porcelain so this is a fine mess. But still, I can't get over what I shouldn't even know. 
     "...her eyes!" I overheard them talking about me when they couldn't find me. 
     "I know. I try to look her in the eyes but it's like looking into a vampire's eyes."

Random Question: What's the earliest you've gotten up to watch cartoons and what did you see?

(new writing exercise...write from random questions/statements.)

I got up at 3:30am. The goddamned car wouldn't start. It was three degrees. Negative six wind-chill. I jumped the battery by myself in the snow; pitch black, heavy Mag-lite falling out of my grip as I was holding up the hood. Flashlight pinched between my shoulder and my ear like a receptionist's phone. I started the truck and went inside to have a cup-a-coffee. My fingers were numb through my gloves and I wanted to hold the mug like housewifes on commercials do after they take their kids to daycare. I wanted some insurance and safety for a minute. But then that thought would go away soon. I was on my own.
The t.v. was on inside and I heard pieces of it coming through the living room doorway as I thawed my hands on my mug. It was cartoons. Old cartoons. Warner Brothers when they were still hand-drawn. It made me happy and I saw his eyeballs glisten in the dark from the glow of the screen. He couldn't sleep cuz I was making too much noise but he didn't say a thing...just watched his cartoons and i think he glanced at me standing in the doorway from the dark but it was hard to tell. If he did only his eyes moved.

Then I drove to the east side of the state and then I went to work.
"Get outta bed," I say. "We got lives to run." 

"It's a town fulla losers and we're pullin' outta here to win. -The Boss (B.Springsteen)

He came down the stairs with no shirt. "Sir, this is a business," the night-audit guy said. In reply to that he spat, "I do what the fuck I want!"

   6:20am.  "Ma'am, I don't mean to scare you," he had a frantic look about him as he leaned over the desk into my face, "but there's a black guy out there in the parking lot who is scaring me." The sun hasn't even come up yet . I just fucking got to work and I'm tryin to read my news.
     I looked at him with a blank stare trying to figure out why this guy didn't just hit him. I couldn't see this construction worker takin any shit from a nigger or asking anyone to solve his problems for him. I led the way to the door like I had a knife and a purpose cuz I wasn't takin any shit this early in the morning either. I flung the door open and stood in the doorway, construction worker by my side as he pointed at the man in the parking lot in the pre-dawn. Mutherfuhkers get outta my goddam parking lot with yer shit-startin. I'm not afraid of jail and I gotta bad mouth. I stared at the black guy and all the construction workers circling him until I figured out that they weren't circling him to jump him.
     "I think he's got a gun in his pocket," construction worker still standing beside me said. "I think he's gonna rob you."
'White guys' started to smile. I turned to the guy beside me still with no emotion, "You fuckin with me?"
     "Yeah."
     I had to try really goddam hard to smile slightly and pretend that the joke was funny. I wanted to hit him so fucking hard repeatedly so that his crew all saw it. Spike his head onto a staff and hoist it into the sharp pre-dawn air. He was to be the example for what busty front-desk clerk will and will not dick with. I don't think your jokes are funny.
     The colored boy on the crew was being hazed. They told the waitress at Perkins that he beats his wife but he seemed like the most decent of them all.

She fell on the burgers and rolled in her soda. I kept pushing her out and then I ate some onion rings and gave her some curly fries on the curb.

She put the chix in my mouth and her fingernails hit my teeth. I need to be fed. I have problems with feeding myself. I have problems with stimuli overload. Things are too bright.
    I had her to myself again for a moment and she only wanted to feed me again for a moment.

"Crystal, this is not the neighborhood to be sleeping alone back there." So Ashley gave me her knife and I held it open in my left hand while I slept in the backseat. I wasn't concerned but it eased the others' minds.

------ MMS ------
Sent: Aug 26, 2010 9:03 PM
Subject: IMG00013-20100826-2052.jpg

Snake oil...and two big fucking glasses of whiskey and lots of sunglasses it night. Pens and napkins are what the stories of life are written on. We're selling elixers and that's what everyone is looking for. We stand to be rich. -Cash.

I looked all night and I didn't see any meteors but everybody else saw them. "Juice, stars are fallin all over themselves tryin to get back down to earth."

     I roll down the window and the big dipper is big and the road wind is on us. Wind on our sweat in the road breeze cuz summer in iowa is full on and we handle it in this car tonight. Theres a meteor shower tonight and we're takin the back route outta the city into the dark. We drove into the abyss last night & for driving into the abyss we didn’t hit too many things. Only a few scratches on the scion and a good story to tell that should been enough to scare you sober. But I guess we don't get scared..

     "Crystal, good cd," she screamed against the wind and above the bass.

     "Good. Its only this one song so we're gonna be listening to it for awhile."

     "Jeramy, I don't remember going in reverse that far."

     "It woulda taken em a loooong time to find yer bodies in that creek!" she screamed back at us again.

     "No it wouldn't...all they would’ve had to do is follow the tire tracks through the yard down into the forest.”

     We gave them a hundred to not call the cops. I pulled a hundred dollar bill out of my back pocket.                                         08/2010

Snakes on my bones.

     The danger here is that i am liable to kill myself and it's hard to kill me but i like life hard and standin up. Push it push it. And its a night of hard sympathy or no sympathy. I gotta mean bone in me tonight and it takes all I  have to not drive that car with the taillight out now. Babys born with a sensual bone and I can't do nuthin bout it. And beats take me. My body goes on the little that it gets like few others. Scientists say that the bigger the organism the more efficient it's energy use. God i gotta fight someone tonight. I need adrenaline.

"I's made'a armor baby."

     Godbless Studio 13 & Godbless Iowa City in all it's glory and all of it's weird sexual fuckers. I shake when i get the withdrawals in my black bra. No shirt and my jaw trembles in the dark on the porch smoking a cigarette. I need some More. Some of my friends are in the bedroom in their skin only and one is passed out on the carpet with his phone in his hand waiting for the message that gets his cock sucked. It didn't come in time. 

     And then it doesn't end and it only goes on for me...as it usually does. The thunderstorm rolls in and the lightening was already there and I wanna be an animal in the forest in the night with sharp teeth and blood on my mouth. I wanna see better than the owl.