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December 11, 2002 "..you're staring at me like I need to be saved.. in your Jesus Christ pose." -Soundgarden "Smack. Horse. Mud. Brown sugar. Junk. Black Tar. Big H. Dope. Skag." -Heroin Slang, from http://www.forreal.org Just in here killing time. Justin here. Killing time. Justin. Oh my dear couzin Justin. Wherefore art thou Justin Killingtime? Justin, my brother in arms, my cousin of the parallel cause, the infinite loss of purpose, the love of libation and vacations and limeys with cash and that endless mad dash toward something better, bigger, the bridge of timber and rail from whence shoot flames and fire of color screaming gunpowder high and loud into that heretofore silent New Hampshire night. Justin my cuzin, our day will come. Hold fast. Hold fast and firm to your bedazzled dreams, hold on as the reports come through from the battle on the front, from the blood and the bare knuckle bleating of silly stoned sheep like me. Me out here fighting the fight. Me out here, awkward and inexplicable. Unable to explain myself to anyone. I remember a night, a humid hot night in an eastern town.. Georgia, was it? I found myself in the company of that town's biggest dealer, me, a virgin to junk but no stranger to the blue, blue funk of strange days in strange cities with no woman by my side, no corner pocket to curl into white and round and sound as the plunk of cue in leather satchel landing. I remember a night.. Savannah? Perhaps. All those buckled granite bricks by the river's edge, stumbling on them, sober. Then giving in to the.. the truth. What truth? The truth that she wasn't coming. The truth that most of Savannah is built far above those cobbled streets because sometime long ago the locals discovered that the river.. ..floods. Lola's father says, "Was wilst du den hier? Gehe nach Hause. Las mich in Ruhe." I love German. Like Werner Herzog's statement about the jungle in Les Blank's documentary, "Burden of Dreams," I say of German: I love it. I love it against my better judgement (pronounced chuj-mint). German doesn't sound good in bed. And really, what use does a writer, a speaker of silent words, have with an aurally ugly language? English is ugly enough. I don't care to speak. I would prefer never to speak another word.. would prefer only to write. But then I hear Lola speak. And the others in this film. And I remember Werner's words. And I am in love with German again. The river floods. The woman isn't coming. I am alone again in the world. I cannot recall ever in my long life having walked such crooked streets as the cobbled riverwalk of Savannah. And sober, yet. Walking such cobbles makes one feel drunk without the pleasure of the high. So I take the natural next step and walk into a pub. That's where I met the dealer, getting drunk, in a pub on the hobbled cobbled streets of old Savannah. And I'm ripe to get high, really high. The dealer treats me like an old friend, like family. We take a walk. Under the right conditions and for a limited time, two pints of India pale ale can spin the brain like so much pink cotton candy and suddenly all the world is fair and fine, and sure I'll take that walk. "Where we walkin?" To this day, at this very moment so many months hence, the Spanish moss of that walk adorns my dash and the shelf of the back window, too. I remember that old closed-down pharmacy by the graveyard, its barren shop windows all a graven image of its forgotten past. I was surprised to find how small the doses of heroin are, the baggies Thumbalina Ziplocks, the contents barely visible to the human eye. Outside that old shop with its oh-too-perfect gold-leafed lettering in the upper windows, two windows intact saying DRUGS and something else, perhaps HERE. And so naturally I hold out a hand full of K's, those nastynice little white pills from Mexico, and snap a shot with the digital. Later I tweak it a little, then a lot, ripping it full round into the negative, polarized, whatever. It looked good. An outstretched hand, all those pills, the old southern pharmacy long closed down and the graveyard in the background, Spanish moss hanging from the trees. Beautiful. Better than the reality. Better looking. Better, that is, until I took that friendly southern dealer's hospitality in hand and up my nose and.. and... Better. Prettier. Faster. Redder that sunset. Easier the pain soon to come when the sun undone, me with myself.. left. Florida. We had a damn nice hotel room, Justin Case and I. Paradise. A pair of dice on my silver flask.. all that remains of that Gonzo weekend in Daytona.. all else left behind with the inflatable alligator and that despicable rash of detritus that WAS our good, good time. With the right kind of eyes, you can see the sky's every aborted constellation reflected in the cracked cobblestone earth. Desolate and high, I saw it all. -His Lordship RSM the Duke of boxed winus obsequious ecstatium [More on heroin and the heroine that wasn't, later.] "I'm in the corner grouting.. I sat on some caulk... They're tipping their hard hats at me... Men!" -Ruby Wednesday, floor model man-ho & climax of our girly men dreams (quoted out of context whilst R.W. interrupted tonight's confessional)
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