“…what do I really know about it except that you’ve got to stick to it with the energy of a benny addict…”
-Jack Kerouac’s advice to Neal Cassady on becoming a writer
Flash Fiction:
We started a second bottle of Merlot in my bedroom. He was a mess until I came along. He looked like his mother had dressed him. But a home waxing kit and a quick introduction to hair products changed that.Now he was hot—the Milan runway kind of hot. He was visibly uncomfortable with this, but fashion isn’t for the faint of heart. He’d get used to it. He put down the wine and asked if he could look through my closet…
“Your shoulder blades move like angel wings,” he told me once.
He said the heroin made him a better poet. He would wrap that ratty leather belt around his thin bicep and pull it tight with his teeth, just like in the movies…
Sudden Fiction:
John overheard the two white men standing at the stairway entrance. Both were holding beer bottles. “Thank God they keep the gangstas in the basement,” one of them said. He emphasized the word “gangstas,” giving the two “s” sounds an exaggerated slur. “If they were up here I’d have to find a new club.” The other agreed and took another drink. The first must’ve been very drunk to say this, since John was clearly within earshot. Of course, in his pink button down shirt and tight blue jeans, John was no gangsta. But he was the only black face in the crowd…
Short Stories:
“Mom..Dad…I’m gay,” Colin announced at Thanksgiving dinner, with one hand on his bony hip and the other hanging from his bony wrist. How could they not have known? “And Dean is my fiancé.” He turned when he said this, his long, white index finger and recently manicured fingernail pointing directly towards me. Some of his family was there: his mother, his father, his two older sisters and their husbands. The brothers-in-law, who had been talking about the day’s football game before Colin’s announcement, were now visibly uncomfortable. Off to the right of us was the kiddie table, where Colin’s two and three year old niece and nephews were making messes, and arguing about whose sippie cup was whose, completely oblivious to the silence sitting right next to them…
“But, dear, that’s just Satan’s game. Once you’re convinced he doesn’t exist, he’s won.” Becky’s Aunt Datherine responded to Becky’s assertion that, perhaps, the devil was an artificial construction. Aunt Datherine spoke with the certainty of a scholar. She waved her thin white fingers, displaying the remnants of natural nail that were never manicured and always bitten to the skin, and periodically using one of her index fingers to scratch her scalp through her short, schoolboy haircut…
Rob sat in the living room and drank while I spun drum n bass our bedroom. We fell in love about seven years ago, and moved into a cramped one bedroom together in Asbury Park, along the Jersey shore. Before Rob I had fallen in love with the drum n bass scene: the records, the ravers, the drugs. As the years went by and Rob and I became more serious, I slowly lost contact with the ravers and the drugs. But never with the records. I cued the record with the skull and crossbones label. I applied slight pressure to the record with my small middle and ring fingers, making sure the platter still spun beneath. I played the record in my headphones, sliding the pitch up, then down, until the tempo matched the other record already playing. I repeated the process, fine tuning the tempo until it matched exactly. By now I had done this more times than I can count; the motions were an intimate part of me. I have no idea who this artist is, or what the song is called, but I love it because its bass line is intoxicating. And because Rob hates it…
…Drama…
John had short, chopped hair, frozen in place from massive amounts of styling gel. His lanky wrists hung from his forearms. He wore black shoes and black dress pants with white pinstripes. A tight black shirt, with gray lettering that read BOYS SUCK, accentuated the slightly developed chest given to him through genetics.
He was insignificant.
…Drama…
John heard from the next room the unknown queen who spoke on top of a pounding tribal beat coming from the large speakers chained to the ceiling. Her voice was altered, slowed down by the producer. She sounded like a demonic goddess.
He hoped Justin would be waiting.
…Drama…
The Night I Sold Madonna Ecstasy
The media’s fascination with Madonna has spanned more than twenty years and shows no signs of waning, especially with her latest international attempts to scoop up impoverished African babies and give them pop star babies’ lives. She’s credited her exposure to Eastern religions and the Kabbala for this latest transformation. While this is true, she has yet to open up about one other catalyst: the night I sold her ecstasy…
I’m late again and this time it’s a big deal. The new manager will wait until after closing time to scold me. He’ll first address me by my full name, Matthew, in a condescending tone. Then his young face will burn red and his thin body will shake with rage inside his cheap suit, and he’ll threaten to fire me again. But this time I’m actually scared because he has good reason to. I’m spinning at The Island, like I have for almost ten years now, but tonight isn’t like any other night. Tonight is the party after Pride 2006 and I was supposed to start an hour ago. I sneak in through the lobby of the attached hotel, slither my way through the crowd along the outside of the stage, and climb into the adjacent DJ booth…
Through the long horizontal mirror hanging on the opposite wall, Stuart observes the gaggle of Manhattan club queens sitting alongside him on the long leather couch, all waving their moisturized hands in self-absorbed conversations as if the world is contained in their every fingertip and syllable. The empty seat next to Stuart is normally occupied by Manny, the mannequin that Stuart stole from work, started coming to life nightly two months ago, and now takes Stuart clubbing. Manny claimed he had to use the restroom, located beyond this chillout room, across the dance floor, past the bar, and adjacent to a small alcove with a few couches. Stuart knows Manny will get caught up on his way to and back across the dance floor by club acquaintances, making small talk and landing light kisses on cheeks kept blemish free with individual regimens of overpriced night creams, in a maze of lasers and strobe lights and sweating bodies. Manny’s only been gone five minutes, so perhaps Stuart is being paranoid. But Stuart can’t help fearing Manny will never return because Stuart realizes that Manny now remembers a mere sixteen hours ago when, as the eight o’clock Saturday morning sun filtered in rainbows through the polluted haze of Manhattan’s mythic skyline and into Stuart’s tiny bedroom in Jersey, Stuart dismembered Manny.
Manny and this bitch named Sheila who Manny met a few weeks ago and claims to be Lady Gaga’s cousin appear at the doorway, dressed in outfits inspired by the masses of gigabytes of videos Manny possesses of Lady Gaga, particularly Gaga’s Telephone video featuring Beyonce. The two look ridiculous: Manny is Gaga, in a cowboy hat and layers of purple chiffon that fall down around him, as if he’s dressed for a queer funeral. Sheila is Beyonce and dressed the same, but using black chiffon. They’re both idiots; the costumes look restrictive and the two must be sweating beneath the chiffon; this club is always packed with bodies and therefore hot as hell. But Stuart has come to expect this kind of thing from Manny; Manny’s never had much common sense…
Creative Non-Fiction:
Unlike Peter, I had to grow up.
But even as an adult, it feels good to return to Neverland now and again. Almost a decade ago, long before rent and utilities became a part of my vocabulary, I would pull a Strawberry Shortcake tee over my head, loosely tie my kwikwear pants around my waist, roll flourescent candy bracelets up to my elbows, and head out to listen to some happy hardcore with like-minded partykids. We lived at 160 beats per minute, dancing all night, “e-bonding” with friends and strangers, watching the sun rise, then doing it all again the next night…
I have to admit I’m a bit of a dork. I think it’s because I come late to everything. It’s not something I try to do; it just happens. Music, televison, fashion, whatever. You name it and I’m a step behind. And raving and happy hardcore were no exceptions…
