-jem> <*weeb*> *pats you on the back like a drunken sailor*
-jem> aw!
-rachel> how do drunken sailors pat?
-jem> you know, all falling down and buddy buddy kinda gay style
-jem> the best way, in other words
-rachel> ah
-jem> the cute receptionist is making me a tape
-jem> the sun is out and it's all spring like and i'm hyper and giggling.
-jem> i feel like a thirteen year old boy.
-jem> but with a bigger dick.
-chaya> hahaha!
-jem> quote of the day: "fyi, never fall asleep chewing cinnamon gum!!!! now my tongue feels
-jem> swollen... i just don't know what i was thinking..."
-stacy> ew!
-stacy> i try not to fall asleep while chewing *any* gum
-sapphire> I reguarly fall asleep while chewing gum *and* smoking
-sapphire> cigarettes, often while running through the house and holding
-sapphire> scissors the wrong way
-jem> so yeah
-jem> hi
-jem> welcome to my good mood
-jem> it's been going on for like a week now!
-jem> somebody stop me!
-garok> yer in a good mood? cool!
-jem> i almost like want to go to the gym and work out
-jem> it's that bad!
-jem> help!
-jem> quick depress me
-shadok> eat some pie
-sapphire> dude
-shadok> with ice cream
-sapphire> and then do it again
-jem> i love the gym
-jem> it's fun!
-jem> it's like recess!
-sapphire> nuh uh
-jem> yeah
-sapphire> they dont have trampolines, or lava monsters, or monkey bars
-sapphire> or anything like that
-jem> yes they do
-sapphire> lame
-jem> i don't know what gym you're going to
-sapphire> your gym has trampolines & lava monsters?
-jem> ok, lava monsters are EVERYWHERE and yes, i went to a gym for a while tha
-jem> t had a trampoline
-jem> and those big ball things. and big tuff fags. and a sauna thinger.
more on the gym:
-da> i don't really need to lose weight. a little maybe...i mostly
-da> just need to burn off angst, and that's harder to quantify.
-shadok> just do some angst burning exercises, and cut down on your
-shadok> ennui intake
-da> it's really the take-out ennui that's getting me. it's just
-da> so darn convenient!
[=Topic=] jD changed the topic to "take-out ennui"
-shadok> that stuff is dripping with poly-unsaturated grief
-jD> yeah, but at least we don't get overweening inertia delivered
-jD> like our friends over in SF
-jD> (I just wanted an excuse to use the word "overweening,"
-jD> actually)
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
driving to la tomorrow morning.
looking in the truck stop game rooms for new pinball.
borrowing a different car. this time with a tape player.
listening to:
unitard (my new favorite band)
jay-z
can
journey (nobody believes me that they are a great band)
ESG
the fall
weird live new order tapes
and my new set of learn to speak spanish tapes
spacemadness> NAPALM DEATH?
yeah
i sort of opened for them once with my fake band in new york
emphasis on SORT OF
spacemadness> they pretty much rule.
we played at the upstairs of coney island high and they played the downstairs.
chaya> fake band?
yeah
SLUT
i will publish the story of how i ended up in this band some day
it is quite a tale
chaya> tell the short version
ok
here goes
i came home one day and there was a note on my floor from my roommate tim
loa> oh no
it said: get your bass, drum machine, practice amp and you can borrow my distortion pedal. you have a show tonight at coney island high at 11. must start band now! katie will pick you up at 4.
so i'm like ok
and i get all my shit together.
and a few different shirts and the leather cowboy hat i had stolen from tessa the week before.
s5> hah.
so katie picks me up in "via ria" her 1967 mercury caliente and we go to tessa's house. she is going to be the singer. much to the horror of katie and myself
[=Topic=] chaya changed the topic to "coney island high"
we get there and tessa is locked in her parents bathroom doing dope
and there are a few strange boys in leather pants standing around drinking scotch and looking for snacks
chaya> hah
loa> hahah
katie has written like 5 brilliant songs and she plays them for me and i write quick bass parts and drum parts.
so now we have to teach tessa the lyrics
the writing parts part took like an hour and a half. then we realize that tessa will never learn the lyrics if she can't see straight
so tessa finally comes out in a white bra and a pair of fredrick's of hollywood spandex hotpants that look like acid washed cutoff jeanshorts but are spandex.
chaya> heh!
and decides that what she wants to do is play welcome to the jungle and strip to it
and we are like no fucking way
loa> ahha
so we give her paper with the lyrics on it and spend the next four hours getting our outfits together, buying coke, and looking for tessa's favorite thong
we drive via ria to the show and it breaks down on st marks in the middle of the street. and i'm wearing white platforms, tight pants, a black bra and katie's jeans jacket unbuttoned and the cowboy hat.
chaya> WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
chaya> oh dear lord
but katie is wearing like fishnets and these spandex cammo underwear things and this weird "top" thing that she made, a janis joplin wig and big huge glasses
chaya> so you all look like hookers
chaya> with a broken down vehicle
s5> that's not too out of place on st marks's
s5> marks
basically she's almost naked
and we're pushing the car out of the way of an oncoming bus and we're late for the show
chaya> HAH
so she stays with the car and gives me her guitar and i have to go in and play her parts while she puts the car somewhere
and i do. but i haven't the slightest idea how to play it
and i'm sort of nodding off
chaya> snerk
so i do anyways and then she saves the day and i go back to bass.
a friend of mine has pictures
i wish i had those songs still. the lyrics were brilliant
katie is a total genius
and is one of the girls whose presence is guaranteed to ruin my life
loa> goddamn
and she, apparently, just moved to la today
YAY
chaya> haha
chaya> time to leave
ha
totally
w: "well, in porno, you have to think on your feet a lot of times."
r: "oh really? i thought you had to think on your back with your feet
in the air."
*> we started sobbing and we would tell each other our sob stories
*> until we passed out in a little hugging sob
<*gus*> and hopefully at some point a cute person would come in for
*> each of us and make out for 10 minutes with us, and then they
*> would leave and then a dork would come in and we would punch
*> them and then they would leave
<*gus*> and then we would go back to our sob stories.
I woke up this morning and went to a noodle shop to eat and read. I ate
katsune udon which has fried tofu skin and green onion in it. The broth
warmed me and the coke on ice I was drinking chilled me to the bone, made
my arm hairs stand on end. Some days I'm unusually sensitive to
temperature. I noticed also that I get freezing when I'm really nervous,
all teeth chattering and stuff.
I read an essay called Sly Stone and the Myth of Staggerlee. I'm going to
photocopy it and send it to you. This week, I also just reread The Long
Goodbye and The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. It surprised me that I had
learned so much about writing from those books. Rereading them for
probably the fifth or sixth time, I see the moments and the phrases and
the gestures that influenced stories of my own.
I was thinking about writing this morning. Probably because I have done so
little of it since I got here. I almost feel like I forgot how. I was
thinking about what exactly I am trying to do and whether or not it is
working. I want to show beauty and awkward moments, nervous tensions. I'm
terribly concerned with the absolute minute details of a situation. As if
they are going to make all the difference in the world in how you
understand the story I'm telling. Those details make all the difference to
me when I remember something that happened to me so I hope it translates
to the reader. It's like this:
Even the weather is slow. Its November and weve only had a couple real
cold days to speak of. A little rain. A lot of cool still nights. The
sunsets are orange. The East River water is brown. The scaffolding is
green and red metal. This is the view from my apartment.
Short bursts of description, detailing every moment. The color of a girl's
shoes, the curve of her lower back, the song that was playing when I
turned and smiled at her as I walked into the bathroom. The streets I
drove by, the color of the car, the song on the radio, the smell of the
bay water in the air, the time on the clock. I just think that each little
detail is of equal importance, you know. They all add up into a whole
scene and every part no matter how tiny makes the scene what it is and the
feeling it inspires.
I haven't written about Los Angeles yet, I think because I can't find the
right words to do it justice. Raymond Chandler did. I need to do for LA what
I was trying to do for New York in the New York Booth columns, writing about New York even when I wasn't
writing specifically about the city itself. That is, writing in a style
that WAS New York even if I was telling a story that happened in Mexico or
Providence, I was telling it from the frame of reference of New York and I
was using the language I developed from living there.
In order to get it right for LA, I need more practice. Or maybe that's not
it. I need something that I don't have so what comes out so far is a
disjointed, bland, confused description which reads like I never wanted to
write about it in the first place. And that is bad.
I think I will end this letter here for now by saying, the fall air is
amazing in Los Angeles. The sun feels so good, the air moves. Today is a
pretty clear day. It doesn't smell weird.
I'm going down to the empty bar downstairs to play Heartbreak Hotel once
on the juke box before I come back up and get to work on a new story.
Love, Cody Lee.
P.S. On a completely unrelated note, a bird pooped on me this morning. Is
that good luck or bad?
You know, people in tex-ass seem to be incredibly proud of the fact that they live here. As the miller lite can says, "BE TRUE TO TEX-ASS, SHE'S TRUE TO YOU"
One sign: "covenant church, where it's FUN to be saved!"
One person: "I'm fixin' to go to the mall, y'all comin'?"
One bumper sticker: "No wimps in TEXAS"
So far: hung out with ballerinas. found a good taco truck (just like home). helped some guys change a tire. shopped at value village. tried on cowboy boots. took pictures of freight trains. got lost. drank beer. went looking for an arcade.
Chat:
jem: i took pictures of churches in converted garages and old liquor stores and front lawns and the backs of trucks. texans will put a church anywhere, it appears.
wb: interesting
wb: have you met many texans
wb: heh
jem: i've met two kinds mostly...white suburban 18 year old ballet dancers and the hot mexican boys at the taco truck where i've been eating every day
wb: heh
wb: nice weather?
jem: mostly
jem: little rain. some sun. lots of wind yesterday
jem: today is nice
it had two lights on behind
when the train left the station
it had two lights on behind
well, the blue light was my blues
and the red light was my mind.
all my love's in vain.
-robert johnson, love in vain
Ray Wray wore white for the first month that he lived with me. It had something to do with Santeria but i'm not sure what exactly. I'd ask him but I’ve sort of lost him somewhere. I doubt he'd remember anyway.
He gave me a box with a folded up skeleton carved out of the top. It smells like Egyptian musk and ash. Like his room did.
For a while he was obsessed with self-tanning lotion. It worked up to a point then one day it turned him bright orange and he stayed that way for weeks.
Once I tried to throw him out the window at Epicenter while we were drunk.
eat, turn the light on, drink anything but water. Yesterday morning I was
alternating between trying not to throw up and wanting to die. Having the
stomach flu is one of my biggest nightmares. I got a lot of high fevers
when I was a kid and weird things were always happening. My finger tips
always go numb when I get a fever. I hallucinate and I have crazy dreams.
Last night, in my weird fever, I couldn't stop thinking about my old
friends Omar and Daniel. They were boyfriends for five years and they were
constantly having huge fights and breaking up and then having dramatic,
sexy reunions. Daniel had Omar's name tattooed on his neck. When they were
on, they were an amazing couple. Then something would happen and Omar
would go to Spain and Daniel would move into my kitchen or Daniel would go
to Baltimore and Omar would move into Terrence's kitchen.
I lost track of them both for a year or so. Last spring, when the
weather was like it is now, mild and sunny, Omar and Daniel broke up and
Omar visited New York for the first time. I ran into him on 7th Street,
trying on cowboy hats. I took him to the Boiler Room on 4th street and he
ditched me for some Spanish guy in tight pants. The next morning, he hadn't
slept yet and we went to Michael and Zoe's for coffee. He was kind of
upset. Spanish guy gave him some coke and then took him home. He came
while they were just making out, decided he didn't want to have sex and
fell asleep. Omar left, unfulfilled and high, and walked around the city
all night.
You know, he said, my first night in town, I have to go out and cruise a
little. It's like a new place feels so unreal, so big. I get off the bus
and I'm wandering around and it doesn't feel like it's really happening. When
a guy takes me home and fucks me, I become visible. The city shrinks
back. By now, I can just about map the world in dicks. I don't know how to
explain it. I show up hungry with a huge empty feeling and I think that
sex is going to fill it. I know it is. And I rush out for it and when I
get it, sometimes it's the only thing I ever needed. And sometimes it makes
the feeling a lot worse.
I was at Meow Mix a while ago. At that time it was only a couple
blocks from my house, I had just wandered over there because I needed to
be around girls. Omar was right. I was thinking about what he said while I
was standing in the bathroom line. I wasnt even that drunk. I looked at
the girl behind me. She looked at me. I know it sounds stupid but for a
second everything was quiet. I turned away and there was a Prince song
playing. I laughed as I walked into the bathroom.
When I came out, I was dancing with my friend Cooper and a couple of her
friends I ran into. The bathroom line girl and her friends were dancing
next to us. She came up and danced all close in front of me and then took
my hands and put them on her hips. She was small, like me. And wearing red
converse.
We danced. I moved my hand up her back from her hips. 'Til this day that is
the one thing I still can't get out of my mind. That curve. I can still
feel it with my eyes closed. My lips brushed her neck for a second. She
tasted a little salty.
Earlier that night Cooper and I were talking about girls and what little
things you remember about them long after you stop hanging out. The first
thing I said was collar bones and that web thing in-between your thumb and
your forefinger. Cooper grabbed my hips so that her thumbs rested in the
area next to where my hip bones stick out a little. I think that's my
favorite, she said. Cooper was right when she said after awhile you forget
a lot of things about the people you have sex with. You stop reviewing it
in your head as a whole experience and it gets reduced to parts. And Omar
was right too about sex sometimes fixing everything and sometimes making
it all worse but you have to try, right? The girl from the alley by The
Stud, I remember her stomach. And Lupe from the piers, I remember her
teeth.
Cooper hit me on the back when the girl from the bathroom line
grabbed me by the belt and pulled me away from the bar, towards the dance
floor. I turned and shrugged at her. We danced some more. She kissed me
for a second and then pulled back. Hi, she said, I'm Nikki. Hi, I'm
Cody. She shook my hand. Then we kissed some more and I forgot that I'm
too shy to make out in public. At some point we stopped and I said I had
to pee hoping that shed follow me into the bathroom. She did. We fucked in
the bathroom. Afterwards, we splashed our faces with cold water and tried
to fix our hair and sat in the bathroom smoking cigarettes, ignoring the
people knocking on the door.
i've been getting this thing where my arms, from the elbow down, get these
weird sharp pains down toward my wrists and my hands twitch for a second
or something and then get all tingly like they were asleep and are trying
to come out of it.
i'm a little worried, i guess.
anna told me that i changed the way she felt about herself. nikki once
told me that too, and both katies said the same thing, and tina too, now
that i think about it. when ** told me that, she said, "you changed me,
you change the way i feel about myself in this weird way. i bet a lot of
people have said that to you, huh?"
and i said, "yeah, i guess they have but i hardly, if ever, feel the same
way about them."
anna said that i made her feel beautiful, like more of a woman than she'd
ever felt before. she made me feel like the perfect boy, tough and sexy
and maybe a little bit mean but sweet on the inside if you took the time
to get there. she would talk softly to me when we fucked, her lips on my
ear, and i felt like the person i'd always wanted to be.
her: "i really hate last-night's-shoes, you know."
me: "i know. i need a cup of coffee bad."
her: "come on, i'll buy you breakfast."
me: "ok. let's go."
her, leaning out my window: "wait, look. it's one of those days where the
air feels fresher and you look at the clouds."
