Erotic Nightmare: A Noir Porno In Fragmented Hallucinations

And: flash.

The bulb on the old-timey photographer’s camera popped and fizzed and the smoke never dissipated. It hung snugly from the ceiling and whispered to me thinly: D-V-N-O, four capital letters, printed in gold… The words cracked and faded but the bassline jumped the jewelry on the nightstand up and down.

I foreshadowed a stairway and was instantly walking down its steps, made of satin and sand. Ornately framed gold records (wrapped with animated lizards, licking and smiling in quiet) lined the descent. At the bottom the sand spilled into creaking floorboards and the bass humped louder. Tiny shafts of neon light danced from a keyhole ahead. The doorman, in crushed red velvet riddled with moth-bites, tipped his tasseled hat and motioned to the gigantic, oak door.

“We’ve been waiting for you, Mr. Kaleidoscope.”

Valentino grabbed my hand and inserted my index finger into the lock. He twisted my wrist and with a sparkle and cough the weights raised and the door wooshed open, smacking my face with smokey light and techno.

On acid, delicately: Waiting For Tonight.

This is hard-core, someone whispered and the waterless gondola took me barside. Before I could order my gin and tonic a Blundes in high-waisted denim chortled at me. I dropped my jaw into the ashtray. Her top was only this: two thin strips of untethered suspenders, forming two gig-lines with her Cosmonaut-pink nipples. She had dazzling tit-length Rorschach braids. When I say she had emeralds for eyes I mean she had snakes for eyes and those snakes, as emerald and reflecting many facets as they were, tongued hisses and scolded my tinkering frame.

The DJ exclaimed over something chopped and screwed: O Captain, my Captain!

I snapped back to the podium and she slid me a note, condensation stained, that spoke in cracked eyeliner a disappearing message (centered, one word above the next, symmetrical):

LANA
YOUR
LIP —

When I rose back up her fog-hair left a trail and she floated on periwinkle farts away from the ballroom. The note crumbled in my hand like ash and when I dusted off my boots it scattered “Corridor 3” and wouldn’t you know it there I was, approaching a vanishing point, following a burning red door, emanating heat and pheromones. 

Careful, Detective, you don’t want to disturb the crime scene.

She pushed me onto the bed and my cheap suit shriveled and ran out the door with its tail between its legs. It was difficult to concentrate. When the suspenders stopped suspending her chest erupted a most powerful beam of light, scarring my pupils, staining the walls.

I turned away to adjust and Gingrich was standing on a bedside table, pouring champagne into the mouths of two co-eds connected with a stone dildo at their back-ends. His flabby stomach rolled continuously over his waist, lapping at the case of skin squirting hose-like tiny globs of pearl around the room. 

I turned again, to dodge the chubby seeds, and noticed the blood. It covered the bed sheets. Little placards with numbers to note evidence, placed delicately by homicide detectives, dug into my skin. Julia had inserted myself, hush, warmly, softly, slipping and- must have been in the fog, when I was, well, I had been running somewhere- hadn’t I?

The body lay beneath us, undulating it’s minimal contents from our rhythm and pulse. Flash bulbs popped again and Newt drooled a turkey leg from the corner recliner. Mother, no, I didn’t mean to vomit again. I just get so, frankly, disturbed some nights. Some nights in red, some nights in criminal blue.

A fat, ham-hock-hand pulled at my Adam’s apple to a sitting position at the end of the bed. A chalked revolver winked at me soaked in crimson wet and the girl between my legs, Hoovering my rigid cock, looked up at me. The room vibrated in bass and her fleshy face cascaded grotesquely.

Lana, your lip-

But she couldn’t respond now, as her angelic face went from chiseled to chaste, leaving nothing but a floating head of hair. My penis tucked back and released and sighed and I walked through quicksand to the backdoor, getting gut punched by Mr. Gingrich once more, whispering between winded coughs- where’d Valentino go? Where’s the towncar?

My hip-pocket hummed concentrated vibrations and the smoke finally broke, the ceiling formed again and my bed was damp with sweat. How long had I been in?

The Hard Things

Recently a soft and astute human being told me that a positive side to a bad experience I had was that it makes me uniquely qualified to help someone going through something similar. This was yesterday. And I couldn’t help echoing this thought in my mind as I listened to Todd Glass give such a beautifully unique and touching perspective on hiding who you are, being gay, and coming out, on Marc Maron’s WTF Podcast. These two things together nudged me to talk about something I’ve been dealing with for over a decade, something that still gnaws at me, and something that has taught me some beautiful lessons in humanity, family, and love. I’m not saying this in anyway compares to Todd Glass’ triumphant and fractured story. I could never fathom the complications and hurt that comes with something like that. Dealing with the violent and close-minded take on homosexuality our society has cultivated is in no way like the “abandonment issues” (thanks ex-girlfriends!) I deal with from my mother. But that’s what I’m going to talk about. My mother (eye rollzzzzz).

And I hope this helps you. If you need it.

Yeesh!

Anyway, when I was around the age of 11 or 12 my increasingly disconnected mother disappeared. This is how I remember it at least. And unlike most maternal vanishing acts it wasn’t because of drugs or kidnapping or magic or anything else I may have been able to understand at that age. It was manic depression. But that meant farts-and-a-half to me at the time. I just knew she was one day there and then not the next.

Three months later she returns and two custody battles later I realize that in her chase for a youth and with the baggage of an eroding mind she spent an adulteruous absence in the same town I continued to look for her in. The details and corkscrew turns of these revelations and divorce proceedings are seemingly endless and horrifying and boring, all at once. When it was finally decided, by the first judge who cared for justice, my mother was unfit to raise my sister and I, my actual parent, my father, was returned custody and rightfully the home he was paying for. After several years of calendar-marked visits and a handful of almost-reconciliations my mother burned me for the last time and that, as they say, was that.

Now, it was a long and difficult process. I didn’t disconnect from the woman overnight. I skip over most of it to protect my own harsh memories and to not bore you. There were fights, there were sirens, there were admissions a child should never hear, there were suicide attempts and homicide threats, the whole American gamut. But none of those stories are the point (though I do take pride in my youthful defiance of kicking in the door of my mother’s worst boyfriend’s new Porsche [a now convicted sex offender!]). The point is this:

You can not help who you love and you can not make any human being love you. I know this sounds literal in my case. I could not help being born from my mother, I could not help to learn language and compassion and how to walk from her, I could not help to memorize her circadian rhythm before I could formulate thought. But it is the same as how you can not help who you fall in love with. You do not chose who your heart desires, for whatever reason. Not for attention, not for affection, and not for attraction. And when these people, these equally naive, fractured, and human people, when they do not realize that you are lovable and worthwhile and brilliant that is not your fault. It is theirs. One day, hopefully, they will realize and lament these mistakes they’ve made. But they also might not. And that is fine. They looked away when the meteor skimmed our atmosphere. Years from now the geniuses with their eyes to the sky will recall how you were ebullient and night-ripping, whereas these failures, these non-awares, will only recall in faded stories how truly bombastic you really are. It is a mistake and that is all it is. It is the same as the bumper you hit parallel parking the other day.

Now, that isn’t to say that mistakes can not affect you deeply. A misplaced digit can foreclose a home and ruin an entire family, entire generations. These ripples are for us to deal with and learn to endure. What we can’t affect is the mistake that led us here. And knowing that is comforting because knowing that means knowing that you are a product of the world and that itself is beautiful. And it will highlight the people, the actions, the objects, that weren’t mistakes. And you will cherish those with all of your heart because your heart is worthwhile and has grown larger than cities and has learned to exclude anything that does not match its sincerity.

Be careful. As I said, these are mistakes. Sometimes they are made because of off-balance serotonin levels and sometimes they are made because of fun white powders and sometimes they come from generations of non-love, but they are mistakes nonetheless. You will make mistakes. You may ignore a shining and brilliant human being who yearns for your affection, and you may never know that you did. But you must remember to try, you must remember to be careful. And when you slip, and this is not easy, you must try to explain, you must try to reveal. Because we will live on enduring and knowing we are meteors with unmatched speed and fury, but even rocks on fire in space can use a bit of tenderness, a bit of clarity.

Suicide Notes

-Probably two weeks? I’d need some time to get things in order. Is there anything else I want to do that I have yet to do?
-fall in love, check, tell my dad I love him, check, tell my sister she’s special, check, meet my brother, check, have a daughter- fuck.
-travel, check, didn’t make it to Nepal but I guess I covered a lot, especially given my status and wealth, Prague was nice, America would have been better if I wasn’t born here, Minneapolis was kind, saw enough of New York in movies, sure I missed some things, never been to Ohio but I saw where Buddy died in Clear Lake so we’ll call it even.

-Oh man, not gonna miss people who talk on cell phones loudly in public.

-Stop crying, please. 

-Two weeks? TWO WEEKS? FUCK!

-OK, maybe on your birthday? That gives us approx. 6 months. That’s breathable.

-Don’t believe in god, thank god.

-This sunshine tastes amazing. Amazing!

-Pretty girls, pretty girls, no more pretty girls.

-How would I do it, though? Logistics.

-rope? A punishment, plus your tongue pokes out all goofy afterwards, dangling like a pendulum with a lizard-tongue? No thanks.

-pills are boring, right? What am I gonna do, zone out in front of daytime television or put a record on?

-which record? nix Elliott Smith, too typical, nix it all.

-They’re playing Bright Eyes in this coffee shop.

-Maybe 6 months is too long.

-Forgot about Star Trek 2. Shit. OK, I’ll do it after Star Trek 2. When does that come out?

-I guess if I’m going out I can punch some people in the face who deserve it:

-Mark

-Westboro Baptist Church

-That guy who hit me with his car.

-Ian

-Jonah Hill

-Me

-Should buy some expensive bourbon.

-Guns?

-Should write some more love poems. Not enough love poems, ever.

-Should fall in love again.

-Should really, really have a daughter.

-Fuck.

-Sometimes I wish I had a faith.

-Look how beautiful that dog is, licking the air, jumping in that parking lot, he doesn’t even know that rent is late and debts are-

-Who will take over my debt? They’ll make someone else pay it right? My family? Sorry. 

-OK, pay off debts first. Don’t leave a mess for anyone else. That’s not fair.

-How to pay off debts:

-Sell a screenplay.

-LOL.

-Rob a bank.

-Not so LOL.

-most people get away with the first bank robbery. it’s the repeat offenders who blow it. isn’t that crazy!?

-Kerri Russell.

-Kerri Russell. Keri Russell!

-Can’t turn off the rotary buzz claws in my brain.

-Pizza? Pizza!

-Burritos

-Daughters.

-Someone’s gonna miss me. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, a very, very, very tiny amount of people. But, still. Don’t want to be rude.

-Not gonna miss people who cut me off.

-Not gonna miss anything. Too much to miss. Need to stick around. Need to have a daughter and need to write more love poems and need to high five more friends and make things that make other people feel less alone and need to ride it out and maybe if I’m lucky I can make enough money to high five more friends and make things that make other people feel less alone and then maybe, oh please maybe, can go to space.

-Need to buy some groceries then.

Endless Ticker Tape

I’ve never been one for much end-of-the-year reflection. It rarely makes me feel any different to complete one and enter another. But I do like a good summarization. I like things to be compact, when they can be. So here are some highlights, of this here collection of sun fragments and word-tricycles, of the year completed: 2011 (what a large number! Two thousand! And eleven! Look how far we are!)

Writing:

GOOD: Dealbreaker: She Was My Opposite

My Son And I Had A Picnic Today: Who is Justin Timberlake?

Drake’s Lonely Phone Log

A Sunlight Sketch of General Public’s Tenderness

‘One Morning’  (A Pleasant Wish of Ill Will)

The West Memphis Three Go To A Strip Club

Two Things That I Wanted To Know (That I Will Never Know)

TC: The Thing About Space Travel (Is Loneliness)

Internet Dating Is For Degenerate Losers Like Myself

Elle Fanning Offers To Buy Me A Drink In 2019

TC: Your Recently Divorced Father Has A Night Out In Leavenworth, KS

Poetry:

3(2)

One Morning, One Weekend, In The City

Garage Music

Still Tippin’

A Long Walk Down 32 Stale Carpeted Stairs, Covered In Nylon, Smoldering Sun, And Robin’s Eggs

Found Some Graph Paper

American Attendance

Caves

Dear Corina (Winter In Los Angeles)

Thanks so much for reading, criticizing, reblogging, and sticking around for all of this. You mean the most to me.

Bio farts.

Jamie Leffleur is a writer in New York City and she wonders if she lives in a pizza bubble but wonders more often if she could eat said bubble.

Cal Titus is a writer who prefers Maxim to GQ but his parrot prefers the Penny Saver to most major print publications. His shoes need resoling.

Maxwell Maxington studied Artistic Representations of Bill Cosby at Evergreen University and still calls his ex-girlfriend late nights out of habit. She has stopped minding.

Michalea Fist is an ex-Sandwich Artist and seamstress who befriends clear liquors nightly. She has stopped mending.

Kara Q. Walcott designs eco-friendly ascots with her boyfriend Zeal when she’s not hammering away at her Paralang Typer 110-ASL her grandfather left her. He wore a mustache. Zeal does not.

Megazord P. Berkeley, Esq. has a quick hand. He’ll look around the room. He won’t tell you his plan. He’s got a rolled cigarette hanging out his mouth. He’s a cowboy kid.

Qorin Qu is the editor of See-Saw Revolution, a weekly playground voyeur column. Qorin never mastered the monkey bars.

Sethula Presley once found twenty dollars and a gram of cocaine in his grandmother’s shoe.

Mark Carrer Hilton doesn’t remember where he put his keys but can recite every lyric to Wham!’s ‘Make It Big’. He likes cats.

Farthing Woooster comma franklin parlor mince meat umbrella dog.