..:S...P...I...D...E...R...B...I...T...E...S:..

Tuesday, August 05, 2003

"sister got bit by a copperhead snake in the woods behind the house, nobody was home so i grabbed her foot and i sucked that poison out..."
-Summer of the Drug

so last night i'm knuckle deep in this chick's sphinct...
sorry, i just love starting out a conversation like that. can't claim credit for it though. the quote or the act.

been writing like it's the end of the world over here. i'd should just lay pages on the floor in a closing spiral until i'm walled in like a fucking Poe story.

so yesterday i ventured out looking for a record store in this town. couldn't find on and drove down the road into the next town, some little Lumberton looking corner of the world called "Sewickley" (?) which is, according to the sign, the home of Mario Lemiux. didn't see him but i did see a sign for "Books Music and Gifts so slammed on the brakes and took a chance. turned out to be this goofy little new age shop with about 10 whalesong cds and a shitload of candles. however...there was this cute little pig-tailed hippie working behind the counter reading a book. and this is a turn-on for me. i don't give a fuck what she's reading. okay, maybe that's not true. it can't be a fashion mag. actually no, strike that, these days i don't give a shit what she's reading as long as her mouth isn't moving while she does it (you can apply that rule to many things). and me seeing a girl reading a book is like a chick seeing a big sweaty fireman pissing on a fire to put it out then rolling up his dick and throwing it over his shoulder. it makes me take a second look. so i ask her if there's any real record stores in her town and she says no. then she proceeds to tell me her life story, which i'm going to sum up and disect right here for 2 reasons: first, she made a comment about not having a computer and computers being the antichrist so if she gets online to read this she's a liar and if i ever see her again she can't say shit without me calling her out on that. and second...actually i forgot the other reason. i swear i had one. i think it was something about stacking the deck in my favor so if i have to explain anything insulting i say about someone before i really know them, i can say it was some sort of experiment to compare first impressions or...no, that wasn't it either. anyway. here's what happened. she said she was a writer. now to quote Travolta in Pulp Fiction, "that's a bold statement." these days i'm riding a satisfying wave of female writers and their action-packed web logs so i'm thinking "if this girl is a fucking saturday-morning poet i'm going to walk out and knock over that glass case so she has to chase polished stones all over the store. but she's a talker and i'll listen to anyone for longer than i should. and she tells me how she graduated from high school at like 15 cause she's a "genius." and she hitchhiked across the country and just recently came back to her home town and through it all she wrote about her travels like Kerouac and she never let's anyone read her stuff and her fridge only has this grain in it with a strange name that starts with a "Q" and...

while she's talking i start to hear voices. not those voices that always tell me to try to grab the bubblegum out of someone's mouth or to drop my pants mid-conversation, that voice i recognize. no, it's these other female voices that seem to be coming from behind her head. voices whispering bullshit about auras and zen and reincarnation and apparenly this clerk she's not hearing any of this and for a moment, for a split fucking second (i'm talking one of those hummingbird 1400 heartbeats a minute) i think i'm psychic. i'm thinking i'm listening directly into this little scatterbrain's head and i'm ready to run out the door and use my new psychic powers for EEEEEVIL! instead of good when this door behind her, a purple door that was painted into the wall that i hadn't noticed before, this door with an Old English "In Session" sign rattling on it, swings open and out walks this woman wrapped in scarves and some dazed-looking soccer mom.

turns out it was a psychic reading going on in that room and i'd been listening to the tail end of it. the girl trails off and talks to her boss for a minute and the soccer mom skitters out the door looking at her shoes and i pretend to be looking at this basket of stupid-ass angel-in-your-pocket lucky charms. when the girl starts yapping again i'm not really paying attention because i'm cracking myself up thinking about this:

i'm always so ready to rip on that scene and all its desperation and its seach for answers in the supernatural and there i was HOPING i had some superpower that allowed me to see right into some's little 60's throwback's new age delusions. i mean, to be honest i didn't really think i was psychic, but in that split-second it was more like i was thinking "wouldn't it be funny if i was?" and "seriously, where the fuck are those voices coming from?" and i would have told this girl all of this, just to throw down the gauntlet to see if i get a "you're weird" out of her mouth, but i was troubled by something she'd said in the middle of her lecture:

she had said she never showed her writing to anyone? did she say that shit? i swore i heard that right between her saying she's never owned a TV and she watches cars from her roof for prime time entertainment. never showed her writing to anyone? i couldn't resist. i said:

"how can you not have the urge to show your writing to anyone."
"I don't know, it's just for me and it's private thoughts and..."
"no no no, that's impossible. these thoughts, you should want to put them in people mailboxes. or stand screaming on your car in a traffic jam, you should want to rent a fucking blimp to flash your shit to your old friends working the Renasance Fair, you should want to...wait, when was the last time you wrote something?"
"it's been a little while, i've been working these two job and..."
"i'll bet you haven't had the urge to share your thought since you last wrote something. am i right?"
pause. "no, i just don't like to show my-"
"these things you don't like anyone to see? these thoughts you can't share? you know why that is? because you wrote that stuff years ago. and it's not you anymore. maybe it's dramatic and gets you emotional when you read it now, but you can' t share it because it's time has past. just like photographs, we could easily forget about broken hearts and hatred if we didn't have these pictures to stumble over that keep picking that scab and..."

maybe i didn't say it exactly like that, but it's in the same ballpark and she seemed to be giving this nonsense some serious thought at this point, and i'd stopped thinking about how to manipulate the conversation to meet her out somewhere later and all that crap. i just wanted her to admit she wasn't writing. i just wanted her to say the words, "i haven't written shit in 5 years." i realized that it was quite a conversation for a couple of strangers and i know she did too. and her boss was creepin' around too. but that happens to me sometimes, i don't set out to meet people but i can usually ask some key questions to get shit out of them that they haven't thought about or talked about for awhile.

what was the point of all this? i don't know. i'm supposed to meet her friday at someplace called Bar Louie's in Strongsville? her idea. i think that's what she said. i told her to bring something she wrote. she won't though. i don't want to abuse her too much on this computer since it's the first stranger i've exchanged names with since i moved here. not counting the neighbor to the left. and some drunks friday. and the UPS dude. i don't know. i used to think the effort to be creative was enough. but i swore i wouldn't do that shit anymore. then again what the fuck else am i going to do around here on the weekends? you readers are voices in my head too but we can't run around tearing up this town and getting louder as we argue about the world n shit and people don't dare tell us to be quiet because we'd verbally spank their ass. all i'm doing is sitting here typing faster and faster and nobody can hear it happening. here, check it out. i am now typing like i'm underwater. slow, one letter at a time. okay, now i'm typing so hard the birds just exploded from all the trees outside. can't tell the difference, can you?

so those trees back there? there's nothing alive in them. where's the sasquatch and the snakes and the wild turkeys? it's too quiet. freaky as hell. i swear, i crash through the deadfall back there when i'm bored or doing chin-ups and there's nothing crawling around. not even a cricket. at this point i'd celebrate a snakebite like i'd stumbled onto someone's diary. One she swore she'd never let anyone read.

::: david - 3:26 AM [+] :::
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