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The cocooned or the coquette?

Written by

Jens Lekman – I Know What Love Isn’t

“Hey, Rawles. What’s up?”

“Whatsupwhatsupwhatsup.”

“How’s it going, boy? You want to go outside? I bet you do. I’ll bet you do.”

“So what do you think? How’s your life been?”

“Fancy a cuddle-nap? Yeah, that sounds nice to me, too.”

“Do you ever feel lonely here alone in the house? Or is it worse when I’m here ignoring you? Loneliness and being alone are different things, remember.”

“Hey, buddy, want a snack?”

“Well don’t you look dapper today.”

“Stop licking my fucking couch, dude. Just because it’s leather doesn’t mean it tastes like beef.”

“You thirsty, buddy?”

“I’ve traveled all around the world trying to lose my existential distaste for myself but I think this is one tail I’ll never shake.” Rawles blinks. “Yeah, I thought it sounded a touch pretentious too.”

“C’mon, man, don’t pee on that.”

“You know that feeling when you’re a tourist and it’s cool and all, but you can’t shake the thought that you are making the place worse or less authentic by being there? I feel like that everywhere in the world. No? You’re pretty much comfortable wherever you flop? Alright.”

“Seriously, stop licking the damn couch.”

[I Know What Love Isn’t.]

Posted on September 27, 2012 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

Stand up and be a man

Written by

Night Panther – Fever

In a thrift store, I found a white, hand-painted mug for 99 cents. The front read Meg in loving, loopy, lipstick-red script. The back:

Rachel
April 16, 1994

Meg and Rachel met at a bar when Rachel caught Meg’s eye from across the bar and sent a bourbon-and-coke her way with a wink and a kiss on a napkin. They met in the middle and danced off-beat to The Cardigans and The Go Gos. Meg was trying too hard. Rachel asked for her number anyway. Rachel waited three days before calling, during which time Meg may have had one too many cups of coffee and a few too many cigarettes.

They went for a drink after Meg’s shift on a Friday night and tumbled into Rachel’s apartment, shedding clothes and inhibitions. Rachel made French toast and strong coffee, and Meg fed her strawberries while she cooked. They spent the day together and split a bowl of nachos for dinner.

Six months to the day they met, Meg asked Rachel to move in with her. Rachel said yes and made Meg a mug in ceramics class. On the front, she painted Meg in her distinctive handwriting, and on the back:

Rachel
April 16, 1994

She chose a shade of red that reminded her of Meg’s satin knickers and the nub of lipstick she smeared across her mouth whenever they went out.

Meg made space in her cupboards for Rachel’s mugs and Rachel’s jeans and Rachel’s shoes and Rachel’s deodorant. They shared a tube of toothpaste, and took turns cooking dinner for each other. They danced off-beat to No Doubt and The Bangles.

In July, Rachel left dishes in the sink and Meg left her a passive-aggressive note without a kiss on it. Meg let her dirty underwear pile up on the chair in their bedroom until it was spilling onto the floor. Rachel made herself a cup of hot chocolate and didn’t make one for Meg. And then Meg cooked a single serve of spinach-and-ricotta ravioli with truffle oil sauce, and Rachel watched her eat it from the door of their bedroom. She silently packed in the morning, and Meg watched her go with eyes trained on an article in Vanity Fair.

Meg tried to collect the things Rachel had left behind, and only managed to find a pair of shoes (high-heeled, scarlet, bows on the toes), a sad-looking beret (navy blue), a packet of Tic Tacs (orange), and the mug. She packed them into a pink holographic gift bag, which Rachel accepted with a liquid expression. She said “Are you trying to hurt me?” and “This was a gift!” and “I think you should keep it” and “Don’t try to erase me!”

Meg put the mug at the back of her cupboard. She moved it to three different apartments, and finally to a house in the suburbs with a tree in the front yard and a dog in the back. In 2012, she packed a box full of books and toys and her children’s clothes, and decided to sort through the crockery. She nestled the mug into the box between a Furby and a pair of teeny tiny red capris.

I bought the mug along with a kettle, a German beer stein, and a tourist guidebook called “James Dean Died Here.”

[Fever.]

Posted on September 25, 2012 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

There’s no satisfaction in knowledge

Written by

Doll Eyes – Mike Degrasse Tyson

Things I realised while stranded outside the apartment at 4:30 a.m. (because my roommate was asleep/having sex/dead and couldn’t be woken by the buzzer nor her phone, despite shouldering the door-opening responsibility by taking the only set of keys):

– The longer you are outside, the colder it gets.

– Those black dots on the pavement that are smoother than the roughness of the concrete? Those are downtrodden pieces of chewing gum.

– Don’t pick at the black dots on the pavement, or you’ll get gum under your nails.

– Five storeys is too high to throw pebbles at a window. This has potential to shit all over plans for romantic street-to-window poetry readings, badass attention grabbing (whereby the person on the receiving end would look outside and see, like, a tank, or something equally awesome), and irate wake-up calls.

– Being cold sobers you up.

– Being in a rage sobers you up.

– Being locked out of your apartment sobers you up.

– There is a time and a place for a transparent top and it is not outside an apartment building at 4.30 a.m. with no way of getting inside.

– Always be thankful for huge, fuck-off menacing boots.

– You will almost definitely start to regret that final beer.

– Don’t risk that gutter pee, no matter how sneaky it seems at the time.

– There is no limit to the amount of times you can press a buzzer.

– The super is not at your beck and call.

– The buzzer is not loud enough.

– Call.

– Call.

– Call.

– Call.

– Call.

– Calling makes you feel productive.

– Voicemail takes control too quickly.

– There will always be helpful-but-suspicious neighbours.

– Smile and thank all your neighbours. Always.

– Knocking must reach volumes previously thought unmeasurable.

– Kicking the door is not an unhelpful outburst of rage. It is tactical.

– An open door will cancel all ill feelings toward a roommate, only to replace them with feelings of complete fanatical devotion.

– Propositioning your roommate at 4.50 a.m. will be met with a contemptuously closed door.

[Big Fun.]

Posted on September 17, 2012 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

Someday you might find your soul endangered

Written by

Neil Young – Natural Beauty

They sit silently. There are three of them, taking up three of the 12 seats set up in a circle in the living room of an old Los Angeles house. The couches are plaid and floral and ugly and old. The ceiling has water damage. They sit in silence. It is an unprogrammed Quaker meeting. A peace sign six feet tall rests in the weeds out front.

A cat bounds onto the center coffee table and casually preens itself. The whole house smells like cats and cat piss. In an unprogrammed meeting, any member led by the Spirit speaks. If the Spirit does not lead, the members do not speak. They sit in silence.

Malory’s head nods briefly. She is wearing perfectly round silver glasses. Her hair is silver. Her clothes are frumpy and her body lumpy. The cat rattles something in the kitchen, so she shuffles to the back to investigate and slowly shuffles back.

Bill shaves his mustache but not his gray beard. The leather of his brown shoes is cracked. There is a gap between his two front teeth. He has not flown since 2001 because he assumes he’s on the no-fly list. A fly buzzes in the stale air for a bit and then leaves the room. The air does not move. He is the clerk.

On the mantle sits an old scale, the kind you have to use weights on the bottom to figure out how heavy something is. The only thing it is measuring now is dust. No one is measuring the time either; Marge’s mouth is open in snoreless sleep. They sit silently, praying, waiting. [Harvest Moon.]

Posted on September 16, 2012 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

I’ll be dancing in your footsteps

Written by

Neonfaith – Escape

I emptied my trash last week and realised I’d reached a point in my life where the only things I was throwing out were coffee filters, cigarette butts and used menstrual products. This realisation, more than any moment that had preceded it, was when I decided to Grow the Fuck Up. My friends laughed and placed bets. My mum just said, “It’s about bloody time, pumpkin.” (Insults are made nicer with terms of endearment.)

“Fuck them,” I told myself. “I am Batman.”

I made appointments with a personal trainer, a nutritional advisor, and a life coach. I cashed up my Metro card and spent the day riding the subway between buildings.

I listened to their advice. I took their pamphlets. I filled in my shiny new diary with their dates. I accepted their exercise schedules and meal plans and organisational tools. I nodded and promised and shook hands.

I bought adidas and Nike and New Balance. I tore up the Metro card and got a bike. I set up a gym in my lounge room. I stocked my fridge with green things in brown paper labels that screamed “ORGANIC” in retro-style fonts. I sorted through my papers and filed everything into colour-coded folders. I put all my pens into an empty tin. I threw out the coffee and destroyed the cigs. I sold my beer stash to my neighbour for his vacuum cleaner.

I started setting my alarm for 6:00 a.m. and became acquainted with the world of the morning. Hair falling out of a ponytail, I pounded the pavement in my adidas, in my Nikes, in my New Balances. I coughed my lungs out on a children’s playground. An awkward little boy with a gap-tooth and soy sauce curls put his sweaty little fat hand on my sweaty, heaving shoulder.

I looked at him, my hands propping me up from their anchor points on my knees. I breathed the exhaust fumes of smoke, coffee and alcohol that were burning themselves out of my organs into his pretty freckled face.

“Are you okay, lady?” he asked me, patting my shoulder like you’d pat the seals at Sea World.
“I’m dying,” I told him.

I woke up in the emergency room two hours later.

[Escape.]

Posted on September 11, 2012 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

What a beautiful state we’re in

Written by

The Kills – Goodnight Bad Morning

“Can you just leave that alone for a minute?”

Eli’s knocking the wooden wing of a broken Spitfire his grandpa gave him against the car door, trying to jam it back into the plane’s body.

“It’s snapped right off; it’s not gonna just stick back on like that. Can you put it down? Please? You’re driving me crazy.”

Eli drops the broken plane bits into his lap. He looks out the window for a minute, rests his head against the glass, exhales loudly, then starts blowing raspberries on the dashboard.

“For Christ’s sake, Eli!”

Eli’s brother pulls the car roughly to the curb and yanks the handbrake. It makes a violent, stuttered groaning sound that Eli hates.

“Fuck.”

That’s another sound Eli hates. He wishes he was back at his grandpa’s house. Only good sounds live there. Like Spitfire engines, and belly-blown raspberries, and his grandpa’s gritty laughter, as rough and rocky as the untarred road that leads to his house.

The curb where Eli’s brother has now parked the car is smooth. Smooth and sticky. Fresh tar.

Eli’s brother rests his head on the backs of his hands, which are still locked around the wheel. He lets out an exhausted sigh and lets it hang in the small, air-conditioned space between his thoughts and Eli’s. He doesn’t move.

Eli can see his back rising and falling a little and tries to imagine his own lungs underneath it all. He imagines lungs punctured by Spitfire artillery. He imagines his grandpa’s lungs, heavy with tar and tumours.

Staring, Eli waits for his brother to move. He doesn’t. Eli opens the car door and steps out onto the sticky, tar-slicked gravel. He leans down and presses his hand against the wet ground, but it doesn’t depress and leave an imprint like his brother showed him with wet cement. Eli crouches down and examines the granules of tar-choked gravel at his fingertips. He scrapes at it with his fingernails and pulls up globs that ooze underneath. The tar is thick like molasses and Eli’s hands are covered in it when he clambers back into the car.

Eli crawls as near to his brother as he can get, trying not to get tar on the dashboard. Eli wraps his arms around his brother’s torso and presses his hands into his chest, leaning his small body against his brother’s back.

For a moment Eli’s brother doesn’t move, and neither does Eli. Slowly, Eli’s brother lifts his head off the steering wheel and takes Eli’s hands in his own. Then he feels the stickiness.

Eli’s brother looks from the open car door and the mangled strip of gravel to the broken Spitfire pieces on the passenger seat, and lifts Eli’s hands off his chest. The small black handprints on his shirt rise and fall with every breath.

Eli blows a gentle raspberry against his brother’s neck.

“We’ll buy some superglue on the way home,” Eli’s brother says, and then he starts to cry.

[Midnight Boom.]

Posted on September 5, 2012 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

Sometimes I get a little scared and drunk

Written by

The Night – Like This

My roommate says 7-Eleven and Vegas share a similar vibe. It’s open all night. The clientele is filled with a quiet desperation, a certain depravity. It facilitates poor life decisions.

I had to make a bee-double e-double arr-ewe-en at 1 a.m. As I crossed the street, a couple passed the other way. A cop stopped at the light called them over, and, seeing the open Corona the guy was trying to hide behind his leg, got out of his car, all crisp blue uniform and authoritative sobriety. The girl — skin-tight black dress down over the impressive curve of her thighs and not much else — obediently backed off into the parking lot. The guy sat down on the curb, handing his license up into the beam of the flashlight.

I hightailed out of there; I know I’m white, but cops are scary, okay?

The 7-Eleven down the block has two demographics. Half is older, burned-out, ethnic, from the residential side of the street, there to pick up six-packs and menthols. Half is from just across the road, hipsters drunkenly stumbling out of a club called Que Sera for smokes and snacks. I grabbed a PBR tallboy and an Arizona ice tea and fell into line behind two hefty white dudes comparing notes about arm tattoos. Outside, two senile black guys missing teeth elbowed each other and snickered at unfunny jokes about the lost girl in the parking lot, talking on her phone to stranded friends. “She’s really got some sugar on that cookie, huh, oh man.” The girl tugged on her black-and-white striped skirt and looked away.

I left. I prefer to make my poor life decisions in the comfort of my own home.

[i am, and say.]

Posted on September 5, 2012 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

What are people going to think

Written by

Father John Misty – Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings

Everything she wears could be pyjamas – flannel and leggings, worn soft and softer, patterned with cats and whales and butterflies. She wears new boots scuffed with sandpaper, the laces picked and frayed. She slices the sleeves off thrift-store shirts, and lets the edges unravel.

Her eyesight is perfect. Her glasses are horn-rimmed. The lenses are scratch-resistant. She leaves them at home, and says, “Fuck, I left my glasses on my record player.” She squints at the road ahead, at billboards and signs, at movie scenes after paying extra for viewings on stupidly huge screens. She takes the 3-D frames home and keeps them in a drawer. She pops out the lenses and wears them to work.

She dyes her hair brown to red to black to blonde. She complains about the results. She does it again. She cuts it with kitchen scissors, and tackles the fringes strand by strand. She cuts it short and shaves it off and tries layers and graduations and angles. She doesn’t brush it.

She begins stories with, “I’ve made a huge mistake”, “It wasn’t my fault,” and “I know this guy.” She doesn’t make decisions influenced by retrospect. She throws herself at opportunities to stumble. She can not, will not, plan ahead (“I know what I’m doing”).

She drinks vodka and forgets the night. She drinks beer and shouts at her friends. She drinks wine and molests strangers. She drinks. She dances, turning turning turning and pointing pointing pointing. She misses the beat. She collides with everyone. She magnetises eyes.

She chooses soy and gluten-free and vegetarian. She reads Vonnegut and Moody and Eggers. She listens to music ironically. She quotes. She writes. She photographs. She blogs, and tweets, and networks. She rides a fixed-gear bike without a helmet. She collects people who do the same things and files them away for future use. She knows everyone.

She studies. She neglects. She works. She fails. She tries. She impresses and strives. She projects her nonchalance through her glasses, through her dyed hair, through her artistic tastes and aim (failure) to be different. She lives.

[Fear Fun.]

Posted on September 4, 2012 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

Why do the birds go on singing?

Written by

Girls – End Of The World (Skeeter Davis cover)

On one of the cross-streets between the train station and where I used to work, there is a woman who sits and cries.

I saw her every day, sitting on a bench or a stoop or huddled against a wall, designer knock-off handbag clutched under her arm, regrowth-marred blonde hair hanging like spaghetti, crying with a paper-crumpled face.

The first time I saw her, I was running (literally – boots slapping pavement, suit-wearers launching themselves out of the way) late for work. She startled me, bewildered me, and I wanted badly to stop. Feeling hopeless and heartless, I continued hurricaning on my way. Someone else will comfort her, I let my city mind assure me.

As I sent emails and made photocopies, the crying woman dribbled from my mind. Her despair was replaced with Important Things – deadlines and requests and cups of coffee to be made.

The next day, as I hauled my hood over my head for insulation, her sobs swirled and spiraled like stream from a hot cup of coffee. She watched me as I trekked past. Her wet eyes followed me. I could feel them burning, judging, shaming. She knows I am a compassionless person. She knows I have no soul.

 

The despair of the crying woman’s life began to permeate my own, soaking everything and leaving a dampness that persisted for weeks, everything I did wet with her tears. When bad things happened – when I missed my train, or when I got food poisoning, or when I rubbed blisters all over my feet and had to hobble like an octogenarian – I rationalised that at least I wasn’t driven to sobbing on a city street. Nothing could ever be as bad as that level of all-consuming misery.

My mind sketched high-contrast lithographs of the world ending, of everyone dying and the city falling in on itself.

 

The day I was slated to finish at that job, I resolved to confront the crying woman. Perhaps we could cry about it together. She sat in the mouth of a laneway, inconspicuous yet unmissable. The lines in her face deepened as I approached, her features folding in on themselves and wringing out more tears.

“Why are you crying?” I vomited. She lowered the hand that was held to her mouth like a 1920s film star and extended it toward me, imploring, demanding, pleading.

“D’you have any spare change?” she slurred. Her voice, like her face, was wrapped around itself, punctured by fold lines and tears. She breathed smoke and petrol. Her paper skin was kindling. The fire rushed to my face, filling my cheeks with red and steaming away all the water. I choked out a “No, sorry” and tripped over myself as I turned away.

[Morning Light / Andre De Freitas.]

Posted on August 27, 2012 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

Hey, are you awake?

Written by

The National – About Today

Douglas was 6-foot-2, 42 years old, and a cuckold.

Douglas sighed deeply — a sigh that seemed to deflate his torso like a punctured exercise ball — swung his legs out of bed, and was a cuckold.

Douglas wore a suit to work, which made his shoulders look even more broad, and loosely fingered the cufflinks his wife had bought him, and was a cuckold.

Douglas slid his size 13 feet into dress shoes using a shoehorn that a now-distant friend had given as a wedding present, and was a cuckold.

Douglas’ voice cracked during a conference call at work and, later, when Debbie, the secretary, asked him if everything was alright, he said it was, and didn’t mention that he was a cuckold.

Douglas walked brazenly out of work early, slumped into his leather car seat, and was a cuckold.

Douglas picked up his daughters — seven and nine — who squabbled and tittered in the back seat, while he sat silent in the front, driving slower than the speed limit, and was a cuckold.

Douglas traded his suit for a polo and poured himself an inch of Woodford Reserve, and was a cuckold.

Douglas idly stroked his youngest daughter’s straw blond hair when she fell asleep on his lap on the couch, and was a cuckold.

Douglas went to bed, alone.

[Cherry Tree.]

Posted on August 26, 2012 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

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