BLAME DEVILISH- RIDING THE BAD STRANGE CYCLONE- One old Bit for the Sun

3:17 AM-

 

(The names in this piece have changed to protect the guilty. It was also written under extreme duress and inebriation…but I know that’s no excuse.)

 

      Blame Devilish.

 

Blame Devilish. That’s all I can tell you. It’s all that rotten son of a b***h’s fault. Much like at the age of five when my father handed me a comic book and told me to draw until he came back (which, in a way, he never did.) Devilish stuck a scotch and water in my face and told me I had to “f****n’ write.” I had to write because I was gonna be the one to write or some such s**t. What did I know about writing? I’ve wanted to be a comic book artist all my damn life. Sure, comics peaked my interesting other mediums- film, novels and all the other sorts, but what did I know about writing a novel? Novels were for scholars who frequented high-falooting black tie affairs that you’d find me busing tables at.

    “D’f**k you talking about?” I asked him as he backed me in a corner produced by a cigarette machine and a dirty wall littered with crusty beer labels.

   “You have to write, you have to be the writer. You’re the one,” he told me- whiskey vapor trailing from his mouth and straight into my eyes, “Of all of us, you gotta be one. Don’t you understand? Don’t you see?”

I couldn’t see a thing. My eyeballs were doing the backstroke in three accounts of DWI as it was, and Devilish was in my face looking…well, devilish. He always chose to have these dutiful interventions with me at the most inopportune times. Mostly drunken times, between the hours of then and now.

   “I’m just trying to drink here, Devilish.”

   “As well you should, you’re a writer.”

   “I’m a comic book writer, and artist.”

   “F**k comic books, here drink this, it’s what Hemingway drank.”

   “Hemingway mistaked a shotgun for a straw and drank a bullet, Devilish.”

   “But he wrote a many great books!”

   “-About trust fund babies in fricken France. D’f**k do I know about France, other than Jerry Lewis is their sex and Luc Besson knows how to stylishly fire a gun on film?”

   “He was a man, do you understand? His writings were about honor and nobility!”

   “And wandering the streets littered with beret-wearing m***********s who detested him.”

   “You have no idea what you’re talking about!”

   “Probably not, gimme another Scotch, you’ve just about got me convinced about this writing thing.”

Which he really didn’t, but f**k it, he was a waiter at a five-star and made four times as much in an hour than I made in a week, so the Scotch was always on him. So, I told him what he wanted to hear.

 

But I always liked Devilish. He had the sophistication of fine blood-red silk shirts and greasy strands of flipped hair. He was poster boy of every French cologne you can think of. He had the look of guys on the glossy magazine ads that made you turn the page quickly so it wouldn’t remind you of your embarrassing financial situation. He definitely had a style about him. He could always match me on the deepest of conversation subjects, from books to film to social situations to the fall of Lucifer and the rise of Reality TV, whatever. So yeah, I felt a tinge of intimidation. But I always found myself gravitated toward the folks that intimidated me. Those were the folks that pushed me. Those were the guys I wanted to drink with, to practice the fellowship of the pint with. To raise my glass with, to roar to the Gods and such.

Most people who get intimidated try to tear the person who caused the intimidation down- but really, what the f**k is that? I know there are people better than me, but I strive to get to their point in the mountain, and leave the vindictiveness to the amateurs.

 

So that’s how it went, night after lost night- Devilish’s personal mission to turn me into the next superstar-talked about writer, wanting me to leave a piece of my soul immortalized on mantles of scholars and literary critics worldwide. He was all about the blurbs, man- but me, I just wanted to write tiny things that made waves, ripples in this big pond. I want a good woman to sleep with who accepts that I’m weird and unacceptable, a paycheck in the mail every coupla weeks, a mantle to put my various works on, a dirty pub in walking distance and an understanding that I don’t know any more than the next freak.

 

I’m a strange little meaty creature. Pardon me, Sweet Child O’Mine is playing so I need to shed a tear and crack a grin.

 

Where the f**k was I? Is any of this s**t making sense? Are you there? I was talking about Devilish weren’t I? Did I tell you about the time we did the lights at the after-hour pub and he promised me a Denny’s steak for a ride home? (This is back when I was equipped with transportation.)

 

Yeah, no more than an hour before that we made a savage, drunken trek to Barnes & Noble because Devilish insisted that I read Voltaire post-haste. I had to, we had to leave right then, because there was one piece Voltaire wrote in particular that Devilish said put him in the mind of me. I figured it was something to do with t*****s and things blowing up, but I figured that wasn’t appreciated during that certain era so I had no idea what he was talking about

Wait, did that happen on the same night? I don’t know. Scotch is evil. So is the tallboy Milwaukee’s Best I’m drinking on right now. Anyway, by the time we got there, we were wandering the isles like sprung carnival sideshow attractions and asking every person in a green smock where we could find any Voltron.

Christ. Dear God. The sparks from the guardrails, but we didn’t kill any nuns before we got back to the pub and our drinks were still sitting on the doorman’s podium so mission accomplished. Peter Graves would be proud. And sitting in my backseat was a thick, fresh volume of Voltaire that I never got around to reading.

Then there was the time he threw up on a young urban professional’s jogging shorts. It was after another binge of scotch and frenetic screamed conversation over the loud 3 AM crowd- as always, the dialogue was laced with boiling contempt and sparks of uncertain profundity.

   “Look at what you’re wearing!”

   “The f**k is wrong with what I’m wearing?”

   “You look like you just left a Limp Biskit concert! Look at this! Ragged, baggy shorts and a t-shirt that looks like s**t! Look at the collar, how long has it been since you washed that?!”

He was right, I hadn’t done laundry in so long my clothes had gained enough mutated sentience to get up and walk. I came in one night to a pair of blue-jeans doing vile things to a copy of Swank. Perhaps he did have a point, so I told him so.

   “F**k you, devilish!”

   “F**k you! You’re a writer, you should dress accordingly! The lights are about to come on! We’re getting coffee and sorting this out!”

   “Fine, but you’re buying. And I want a fat Denny’s steak!”

So we said our f**k-yous to our fellow drinking comrades and piled into my Honda- taking straight interstate to the closest Starbucks.

 

God, I hate Starbucks. I hate even using Starbucks in my writings out of fear that if they don’t get compensated immediately for mentioning them then a death-squad of Columbians wearing rubber Kurt Cobain masks will slip into my house and rape-kill me in my sleep.

 

I have a lot of strange fears.

Anyway, we hit Mississippi Ave doing seventy-five over the rolling hills (I could feel the Honda at times getting airborne.) The radio was pumping Rage and the sun peeking over the horizon and through the dirty burnt orange like a rattlesnake waiting patiently. It was scaring the s**t out of me.

 “Slow down, you freak!”

 “Kiss my a*s, you see that sun chasing us? If it catches me, I’ll light up like Anne Rice at a brunch!”

We hit the corner of Cantrell and Mississippi and I felt my steering wheel jerk violently from my grip and I heard Devilish yell, “You passed it!”

The Honda did a ninety degree angle and smashed across the sidewalk and into the parking lot of the Starbucks. “Jesus jumped up and Jazzercised!” I screamed.

I gained control of the barreling car-wreck-to-be in just enough time to catch a parking spot. I slammed on the brakes and slid to a halt. The engine rattled as smoke rose from the hood. I shot Devilish a look like a pit-bull that just got his nuts kicked in.

   “You ever do that again and I’ll shove a hand grenade up your a*s minus the f*****g pin!”

He blew me a kiss, “You always say the sweetest things. I want a latte.”

   “What if the police nailed us?! We’d be fucked!”

   “This is West LR- the police don’t come here. These people would actually make them work!”

He was right. You can usually get away with murder in West LR. Sure, four people get violently murdered every night on Asher Avenue, but a coupla drunks run a Honda into a Starbucks and it would be a travesty worthy of the front page- and the last thing any of these upright tax-paying sitcom freaks would want because their property values would go down- yada-yada.

We staggered into the Starbucks in a hurry. We wanted to get this done and get out of there. With the sun and the joggers and the four quarts of booze in our blood, it was becoming a spiraling hell, the flames licking at our ripped up minds.

I suppose the pressure was too much for Devilish because he got three feet inside and vomited on a marketing exec’s jogging pants. He just popped leaving the jogger with wide eyes and foamy yellow vomit running down his leg and collecting in his Reebok.

   “Sorry! Sorry!” Devilish choked out as the jogger darted out the door humiliated.

It was the funniest goddam thing I’d seen in weeks. Here was this poor guy going through his rigorous routine of morning paper, double expresso and three mile morning jog and now he walking home with a squelching shoe and some Voltaire-reading drunk’s undigested whiskey matted up in his leg-hair. Oh well, at least he had a better water cooler story than his fellow cubicle drones that morning and Devilish had become my personal hero. He tried to play it off like it was no big thing, with his smirk and popped collar and flipped hair, but I kept at him.

   “You just threw up on that guy.”

   “Shudafuckup.” He whispered.

   “All over his jogging pants. Did you see those pants?”

   “I said shut-up,” he told me through gritted teeth, handing me a ten bill. “Order me a f*****g latte grande, I’m going to the bathroom.”

   “You ruined those pants. He probably paid forty bucks at the mall for those pants. Ruined!”

Devilish shot me a look as he darted for the bathroom as I looked up at the nubile little counter girl. She had a half-cocked grin, like she was scared to laugh for fear of the Columbian death-squad.

I chuckled, “Funny- most folks don’t throw up until after they leave here.”

The girl gave me a teary-eyed look as if to say dear god, please stop, I have to work here.

 

So we survived the Starbucks and what I’ve now labeled as the Infamous Vomit Incident and we found ourselves slowly sobering out at Denny’s. I was chewing on a dry steak like my life depended on it and Devilish was making hell for an old man at the counter who’s wife of twenty-something years had just left him.

   “Yakety-yak- you sonsabitches shut the hell up! My wife just left me!”

Devilish jabbed his steak knife at him and yelled.

   “Are you giving me s**t, old man? Do you know who you f*****g with? I’ll come over there and throw up in your ear, man! I’ll do it. Shut the hell up and eat your eggs!”

I hurried with my steak, chewing quickly thinking we were gonna be asked to leave any second. Apparently Devilish had just enough booze left in his veins to give this poor old man a run for his surly money.

I sat, listening to Devilish’s mad ranting, trying to gain a moment of much-needed solace- Cowboy Junkie’s Sweet Jane was whispering out of the P.A. as I chewed on my meat watching the morning sun turn the air outside three different shades of purple. My eyes stayed focused on a street light long enough to watch it fade with the last of the evening and I felt like I survived myself one more time.

   “You see the air outside?” Devilish asked me, breaking my soul-hiatus.

   “Yeah, I do.”

   “That metaphor, that thing you see out there- that’s what you see and remember on top of anything else that happened tonight. That’s what you write.”

 

We were madness, you know. I had to get it down somehow.

 

 So now I have, so I hope the b*****d is happy wherever he is. He sent me spiraling down this crazed rollercoaster writing thing and bailed just when it was getting good. But oh well- chances are this ain’t really how it all went down but that’s what the Bad Strange Cyclone does when it consumes me and I start pounding it out. What is the Bad Strange Cyclone, you ask?

 

I suppose it’s just some glorified idea I have, a device I adopted to give me some sort of mystique. It started earlier on- when I’d spend the afternoon wiring myself up on coffee and other over-the-counter speed then counteract it later that night with alcohol on an empty stomach. Then with the cyclone of up and down that enveloped I’d go home, crack open the laptop and just let it go wherever I was gonna go, I’d ride the Bad Strange. Pure Octane. Just let it pour out.

Sometimes it was the only way I could get what was going on, all the wild madness in my head that so desperately needed to find itself documented, it was the only way I could get it on the page.

 

I remember this one bit I wrote, back in the dark days when I was slumming on the couch of the local rag-

 

“Home is where I hang my wireless these days. I've embraced the idea of being a Bohemian writer.
For the last two months I've been squatting here at the QUARANTINE STAR offices like a Pro Gypsy and that has been an experience all fledgling writers in this town should go through. There is no trial by fire like living in the QUARANTINE Office. All the madness and freakshow you can muster and then some buddy. At any given day at four in the morn, you don't know what's gonna crawl through the door. Sometimes I just sit at my desk wearing nothing but my boxers and a cigarette surrounded by bad wiring, a ton of empty Marb packs and dried up PBR Tallboys and wait to see what's gonna happen next.
So, here I was getting down to it- I flipped open Clint (my trusty nickel plated Zippo- I have a bad habit of naming my inanimate belongings.) and fired up my Black and Mild. I dosed up on all my components and waited for the rush to wash over me.  I felt the generic E-Z buzz shoot through my arms and down to my fingers. I begin to clickety-clack away as the smoke filled my nose and water my eyes- filling the page with the rant you're reading now.

*****

So as I'm writing this, the sun is starting to peek through blinds. The E-Z Junk buzz is wearing thin. I'm starting to feel some righteous exhaustion. You know- that kind of exhaustion that tells you the job is done. I light my last cigarette and retire to the balcony.
Mornings can be a lucid experience. Make you reflect. Make you feel just about everything on your mind all at once. I enjoy the still of the wee hours before the thick nasty heat comes on. And it has been thick and nasty this summer. It's been a long agonizing year all together.

 

CR05”

 

-And that’s how it went, for a few weeks I cranked out some awful stuff. Worse than what I write now. But I was writing, or at least trying to write. As I’m writing this I’m doused to the eyelids on a bottle of Boone’s Farm and wondering if I’ve gotten any better at this writing thing.

 

If I haven’t, blame Devilish.

 

 

 

-For Isom, who’s probably somewhere suffering from a SoHo hangover……whatever the hell Soho means..

 

-CR07