a bit from my novel PUNK MINNEAPOLIS

A Story by Peter Joseph Swanson

at the pizza place

Fingernails have been cursed off ...

Green is in, blue is out ...

Free toilet paper ...

punk will last forever ...

This excerpt from my fabulous published punk novel (the story takes place in 1989) is censored for the internet:

The next day Bunny Umber came back to the pizza place dressed in hot pink fishnets, safety pins, bracelets, necklaces, and earrings galore, an open red kimono and an exposed black bra with hologram eyeballs for n*****s. “I’m starving. More parmesan.” She looked up at the quiet ceiling. “And no sh###y disco. How cool.”

Sandra nodded. “Yeah. No corporate-approved-George-Michael today.”

Raven explained, “The manager put on some god awful country and then went down to the beauty chair to get high, so Mark put some pepperoni in the tape player. If we can’t have something cool, we’d rather not have anything at all.”

Becky said, “I’m the entertainment.” She yelled, “GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!”

“F###’n A.” Mark twirled his cap around to get his hair out of his eyes.

“There’s a beauty parlor around here with pot?” Bunny Umber asked with great interest. “What?” She pulled out her tobacco and papers and nimbly rolled a cigarette.

“No,” Becky corrected. “Just junk left in the basement. This place up here used to be a beauty parlor. And then a steak house. That’s why it has brass rails. The manager goes down there to relax when we’ve succeeded in stressing her out too much. We’re all getting very good at that. She’s down there all the time.”

Mark added, “Just f###ed up. Yow.”

“Oh,” Bunny Umber said. “You all go down there?”

“I wouldn’t,” Becky said. “I’m sure I’d fall over something and kill myself. It’s a dump down there.”

Bunny Umber gave Becky a dirty look for being so prissy. “Whatever. And what happened to your fingernails? Don’t tell me they were cursed off right along with Raven’s.”

Becky sadly nodded. “When you do something with a loser, it rubs off. F###.”

“Oh my.” Bunny Umber looked around. “More parmesan.”

“It’s good, huh.” Raven smiled. “And god your eyes are so cool.”

Bunny Umber winked. “Green eye shadow is now all the rage. Blue is out.”

Raven pointed to her bra. “Those ones.”

She looked around some more. “And go get me a few rolls of toilet paper. Hmm?” She raised her green eyebrows while patting her gigantic handbag. Raven hopped off to fetch some as she put a tremendous wad of napkins in her bag. She looked up to the ceiling and chanted, “I thank thee Goddess of All Things Met, to meet my needs. Yet again. I thank thee. Shana shana shana!”

Becky asked, “Have you heard of when the Rooster Party is? And when?”

Bunny Umber opened her bag. “The Rooster Party? Oh that.”

“When is it? Have I missed it this year? Oh sh##!”

She took a safety pin out of her pocket and left it on the napkin dispenser as if it was an offering to it. “Nope. You haven’t missed it. And I have no idea when it is. I usually hear the day of the party so I don’t worry about it. Ahhh… I remember when it was called the Movable Party. Those were the days. Everything was so intense back then. Sooo cool. I was at a place where I was gonna get f###ed in the garage, but we both got so drunk we couldn’t find it. So we ended up puking a lot instead. We couldn’t stop laughing.”

Becky smiled hesitantly. “Sounds like massive fun.”

“Now it’s just a kegger followed by a lot of carbonated puke. So what. There’s no zeitgeist to that. It started as Café Flesh back in the early 80s, the year the movie came out. Even though that was a porno movie, it was also marvelous artsy-fartsy satire about how we’re all dead. We’re nuked zombies. We’ve all become automated factory machines. We admitted it back then. We mourned the loss of our humanity. We cried out in anger. Our last gasp was a loud protest. Café Flesh and Blade Runner said that.”

Becky made a doubting face. “A porno movie can do that?”

Bunny Umber nodded. “It takes place after some total holocaust. Most people are left so sterile they can’t have any sex at all, so they sit like zombies at a cabaret and watch the few left who can have sex, have sex up on a little stage. So it’s all about alienation right out in the open. It’s all done real phony with arty props and sets. And they f### like machines. There is an oil pump on stage, pumping, for one act, and the man’s head is nothing but a huge pencil. Another scene, they’re all wearing rat costumes. It’s so weird. It’s totally hilarious. There was some stuff that was just so radical back then, like that. Nothing is cool like that anymore. Sad. Everything is just blending together into blah.”

Becky said, “Admit it, the big annual punk party is the ultimate party! And it’s

not sad! Punk will last forever!”