Guerilla writing from dc.
The small apartment smells a little from the windows being closed against the humidity. I don’t have any place to put the butts from the ashtray and teaI really don’t want to waste my time doing domestic things anyway.
Time seems too valuable for that. But the job of cleaning now has become overwhelming. I hate living in an apartment and not on the road because messes remind me of stagnation. I am stagnating and the garbage reminds me, the ashtray, and the clothes I have to smell before wearing.
This is wearing thin.
My writing is going just fine, but I am not following Eastern Daylight Time, but Hawaiian Time. I have been awake since bright and early at 2:11 PM and shall go to sleep in an hour or so, around 4:30 AM. It’s certainly the typical hours for work in downtown Honolulu. Maybe Los Angeles. Okay, LA, but I’ll never admit to having to do anything with that place.
Seattle then. A place called never-never-land. A place so unlike Washington. Washington looks so deeply into the mirror. Washington is like a teenage girl. She notices every flaw and every ounce gained; she worried about everybody’s opinion and fears rejection, always believing herself (no matter how gorgeous) to always be the homelier.
New York is her older sister, the prom queen, the forever more popular to the studious insecure Washington.
Seattle just is. Whether the mecca for new technology or sustainability; or, as it is better know, for the romper room of the Generation X (and also the Generation Why as well as for Old Hippies and middle-aged Punkers). Seattle just is. The people explore their own trendiness with great seriousness and commitment. Whereas people from the seventies laugh off their bell bottoms and feathered hair, Seattle youth of the nineties (much more so than their suburban “Club Soda” brethren) shall be unable to secret their past shame in the attic, but shall be wearing it across their backs in inky faded wings. Or in a tribal tattooed arm band, in the scar of a clitoral piercing, brands, scarification — this is commitment, this is power.
But here, Washington looks at herself in the mirror and doesn’t want to be one-hair out of place; she doesn’t want to stick out; she doesn’t want to be snickered at by her friends. She doesn’t know what she is missing, the freedom of showing off the downy gleaming blond hairs of the tummy, the ellipse of the navel; to show the movement and form of the breast; to let the length of the body move under sunshine, under rain, beneath the incessant tirade of base and guitar. Pressed and exposed; excited and rosy from the blood coursing in the veins, breaking near the surface of the cheek.
And the ashes are constricting my chest. The smoke is no good for the chest. Seattle is cast under cloud by day, but at night the mist is nicotine and clove. Seattle is a Camel town. New York is Marlboro. Washington is a Marlboro Light town, by default to New York.
teaThe pale flanks of Seattle, tight from starvation. Striations of muscle, the glint of the rings, the glitter of the disco makeup, the high camp. The bell bottoms taken for a steal at a flea market, from the folk’s attic. The nosebleed platforms and ubiquitous coffee jitters.
Dimpled erotica painted on flesh with needle, wrapped like tentacles along the arm and down the back. Once, my head way held tight during a freedive. By a giant octopus, I shit you not. It took hold and its eight tentacles, each as big as my wrist. The suckers reeled down my arms and bare back. On one breath, I fought it. I used my knife to tickle it away and it disappeared in a cloud of ink.
I had been hunting for him so it was a fair loss, but when I arrived on shore, there were terrible welts where the genius had taken hold. They were read and indelible for quite some time, having broken the blood vessels, creating bruises.
The mark of the octopus from that day were as flowing and dynamic as the patterns dancing on the flesh of the Seattlite. Half-shirts, tank-tops, halter-tops, no shirt at all. The dancing of the image on the flesh; the tinkling of rings and jewelry. The clicking against the teeth as the boy absentmindedly plays with the silver barbell in his tongue as he pulls you off a shot of espresso.
Where can you get a good cup of coffee at 4 AM on Capitol Hill?
– text by Chris Abraham
