holy shit!
two updates in a week?
You know what that means, right? Exactly....you probably won't hear from me again until September.
Moving on....
I have started 2009 with some pretty awesome reads. Among them:
Just After Sunset by Stephen King - shocker, I know. I don't need to say much. It's just really, really good. More short stories to tide me over until this next novel (tentatively titled Under The Dome I believe...) blows my goddamned mind. He's already gone on record as saying it's his longest novel and that it's one of the darkest stories he's ever written. I guess he's tried to write it twice so far, but it hasn't come out as brutal as he wanted until now.
The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames - graphic novel. Depressing as all hell, but one of the best reads out there. Do yourself a favor and get this.
and, last but not least, I broke down and started reading the Harry Potter books. I put this off for so long. I, for some reason, really didn't want to like them. After the first twenty pages of the first book, I had to literally put the book down, take a big breath and mutter to myself, "Shit...this is really good." What can I say? Well, I'll wait to say it once I've read the other six volumes.
I was also given a novel titled 2666 from the author Roberto Bolano by our good friends John and Darci. I had read about the book, but never got a chance to buy it. At nine hundred pages, it may take a while to get through, but the plot is so insane, I can't wait to start it.
That's enough book nerd talk. Besides, I can't hang with the big guns. I like crime fiction and fantasy and horror novels. I don't spend much time with all the authors you can name drop at social gatherings.
Mickey Rourke's performance in "The Wrestler" should give him an Oscar, but it won't happen. This movie killed me in the best of ways.
fin.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
06.01.09
It was brought to my attention that I haven't written anything on here in three months.
So, here's a recap:
I went to Europe. Trap Them did a three and a half week tour with Grief. It was much different than our first European experience, but at the root of it all, we still had a very good time. The guys in Grief had me laughing quite a bit. It was nice to tour with a bunch of fellow native New Englanders. I also had a passionate romance with alcohol each and every night, which is understandable if I went into great detail about the tour. Most would be surprised I didn't drink more.
Flew back home and had one day off before we did a week down the west coast with These Arms are Snakes and Narrows. It was, to be honest, one big party. Everyone had a great time. Every band sounded fantastic and at the end of the tour, even though I had been out for three months, I wished that this last leg had been another week or two.
Flew home from Los Angeles to Seattle with my ladyfriend, who was able to accompany us shitheads on this last week of tour. It was nice to have her there...nice to be able to see her after such a long time apart. When we landed at Sea-Tac, we were greeted by glorious snow. More snow than I'd ever seen while living here. After an extended cab ride back to the house, I immediately had to start christmas shopping, seeing as I hadn't had the opportunity to do it while in the numerous vans.
A day later, Seattle was hit with one of the hardest snowstorms it's had in a very long time. It lasted for days, turning the city into a white wonderland. Now, you have to understand, Seattle has only TWO PLOWS for the entire city and surrounding areas, because it never snows. So, when something like this happens, the city literally shuts down. Major streets and roads are shut off because of ice on hills. People sledding in the middle of streets. Utter and awesome chaos. This lasted for three days, causing my wife to not be able to make it to work. We took advantage of the situation and became lazy hermits.
Everything after that was your usual holiday routine. We had a christmas eve gathering as well as on New Year's. I've started to write for a few things and have begun the new series of paintings for the last Trap Them record. I've been able to read and relax, so now it's hopefully time for me to be successful in my job search.
That's about it. I gave the long story short, because I'm very good at that.
LOST begins in just two weeks. I'm so excited, I don't know what to do with myself.
below is my reading list for 2008. 2009 has already started with some amazing works, and looks to get better. I have other things to say about what I'll be doing this year, but I can't talk about them yet. It's kind of like Fight Club, but not at all.
also....I posted a lengthy story below this post.
Listen to Black Breath. And Heiress.
2008 reading list:
Hollywood Horror by Mark Vieira
The Consumer by M. Gira (again)
Pictures of You by Matt Thorne
Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite
Liquor by Poppy Z. Brite
Soul Kitchen by Poppy Z. Brite
The Fahrenheit Twins by Michel Faber
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
D.U.C.K. by Poppy Z. Brite
Crystal Lake Memories by Peter M. Bracke
Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
White Noise by Don DeLillo
The Siege of Trencher's Farm by Gordon M. Williams
The Best Revenge by Stephen White
The Secret Life of Laszlo. Count Dracula by Roderick Anscombe
Insomnia by Stephen King
Bag of Bones by Stephen King
Prime by Poppy Z. Brite
Desperation by Stephen King
Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King
Rose Madder by Stephen King
Lisey's Story by Stephen King
Heartsick by Chelsea Cain
The Regulators by Richard Bachman
Bleeding London by Geoff Nicholson
Lost Boy Lost Girl by Peter Straub
Everything's Eventual by Stephen King
Bigfoot: I Not Dead by Graham Roumieu
From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury
Duma Key by Stephen King
From a Buick 8 by Stephen King
The Value of X by Poppy Z. Brite
Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
Dreamcatcher by Stephen King
The Hellfire Club by Peter Straub
Blaze by Richard Bachman
Love That Dog by Sharon Creech
Underworld by Don DeLillo
So, here's a recap:
I went to Europe. Trap Them did a three and a half week tour with Grief. It was much different than our first European experience, but at the root of it all, we still had a very good time. The guys in Grief had me laughing quite a bit. It was nice to tour with a bunch of fellow native New Englanders. I also had a passionate romance with alcohol each and every night, which is understandable if I went into great detail about the tour. Most would be surprised I didn't drink more.
Flew back home and had one day off before we did a week down the west coast with These Arms are Snakes and Narrows. It was, to be honest, one big party. Everyone had a great time. Every band sounded fantastic and at the end of the tour, even though I had been out for three months, I wished that this last leg had been another week or two.
Flew home from Los Angeles to Seattle with my ladyfriend, who was able to accompany us shitheads on this last week of tour. It was nice to have her there...nice to be able to see her after such a long time apart. When we landed at Sea-Tac, we were greeted by glorious snow. More snow than I'd ever seen while living here. After an extended cab ride back to the house, I immediately had to start christmas shopping, seeing as I hadn't had the opportunity to do it while in the numerous vans.
A day later, Seattle was hit with one of the hardest snowstorms it's had in a very long time. It lasted for days, turning the city into a white wonderland. Now, you have to understand, Seattle has only TWO PLOWS for the entire city and surrounding areas, because it never snows. So, when something like this happens, the city literally shuts down. Major streets and roads are shut off because of ice on hills. People sledding in the middle of streets. Utter and awesome chaos. This lasted for three days, causing my wife to not be able to make it to work. We took advantage of the situation and became lazy hermits.
Everything after that was your usual holiday routine. We had a christmas eve gathering as well as on New Year's. I've started to write for a few things and have begun the new series of paintings for the last Trap Them record. I've been able to read and relax, so now it's hopefully time for me to be successful in my job search.
That's about it. I gave the long story short, because I'm very good at that.
LOST begins in just two weeks. I'm so excited, I don't know what to do with myself.
below is my reading list for 2008. 2009 has already started with some amazing works, and looks to get better. I have other things to say about what I'll be doing this year, but I can't talk about them yet. It's kind of like Fight Club, but not at all.
also....I posted a lengthy story below this post.
Listen to Black Breath. And Heiress.
2008 reading list:
Hollywood Horror by Mark Vieira
The Consumer by M. Gira (again)
Pictures of You by Matt Thorne
Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite
Liquor by Poppy Z. Brite
Soul Kitchen by Poppy Z. Brite
The Fahrenheit Twins by Michel Faber
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
D.U.C.K. by Poppy Z. Brite
Crystal Lake Memories by Peter M. Bracke
Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
White Noise by Don DeLillo
The Siege of Trencher's Farm by Gordon M. Williams
The Best Revenge by Stephen White
The Secret Life of Laszlo. Count Dracula by Roderick Anscombe
Insomnia by Stephen King
Bag of Bones by Stephen King
Prime by Poppy Z. Brite
Desperation by Stephen King
Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King
Rose Madder by Stephen King
Lisey's Story by Stephen King
Heartsick by Chelsea Cain
The Regulators by Richard Bachman
Bleeding London by Geoff Nicholson
Lost Boy Lost Girl by Peter Straub
Everything's Eventual by Stephen King
Bigfoot: I Not Dead by Graham Roumieu
From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury
Duma Key by Stephen King
From a Buick 8 by Stephen King
The Value of X by Poppy Z. Brite
Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
Dreamcatcher by Stephen King
The Hellfire Club by Peter Straub
Blaze by Richard Bachman
Love That Dog by Sharon Creech
Underworld by Don DeLillo
The Constant Reader
I have quite a few regrets. None of them amount to very much, which is to say that on the grand life scale, the things that I have chosen not to do are, for the lack of better terms, unsubstantial. I don't regret not going to college. I don't regret quitting my first job out of high school. I don't regret not engaging in meaningless conversation with everyone around me. I don't regret keeping to myself.
No, my sincere regrets are minimal. They more have to do with personal choices that I've made over the years that, when I look back, may have helped me a bit more in the present. Specifically, I regret that I hadn't fully embraced who I am a lot earlier in my days and gone for broke before I started to hit thirty.
This isn't really about that, though. This is about lost time in another area, and it's very close to being a reget that I had no control over. My major gripe with myself? I really, truly wish I had read a lot more books when I was younger. Not too major, huh? Well, the root of it is fairly simple. I've found myself so buried in turning pages over the last few months, so engulfed in fictional and nonfictional character's lives, that I wished I had taken the time to get to know even more of these people, these places, these things. It's not something that will leave me on my deathbed screaming, "Why?!!! Whhhyyyy??!!". It's just a Spicolli-sized bummer for me.
I had started out alright. My mother provided fuel for the fire in me to gather as much information (real or unreal) as possible. My birthday presents from about four years old on had always included at least one book, sometimes more. I read a lot. Not just book books, but comics, cartoons, anything I could get my hands on. To this day, I have a hardbound coffee table book about The Muppet Show that was given to me by my grandmother at five years old. Garfeild books. Batman comics. The Time-Life Mysteries of the Unknown series.Christmas books (two in particular that I remember are "The Sweet Smell of Christmas", which was a scratch and sniff book that I read about forty times every holiday season, and a book with a name along the lines of "Little Miss Suzy" or something to that effect, about a squirrel trying to hide inside a home during Christmas. At least, I think it was a Christmas book. We are talking twenty five plus years ago....I can't remember everything.)
As soon as I began elementary school, the library became a regular visiting station for me. Once a week, usually Saturday afternoon, my mom would drive me down to the Dover Public Library, a beautiful, three story brick building set around a legion of maple(?) trees. I can remember looking up at the building and always feeling so important walking into that place. The building itself was old, and planted right there where it was, set back behind a feild of green grass, I can now fully understand why some people are such die-hard, small town New Englanders. The major buildings are few and far between in these locations, but they always look to have been built with the care and consideration that is probably overlooked as the five plus story addresses became dimes of a dozen in larger, more populated areas.
The first summer vacation from school? I saw that library quite a bit, as I did every summer after that. Second and third grade was when I had discovered young adult suspense novels. The names R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike come to mind, though I don't really remember much about any of the books, only that someone would go missing and one hundred fifty pages later, they'd be found. I loved reading The Far Side Comics by Gary Larson, which made my mother quite happy, since she shared my bizarre and sometimes sick sense of humor.
It was mid way into my third grade year of school when it all happened, when things got darker and, in turn, the light in the attic started to shine brighter. Some people pull out the small violins and tell you that they had no friends, that they were the nerd in school, blah, blah, blah. I'm going to be honest and just tell you I was the vanilla center in the neopolitan bowl of ice cream that was the Dover School system. I was there, I had a reason to be there, but the reason wasn't very important. I was filler. I had a few friends. None that would last beyond a given school year, but I still had a few. I was pretty boring to most of the kids that came over. I hated "playing". I hated "hanging out". I really, really liked entertaining myself. I did, however, have a friend named Conor that was a good kid. We'd go over each other's homes quite a bit that third grade year.
So, what happened you ask? Well, Conor introduced me to a great, great friend. A friend that I have kept to this day, who has been there time and time again for me on rainy, snowy, or just plain shitty days, though he doesn't even know it. He's kept me entertained and has helped me bring out some of my true emotions late at night when no one is looking, here in overcast Seattle, when my wife is asleep beside me. He's told me all about love, about life, and, most importantly, about fear. He's a fantastic, brilliant person, and I honestly hope he outlives me, so that he can continue to rip apart all the boards up in my attic. His name is Stephen King.
Conor probably doesn't even remember me. He was a pretty popular kid in my later school years, so an early friend when he was still young can't really take up too much of his memory, I'd assume. And, truthfully, if it wasn't for the night at hand, I'd have probably forgotten about him a long time ago as well. That's the nature of school friends. It lived and breathed at the first ring of the bell on the first day of the school year and tended to die a quick and painless death the moment the last bell was rung deep in June. You'd run outside, ready to throw your backpack in an open field. You'd wave goodbye to the familiar faces and then forget they existed until the following September. Zombie friendships.
Everything isn't crystal clear to me, but there's enough there to make it a story. Or, at least try. Conor's mother was nice enough to allow me to sleep over on a friday night. There was something us kids had to do involving school that kept us there until long after most of the other students had left. Not detention, that stage of my life took a few more years to come to fruition. No, it was some sort of project, or sports game.....something. I really wish I could think of it. She picked us up around five o'clock, in which we left the school and walked outside into brisk winter New Hampshire air. It was already dark, and I absolutely remember that, so it must have been around late January or early February. It wasn't snowing, though there was a faint sleet passing down all around us that had made way for a half inch layer of slush to soak our sneakers. It may have only been a fifteen second run to her car, but it was enough time to let the wetness sneak it's way in and surround our socks and chill our feet.
I had been looking forward to the sleepover. Conor's mom would let us rent movies well beyond our age. Lots of them were horror films. His house was where I saw The Omen for the first time. Same with Halloween. It'd be a few more years before my mom would realize how much I thrived in horror culture, in which time she introduced me to Alfred Hitchcock (which is another story entirely). My mom's pretty great.
We went to the independant rental store in the heart of downtown Dover, all one major street of it, and I told Conor to just grab what he wanted to see. I had no real reference. I just wanted to see any horror films I possibly could. Fifteen minutes later, while I was still trying to get my oversized red gumball out of the machine in which I had just sacrificed my last quarter, Conor told me we were all set. I gave one last nudge to the machine, and my gumball somehow jarred loose and rolled into my hand, kind of like a bratty kid who wouldn't move until you told him you were leaving, causing him to cry and run after you. My gumball was screaming, "Noooo!!! I want to be eaten! Don't leeeaave!!"
We got back in the car and took one last errand at the ultimate of childhood treasures: McDonalds. Chicken mcnuggets, fries, a vanilla shake and cookies for later. A big pile of shit that would bring a smile to any youngster's face. Especially if you were a fat kid in training. The drive-thru made the process that much quicker and we were on our way. (Anyone shocked as to why a quarter of the nation's population is obese needs to look no further than the birth of a way to have food handed to you while you're still sitting, never having to move a muscle except to fish an Abraham Lincoln out of your wallet.) The final stop was my house, where that morning I had gathered my sleeping bag and a box of odds and ends for possible late night entertainment as Conor and I would pretend to sleep when we were doing anything but.
We made it to Conor's, our hands clamped with food, accessories and VHS rental cases. The moment the back door was opened, Conor's mother just stepped aside for fear of being knocked over by the youth stampede. Our wet shoes and socks kicked and pulled off, we ran with our overstuffed hands straight up to his room. I took a second to thank his mom for carting us around. I was a polite kid. More, I was safe. Most parents like me because I looked like the most innocent little boy ever created. Times have changed.
We layed out our high calorie bounty on his floor, situating ourselves with our backs resting against his bunk beds and our eyes able to feast on the television screen ahead place in the center of his extra wide bureau. This was the other thing that made Conor cool. He had his own televsion and VCR! We could watch whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. All the horror movies we could ever ask for.
I had already started to stuff french fries in my mouth, looking out his second floor window. Conor had a pretty big backyard. It was very unkept and always seemed a bit creepy, especially after a creature double feature. The mind can race as a kid, and my attic light used to pulsate violently when I looked out there. Tall weeds, a huge, crooked tree and an iron gate. All that was missing was tombstones with hands rising out of fresh dirt.
He asked me which one I wanted to watch first, shaking one movie in each hand. I told him I didn't even know what they were. Conor smiled, looking at my soft skinned innocence. He may as well have said "I'm about to corrupt you for the rest of your life."
Instead he said, "Tonight's Stephen King night."
"Who's that?"
"You're about to find out."
He put the black VHS boxes face down so that the labels couldn't be read. Then, as if he was a magical carnie, he swirled both boxes in circles back and forth as if he were going to command me to pick a card, any card . This went on for about fifteen seconds. Finally, he raised his hands and smiled at me again.
"Pick your poison."
I pointed to the left case. Conor picked it up so that he could read the title. I silently waited, shoving a full mcnugget dipped in honey mustard into my mouth. Conor turned around the box and in the worst ghoul voice ever said, "Looks like we begin the night with Cat's Eye!"
It could have been anything. I didn't care...I just wanted to be scared. He popped in the tape and sat back down as we finished our dinner out of waxed yellow, red and white paper bags and waxed paper cups with plastic straws, all emblazed with a giant "M".
The movie may not have been amazing, but it did the job. There was a severed finger that scared the shit out of me. There was a thing that lived under a little girl's house that frightened my third grade mind. It was evil, that movie. Plain and simple. Made up of three stories that all ended on sour notes, all three of them giving my young frame a shudder and causing me to avoid looking out the window into Conor's back yard every time I got up to go to the bathroom.
I still didn't quite get what Conor meant by Stephen King night, other than the stories seemed to have been written by him. He knew how to make a kid nervous, I gave him that. But, even though I got scared, I wasn't impressed. It wasn't as if the movie had torn at my very core. Conor ejected the tape and then turned and asked me a question that I remember to this very day.
"So, you ready for the main event?"
I shrugged in an I guess so way. Whatever was next couldn't be that bad.
In a rather large and theatrical presentation, Conor grabbed the other black plastic case and turned it around so I could see the label. "You ever heard of The Shining?" he asked.
Jack Nicholson's manic eyes may not have been staring straight ahead through that broken door, but they sure as hell were looking at me. Straight through me. And, Jack Nicholson (as Jack Torrence) was basically telling me he was about to fuck up my innocent little world.
Tape in.
Cue haunting strings.
Cue opening credits.
I read the words "Based on a novel by Stephen King".
And, within ten minutes, I understood why this was Stephen King night. I'm pretty sure Conor spent less time watching the film and more time watching my reaction to each tension filled minute.
There's really nowhere to begin. The twins in the hallway. Danny Torrence's talking finger. The young / old woman in the bathroom. Everything. All of it. The goddamned axe through the door. This wasn't a movie to my young head. This was an assault. And, scared shitless as I was, I loved every single second of it. That last scene, the panning out of the old photograph, ended. Credits rolled, and I took a big breath. I turned to Conor, shit eating grin still planted on his face, and all I could say was, "Stephen King is awesome."
(Come to find out, Stephen King hated this cinematic adaptation. When I finally read the book years later, I didn't have a problem figuring out why. The things is, Stanley Kubrick made an incredible film. A haunting, intense, piece of celluloid paranoia and psychosis. While watching the film, you were trapped in the Overlook Hotel with Wendy and Danny Torrence. But, it's not Stephen King's novel. Not even close. I remember getting three quarters of the way through the book and asking myself where most of this was in the movie. It was proof that two brilliants minds may not be able to see eye to eye, especially when one is requested to retell a perfect story and somehow also make it their own.)
I didn't sleep that night at Conor's. I didn't even toss and turn. All I remember is staring at his ceiling from the top bunk and thinking of The Shining. One scene at a time. Over and over. I was still young, and this was the first time I grasped the concept that they make films based off of novels. My initial though upon this realization, is that maybe Stephen King has other novels. And, hopefully, more movies to scare the shit out of me.
I left Conor's house early the next morning. As in, like, seven a.m. I walked back home with books on my mind. It was a short walk, maybe ten minutes at the most, that I took at lightning speed, dropping my sleeping bag several times along the way. I swung open the door in an overly dramatic hurry, as if I had been chased by a band of theives. I was excited. I couldn't help it. My mom was in the kitchen, fully armed with a look of disbelief as to why her son was already home. I just told he I couldn't sleep, or something along those lines. I tried to play it cool and not jump all over her, as I had a very important request for the day. I waited a few hours, until my parents had had breakfast. Finally I begged my mom to take the library.
Now, with my mother involved, begging to be brought someplace where the sole purpose was to find things to read was not very difficult. In fact, it wasn't begging. If it involved her son reading, my mom was willing to do whatever needed. We made it down there, to that big brick building and I ran on ahead. I had to ask at the counter for help, since this was big time important business and I had no idea where to look. I wasn't sure if there was a "spooked out of your gourd" section or not. The older woman looked at me a little weird, noting how young I was, but she brought me over there anyways. She patted her hand on a book and then said, "Here they are...." and moved her hand along the whole row. My jaw probably didn't drop, but I'd like to think my eyes bugged out a little bit. The holy grail. I thanked her and began my research.
Honestly, I was extremely intimidated that first day. Probably because my eyes laid first on that behemoth known as The Stand. All ten gazillion pages of it. In fact, all of his books looked pretty thick. After about an hour (and two check ins with my mom) I made my selections. I went slow and steady, starting small. First, was Cycle of the Werewolf. It had pictures. Yeah, that was the deciding factor. I also had watched Lon Cheney as The Wolf Man one Saturday afternoon Creature Double Feature on channel ten and loved the very idea of werewolves. It seemed to be a good way to dip my foot in the guy's work(after, of course, having my skull pummeled by The Shining). The second selection was Skeleton Crew, which was a collection of short stories. Perfect introductions.
I loved them both. I read Cycle of the Werewolf in a few hours and started immediately after with Skeleton Crew. Less than twenty four hours before, I hadn't known his name, and now, Stephen King was my favorite author. It went on for years. I would take forever to read some of his classics. I never found the time during the school years, so most of the reading was done on summer vacation whenever I wasn't outside.
It kept on like this throughout high school, except I'd read less and less, my spare time filled with either jobs, girlfriends or homework. Timing never seemed right, especially for the novels at hand. They deserved my full attention, and that was hard to come by. Then, as high school came and went and I plowed headfirst into the working class, a sad thing happened. I forgot about Stephen King. This is not to say I forgot he wrote, but I forgot to read what he wrote. Visits to Salvation Army stores, yard sales and flea markets would involve me buying a few of his hardbacks for a dollar or two, but then they just sat there on the shelf. I knew they were there. They looked back at me like a sausage on the sidewalk stares at a stray dog. They knew I wanted to ingest them, to soak their words in like a blood sponge. But, still, the time never felt right.
I would still read novels, but the frequency died. I'd get through three, maybe four a year. I'd read a Chuck Palahniuk story whenever it came out. Randoms odds and ends, never really paying attention to any given author. I'd waste my time on bullshit. I don't even have an exact description of said bullshit, but bullshit it was.
Somewhere around the winter of 2003, it all came back. The reading, that is. I had recieved Clive Barker's Abarat for Christmas. It looked incredible. I had cheated and thumbed through it after I had unwrapped it, knowing that Mr. Barker had done a generous amount of illustrations to help tell the story of Candy Quackenbush and her travels. About a month later, during a January snowstorm in which I had lucked out and had the day off from work, I happened to look over at the bookshelf after my first pot of coffee for the day had come and gone. The thick, bold blue spine just shouted at me, "Read! Do it now!!!" So, I did. Twelve hours later, as the snow outside had started to die down and my fourth pot of coffee that day was on it's last cup, I read the final page to the first installment of the Abarat series. Mr. Barker was the one to light that fire under my ass and convince me to resume my infatuation with turning pages.
By a stroke of luck, the next day as I left my apartment building to head over to a corner store, hungry for a Little Debbie cake donut, I looked across the minimally busy Broadway Road in Desperatetown (also known as Derry, New Hampshire). I saw something that I hadn't really noticed for the last six months I had been there. I mean, I'm sure I had seen it, but it never gave me that click! like it did that day.
A used and out of print bookstore.
I bought my little desert snack (two of them, actually...one for now, one for five in the morning when I would inevitably still be awake) and walked across Broadway and straight into the building. It wasn't very well advertised. No neon "open" light....come to think of it, there were no lights outside at all. Unless you checked, it may as well have been permenantly closed. Luckily, the doorknob turned, a little bell anounced to the owner that a new customer was about to present himself, and in I walked. It was a fairly small store upon first glance, but after my initial walk around the walls, I found more than enough to peak my interest. I found an early publishing of James Dickey's Deliverance, Patrick McGrath's Spider and many odds and ends. I took chances on unfamiliar authors, resulting in novels like Graham Joyce's The Tooth Fairy and Michel Faber's Under the Skin, the latter author becoming one of my all time favorites since my initial introduction. It went on like this for a few months and then, unexpectedly, the store closed. I was crushed. This place wasn't anything like a second home to me (I'm not going to be that dramatic...), but it was my adult library. I went there twice a week and bought a book or two, would read them on my days off, then repeat. All of a sudden, it was all gone.
So, I started to hunt. I went back to going to the yard sales, picking up more random novels, all while those Stephen King books longingly hoped I'd pick one of them up. The shelves filled up with no set order or with no end in sight. I'd love to be able to look over at my shelves right now and be able to list everything, but it's not possible. Not because there are too many to list (though, that would be the case ....) but because over the years I've downsized, minimalized and stripped myself of a lot (....if I still had them). I gave away books. I'd sell them back for more. I moved so many times and got rid of so much stuff that I don't have any idea where a lot of my things ended up.
About a year and a half ago, when my wife and I moved to Seattle, our first apartment was down in Pioneer Square. If you ask anyone in Seattle where not to move, they'd probably tell you there. I loved it though. At least, I really liked our studio apartment. It was high up and we had a minor view of our new downtown. The thing that sold me about the location, though, was that right next door was the Seattle Mystery Bookstore. Have I established that I like suspense novels? Good, I'd hoped I was making this clear. So, basically, this place next door was screaming bloody murder at me....almost calling my name. It took a few days of settling in and aranging the apartment before I went over. One project at a time, and every box needs to be unpacked before I can let my mind rest.
My first trip in there was overwhelming. I had no idea where to begin. I, unsurprisingly, became that guy and asked the counter clerk if all the books were really mysteries. She'd heard it before and could tell I wasn't being a dipshit, just another boggled crime reader that stumbled upon the promised land. She said yes, they were, and if I needed any help to please ask. My response was in the form of a question.
"Where do I begin?"
Luckily, she laughed and shot right back, "Anywhere at all, hon. Take your time."
I bookhunted here quite a bit. My main stops were always Elliot Bay Bookstore and Half Price Books. I'd scan the clearance and discount sections first, then move on. I've found some pretty amazing buys. All the while, I'd still pick up a King book whenever I saw one I didn't have.
One local store had a moving sale. I was back in the city for the day and it just so happened to be the last day before they moved. All the books left, hardcover or not, were under two dollars. For one dollar, I found a signed first edition of Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island. One dollar. The first ten pages were worth the price alone. By the time I had finished it, I had a new member of my top ten. (Oddly enough, once I read the novel, I considered how amazing a film adaptation might be. I checked IMDB and typed in the title. Three guesses what Martin Scorcese's next film is? I'm counting the days until I get to sit in a theater with a box of popcorn and see live action versions of all the characters running though my attic) I was able to buy a few titles at that sale that I would have never given a chance. For fifteen dollars, I purchased nine new novels; and since then I've read each and every one. I think I made my money back after reading halfway through the first stack of pages I flipped.
In a roundabout way, I have Poppy Z. Brite to thank as much as Conor. It was an interview in Vice magazine with her (volume 14, number 12). It was their "fiction" issue. I was immediately interested in reading one of her novels as soon as I finished the interview. The description of her early vampire / gothic stories sounded interesting, but it was her last few titles that really caught my attention, those being about two chefs from New Orleans that had decided to open a restaurant called "Liquor". I knew that the used bookstore down the street from our new apartment on Capital Hill (we escaped from Pioneer Square after six months....not a second too soon...) would have at least one of her books for me to buy. No sooner had I finished the article, I had my coat on and was out the door. Now, I'm the farthest from an impulse buyer, but when you want something, you want something. Go get it.
The store actually had three titles for me to choose from: Exquisite Corpse, which by the title alone sounded promising to my little black soul, Liquor and Soul Kitchen. I bought all three. No use deciding. Sometimes you can just tell when something is meant for you, and these books needed a new home. I read Exquisite Corpse first. It was wonderfully written. Graphic. Emotional. Intense. I finished it in one night. I like to read the whole thing in one sitting if I can, and her novels are perfect for that.
The next night was Liquor. It's an understatement to say I loved it from the very first paragraph. Some characters immediately make their mark and, for me, Gary "G-Man" Stubbs and John Rickey were those characters. I read both Liquor and Soul Kitchen, the respective first and third novels in the series, in one night. I bought Prime, the second (or as I'd call it, the cream filling) in the series within the next two weeks. another local bookstore, Bailey/Coy Books, had her novella, D*U*C*K*, that was also part of the series. Subterranean Press had published it, signed in hardcover. It was a little too pricey for my blood, and I knew I'd have to wait until a rainy day when I was able to either finally afford it, or shrug off responsibility for a week. Neither of those ended up being the case. I came home from a very long time on the road, and there sitting on my nightstand when I came into the bedroom for the first time in two and a half months, was D*U*C*K*. My wife is very good at surprises.
I've finally started to dip back into her early work, just last week purchasing Drawing Blood. Though, I'd be lying if I said I'm okay waiting another few years to read about Rickey and G-Man. Great storytelling takes time, so I'll continue to be patient. I'll be there on release day whenever she dives back into Liquorland.
After I had read all I could find by Ms. Brite, I went back and read the interview. She listed A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole as her favorite work of fiction. I figured, "why not?", and picked up a copy. Thank you, Poppy. It was another brilliant satire, told by a tortured mind. Toole commited suicide at the young age of thirty one, considering himself a failed writer. This novel of his was found after his death by his mother, who brought it to a local college professor to read. This novel of his was then published after the professor read it and realized how good it was. This novel of his, young John Kennedy Toole, a "failed writer" who commited suicide, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1981, twelve years after he gave up on himself. John Kennedy Toole, folks, is the reason the phrase "stranger than fiction" is still used today.
Once I had read Confederacy, I went back to the interview. I wanted to see what else Poppy could tell me. I read a few more recommendations Most were entertaining. Some, not so much. But then, as if it were like the books in my shelf that I hadn't looked at for so long, I noticed one single sentence that I truly didn't remember ever reading. She called Stephen King her comfort reads, or something to that affect.
Click!
She was right. He is a comfort read! I looked up from my corner chair and stared at the shelves. There was one big book with a red and white cover that was finally plucked from the island of forgotten toys. Stephen King's Insomnia. I had the time. I had most of the summer free this year because I 1) wasn't on tour and 2) couldn't find a job. I was an involuntary international man of leisure. But, if I was going to be at home for a long period of time, I was damn well going to make it worth it.
It had been, man...like seven years since I read a King novel. Shameful. I had read one short story last sumer, wanting to know the literary version of his short story, 1408, before I saw the movie. It was in King's collection called Everything's Eventual, which was published in 2004 or so (the dates aren't that important, so if anyone wants to point a finger at incorrect statements, I'll politely tell you where to put it once you're done correcting me...). Like I said, I never stopped buying them, just stopped opening the covers.
I read Insomnia over the course of four nights, two hundred pages at a time. I learned the story of Ralph Roberts and the end results of gradual sleepless nights. By the time I was finished, my heart was aching. Part of it had to do with the story itself. It was, at the root, a perfect story of life and death. The other part of the ache came from overflowing of anticipation. I simply couldn't decide which of his works I wanted to read next.
I looked back over at that pile of books and it dawned on me that I had only read the man's early works...up to around 1991 or so. My mission for the summer was to play catch up with my new old friend, to find out what he'd been up to the last seventeen years or so. I jumped around, not taking it so seriously that I was reading in chronological order. I wanted to read them in the order of which title shouted at me after I had closed the back cover, feeling the finished book in my hands. And I learned that I enjoy the new(er) Stephen King more than the early version of the prolific novelist.
Bag of Bones was the one that hit me the hardest. I'm not sure why, but this one is the be all end all for me. I'll probably read it once a year for the rest of my life. There was just something about Mike Noonan's unraveling little haunted story that left me in awe. If you notice, I'm not really describing any of these books in great detail. The reason should be obvious. No one likes a spoiler.
There are a few others that I've read this summer that I hold in high regards. Rose Madder incredibly perceptive and, for most of the story, entirely realistic. There was an underlying redemption soaked in sorrow that King touched upon with every chapter with the greatest of ease. Hearts in Atlantis and Lisey's Story, were both heavy, heavy reads for entirely different reasons. In fact, Lisey's Story left me a bit shook up for a few days. It was so damn personal and, yes, depressing that I finally had to admit that I wasn't prepared for it. At all.
About halfway through writing all of this, I finished up his latest work, Duma Key. I spent six hundred plus pages finding out about Edgar Freemantle's first, second and third lives. About why he has only one arm. About Duma Key itself.
He's always told a great story. Always. I have no complaints about any of his forty novels and two hundred plus short stories, though, I've got about ten scattered novels and a large handful of shorts that I've not yet read. But, for me, somewhere in the early 90's, while every one else in the world was happy with a decade about nothing, Stephen King was telling us all something. His work became unflinchingly epic. He became so in touch with living, dying, with human nature, that his work became more than print. The stories leaped off of the pages and danced into my attic, waking the bats, kicking out the windows and screaming out into the open air.
And there are a lot of us that realize this about him. You don't sell three hundred fifty million of your books to a select crowd. Three hundred fifty million means you've got quite a few people who like you, who wait every year or two for an announcement about a new publication. Luckily, a new collection of short stories was released at the end of 2008. Mid November, there I was, somewhere in Europe, and my inner horror nerd wouldn't stop reminding me that back home there's a brand new book stuffed with new victims and villains. I waited until New Year's had come and gone, and Mr. King and I had a coffee date in my warm bedroom while the pacific northwest rain and snow fell down hard outside. He is also said to be working on a new novel, one he had attempted twice in the eighties to no avail. It will be his longest novel ever. I've read a brief synopsis and it sounds amazing. I'd tell you, but that would be no fun. Go find out for yourself.
So....regrets. In a way, taking this long to read the rest of King's latest works can't be considered a regret, because I really was waiting for the right time. I just regret the right time taking this long to find me. Now that is has, though, I'm going to give it a hard run. What will I do if I run out of new tales to read from him? Start all over. Find all the things I missed the first time around.
I'll probably never get the chance to say hello to him, to thank him for the hundreds (maybe thousands) of hours that he has held my interest. I'll probably never get the chance to explain my gap in time between our visits. Though, I think he would understand all of this, as I am one of the legion of the unnamed that are thanked in every book, united by his appreciation for his "Constant Reader". He provides the stories, and I provide the endless support.
Sometimes, that's all it takes to make a friendship last.
No, my sincere regrets are minimal. They more have to do with personal choices that I've made over the years that, when I look back, may have helped me a bit more in the present. Specifically, I regret that I hadn't fully embraced who I am a lot earlier in my days and gone for broke before I started to hit thirty.
This isn't really about that, though. This is about lost time in another area, and it's very close to being a reget that I had no control over. My major gripe with myself? I really, truly wish I had read a lot more books when I was younger. Not too major, huh? Well, the root of it is fairly simple. I've found myself so buried in turning pages over the last few months, so engulfed in fictional and nonfictional character's lives, that I wished I had taken the time to get to know even more of these people, these places, these things. It's not something that will leave me on my deathbed screaming, "Why?!!! Whhhyyyy??!!". It's just a Spicolli-sized bummer for me.
I had started out alright. My mother provided fuel for the fire in me to gather as much information (real or unreal) as possible. My birthday presents from about four years old on had always included at least one book, sometimes more. I read a lot. Not just book books, but comics, cartoons, anything I could get my hands on. To this day, I have a hardbound coffee table book about The Muppet Show that was given to me by my grandmother at five years old. Garfeild books. Batman comics. The Time-Life Mysteries of the Unknown series.Christmas books (two in particular that I remember are "The Sweet Smell of Christmas", which was a scratch and sniff book that I read about forty times every holiday season, and a book with a name along the lines of "Little Miss Suzy" or something to that effect, about a squirrel trying to hide inside a home during Christmas. At least, I think it was a Christmas book. We are talking twenty five plus years ago....I can't remember everything.)
As soon as I began elementary school, the library became a regular visiting station for me. Once a week, usually Saturday afternoon, my mom would drive me down to the Dover Public Library, a beautiful, three story brick building set around a legion of maple(?) trees. I can remember looking up at the building and always feeling so important walking into that place. The building itself was old, and planted right there where it was, set back behind a feild of green grass, I can now fully understand why some people are such die-hard, small town New Englanders. The major buildings are few and far between in these locations, but they always look to have been built with the care and consideration that is probably overlooked as the five plus story addresses became dimes of a dozen in larger, more populated areas.
The first summer vacation from school? I saw that library quite a bit, as I did every summer after that. Second and third grade was when I had discovered young adult suspense novels. The names R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike come to mind, though I don't really remember much about any of the books, only that someone would go missing and one hundred fifty pages later, they'd be found. I loved reading The Far Side Comics by Gary Larson, which made my mother quite happy, since she shared my bizarre and sometimes sick sense of humor.
It was mid way into my third grade year of school when it all happened, when things got darker and, in turn, the light in the attic started to shine brighter. Some people pull out the small violins and tell you that they had no friends, that they were the nerd in school, blah, blah, blah. I'm going to be honest and just tell you I was the vanilla center in the neopolitan bowl of ice cream that was the Dover School system. I was there, I had a reason to be there, but the reason wasn't very important. I was filler. I had a few friends. None that would last beyond a given school year, but I still had a few. I was pretty boring to most of the kids that came over. I hated "playing". I hated "hanging out". I really, really liked entertaining myself. I did, however, have a friend named Conor that was a good kid. We'd go over each other's homes quite a bit that third grade year.
So, what happened you ask? Well, Conor introduced me to a great, great friend. A friend that I have kept to this day, who has been there time and time again for me on rainy, snowy, or just plain shitty days, though he doesn't even know it. He's kept me entertained and has helped me bring out some of my true emotions late at night when no one is looking, here in overcast Seattle, when my wife is asleep beside me. He's told me all about love, about life, and, most importantly, about fear. He's a fantastic, brilliant person, and I honestly hope he outlives me, so that he can continue to rip apart all the boards up in my attic. His name is Stephen King.
Conor probably doesn't even remember me. He was a pretty popular kid in my later school years, so an early friend when he was still young can't really take up too much of his memory, I'd assume. And, truthfully, if it wasn't for the night at hand, I'd have probably forgotten about him a long time ago as well. That's the nature of school friends. It lived and breathed at the first ring of the bell on the first day of the school year and tended to die a quick and painless death the moment the last bell was rung deep in June. You'd run outside, ready to throw your backpack in an open field. You'd wave goodbye to the familiar faces and then forget they existed until the following September. Zombie friendships.
Everything isn't crystal clear to me, but there's enough there to make it a story. Or, at least try. Conor's mother was nice enough to allow me to sleep over on a friday night. There was something us kids had to do involving school that kept us there until long after most of the other students had left. Not detention, that stage of my life took a few more years to come to fruition. No, it was some sort of project, or sports game.....something. I really wish I could think of it. She picked us up around five o'clock, in which we left the school and walked outside into brisk winter New Hampshire air. It was already dark, and I absolutely remember that, so it must have been around late January or early February. It wasn't snowing, though there was a faint sleet passing down all around us that had made way for a half inch layer of slush to soak our sneakers. It may have only been a fifteen second run to her car, but it was enough time to let the wetness sneak it's way in and surround our socks and chill our feet.
I had been looking forward to the sleepover. Conor's mom would let us rent movies well beyond our age. Lots of them were horror films. His house was where I saw The Omen for the first time. Same with Halloween. It'd be a few more years before my mom would realize how much I thrived in horror culture, in which time she introduced me to Alfred Hitchcock (which is another story entirely). My mom's pretty great.
We went to the independant rental store in the heart of downtown Dover, all one major street of it, and I told Conor to just grab what he wanted to see. I had no real reference. I just wanted to see any horror films I possibly could. Fifteen minutes later, while I was still trying to get my oversized red gumball out of the machine in which I had just sacrificed my last quarter, Conor told me we were all set. I gave one last nudge to the machine, and my gumball somehow jarred loose and rolled into my hand, kind of like a bratty kid who wouldn't move until you told him you were leaving, causing him to cry and run after you. My gumball was screaming, "Noooo!!! I want to be eaten! Don't leeeaave!!"
We got back in the car and took one last errand at the ultimate of childhood treasures: McDonalds. Chicken mcnuggets, fries, a vanilla shake and cookies for later. A big pile of shit that would bring a smile to any youngster's face. Especially if you were a fat kid in training. The drive-thru made the process that much quicker and we were on our way. (Anyone shocked as to why a quarter of the nation's population is obese needs to look no further than the birth of a way to have food handed to you while you're still sitting, never having to move a muscle except to fish an Abraham Lincoln out of your wallet.) The final stop was my house, where that morning I had gathered my sleeping bag and a box of odds and ends for possible late night entertainment as Conor and I would pretend to sleep when we were doing anything but.
We made it to Conor's, our hands clamped with food, accessories and VHS rental cases. The moment the back door was opened, Conor's mother just stepped aside for fear of being knocked over by the youth stampede. Our wet shoes and socks kicked and pulled off, we ran with our overstuffed hands straight up to his room. I took a second to thank his mom for carting us around. I was a polite kid. More, I was safe. Most parents like me because I looked like the most innocent little boy ever created. Times have changed.
We layed out our high calorie bounty on his floor, situating ourselves with our backs resting against his bunk beds and our eyes able to feast on the television screen ahead place in the center of his extra wide bureau. This was the other thing that made Conor cool. He had his own televsion and VCR! We could watch whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. All the horror movies we could ever ask for.
I had already started to stuff french fries in my mouth, looking out his second floor window. Conor had a pretty big backyard. It was very unkept and always seemed a bit creepy, especially after a creature double feature. The mind can race as a kid, and my attic light used to pulsate violently when I looked out there. Tall weeds, a huge, crooked tree and an iron gate. All that was missing was tombstones with hands rising out of fresh dirt.
He asked me which one I wanted to watch first, shaking one movie in each hand. I told him I didn't even know what they were. Conor smiled, looking at my soft skinned innocence. He may as well have said "I'm about to corrupt you for the rest of your life."
Instead he said, "Tonight's Stephen King night."
"Who's that?"
"You're about to find out."
He put the black VHS boxes face down so that the labels couldn't be read. Then, as if he was a magical carnie, he swirled both boxes in circles back and forth as if he were going to command me to pick a card, any card . This went on for about fifteen seconds. Finally, he raised his hands and smiled at me again.
"Pick your poison."
I pointed to the left case. Conor picked it up so that he could read the title. I silently waited, shoving a full mcnugget dipped in honey mustard into my mouth. Conor turned around the box and in the worst ghoul voice ever said, "Looks like we begin the night with Cat's Eye!"
It could have been anything. I didn't care...I just wanted to be scared. He popped in the tape and sat back down as we finished our dinner out of waxed yellow, red and white paper bags and waxed paper cups with plastic straws, all emblazed with a giant "M".
The movie may not have been amazing, but it did the job. There was a severed finger that scared the shit out of me. There was a thing that lived under a little girl's house that frightened my third grade mind. It was evil, that movie. Plain and simple. Made up of three stories that all ended on sour notes, all three of them giving my young frame a shudder and causing me to avoid looking out the window into Conor's back yard every time I got up to go to the bathroom.
I still didn't quite get what Conor meant by Stephen King night, other than the stories seemed to have been written by him. He knew how to make a kid nervous, I gave him that. But, even though I got scared, I wasn't impressed. It wasn't as if the movie had torn at my very core. Conor ejected the tape and then turned and asked me a question that I remember to this very day.
"So, you ready for the main event?"
I shrugged in an I guess so way. Whatever was next couldn't be that bad.
In a rather large and theatrical presentation, Conor grabbed the other black plastic case and turned it around so I could see the label. "You ever heard of The Shining?" he asked.
Jack Nicholson's manic eyes may not have been staring straight ahead through that broken door, but they sure as hell were looking at me. Straight through me. And, Jack Nicholson (as Jack Torrence) was basically telling me he was about to fuck up my innocent little world.
Tape in.
Cue haunting strings.
Cue opening credits.
I read the words "Based on a novel by Stephen King".
And, within ten minutes, I understood why this was Stephen King night. I'm pretty sure Conor spent less time watching the film and more time watching my reaction to each tension filled minute.
There's really nowhere to begin. The twins in the hallway. Danny Torrence's talking finger. The young / old woman in the bathroom. Everything. All of it. The goddamned axe through the door. This wasn't a movie to my young head. This was an assault. And, scared shitless as I was, I loved every single second of it. That last scene, the panning out of the old photograph, ended. Credits rolled, and I took a big breath. I turned to Conor, shit eating grin still planted on his face, and all I could say was, "Stephen King is awesome."
(Come to find out, Stephen King hated this cinematic adaptation. When I finally read the book years later, I didn't have a problem figuring out why. The things is, Stanley Kubrick made an incredible film. A haunting, intense, piece of celluloid paranoia and psychosis. While watching the film, you were trapped in the Overlook Hotel with Wendy and Danny Torrence. But, it's not Stephen King's novel. Not even close. I remember getting three quarters of the way through the book and asking myself where most of this was in the movie. It was proof that two brilliants minds may not be able to see eye to eye, especially when one is requested to retell a perfect story and somehow also make it their own.)
I didn't sleep that night at Conor's. I didn't even toss and turn. All I remember is staring at his ceiling from the top bunk and thinking of The Shining. One scene at a time. Over and over. I was still young, and this was the first time I grasped the concept that they make films based off of novels. My initial though upon this realization, is that maybe Stephen King has other novels. And, hopefully, more movies to scare the shit out of me.
I left Conor's house early the next morning. As in, like, seven a.m. I walked back home with books on my mind. It was a short walk, maybe ten minutes at the most, that I took at lightning speed, dropping my sleeping bag several times along the way. I swung open the door in an overly dramatic hurry, as if I had been chased by a band of theives. I was excited. I couldn't help it. My mom was in the kitchen, fully armed with a look of disbelief as to why her son was already home. I just told he I couldn't sleep, or something along those lines. I tried to play it cool and not jump all over her, as I had a very important request for the day. I waited a few hours, until my parents had had breakfast. Finally I begged my mom to take the library.
Now, with my mother involved, begging to be brought someplace where the sole purpose was to find things to read was not very difficult. In fact, it wasn't begging. If it involved her son reading, my mom was willing to do whatever needed. We made it down there, to that big brick building and I ran on ahead. I had to ask at the counter for help, since this was big time important business and I had no idea where to look. I wasn't sure if there was a "spooked out of your gourd" section or not. The older woman looked at me a little weird, noting how young I was, but she brought me over there anyways. She patted her hand on a book and then said, "Here they are...." and moved her hand along the whole row. My jaw probably didn't drop, but I'd like to think my eyes bugged out a little bit. The holy grail. I thanked her and began my research.
Honestly, I was extremely intimidated that first day. Probably because my eyes laid first on that behemoth known as The Stand. All ten gazillion pages of it. In fact, all of his books looked pretty thick. After about an hour (and two check ins with my mom) I made my selections. I went slow and steady, starting small. First, was Cycle of the Werewolf. It had pictures. Yeah, that was the deciding factor. I also had watched Lon Cheney as The Wolf Man one Saturday afternoon Creature Double Feature on channel ten and loved the very idea of werewolves. It seemed to be a good way to dip my foot in the guy's work(after, of course, having my skull pummeled by The Shining). The second selection was Skeleton Crew, which was a collection of short stories. Perfect introductions.
I loved them both. I read Cycle of the Werewolf in a few hours and started immediately after with Skeleton Crew. Less than twenty four hours before, I hadn't known his name, and now, Stephen King was my favorite author. It went on for years. I would take forever to read some of his classics. I never found the time during the school years, so most of the reading was done on summer vacation whenever I wasn't outside.
It kept on like this throughout high school, except I'd read less and less, my spare time filled with either jobs, girlfriends or homework. Timing never seemed right, especially for the novels at hand. They deserved my full attention, and that was hard to come by. Then, as high school came and went and I plowed headfirst into the working class, a sad thing happened. I forgot about Stephen King. This is not to say I forgot he wrote, but I forgot to read what he wrote. Visits to Salvation Army stores, yard sales and flea markets would involve me buying a few of his hardbacks for a dollar or two, but then they just sat there on the shelf. I knew they were there. They looked back at me like a sausage on the sidewalk stares at a stray dog. They knew I wanted to ingest them, to soak their words in like a blood sponge. But, still, the time never felt right.
I would still read novels, but the frequency died. I'd get through three, maybe four a year. I'd read a Chuck Palahniuk story whenever it came out. Randoms odds and ends, never really paying attention to any given author. I'd waste my time on bullshit. I don't even have an exact description of said bullshit, but bullshit it was.
Somewhere around the winter of 2003, it all came back. The reading, that is. I had recieved Clive Barker's Abarat for Christmas. It looked incredible. I had cheated and thumbed through it after I had unwrapped it, knowing that Mr. Barker had done a generous amount of illustrations to help tell the story of Candy Quackenbush and her travels. About a month later, during a January snowstorm in which I had lucked out and had the day off from work, I happened to look over at the bookshelf after my first pot of coffee for the day had come and gone. The thick, bold blue spine just shouted at me, "Read! Do it now!!!" So, I did. Twelve hours later, as the snow outside had started to die down and my fourth pot of coffee that day was on it's last cup, I read the final page to the first installment of the Abarat series. Mr. Barker was the one to light that fire under my ass and convince me to resume my infatuation with turning pages.
By a stroke of luck, the next day as I left my apartment building to head over to a corner store, hungry for a Little Debbie cake donut, I looked across the minimally busy Broadway Road in Desperatetown (also known as Derry, New Hampshire). I saw something that I hadn't really noticed for the last six months I had been there. I mean, I'm sure I had seen it, but it never gave me that click! like it did that day.
A used and out of print bookstore.
I bought my little desert snack (two of them, actually...one for now, one for five in the morning when I would inevitably still be awake) and walked across Broadway and straight into the building. It wasn't very well advertised. No neon "open" light....come to think of it, there were no lights outside at all. Unless you checked, it may as well have been permenantly closed. Luckily, the doorknob turned, a little bell anounced to the owner that a new customer was about to present himself, and in I walked. It was a fairly small store upon first glance, but after my initial walk around the walls, I found more than enough to peak my interest. I found an early publishing of James Dickey's Deliverance, Patrick McGrath's Spider and many odds and ends. I took chances on unfamiliar authors, resulting in novels like Graham Joyce's The Tooth Fairy and Michel Faber's Under the Skin, the latter author becoming one of my all time favorites since my initial introduction. It went on like this for a few months and then, unexpectedly, the store closed. I was crushed. This place wasn't anything like a second home to me (I'm not going to be that dramatic...), but it was my adult library. I went there twice a week and bought a book or two, would read them on my days off, then repeat. All of a sudden, it was all gone.
So, I started to hunt. I went back to going to the yard sales, picking up more random novels, all while those Stephen King books longingly hoped I'd pick one of them up. The shelves filled up with no set order or with no end in sight. I'd love to be able to look over at my shelves right now and be able to list everything, but it's not possible. Not because there are too many to list (though, that would be the case ....) but because over the years I've downsized, minimalized and stripped myself of a lot (....if I still had them). I gave away books. I'd sell them back for more. I moved so many times and got rid of so much stuff that I don't have any idea where a lot of my things ended up.
About a year and a half ago, when my wife and I moved to Seattle, our first apartment was down in Pioneer Square. If you ask anyone in Seattle where not to move, they'd probably tell you there. I loved it though. At least, I really liked our studio apartment. It was high up and we had a minor view of our new downtown. The thing that sold me about the location, though, was that right next door was the Seattle Mystery Bookstore. Have I established that I like suspense novels? Good, I'd hoped I was making this clear. So, basically, this place next door was screaming bloody murder at me....almost calling my name. It took a few days of settling in and aranging the apartment before I went over. One project at a time, and every box needs to be unpacked before I can let my mind rest.
My first trip in there was overwhelming. I had no idea where to begin. I, unsurprisingly, became that guy and asked the counter clerk if all the books were really mysteries. She'd heard it before and could tell I wasn't being a dipshit, just another boggled crime reader that stumbled upon the promised land. She said yes, they were, and if I needed any help to please ask. My response was in the form of a question.
"Where do I begin?"
Luckily, she laughed and shot right back, "Anywhere at all, hon. Take your time."
I bookhunted here quite a bit. My main stops were always Elliot Bay Bookstore and Half Price Books. I'd scan the clearance and discount sections first, then move on. I've found some pretty amazing buys. All the while, I'd still pick up a King book whenever I saw one I didn't have.
One local store had a moving sale. I was back in the city for the day and it just so happened to be the last day before they moved. All the books left, hardcover or not, were under two dollars. For one dollar, I found a signed first edition of Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island. One dollar. The first ten pages were worth the price alone. By the time I had finished it, I had a new member of my top ten. (Oddly enough, once I read the novel, I considered how amazing a film adaptation might be. I checked IMDB and typed in the title. Three guesses what Martin Scorcese's next film is? I'm counting the days until I get to sit in a theater with a box of popcorn and see live action versions of all the characters running though my attic) I was able to buy a few titles at that sale that I would have never given a chance. For fifteen dollars, I purchased nine new novels; and since then I've read each and every one. I think I made my money back after reading halfway through the first stack of pages I flipped.
In a roundabout way, I have Poppy Z. Brite to thank as much as Conor. It was an interview in Vice magazine with her (volume 14, number 12). It was their "fiction" issue. I was immediately interested in reading one of her novels as soon as I finished the interview. The description of her early vampire / gothic stories sounded interesting, but it was her last few titles that really caught my attention, those being about two chefs from New Orleans that had decided to open a restaurant called "Liquor". I knew that the used bookstore down the street from our new apartment on Capital Hill (we escaped from Pioneer Square after six months....not a second too soon...) would have at least one of her books for me to buy. No sooner had I finished the article, I had my coat on and was out the door. Now, I'm the farthest from an impulse buyer, but when you want something, you want something. Go get it.
The store actually had three titles for me to choose from: Exquisite Corpse, which by the title alone sounded promising to my little black soul, Liquor and Soul Kitchen. I bought all three. No use deciding. Sometimes you can just tell when something is meant for you, and these books needed a new home. I read Exquisite Corpse first. It was wonderfully written. Graphic. Emotional. Intense. I finished it in one night. I like to read the whole thing in one sitting if I can, and her novels are perfect for that.
The next night was Liquor. It's an understatement to say I loved it from the very first paragraph. Some characters immediately make their mark and, for me, Gary "G-Man" Stubbs and John Rickey were those characters. I read both Liquor and Soul Kitchen, the respective first and third novels in the series, in one night. I bought Prime, the second (or as I'd call it, the cream filling) in the series within the next two weeks. another local bookstore, Bailey/Coy Books, had her novella, D*U*C*K*, that was also part of the series. Subterranean Press had published it, signed in hardcover. It was a little too pricey for my blood, and I knew I'd have to wait until a rainy day when I was able to either finally afford it, or shrug off responsibility for a week. Neither of those ended up being the case. I came home from a very long time on the road, and there sitting on my nightstand when I came into the bedroom for the first time in two and a half months, was D*U*C*K*. My wife is very good at surprises.
I've finally started to dip back into her early work, just last week purchasing Drawing Blood. Though, I'd be lying if I said I'm okay waiting another few years to read about Rickey and G-Man. Great storytelling takes time, so I'll continue to be patient. I'll be there on release day whenever she dives back into Liquorland.
After I had read all I could find by Ms. Brite, I went back and read the interview. She listed A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole as her favorite work of fiction. I figured, "why not?", and picked up a copy. Thank you, Poppy. It was another brilliant satire, told by a tortured mind. Toole commited suicide at the young age of thirty one, considering himself a failed writer. This novel of his was found after his death by his mother, who brought it to a local college professor to read. This novel of his was then published after the professor read it and realized how good it was. This novel of his, young John Kennedy Toole, a "failed writer" who commited suicide, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1981, twelve years after he gave up on himself. John Kennedy Toole, folks, is the reason the phrase "stranger than fiction" is still used today.
Once I had read Confederacy, I went back to the interview. I wanted to see what else Poppy could tell me. I read a few more recommendations Most were entertaining. Some, not so much. But then, as if it were like the books in my shelf that I hadn't looked at for so long, I noticed one single sentence that I truly didn't remember ever reading. She called Stephen King her comfort reads, or something to that affect.
Click!
She was right. He is a comfort read! I looked up from my corner chair and stared at the shelves. There was one big book with a red and white cover that was finally plucked from the island of forgotten toys. Stephen King's Insomnia. I had the time. I had most of the summer free this year because I 1) wasn't on tour and 2) couldn't find a job. I was an involuntary international man of leisure. But, if I was going to be at home for a long period of time, I was damn well going to make it worth it.
It had been, man...like seven years since I read a King novel. Shameful. I had read one short story last sumer, wanting to know the literary version of his short story, 1408, before I saw the movie. It was in King's collection called Everything's Eventual, which was published in 2004 or so (the dates aren't that important, so if anyone wants to point a finger at incorrect statements, I'll politely tell you where to put it once you're done correcting me...). Like I said, I never stopped buying them, just stopped opening the covers.
I read Insomnia over the course of four nights, two hundred pages at a time. I learned the story of Ralph Roberts and the end results of gradual sleepless nights. By the time I was finished, my heart was aching. Part of it had to do with the story itself. It was, at the root, a perfect story of life and death. The other part of the ache came from overflowing of anticipation. I simply couldn't decide which of his works I wanted to read next.
I looked back over at that pile of books and it dawned on me that I had only read the man's early works...up to around 1991 or so. My mission for the summer was to play catch up with my new old friend, to find out what he'd been up to the last seventeen years or so. I jumped around, not taking it so seriously that I was reading in chronological order. I wanted to read them in the order of which title shouted at me after I had closed the back cover, feeling the finished book in my hands. And I learned that I enjoy the new(er) Stephen King more than the early version of the prolific novelist.
Bag of Bones was the one that hit me the hardest. I'm not sure why, but this one is the be all end all for me. I'll probably read it once a year for the rest of my life. There was just something about Mike Noonan's unraveling little haunted story that left me in awe. If you notice, I'm not really describing any of these books in great detail. The reason should be obvious. No one likes a spoiler.
There are a few others that I've read this summer that I hold in high regards. Rose Madder incredibly perceptive and, for most of the story, entirely realistic. There was an underlying redemption soaked in sorrow that King touched upon with every chapter with the greatest of ease. Hearts in Atlantis and Lisey's Story, were both heavy, heavy reads for entirely different reasons. In fact, Lisey's Story left me a bit shook up for a few days. It was so damn personal and, yes, depressing that I finally had to admit that I wasn't prepared for it. At all.
About halfway through writing all of this, I finished up his latest work, Duma Key. I spent six hundred plus pages finding out about Edgar Freemantle's first, second and third lives. About why he has only one arm. About Duma Key itself.
He's always told a great story. Always. I have no complaints about any of his forty novels and two hundred plus short stories, though, I've got about ten scattered novels and a large handful of shorts that I've not yet read. But, for me, somewhere in the early 90's, while every one else in the world was happy with a decade about nothing, Stephen King was telling us all something. His work became unflinchingly epic. He became so in touch with living, dying, with human nature, that his work became more than print. The stories leaped off of the pages and danced into my attic, waking the bats, kicking out the windows and screaming out into the open air.
And there are a lot of us that realize this about him. You don't sell three hundred fifty million of your books to a select crowd. Three hundred fifty million means you've got quite a few people who like you, who wait every year or two for an announcement about a new publication. Luckily, a new collection of short stories was released at the end of 2008. Mid November, there I was, somewhere in Europe, and my inner horror nerd wouldn't stop reminding me that back home there's a brand new book stuffed with new victims and villains. I waited until New Year's had come and gone, and Mr. King and I had a coffee date in my warm bedroom while the pacific northwest rain and snow fell down hard outside. He is also said to be working on a new novel, one he had attempted twice in the eighties to no avail. It will be his longest novel ever. I've read a brief synopsis and it sounds amazing. I'd tell you, but that would be no fun. Go find out for yourself.
So....regrets. In a way, taking this long to read the rest of King's latest works can't be considered a regret, because I really was waiting for the right time. I just regret the right time taking this long to find me. Now that is has, though, I'm going to give it a hard run. What will I do if I run out of new tales to read from him? Start all over. Find all the things I missed the first time around.
I'll probably never get the chance to say hello to him, to thank him for the hundreds (maybe thousands) of hours that he has held my interest. I'll probably never get the chance to explain my gap in time between our visits. Though, I think he would understand all of this, as I am one of the legion of the unnamed that are thanked in every book, united by his appreciation for his "Constant Reader". He provides the stories, and I provide the endless support.
Sometimes, that's all it takes to make a friendship last.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
life worth living
my wife will appear on the new LP from The_Network. She flew out east last weekend and recorded vocals with my wonderful spiritual distortion advisor, Kurt Ballou, over at Godcity in Salem, Mass. I have heard the unmastered version and it is fantastic. I knew she'd have a brutal recording voice because she talks shit like no other person on the planet. This is me being a proud husband.
Also, above is a picture of my dog, Panic, dressed up as a lobster. He ate the costume minutes after the picture was taken.
Don't get used to new posts on here. I'd love to say they will be frequent, but then I'd be lying and I like to save my lies for important things.
Those in the northeast, Trap Them will be around until the end of October. Those in Canada, we'll be there for a week in November. Those in Europe, we'll see you in mid November until mid December. Those on the west coast? Mid december.
After that, I'll a have a few months off, it looks like. I'm hoping to work on pieces for the "Seizures in Barren Praise" series of paintings.
The record comes out 11.11.08, by the way. I'm hoping the rest of the world appreciates it as much as I do. Heavy. Mr. Bannon took the lyricism to heart and has created a layout that is absolutely incredible. Epic, dark and iconic.
I've been writing. I don't know what I'm going to do with a lot of it. It may end up on here, it may be a zine. It may be a self published collection of fiction and non-fiction. I'll decide what to do once my debt is no longer debt.
Come say hello at a show and tell me where there's some cheap vegan eats and a quiet coffee shop where I can go read a book and hide.
clearly
The limits become more like cubicle walls. The difference is that they are clear and you can see what's on the other side. Instead of monitors hiding work safe porn and conversation statistics, you see faint bedroom lights through the thin curtains drawn together, blocking the outside price about as well as a band aid would treat a six inch gash. You see the cleaners buffering the hard floors in monuments of modern day.
In seven hours it begins again.
Maybe six. Maybe eight.
It all depends on the course of action taken. You decide whether you want to listen to the baritone clicks of heels on tired concrete from behind the single plate of a formerly anonymous shelter, or the double plates that fold your skin and settle you into a custom shaped coffin, where you practice shapeshifting your body into different imaginary scenarios that involve how you would land in front of those heels if you were to fall from the twenty stories above.
If you're lucky, you headed through the next cubicle wall while it was still dark, where you can stare straight through the heart, past the steam, past the watering hole pulling the brake and opening the drawbridge for the legions the filter out and commit necessary acts of audio vandalism.
If you're lucky, you get to see that heart while it's at it's darkest, while it's at it's most intense, because if you head in for the rise, you'll still hear those baritone clicks, but the purpose gets lost. The rhythm will crisp and will have a destination. The rays will tell them when to stop.
Some will call them vampires, hiding behind tinted glass in wheels tucked under the cross streets of every escape route that can be plowed through. Nevermind the orange cones and the blinking distress. Nevermind the race.
Good olds will try to tell you where you went wrong when you stop for ten minutes of escape from the escape. They'll try to tell you what you're doing wrong as their quiet, lonely daughters stand five feet behind them, and as they teach you lessons that bare no weight, you look at the young woman's eyes, telling her to meet you out back of the painted brick. You'll have seconds to decide whether to give her the quickest, most passionate fuck she'll ever have near that cell, or to simply brush the hair from the side of her face, softly kiss her cheek and whisper in her ear that she's the best sight you've seen that whole day....that she's not invisible and the rest of the world misses her while she stays here more than the man standing at the scratch tickets will ever miss her when she finally decides to leave.
You turn a key and get back to the wooden barriers telling you about the lives you take with preference and freedoms. You hand silver over to molesters on work release and drop roots in hands covered in blinding plastic gloves, followed by grunts or greetings and salutations. The voids range from minutes to hours, until you reach the next wall. You've been moved again within all of the cubicles, finding out in the next twelves whether you've been promoted or demoted.
They may call them vampires, but the dark is when you get there. Black blood in the air and the living live none alike.
In seven hours it begins again.
Maybe six. Maybe eight.
It all depends on the course of action taken. You decide whether you want to listen to the baritone clicks of heels on tired concrete from behind the single plate of a formerly anonymous shelter, or the double plates that fold your skin and settle you into a custom shaped coffin, where you practice shapeshifting your body into different imaginary scenarios that involve how you would land in front of those heels if you were to fall from the twenty stories above.
If you're lucky, you headed through the next cubicle wall while it was still dark, where you can stare straight through the heart, past the steam, past the watering hole pulling the brake and opening the drawbridge for the legions the filter out and commit necessary acts of audio vandalism.
If you're lucky, you get to see that heart while it's at it's darkest, while it's at it's most intense, because if you head in for the rise, you'll still hear those baritone clicks, but the purpose gets lost. The rhythm will crisp and will have a destination. The rays will tell them when to stop.
Some will call them vampires, hiding behind tinted glass in wheels tucked under the cross streets of every escape route that can be plowed through. Nevermind the orange cones and the blinking distress. Nevermind the race.
Good olds will try to tell you where you went wrong when you stop for ten minutes of escape from the escape. They'll try to tell you what you're doing wrong as their quiet, lonely daughters stand five feet behind them, and as they teach you lessons that bare no weight, you look at the young woman's eyes, telling her to meet you out back of the painted brick. You'll have seconds to decide whether to give her the quickest, most passionate fuck she'll ever have near that cell, or to simply brush the hair from the side of her face, softly kiss her cheek and whisper in her ear that she's the best sight you've seen that whole day....that she's not invisible and the rest of the world misses her while she stays here more than the man standing at the scratch tickets will ever miss her when she finally decides to leave.
You turn a key and get back to the wooden barriers telling you about the lives you take with preference and freedoms. You hand silver over to molesters on work release and drop roots in hands covered in blinding plastic gloves, followed by grunts or greetings and salutations. The voids range from minutes to hours, until you reach the next wall. You've been moved again within all of the cubicles, finding out in the next twelves whether you've been promoted or demoted.
They may call them vampires, but the dark is when you get there. Black blood in the air and the living live none alike.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Stuck
I was a pretty dumb kid.
No....that's the wrong adjective.
"Dumb" would be the word to use if I did the type of antics that got most young ones to be grounded for weeks...no television, no phone calls, no hanging out with friends. This was what usually troubled my parents seeing as if the rare moment where I needed to be grounded came up, they couldn't take much away from me. I didn't watch too much television, I hated using the phone (in which the feeling has never changed) and I barely hung out with friends.
Basically, they'd end up telling me to stay in my room....something I acted as though was an incredibly harsh punishment...harsh but fair. Then I'd get to my room and commence my regular after school schedule for the day, which involved me being antisocial.
Everything I had was in there, littered around underneath the bed, in a small corner closet and on my desk, which was supposed to be used for homework, but, shockingly never seemed to make it there. The desk was filled with tools for drawing, sketching, etc. and the drawers were stuffed with failed attempts. I stuck mostly to what enjoyed. I read books and comics, I had a ridiculous amount of sports cards that took up a good portion of the space.
Before my parents had moved in and called this their home, my room would have been the dining room for another family. The room had an entrance to the kitchen and to the back hallway, heading towards my parents' bedroom. There wasn't, what you would call, a lot of privacy in there, not that it really mattered. I wasn't hiding anything up until junior high school, where if my mother had even seen the cover of "Never Again", she would have sat me down with tears in her eyes and asked me whether I thought she was a bad parents. Seriously....this is what would have happened. I had a special cubby hole for my torrid affair with distortion, before we were able to make our love public.
I could, and did, spend hours and days in there.
So, "dumb" is not the word....maybe "ill-fated"?
Sure.....why not? That word will at least work in regards to what I'm telling.
My parents put up with my imbalances very well, now that I can look back two plus decades into my time before I had even turned double digits. I handled myself with an air of sarcasm so thick it can only be compared to trying to drive on a New England back road during a Nor'easter. It literally could and would not stop (some things in my life have not changed since birth...this being one of them). I didn't use it because I was a pouty brat not getting his way. I didn't bring it out when I felt intimidated by a situation. It just never stopped.
There was one particular evening at the dinner table that sticks out in my mind, mainly because it was a night where my infinite sarcasm brought me an ill-fated result. This was probably twenty one or twenty two years ago, deep in the heart of the eighties where, nestled snug in small town Dover, NH, we the McKenneys were all sitting down in the kitchen. This was rare, seeing as my father worked ridiculously long hours to make ends meet. He had never gone to college, so he was supporting the family of four on a high school diploma at around the same age as I am now. Elsewhere in the country, the night was just picking up, but for us, it was winding down.
I don't remember the dinner or any of the specifics. What I do remember is bringing my pattented sarcasm to the table. I'm not sure what was said, but chances are it was over the top and enough to drive my parents to send me to my room before the dinner was done. I acted pissed, but the truth is that my bedroom was right next to the kitchen. I'd be sneaking snacks for the rest of the night, so no worry about finishing the meal. Maybe that's why I turned into a fat kid. Wait....yes, that is exactly why I turned into a fat kid.
I got sent to my room. I just kind of sat on my bed, staring at the floor, not really paying attention to much of anything. I had a small nightstand which was a hand me down from my grandfather on my mother's side, Brent Shattuck. You know those old men that you can tell where a ton of both fun and trouble when they were young? Well, that was Brent. On cue at every holiday, there was this really loud whistle he'd do when I asked him. The main reason I always asked him to do it was that it hurt my sister's ears and made her cry. I mean, c'mon...I was a big brother. I was supposed to do that. So, I'd ask him to do it, he'd look around and make sure no one was in the room and then let it rip. Within seconds, my sister would hold her ears and scream, followed by my grandmother shouting at her husband, "BRENT!!!!". At this point, my grandfather would look like a scolded bloodhound. He'd hang his head, tell me not to say anything and then he'd hide until my grandmother gave up looking for him to shout anything more.
He passed away when I was in third grade. I never got the chance to learn how to make that whistle, though with my lack of teeth at this point, I'm not sure if I'd be able to pull it off even if I knew how.
He gave me this great nightstand. It was small, made out of oak and a perfect bedside table. There would be a lamp and radio on there at all times and, on the occasional well-behaved nights, would house a glass of milk and a pile of cookies before I was off to no-sleep land. The front consisted of two swinging doors with handles, that when opened had a small shelving unit to hold tobacco pipes along the side. Five holes on the left, four on the right, all to varying sizes.
This night that I had been sent to my room for an excessive use of sarcasm (normal for me), I found myself sitting on my bed near the nightstand, swinging the doors open and shut.
After a while, it became boring and I kept the door open, sticking my fingers into the small holes meant for tobacco pipes.
Meant only for tobacco pipes.
You see, my fingers were a bit thick for the holes. Once my finger would stick, I'd pull it out.....well, that's what you would think. No, instead, I pushed it in further, for no reason whatsoever.
I stopped, looked down at how far in my digit was and held my breath.
Yank.
Nothing.
again.....
nothing.
There really is that moment of panic when you do something like this. For me, it was trying to figure out how to shout out to my parents to tell them I was fingerbanging my nightstand out of boredom and got myself stuck.
"How do you do this?" I asked myself.
I finally settled for the casual, "Hey mom....dad?" approach. They came in the room and before they could say anything, I pointed with my free hand down to my new attachment.
They really didn't say anything for about ten seconds, the shock of their son pulling something this ridiculous beyond comprehension. My father was always the best to watch in these situations.....he always teetered on the verge of wanting to scream bloody hell and ask me if I'm serious, but instead always opting to just put his hand over his mouth and take it all in.
"Yeah......so, it's stuck. It's in there good...." was all I could really say. At this point all self respect had been thrown out the window.
They both remained calm in the next ten minutes, trying ti figure out the best approach to working out the finger. They brainstormed and came up with the following, all of which were used with no positive results:
shortening, soap, vaseline, canola oil......there were more, but these are the ones I vividly remember. Especially watching my mother lather up by finger in Crisco.
"How do you do this?" I asked myself once again.
Options were exhausted. There was no more loosening agents that could succeed. My father unscrewed the door from the hinges, so that at the very least, I was just sitting on my bed with the door attached to me instead of the whole nightstand. He finally looked at me, shrugged in the "this is all that's left" motion and said, "We're gonna have to saw it off, bud. You know that, right?"
I did. I knew it was coming to this. I'm not going to act like I wasn't worried, because I was. Saws are sharp, and eight or nine year old skin is not.
This is when the new problem arose: no saw.
It was gone. So the door that was stuck to my finger was not able to be taken out at home, because we had no saw.
Off to the emergency room.
Yup, really.
I put my jacket on (not fully of course....the door wouldn't fit through the arm hole) and my mother drove me to Wentworth Douglas Hospital, about a five minute ride from the house. I could tell she had no idea what to say. We parked and started to walk in the ER doors, with my mother asking me what I had been asking myself for the last half hour or so.
"How do you do this?" she said, shaking her head.
"It happens...." was all I could respond.
We walked up to the counter, about chin high to me, and the woman sitting behind it said hello.
"What seems to be the problem?"
To this, I simply raised my hand, door still stuck and dangling.
Her jaw dropped, her eyes bulged a little and all she could muster was, "Ohhhh....."
My mother responded with, "...exactly."
I was brought into a room where, for the next twenty minutes or so, it was very quiet, except for the random nurses who would pop in to ask if we needed anything, even though I knew word had spread and most wanted to come in and see the kid with the wood affixed to him.
A doctor made his way in and took a look without trying to laugh. He did, however, look straight at my mother and say, "You know how funny this is, right?"
Mortified, she smiled and nodded. "Not funny ha-ha, but funny sad...." was what she probably said to herself.
The doctor told us what we knew, which was that we needed a saw. He sent a nurse to go have someone bring one. The first person to come back brought a (I shit you not) full sized saw. The kind you'd use to cut down a goddamn redwood. I took one look and screamed. At this point, the doctor was trying really hard not to keel over with laughter. He turned to the guy who brought in the oversized remedy and told him something quite a bit smaller would do the job.
The saw came, the door was cut off and I went home, getting to keep the memento from the rather unfortunate series of events.
All because I can't control the sarcasm.
Sorry, mom. Sorry, dad. Sorry, grandpa for ruining your nightstand.
No....that's the wrong adjective.
"Dumb" would be the word to use if I did the type of antics that got most young ones to be grounded for weeks...no television, no phone calls, no hanging out with friends. This was what usually troubled my parents seeing as if the rare moment where I needed to be grounded came up, they couldn't take much away from me. I didn't watch too much television, I hated using the phone (in which the feeling has never changed) and I barely hung out with friends.
Basically, they'd end up telling me to stay in my room....something I acted as though was an incredibly harsh punishment...harsh but fair. Then I'd get to my room and commence my regular after school schedule for the day, which involved me being antisocial.
Everything I had was in there, littered around underneath the bed, in a small corner closet and on my desk, which was supposed to be used for homework, but, shockingly never seemed to make it there. The desk was filled with tools for drawing, sketching, etc. and the drawers were stuffed with failed attempts. I stuck mostly to what enjoyed. I read books and comics, I had a ridiculous amount of sports cards that took up a good portion of the space.
Before my parents had moved in and called this their home, my room would have been the dining room for another family. The room had an entrance to the kitchen and to the back hallway, heading towards my parents' bedroom. There wasn't, what you would call, a lot of privacy in there, not that it really mattered. I wasn't hiding anything up until junior high school, where if my mother had even seen the cover of "Never Again", she would have sat me down with tears in her eyes and asked me whether I thought she was a bad parents. Seriously....this is what would have happened. I had a special cubby hole for my torrid affair with distortion, before we were able to make our love public.
I could, and did, spend hours and days in there.
So, "dumb" is not the word....maybe "ill-fated"?
Sure.....why not? That word will at least work in regards to what I'm telling.
My parents put up with my imbalances very well, now that I can look back two plus decades into my time before I had even turned double digits. I handled myself with an air of sarcasm so thick it can only be compared to trying to drive on a New England back road during a Nor'easter. It literally could and would not stop (some things in my life have not changed since birth...this being one of them). I didn't use it because I was a pouty brat not getting his way. I didn't bring it out when I felt intimidated by a situation. It just never stopped.
There was one particular evening at the dinner table that sticks out in my mind, mainly because it was a night where my infinite sarcasm brought me an ill-fated result. This was probably twenty one or twenty two years ago, deep in the heart of the eighties where, nestled snug in small town Dover, NH, we the McKenneys were all sitting down in the kitchen. This was rare, seeing as my father worked ridiculously long hours to make ends meet. He had never gone to college, so he was supporting the family of four on a high school diploma at around the same age as I am now. Elsewhere in the country, the night was just picking up, but for us, it was winding down.
I don't remember the dinner or any of the specifics. What I do remember is bringing my pattented sarcasm to the table. I'm not sure what was said, but chances are it was over the top and enough to drive my parents to send me to my room before the dinner was done. I acted pissed, but the truth is that my bedroom was right next to the kitchen. I'd be sneaking snacks for the rest of the night, so no worry about finishing the meal. Maybe that's why I turned into a fat kid. Wait....yes, that is exactly why I turned into a fat kid.
I got sent to my room. I just kind of sat on my bed, staring at the floor, not really paying attention to much of anything. I had a small nightstand which was a hand me down from my grandfather on my mother's side, Brent Shattuck. You know those old men that you can tell where a ton of both fun and trouble when they were young? Well, that was Brent. On cue at every holiday, there was this really loud whistle he'd do when I asked him. The main reason I always asked him to do it was that it hurt my sister's ears and made her cry. I mean, c'mon...I was a big brother. I was supposed to do that. So, I'd ask him to do it, he'd look around and make sure no one was in the room and then let it rip. Within seconds, my sister would hold her ears and scream, followed by my grandmother shouting at her husband, "BRENT!!!!". At this point, my grandfather would look like a scolded bloodhound. He'd hang his head, tell me not to say anything and then he'd hide until my grandmother gave up looking for him to shout anything more.
He passed away when I was in third grade. I never got the chance to learn how to make that whistle, though with my lack of teeth at this point, I'm not sure if I'd be able to pull it off even if I knew how.
He gave me this great nightstand. It was small, made out of oak and a perfect bedside table. There would be a lamp and radio on there at all times and, on the occasional well-behaved nights, would house a glass of milk and a pile of cookies before I was off to no-sleep land. The front consisted of two swinging doors with handles, that when opened had a small shelving unit to hold tobacco pipes along the side. Five holes on the left, four on the right, all to varying sizes.
This night that I had been sent to my room for an excessive use of sarcasm (normal for me), I found myself sitting on my bed near the nightstand, swinging the doors open and shut.
After a while, it became boring and I kept the door open, sticking my fingers into the small holes meant for tobacco pipes.
Meant only for tobacco pipes.
You see, my fingers were a bit thick for the holes. Once my finger would stick, I'd pull it out.....well, that's what you would think. No, instead, I pushed it in further, for no reason whatsoever.
I stopped, looked down at how far in my digit was and held my breath.
Yank.
Nothing.
again.....
nothing.
There really is that moment of panic when you do something like this. For me, it was trying to figure out how to shout out to my parents to tell them I was fingerbanging my nightstand out of boredom and got myself stuck.
"How do you do this?" I asked myself.
I finally settled for the casual, "Hey mom....dad?" approach. They came in the room and before they could say anything, I pointed with my free hand down to my new attachment.
They really didn't say anything for about ten seconds, the shock of their son pulling something this ridiculous beyond comprehension. My father was always the best to watch in these situations.....he always teetered on the verge of wanting to scream bloody hell and ask me if I'm serious, but instead always opting to just put his hand over his mouth and take it all in.
"Yeah......so, it's stuck. It's in there good...." was all I could really say. At this point all self respect had been thrown out the window.
They both remained calm in the next ten minutes, trying ti figure out the best approach to working out the finger. They brainstormed and came up with the following, all of which were used with no positive results:
shortening, soap, vaseline, canola oil......there were more, but these are the ones I vividly remember. Especially watching my mother lather up by finger in Crisco.
"How do you do this?" I asked myself once again.
Options were exhausted. There was no more loosening agents that could succeed. My father unscrewed the door from the hinges, so that at the very least, I was just sitting on my bed with the door attached to me instead of the whole nightstand. He finally looked at me, shrugged in the "this is all that's left" motion and said, "We're gonna have to saw it off, bud. You know that, right?"
I did. I knew it was coming to this. I'm not going to act like I wasn't worried, because I was. Saws are sharp, and eight or nine year old skin is not.
This is when the new problem arose: no saw.
It was gone. So the door that was stuck to my finger was not able to be taken out at home, because we had no saw.
Off to the emergency room.
Yup, really.
I put my jacket on (not fully of course....the door wouldn't fit through the arm hole) and my mother drove me to Wentworth Douglas Hospital, about a five minute ride from the house. I could tell she had no idea what to say. We parked and started to walk in the ER doors, with my mother asking me what I had been asking myself for the last half hour or so.
"How do you do this?" she said, shaking her head.
"It happens...." was all I could respond.
We walked up to the counter, about chin high to me, and the woman sitting behind it said hello.
"What seems to be the problem?"
To this, I simply raised my hand, door still stuck and dangling.
Her jaw dropped, her eyes bulged a little and all she could muster was, "Ohhhh....."
My mother responded with, "...exactly."
I was brought into a room where, for the next twenty minutes or so, it was very quiet, except for the random nurses who would pop in to ask if we needed anything, even though I knew word had spread and most wanted to come in and see the kid with the wood affixed to him.
A doctor made his way in and took a look without trying to laugh. He did, however, look straight at my mother and say, "You know how funny this is, right?"
Mortified, she smiled and nodded. "Not funny ha-ha, but funny sad...." was what she probably said to herself.
The doctor told us what we knew, which was that we needed a saw. He sent a nurse to go have someone bring one. The first person to come back brought a (I shit you not) full sized saw. The kind you'd use to cut down a goddamn redwood. I took one look and screamed. At this point, the doctor was trying really hard not to keel over with laughter. He turned to the guy who brought in the oversized remedy and told him something quite a bit smaller would do the job.
The saw came, the door was cut off and I went home, getting to keep the memento from the rather unfortunate series of events.
All because I can't control the sarcasm.
Sorry, mom. Sorry, dad. Sorry, grandpa for ruining your nightstand.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
how to say "fuck you" in twenty five minutes:
"seizures in barren praise" is now mixed, mastered and complete.
for those that are interested in more than the one dimension of listening to a record, i suggest purchasing a copy instead of downloading it.
there are three seperate versions of lyrics to this record:
the written / lyric booklet version
the recorded version
and the live version(s) that will change every couple of nights
no...really
if you're going to make an artistic expression....make it worth it and continue to let it evolve into something more than a simple "write and repeat"
i'm not sure when a new song will be online, but you can expect it in the next month or so.
the record will be out in the fall and our plan is to tour from the beginning of september until the end of november with stops on multiple continents.
details are forthcoming.
soundtrack for the last week:
verse "agression"
torche "meanderthal"
ladytron "velocifero"
coldplay "viva la vida"
victims "killer"
world burns to death "graveyard of utopia"
furnace "doublewalker"
duffy "rockferry"
the black angels "directions to see a ghost"
nasum "doombringer"
mono"you are there"
pelican "city of echoes"
boris "smile"
since i've been home i've read some pretty great books:
the best revenge by stephen white - i like mysteries...this guy is going to be a new member of my literary candy jar
the secret life of Laszlo, Count Dracula by rodericke anscombe - forensic psychologist becomes brilliant author. so beautifully written, i'll probably read it again before the summer's over
insomnia by stephen king - when you're going to read 800 pages, you need to COMMIT....i've had this for a year, but finally found the right time...well worth the wait
currently: bag of bones by stephen king - with about 150 pages left i'm willing to say this is my favorite novel he's written
i'm on a stephen king kick this summer. next will by Desperation folowed by The Regulators, though, i first have to read Prime by Poppy Z Brite to finish up all of her "liquor" land writings.
this whole post was just supposed to be a line or two....go figure
for those that are interested in more than the one dimension of listening to a record, i suggest purchasing a copy instead of downloading it.
there are three seperate versions of lyrics to this record:
the written / lyric booklet version
the recorded version
and the live version(s) that will change every couple of nights
no...really
if you're going to make an artistic expression....make it worth it and continue to let it evolve into something more than a simple "write and repeat"
i'm not sure when a new song will be online, but you can expect it in the next month or so.
the record will be out in the fall and our plan is to tour from the beginning of september until the end of november with stops on multiple continents.
details are forthcoming.
soundtrack for the last week:
verse "agression"
torche "meanderthal"
ladytron "velocifero"
coldplay "viva la vida"
victims "killer"
world burns to death "graveyard of utopia"
furnace "doublewalker"
duffy "rockferry"
the black angels "directions to see a ghost"
nasum "doombringer"
mono"you are there"
pelican "city of echoes"
boris "smile"
since i've been home i've read some pretty great books:
the best revenge by stephen white - i like mysteries...this guy is going to be a new member of my literary candy jar
the secret life of Laszlo, Count Dracula by rodericke anscombe - forensic psychologist becomes brilliant author. so beautifully written, i'll probably read it again before the summer's over
insomnia by stephen king - when you're going to read 800 pages, you need to COMMIT....i've had this for a year, but finally found the right time...well worth the wait
currently: bag of bones by stephen king - with about 150 pages left i'm willing to say this is my favorite novel he's written
i'm on a stephen king kick this summer. next will by Desperation folowed by The Regulators, though, i first have to read Prime by Poppy Z Brite to finish up all of her "liquor" land writings.
this whole post was just supposed to be a line or two....go figure
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