Horseshit Chapter 7 (Julia Skakel chapter 1/2)

"Autumn Oranges"

She stares out windows with ivory trim reflecting the rain like steel, as the wind tumbles her parents’ patio decorations and the rain makes jugs out of the candle holders and damp reeds of the figs and branches. The patio looks like a mostrador del bar. And of course, the help is tan.

All of it can be replaced. The fake palm trees, for $500. The candles, imported lavender greens from Switzerland —she thinks of her mother watching Shirley Temple in Heidi. Her name chiseled on the wood railing could be redone. And the spot where she first went down on a guy (and pieces of her soul scattered like dandelion seeds), in the bushes after a dance—on fire—parents awake, maybe—it can all be redone, the brilliant pieces.

You can only see the pool because it matches the windows and the rest of the yard doesn’t: it looks like wet money. Dad’s outside in his damp khakis yelling at Perez to get the leaves out of there. There are three dead frogs Perez catches floating like still-spun ballerinas. Then Dad hits him on the head with his briefcase and goes to work. Legally, Perez doesn’t even live here.

Julia Skakel picks the outfits out of her closet and shares them with the bed. She doesn’t want to get out of Horseshit like so many other kids. This town’s just dirt and streams and bridges and traffic lights. She’d be happy living anywhere, somewhere, outside of this shell. This idea of Julia Skakel is becoming a burden. She’s had a hernia and not told anyone. She’s had worse. This is, in its most self-absorbed, a form of slavery. But she tells herself she could have a more terrible life—drugs, AIDs, a GED. She could be a teenager forever.

Now it’s Monday. Rick Smith, the ever elusive blond boyfriend—so dirty blond—was supposed to come over this weekend. He chose to be with the guys. He was out fishing in the rain with the rest of these men. They walk like praying mantises, pretending more-powerful than the real mantises they bed and marry and keep locked in satin sheets. Rick’s lips taste so sweet. He never lets you taste full-on, but just enough. Like a knight withholding sanctuary.

Julia throws the green dress on the floor. The closet is emptying like the school bus and she isn’t sure where to put all the personalities. They lie from neck to ankle with a pillow for a head. Who gets picked last? Mother keeps knocking at the door. Someone was supposed to bring Julia a food tray, but she keeps turning the TV up louder. It’s a shitty TV. She’s already had it for three years. It’s only thirty-two inches and Daddy still hasn’t hooked up the satellite. You can hear the cordless through the vents when Mom talks to Mrs. Single. “Never wants to sleep with me anymore,” “I just can’t seem to turn him on,” “I don’t even know what makes him tick.”

Nights are always depressing. You feel happiest in the morning, waking up and feeling five—wondering if the Band-Aid from when you slipped off your bike back then is still on your knee. On weekends you hide in your room or in public, at parties. Face nose deep in a pillow in front of some guy, anyone. On weekdays you show yourself at school, get up and dance through the hallways and classrooms with gross tile from when the poor kids’ parents went there. In LA no one’s original. In Horseshit, only rich people are aliens. Now those grown up poor get to clean the same tiles for a living. In thirty or forty years they’ll all lay down together, tile after tile, with dirt on top of them instead of under, letting the town’s leaves color their graves.

Really, you must prefer days. Nights are full of makeup, costumes, the tainted things. Days make sense. Days mean your parents are at work in their law firms or out bagging with the girls, purchasing clothes from monopolies with Monopoly money. They shop in pharmacies with armed guards and create tabs to create more stores.

In twelve hours night will come: you can slit yourself, gouge yourself, leave half your insides on the floor. Your parents have maids to clean you up. Your parents have money to color your grave. Your parents have you. Are you feeling well, dear? Lie down. Pick or move a dress. Buy a new bed and don’t move the dresses.

Then again, she wouldn’t ride the bus if they paid her. Mom hires a driver. And she accepts.

School is just a plastic mirror. It’s a makeup mirror. It’s not the real world. No matter how much you pretend, you can never let go of yourself. Once the mini-skirts are torn, only school uniforms will remain. Let your skin pull off too fast and you’ll find the worst inside. Julia leaves the most important parts of herself in her locker and decides to check in with the bathroom. There’s a crew there that sits like owls repeating the same gossip over and over. “Who’s going out with who? Who’s dumping who? Who injected who? Who’s who?”

“You’re in late,” they say.

“Saab break down again?” Amy asks. She’s a pale one. White chalk for skin and uncomfortable bloody brown tones for hair: menstrual opaque. Gray Scale would send her back to the sweatshop. “That’s the third time this year, right?”

“Our Saab didn’t break down. We don’t even own one. We own a Porsche.” Julia rolls the tricky eyeliner on over and over, weaving herself. “That’s one of them. We don’t have just one car.” Her cleavage pouts into the mirror when she leans over the sink. The janitor needs to clean the sink more. She used to talk to her parents about that stuff. Now when she talks to her parents, “stuff,” is all she says.

“When the fuck are we gonna get out of here?” another one says. “I can’t believe it’s not fucking Christmas yet.”

“Yeah, or Thanksgiving.”

“I’m going on a mini vacation to the Bahamas.”

“No you’re not! When??”

“Two weeks. My dad says we don’t have to wait for school vacation. He’s taking time off. He says Mom needs it or she’s going to have another breakdown and he doesn’t want to pay more doctors’ bills. Might as well spend it on some place hotter than here.”

“God, that’s not fair. You’re so lucky, Jamie.”

“I know,” she says. It’s so on-key. She should be in the school band. She should be in the glee club. She should be in a soundproofed room. Julia does her eyes over and over again silently. The mirror is starting to tire.

“How’s Rick?” Tina Lewis asks. Her teeth are annoying. Her dad let her try some experimental whitening technique. They glow now.

“Don’t know. Haven’t seen him all weekend.”

“Ooooh,” Claudia says.

“Don’t talk like that,” Amy tells her.

“I’m not crying over it,” Julia says touching up her eyes. Then she decides to undo everything. She goes blander. She lets the sheen evaporate.

“No, no way, just saying. Whatever’s between you, Julia. It’s none of my business. I just saw him bowling on Friday. Didn’t you want to go?”

“I haven’t seen him all weekend,” she explains. “Thanks for asking, Tina.”

“Uh huh. Well, he was having a good time. All the guys were there.”

Claudia combs her hair without getting overshadowed by Tina. Her hair is light, but not blonde. Her shoes are new, but not expensive enough. “You’re lucky, Julia. I made three strikes, but Drew Parker hit on me. Uhn,” she says, pulling some hair. “I don’t even know him.” That’s how you find out what he’s like, Julia thinks. That’s how you find out what they’re all like. “Apparently he likes barfing on girls’ tits or something.”

“You rocked on that strike,” one of them says, far in the back.

“Should’ve been there,” Claudia says. “I’m sure Rick would’ve been happy to see you.”

Julia pulls her hair into a bun. It’s the most offensive thing she’s done. It looks . . . almost unwashed. “Who says I want to see him?”

“Who says he wants to see you?” Tina says. The bathroom reeks of bullshit lipstick and batting eyes colored with serrated lashes and Maybelline. “It’s your lost cause, Jule. Deal with it.”

Julia goes for the door in the outfit she finally picked out, forgetting what it is and hating to touch their germs on the handle. “Maybe you should find out how much he wants to be with you. Ask him. And let me know how it works out.”

She’s out and afraid of classes that are afraid of her. The tiles on the floor under her purple shoes crumble like dry makeup. The front seat of the class is always the worst. She picks it right away.

Some teacher without a face comes in. They talk math. They discuss a million things a million miles away and which have nothing to do with how an arrogant lawyer spends his money on weekends. Mommy doesn’t know a whole lot aside from who’s having a sale and why it doesn’t matter with the allowance she gets from her man. Mommy has a lot of crumpled outfits. Mommy has a lot of crumpled pieces of outfits.

Time peels off like fake nails. The math teacher hands out a paper about how long it takes for a battery to die and Julia fills it out slowly with curvaceous purple ink in long threads that say, “Why does this matter? It has no bearing on her real life.” Behind her the bathroom girls make fun of Fridge Johnson, the fattest girl in the class, and they throw paper airplanes at Julia’s head like the rain. A girl catty corner from Julia’s left shifts uncomfortably in brown sweatpants. Square Peg sits anonymously somewhere, fingering her hair, avoiding the stares. How many of these outcasts are here? Later when Julia goes home there’s a call from the school about her behavior and she deletes the message waiting for someone to come home to make her dinner. No one’s around to watch her. Perez is fishing for more pieces of the deck while she passes the window. The pool looks nicer now. It stands out a little, amber sun reflected through light drizzle. It always looks good in twilight, when the early shadow against Autumn sun oranges the impressionable waves. It’s always been a good pool. Soon it will be night and you won’t see it at all.

A favorite.

Horseshit Chapter 1 (Andy Petty story 1/1)

“Andy Petty’s Summer; the Idylls of Child”

Andy Petty’s last day of summer began and ended with dead cats, in this last summer of Horseshit. The first was in an old wooden shed. It sat still and looked alive for who knows how long. The first time Andy went and saw the cat he tried unsuccessfully to win a girl over by masturbating to her school photo five times. In small towns poor kids don’t have matchmakers. And with loneliness, there exists superstition.

He took his old Huffy from his aunt’s trailer by the miniature wildlife reserve and rode about a mile. Aunt Debbie lived outside of town, off Route 225, south of Dornsnife under curled billboards. She earned $24,000 a year because she made it through high school. She didn’t buy her anti-depressant medication much so she could play the lottery. Both she and Andy lived alone. They weren’t sure if they were happy with each other, but they got along

He could feel it as he drove by. The voices of the germs between its hairs and on its flesh whispered to him through the rows of corn. And in the center of the field, slightly to the left, sat the shed which looked like a tandem outhouse. The hexes on the side made him think of the room in the trailer where the dog slept. The one with the red light Boofie stared at ‘til she fell asleep.

But as the cat called—the draw of somewhere different from this Dinty Moore earth crust—he rode his bike and thought about a song a friend played for him at school, but he couldn’t remember the title—the catchiest thing he ever heard. He whistled something else to himself. The girl he jerked off to earlier came back into his head. The corn looked so green against the butter, Redenbacher sun that he thought of her teal eyes and wheat-shining hair. Her little freckles like kernels. Beth Cuomo. He would never talk to her. He couldn’t figure out why he would never talk to her.

The cat’s presence drew him through the field. He hid his bike so no one would take it. Bikes in the country were like sculpture. They decorated roadsides and construction sites. They disappeared like lost children and turned up on foreign corners later, used and worn out

The corn was thick and tall, wet-spider-leg plantation. Andy was five-foot-five and the sharp green leaves scraped against his cheeks’ acne. Aunt Debbie was supposed to order new lotion this month. She didn’t. Publisher’s Clearing House calling. Andy kept going further into the sunset dust, Goodwill Nikes scraping the pressed dirt from the tractor treads as he kicked the molded rows of earth apart. His socks browned while he ran fast through the arms of the earth. Finally he came to the shack and tried looking through the cracks. The hexes scared him a little and the cracks were too thin. He pictured an old witch with pale skin and white-silver hair inside, sitting spread on a hole for shitting, black robe, making a dump. And she stared straight at him, crooked eyes shooting right through him like a broken river whitewashed in its spray. Weren’t all the witches supposed to be dead? But, hex signs along the highway...

Insects buzzed inside. In the distance he could hear a tractor turning over dirt. He could hear the cars on the highway, but they were so common that he hardly noticed the roads anymore.

Inside the cat sat on the floor. Nothing moved. It didn’t look dead or hurt. And he just stared. He wanted to pet it. It made him sick. He needed his zolpidem. Everything felt razed. He couldn’t open the door no matter how many times he touched the knob.

The ice cream place near town was still open and Andy thought he could go see who was around even though he didn’t have any money and didn’t have any friends. He needed something to get the witch’s voice out of his head. That silent voice. Passionless, utter-less, thoughtless. She was the kind of thing that would live in the red light.

Dexter and Billy hung out by the pool, but Andy rode by. He wanted to see people eating ice cream. If Aunt Debbie wasn’t watching her soaps he might have asked her for money. She didn’t have money because he didn’t have acne cream. There was so much acne going around.

Jed and Trevor were at Corner’s, the ice cream stand next to the Tire Iron. Andy rode up and skidded in the stone parking lot. His bike was shit and they looked at him funny, but they could deal with talking to him. Jed was talking about [wallpaper and] his half-brother in LA.

“We should get an apartment. Think of all the beer we could fucking drink. And the chicks. I need an apartment. We need an apartment. My step-brother in LA has it sweet. No parents, no curfew, just fun. He’s banging all kinds of chicks. Every race, every drug habit. It’s more exciting than here.”

“Asians, dude. Yeah, man. They are hot, but I can’t understand what they’re saying,” Trevor said. “When you see Asian girls in a group, they’re all giggling about something I don’t understand.”

“You’re telling me? I coulda fucked one, once. I hate this town.”

“Hey guys.”

“Hey Andy,” they said, looking away.

Jed spoke. He always spoke. “My brother says LA’s fuckin’ better than college. But he’s an idiot.”

“I dunno . . . College is like all pussy, right? It’s supposed to be all pussy.”

“I know. Still thinkin’ of moving to LA, though. Just gotta save up from working at Quincy Appleton’s. May cut out halfway through this year if I decide no college. No one gets out of this town, so I gotta make it happen. Otherwise I’m fuckin’ stuck. He only went ‘cause his mom’s out there. Divorce shit. She’s a lesbian now, apparently.”

“Haha, no way. Dude, you’ll be homeless. Like some piece of shit, man. You ain’t gettin’ laid then.”

“Just goin’ with the flow. Either we get an apartment or I have to move.”

“I need something to smoke,” Trevor said.

Jed coughed, waiting for Andy to leave, until: “So, Andy, ‘sup with you?”

“Nothing guys. Just riding around. Saw something cool and came over.”

“Oh wow man,” Jed said rolling his eyes. “We’re going to the park if you wanna come. This place is dead.”

“Yeah, sure. What’s going on there?”

“It’s the park. Who cares? Nothing’s going on in Horseshit, man. We’re here. And it’s the end of summer. What else is there?”

“Okay.”

Horseshit Park stood on the gradual hill gulfed by the valley with the Turkey Hill (Indian heritage), CVS (corporate heritage), and Wine and Spirits (government) that stood between the pool and park. Horseshit Park was East Horseshit, near the Shoppin’ Rite (Negro lingo) owned by Gray Building and the Nails and Beauty Adventure Salon (you go, girl). Andy, Jed, and Trevor went to the north parking lot and tied their bikes to a tree. Sometimes when Andy parked his bike somewhere and forgot his lock he pissed on the seat to deter people from stealing it, but not with other people around. Only he had broken a sweat on the ride up.

They walked alongside a macadam path without walking on it. Their feet never left the dark grass except to rise forward, or when Trevor jumped on a thick tree stump as wide as their overweight bus driver Carl Schroeder. Each year they hid uncooked meat in Carl’s trailer. Their next target was Fridge Johnson, the fattest girl in school.

They all sat down at a busted picnic table stenciled with razor blade. Most kids at Horseshit High carried razor blades, either to use on themselves, public property, or kids they figured to disfigure. They were cheap. Everything attainable was.

“Fuckin’ shit,” Jed said, tossing an acorn at two ducks.

“Yeah,” Trevor said.

And they didn’t say anything for a while.

Jed drummed on the table. “Beth Cuomo has some real nice knockers. I really like the way she’s been developing.”

“Haha, yeah man. They’re fucking sweet. Like the pears at that Amish stand outside town.”

Jed agreed. “You like ‘em Andy?”

“They’re nice.”

“‘Nice,’” Jed laughed. “Oh yeah. Cuomo’s a fuck in a million. Twice that, being from here. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t peg her ass if you could. Maybe let her suck on your sad sack. Say she comes over to your house, blindfolds herself, and lets you tie her hands behind her back, man. Tighter than a Scout knot. Lets you do anything you want to her, all nice. Full consent. Rape don’t even matter. What would you do, Andy? C’mon. And don’t be easy about it.”

Andy thought for a moment, looking toward the sunset as it hurt his eyes and made them feel like aching muscles. And he could feel the guys’ eyes bleeding all over him, their mouths open and wet for answers, their hands dangling over his face waiting to grab his words.

“Andy . . .”

“I’d fuck her. Yeah.”

“And?” Jed said

“What the fuck?” Trevor laughed. “Oh Jesus.”

“Um, kinda jizz in her eye, you know?” Andy’s voice was small. He spoke like rattling wheat, awkward trembles and scratching. Irritating.

“Get in line,” Jed said, turning back to Trevor. “Wouldn’t she be great in a gang bang? Not that I could share her.”

“I could, just to get more fun out of her,” Trevor said.

“I’d get in line for some of that,” Jed added. “Shit, I need to get out more. It’s tearing me apart.” They sat quietly, the other two wishing they had something to smoke and Andy wishing he could just burst. “I really wish we had my dad’s porn here. You wouldn’t believe what he’s got. Christ,” Jed whispered. “He should be in jail.” He pulled out a small CD player, like the boom box sitting in the corner behind the counter in the Rinky Dink convenience store. They took turns listening, together. “You don’t understand sex,” Jed said after a while. A cat ran out from behind the open amphitheater. It saw them. It prowled behind a tree, peed, and went back. A bird landed on the branches above them, shitting all over the manicured azaleas. They let the radio play, and it played screaming, and it felt authentic, though they couldn’t hear just how blunted was the blitz.

“Well, I’m bored,” Jed said, walking to the amphitheater. The local bands played there. The bad ones.

Trevor trotted along with his shoelace falling apart. “What are we doing?” he said.

“Checking out where that cat went. I don’t know. It went in here. Why don’t you think of something to do?” They came to the small opening, where Jed stopped. They heard kittens talking inside, too small to see because of the shadows. “Where’s a stick?” Jed said. He found one a few feet away while Trevor smiled and Andy waited to see what Jed would do, already feeling it. He looked quickly behind them. Silent houses and old furniture stores. Couples walked by but no one noticed what they were doing, despite the intense feeling of heat over Andy’s back and face. He tried to hide his face.

“Poke around in here,” Jed said, handing the stick over to Andy. “I can’t reach.”

“Why? What are you giving this to me for?”

“Make them talk. Come on. The mom’s gone, you pussy, don’t get scared. They’re just babies. Fuck with ‘em. What’s it gonna do to you? You keep trying to hang with us and don’t want to do anything.”

Andy bent down and saw partially inside, with his face close. The kittens had patchy light hair that reminded Andy of pink skin. Or Peg Oleander’s orange afro tease-hive. He used to stare at her cheeks when they had class together last year. She was more in Andy’s league. If he had a voice, he could approach her. They were both poor and unpopular. They both had skin that looked easy to break. Jed tapped Andy on the shoulder. “No looking away,” he said. “Get down and do it. Hurry up. You’re making us wait.”

Andy stood without saying anything and poked the stick around. The cats meowed like popping bubbles boiling under the amphitheater. Andy jabbed the stick in and out, this piece of brown wood, dusty and splintering, tan underneath, and half-dry from rot in the sun. They watched while the boy meekly did his damage, interested, unsatisfied, disenchanted.

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Jed said after the cats’ whimpering stopped. “You’re both fucking sad. Always going to be stuck in this town.”

They walked down a little hill where the park boiled up from the sidewalk and headed back for the center of town. None of them took their bikes, keeping quiet. Maybe the mother would feel sad when she saw her loss, when her eyes met the punctured bellies and seam-split eyes. Or maybe she was just programmed by natural mystery to care for them because they were small and her own.

From the first draft of the whole book, but I've played with this a few times. Still trying to fix the dialog between the friends. Originally Jed and Trevor were other characters, even though Jed and Trevor pop up in other chapters. I changed the names to condense and maybe broaden the characters a bit (Trevor is pretty minor, Jed gets more space much later). So I should make a few more adjustments. Otherwise happy. In real life my friends and I found the cat in the shed, but it wasn't so creepy.

Reject

I started this for someone I had an infatuation for, and also to see if I could try writing something romantic. I've cleaned it up a bit since then--the ending isn't so romantic--though I'm not sure I completely like it.

To sleep on your stream bank
And live under your weather.
Ages in the grass
Of an auburn countryside;
When you tease me,
I need to be near you.

I’m the preacher of your pasture, the
Curator of your custom. I’m the
Boy to carry your artifacts
And shelter under your boughs.
I want to be the player in your show,
The flowers dying in your hair,
The egress of contemplation:
Heaven is intuition,
And I’m a missionary below
The stars. I’d
Like to believe in you at
First sight. How would I
know?

Gentlemen by The Afghan Whigs

Aside from a piece by Charles Ives called Symphony No. 4, I’ve been scared by music one time, and that was due to the above. I don’t say that assuming music is something which regularly scares people; and I don’t mean that I was scared as in it was loud or different or it startled me. I didn’t like what it was telling me because I believed this album was telling the truth, and it sounded like the voice I always heard saying, "It's not going to work out for you, so stop."

Many times I dragged it out and held it only to rest it back on the shelf. I realized, at a point in my life when I was entering a deep depression, that it had the capability of dragging me in further and making me more pessimistic than I already was. It’s unrelentingly honest—and one of my favorites—but there’s an intensity in the way it tackles a pop song trope (the love song) as no one else does. There’s a reason other writers don’t go in this deep. It makes you feel like you’re watching the end of your life as a spectator, it’s so disassociating and emasculating. And that album is an album called Gentlemen.

In 1993 I was ten and didn’t care about music and this was released. Andy Shanks introduced it to me through the Smile Shop, sometime in 2004. I remember buying it while I was in my first semester at Penn State, so it had to be somewhere around then. I was very lonely; it had been a little while since I’d had a steady relationship because the previous one had ended so badly (all part of my attempt to move cross-country and figure out who I was); and my fear of this music was a natural extension of a failure I really shouldn’t have taken so seriously. But I was 21 and dumb enough to be so invested in a pop album.

I worked at Barnes and Noble in State College that year and spent my time being pursued by cute and troubled girls. Looking to avoid frequent scheduling on weekends, I opted to work from 7-11 AM on Wednesday mornings, before my drama class. It didn’t work. They just overscheduled me instead. But early mornings in autumn and winter I had this album in my head, as I walked from Beaver Hall (oh, the irony) up to my parking lot by the football stadium, near the end of campus. Steam flew off the heated pool and students—usually women—jogged alone around me. Everything else was dark and quiet and the sun wasn’t yet over the mountains trapping us in Happy Valley. I lived in a surplus room with five other guys, got up earlier, and dressed in the dark. I probably would have felt more unusual or alienated if I wasn’t in a phase of my life which sort of amounts to killing time. College is like a pacifier for young adults. Some are workaholics (in a good way) who make the most of it, but you essentially pay a lot to live next to a nice library, because that’s where you’re going to do the real learning. There and out with your friends.

The other big album for me that season was Elvis Costello’s Imperial Bedroom, which is pretty similar thematically, except he’s too focused on his lyrical abilities to really unleash like Greg Dulli does here. Nothing wrong with that. Costello’s album is so concerned with artifice that it would be hard to ever feel it. He impresses a little more than he inspires, whereas Dulli has created a work of purely visceral power. Walking alone those frequent mornings I thought about the girls I’d met through the boyfriend of an old friend: the confused exhibitionist, the heroin addict, the overweight rich girl looking for attention. They were all scary and fascinating and part of a world I felt too hot to step in though I wanted to strangle it and hold it and become part of it. I was annoyed when our mutual friend warned me about all of them while insisting I hang out with the social group they belonged to (many of them with their own addiction problems), and while I found these girls wanting to spend time with me. Too much confusion. I hate mixed messages. As I felt trapped in between relationships, wondering if any love I’d find at that point was just a potent mismatch of personal issues like my own parents’ marriage, I think I found too much to listen to in Gentlemen. Perhaps I’d have felt differently if a nice church girl came after me.

The songs are unforgettable, Nat King Cole full of bourbon, aftertaste of trespass dripping off his tongue, love making with no sense of being human, religious self-loathing. This guy’s a mess, but he’s also everyman—in a sense—and that marked familiarity, so surprising when it knocks you down, is what stops the songs from letting you out of their grip. I wouldn’t say that everyone is literally like this, so ravenously pathetic and full of an unimpeachable bile, but I did say the album was honest. I can’t really argue with the relationship issues Dulli’s trying to illustrate, because we all end up there at some point. We’re very imperfect and it’s our acceptance of that which leads to the relationships we want to have. You never get rid of problems by trying to outrun them. The character in these songs isn’t able to do that yet. He’s still stuck on his bar stool, face in drink, wondering why life isn’t just playing out the way he’s been taught it would: nice girl, nice house, nice job. Instead he finds himself talking about “what jail is like,” when he’s thinking about his relationship. His biggest fear is the woman who accepts him no matter what he does. Isn’t that something most people are looking for, more or less? Yet he’s smart enough to realize that his callous behavior is a cry for help and she must be even more troubled to stomach the abuse. He is wise without wisdom.

He has all of the elements of a human being without being able to figure out how all of those opposites fit together. The parts are confused, mixed up like the album. The music switches between excited and relaxed passages, two necessary dynamics: excited and relaxed, male and female, dark and light. The narrator attempts to reflect during the more restrained periods, but each time he has to confront himself and his flaws he becomes emotional and agitated and the song becomes more punishing. It’s as if the music is his girlfriend, accusing him. “I’ll warn you, if cornered, I’ll scratch my way out of the pen,” he sings. “You think I’m scared of girls, well maybe, but I’m not afraid of you.”

“If I Were Going” and “Brother Woodrow” are comparatively peaceful, which is also the mode of expression this guy chooses when he’s willing to contemplate both sides of the relationship a little more (he’s unable to do it totally). When he’s talking about just himself, though, he doesn’t let up. “Am I okay? I am sure I’m not,” he says on “Be Sweet.” Lyrically it’s like a personal ad printed from the inner black-tar regions of the psyche, where little is visible and the sensations are extreme, smoke instead of land. In Sexual Personae, when Camille Paglia says, “Men know they are sexual exiles. They wander the earth seeking satisfaction, craving and despising, never content,” she’s writing about this character (Page 19). Men and women, too often, expect the worst from each other and always end up disgusted and surprised when they get it. Women are supposed to believe all men are jerks and men like to think women never want a nice guy. This guy believes in the lie and lays out his understanding like an explorer, which is what makes him sound almost intelligent. He understands it to be true as a way of protecting himself, though in isolation he knows “she wants love” while he “just wants to fuck.” Too bad he can’t admit to her that it’s a construct. Everyone wants someone nice unless they’ve been conditioned to accept less, and those “nice guys” too often focus more on finding a female than finding a truly compatible partner, so they always lose. The guy in these songs wants to lose too. He’s digging himself into the hole, throwing himself into jail. The woman has little to do with it. She’s just foolish and tortured enough to go along for the ride, like the heroin addict I knew, who didn’t pay her apartment’s utility bills and slept over in her ex-boyfriend’s dorm room, where he sold drugs from a sock drawer while she and I studied for finals.

Obviously, I was afraid of being in jail, too. I already felt myself looking over the wall from the outside, feeling like I wouldn’t find anyone because there wasn’t anyone for me. They were full of their own problems. And, of course, I was too. I was too miserable for a relationship then, too unsure of myself, not entirely unlike this guy. He’s demanding and needy, even though he’s probably convinced his partner that she’s the needy one, only because she wants him to be a man. But he’s a gentleman, a construct, an image, not a human being. He’s a shape in a tuxedo holding flowers instead of being the compassionate organism she’s looking for and letting romantic gesture flow from that. He’s wondering why he’s even in the relationship, though it’s obvious he hates being alone if he’s willing to put up with their broken home. The difference between Dulli’s straw man and me is I’ve never wanted to be in a relationship to be in a relationship. I’ve only wanted to be in a relationship that was a relationship. I never wanted to feel trapped in time, stuck in place, watching the poles on my headboard turn into cell bars. In the liner notes, each page is marked “Page X.” In this relationship, there is no sense of place, everything’s the same. That’s why the songs sound like a guy looking back on his relationship, especially since the album opens with the sound of flies over a corpse. But the song’s called “If I Were Going.” And the conclusion is called “I Keep Coming Back.” He can’t live with leaving and he can’t deal with staying. He is going nowhere.

I’m not as afraid to listen to this album anymore. Periodically I find myself hesitant, but that probably has more to do with my memories instead of some vague temporal fear. The past only controls us so much as we want to keep reliving it. Change is scary. But doing something dangerous like throwing yourself into the pit of the future can be pretty exciting, too. And I know my chances of finding myself sitting next to that sock drawer are a lot less like than that girl’s, though I wish her the best of everything. Since the autumn I’ve gone places and found myself a lot closer to being somewhere, even if I also came closer to living out these songs in the process. But I’m not a song, no one is. My achievements mean I get to appreciate this album as a fine work instead of accepting it as some sort of sentence. Happy or embroiled, it’s worth listening to and poring over. Just remember that after 50 minutes it ends. So let it.

That’s Gentlemen, and it’s by the Afghan Whigs.

Bondage

Whatever Turns Them On? Inside the Minds of Masochists.

This is an article about a business man suing a British tabloid for a story than ran about his bondage adventures. It's sad that we live in a world where this guy can be punished for wanting to receive pain, but they won't inflict the death penalty on rapists and child molesters. Yeah, I know, I'm really talking about two different countries (mine and theirs), but sometimes it feels like the law exists more to intimidate than to provide structure. In that sense I don't blame people for not paying their taxes even though I think taxes are necessary in a society and should cause more excitement. But that would assume we have some worthwhile leaders, too. And no leader is.

I also have to wonder if these behaviors are as misunderstood as the article says. They seem pretty natural to me.

Current Novel

Each year I try to write at least one novel, which can take a few months. I spend the rest of the time revising or working on something smaller. I've done this since the summer I was 19. These novels haven't always been very good, but they usually contain some worthy material that I still dwell on years later (mentally speaking). Below is the first chapter of Horseshit, the book I'm revising now. Originally it was called High School Slave Narrative and then Like, Truancy. The original title felt too much like a description and not enough like a title. My initial concept, inspired by Hester Blum's narratives course at Penn State, which I took my first semester there (Fall 2004), was to write a slave or colonial narrative as if it were a John Hughes movie. I knew I wanted to write something like John Hughes, as a kind of challenge, and these ideas seemed to gel pretty quickly. I loved reading the narratives because they were like reality TV in the 19th and 18th Centuries. The authors work so hard to convince you of the validity of their stories, when they could just try to write the truth. I say this with massive respect to the slaves, of course. I don't feel capable of judging their writing, but they do make appeals to the reader regardless. The colonists are another story. I felt, also, that in high school we interpret events as being far more serious than they are. Teenagers always feel persecuted and disrespected, like slaves. Yet their pain is real, even if they don't have the experience to accurately contextualize its severity.

This brief chapter, really a prose poem meant to imitate Van Dyke Parks, was meant to be a short thematic introduction. All of the allusions relate to Maine. Originally the story was set in the fictional town of Walsingham, Maine, named after the spy. When I changed the location to Horseshit, Pennsylvania this chapter had to go. I tried writing a version relating to Pennsylvania, but it didn't come out too well. I could never quite get this chapter perfect, either, but I still enjoy it. This is the third draft, from July 23, 2007. I wanted a thematic introduction because it made the book feel like a long musical piece and also because this novel is made up of chapters focusing on various characters, some in first person and some in third person. There is a plot if you back away enough from the novel, but theme is something I had to really push in this case because the chapters do not have an obvious consecutive progression. With that in mind, this still sort of works.

“Ancient History”; or “Ancient History (in the Anglozoic)”

I was main, main I was. Ages ago my blood ran. Chesuncook, Kennebeck, Aroostook, Eagle Lake. Canada, special breast, Atlantic flood, some for all, and natural.

Once I was. I was myself. Now I’m Maine, Maine I am. Patron my style, succor my plate, longitude and latitude coordinate.

Long light, peaceful duress. Awakening eyes, ships in crest. All land is imperceptible without survey. Ribcages implanted in new soils continuously. Folks languished, laundered, learned, and lumbered. They laughed at their mistakes: the fires they couldn’t start, the spears that broke too easily, the slipstream of the fish. Always the cycle of the moon. They laughed when white faces spotted the trees, clubbed and dragged these fields up steeply hills—t-shaped, simple houses, sour faces of church and understanding. The common-pane windows.

Ages in the grass—I was at rest. Cozying wigwams around the fire wearing my birch bark sleeves, Abenakis hunting amid the Sycamore and Sagamores; amid the tidal waves of talking priests. Assimilation with Canadian pines; wilting wallflower, historical plume; brushing shoulders with the twig and needle. Colonists’ colorful clothes unfolding like white pinecone and tassel.

Maine coons and black-capped chickadees, the registers alive at Genuardis. These great outdoors. Moose cautioning kids across the street, whistles, white gloves, reflective hunting sashes. Honeybees in wintergreen, singing “The State Song of Maine” under wild blueberries.

And here Walsingham, that long lost face. Powdered dream, tricorn wreath; fishing the state in slate sharp sea. Almond redd, tucked-landlocked tow, mile stretch lines where you roe. Kids pacing steadily to and from school while parents look after the post office, the convenience store, the battery plant. Do not underestimate the power of minimum wage to transform a town. We live life parent-to-child. We believe in inalienable futures. Together we say,

Oh, Pine Tree State
Your woods, fields and hills
Your lakes, streams and rockbound coast
Will ever fill our hearts with thrills
And tho’ we seek far and wide
Our search will be in vain
To find a fairer spot on earth
Than Maine! Maine! Maine!

Supermarket

I have an obsession with supermarkets which I haven't quite worked out yet. I love being in them, even if I'm not going to buy anything. It makes sense that I'd enjoy a place where I can get all the food I need to survive. That's just human nature. But with supermarkets, the older and lamer they are the more I love them. I accidentally insulted my step-sister's old girlfriend by saying her dad's supermarket was so cool because it was old, crappy, and offbeat. I had a real infatuation with that place.

I especially enjoy going to several supermarkets in the same chain, more so when they're in different kinds of locations (the city, deep country, etc). And you always get that magical, simulated movie experience where you're in the moment, definitely of your era and space, a victim of our crap culture where they want you to be a little droid instead of a human animal. It's when they're playing "A Matter of Trust" by Billy Joel and you think, "I'm listening to a shitty, vapid song about a serious relationship issue while I shop for junk food and stare at all the cashiers in their identical Eagles jerseys and I don't know what the fuck I'm doing with my life." And you're probably pretending to get along with your partner as the song plays and you push the cart and everyone looks miserable and busy and you're all checking out people who aren't ever going to be in your lives. And the yogurt's not on sale this week. You feel like you're the only one with blood running and who realizes that you're living in a plastic world. You live where things are supposed to be real, but they all come in a frozen box with that awful soundtrack above you, hanging around the rafters.

Today was better, though. Much better. I went to a different supermarket than usual. Typically I go to one in Trevose/Feasterville. I like the high school kids there and it's always where I've gone. I like ritual, too much sometimes. So today, when my friend accidentally slept through lunch, I went to this new place on Route 13 while I was waiting for her. It was marvelous. They had two registers open: regular and express. Almost no one was shopping. I walked around singing songs and talking to myself in a bad British accent about the canned tomatoes. I was in Heaven. They had less food than the other one I went to and the look of the place was so deformed and alien. I felt at home by virtue of feeling out of place. It was like being in a worn out time warp. The employees had big moles and walked around depressed while customers slowly pushed their carts with the force of their legs and hump backs. I ran around like it was my first Christmas. I suppose my attraction is toward the place being a messed up version of something which should be clean and healthy. It's a little bizarro. I do tend to have a deep love for anything which signifies society in decay. It's why I love old collapsing barns and the partially razed buildings you find in Central PA. If today's visit is any indication, I found a real treasure. I know I'm going to be going back very much. It's where the freaks work and the ogres shop and the parking lot's too big for the customer base. It's like living in a great poem. With a pharmacy.

Andy Shanks

I know Andy Shanks from The Record Room, or more accurately The Smile Shop, and have been nagging him with praise ever since he started posting his music. Andy's a very talented songwriter who can equal his heroes Alex Chilton and Rick Nielsen pretty easily. And that's not something most people find easy, particularly professionals like Rivers Cuomo. It makes me sad that Weezer, Oasis, and Green Day can find success that people like Shanks can't, because he actually writes pop songs with some sincerity and substance (and I like Weezer!). Just listen to the performance on "Anger Mgt.," a track on the MySpace page for Andy's new band The Shivs. The song's only been posted for about two days, but I've listened to it at least 20 of the 97 times it's been played.

Like much of my favorite music, this is a catchy song with a lot of noise. It makes me think of the Sex Pistols, Cheap Trick, Nirvana, Big Black, the Weirdos, the Stooges, etc. It looks like he has a Jazzmaster in the photo on the left, which makes sense. J Mascis abused one wonderfully in Dinosaur Jr., and the solo on "Anger Mgt."--which is impossible to forget--could only come from a few guitars. Actually, it reminds me a bit of Eddie Van Halen, who knew how to use unusual sounds to make music aimed at a pretty broad range of people. Early Devo also pushed the same hybrid, with less success, financially speaking.

Despite the superficial aspects of Andy's work, the main reason I like him is because his music reminds me of the music I got into when I dove in head first and started buying four or five albums a week. Once I found the Sex Pistols I got really serious about music. I was made fun of mercilessly in junior high and high school because of my devotion to them, the Velvet Underground, Devo, Pere Ubu, Television, the New York Dolls, the Stooges, the Clash, the Ramones, the Weirdos, Crass, and so many others, but that music really got me through some bad family stuff and opened me up to a supportive world I didn't know existed. It was a friend and it was inspiring. These freaks were actually recording and pressing up their own records. Maybe I could do something, too? As my interest grew I started collecting more of the bootlegs: Sex Pistols live shows, Television demos, Rocket From the Tombs. I liked how this music was secret, even though to me it seemed amazingly accessible. I liked the noise and the bootleg sound, and let's face it--the songs were really catchy. They were also smart, way better and more of the world than what was on the radio (Fastball???). I couldn't, and still don't, understand why people have such an aversion to it. I'm referring to people who listen to the radio, not the hipsters that have sucked this niche dry. I was always looking for and always in need of a Sex Pistols, just as I've been looking for something like Andy Shanks since then, whether it's with the Shivs, his old band the Conniptions*, or any other grouping. I complain often about how exhausted this kind of music is, but I always forget that when someone who can pull it off comes along. And we haven't thrown up any new technology to move on, so we're kind of stuck with the Shivs. Which is nice, because I never thought I'd find myself listening to unknown music made in the middle of nowhere so obsessively, but I guess that's how all our favorites starts out: in Hamburg, on Denmark Street, Rockford, and Springfield, too.


* I still have most of the mp3s Andy sent me of their recordings, including "Take it Back," "Tough Nut to Crack," "Fake You (All the Way)," "Can't Stay Here," "(She Keeps Me) Out of the Bars," "Played Out," and a 10-minute cover of "96 Tears." They sound like Elvis Costello playing with the early Damned. "Fake You" is my favorite, with just a hint of the Raspberries' "Go All the Way" in the chorus.

New subject: "White Wedding" by Billy Idol

This is, of course, not meant to be part of those posts about love songs. That's done. But I wrote this for the message board and thought I should post it again here. So here we go.

Everyone knows this. Never really impressed me much, but like a lot of songs, you kind of laugh at it because you secretly like it, and it simmers in the back of your mind for years before it can finally be admitted, flower, and die through your open obsession. It's like when everyone realizes who you're attracted to before you do.

Like "The Boys of Summer," this is an art piece on its own when taken as a music video. The sound and visual are deeply related and this should be viewed as a film in its own right. It's a great horror movie: solid music, lots of sex, action, and old buildings. The video's even tinted. Bonus.

The imagery is so obvious in this, yet so perfect. Look at the nails being driven into the coffin when Billy arrives at the church with his bride. Err, duh. But beautiful. Many layers: sex and death. If a troubled rocker wrote it, it would be pored over. And Billy's so tight, so desirable, so badass, he can't even arrive with his chick. He appears like a vampire, with those red eyes and dead skin inside the motorcycle helmet, pulling up behind her quaint but somewhat erotic automobile. And she's in the car trapped by all the mirrors. He only seems to exist in glass: the rear view, the church window. I guess that's what vampires do when they're rock stars: anything.

I'm going to indulge myself by continuing my obsession from the love songs and time. It's all Paglia aping, anyway. What I'm saying is, I can't get over how he appears like a mummy in the church, but stylized. He's not just trapped in rags, they're lightly draped over him. He's the only pharaoh to actually come back from the dead. He's sexual, but looks so young, which adds to the damage and the horror overtones. That and he looks like a Nazi, which is important, because obviously he's trying to overtake you. He wants to be your sexual commander. The best part is when his image is superimposed on the stained glass and he crashes through the window on his bike. This is the realization of every kid's dream: to take adult authority and stamp your own image all over it while destroying it. The motorcycle is every kid's dream toy: a gun, a guitar, a tattoo, a skateboard. And inside the church is his cult, which everyone secretly wants when they're stuck at the stage he is. He is president, dictator, lord, and savior. These are the teen ideals of pop music. Yin and yang as chain smoking angel criminal.

Billy speaks to me because he looks young, thoughtless, like a beast, but he's saying a lot. "There is nothing safe in this world." "It's a nice day to start again." "Take me back home." When he says the latter, he looks quite pained. In some ways he's not just wounded, but deliriously fucked up: he seems to like the idea of the white wedding sarcastically, like he realizes all this innocence and sanctity is a joke. But he partakes because he wants it, and can't admit it to himself. Purity is another adult ideal he wants to break apart--that's why he's going to take the girl and break through her stained glass windows, too. He's experienced too much in a short life, which is what so many of the great pop music symbols try to embody. Hence Cobain's "Rape Me" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit," Brian Wilson singing to us about the symbolic infinity of the colonial lands, Lou Reed's raking over the Factory for hot coals to drop in his songs, as if he lived it all himself. Hence "Death Trip" by the Stooges. One guy to play up to this and then give us a brilliant example of actually living through it is Lydon. "Death Disco." But, I digress.

All of these ideas are made more powerful by how casually they're thrown out there in "White Wedding," and also by the music. The song has the cool surf intro with the dance music beat and early 60s ballad lead guitar melody. It's an incredibly clever meshing of the past (he uses that old archetypal pop love, the Little Sister) with some forceful sexual abuse from the present. And in the end he's stuck in that little house with the exploding wedding presents. Nothing lasts forever and as long as we're here to talk about it, it hasn't ended, either. We're always trapped in the world of the living while conceptualizing the world of the dead. There is no escape. And you wouldn't want to.

Some people see this as just a cheesy, nostalgic 80s token to drop sarcastically into conversation, but it's a pretty exciting, even moving, piece of work. It speaks more to me than the more acceptable form--Ian Curtis--and shouldn't be taken lightly. But, like I said, sometimes we laugh at the stuff we know is real.

"Unchained Melody" by the Righteous Brothers

The final Spector production here. You have to love how in all these old videos the singers, in black and white, come out of the darkness like ghosts.

Times goes by so slowly/And time can do so much/Are you still mine?/I need your love/Godspeed your love to me/Lonely rivers flow to the sea/To the sea, to the sea/To the open arms of the sea/Lonely river side/Wait for me/I'll be coming home/Wait for me.

Bang, bang, bang. All my themes, right there: time, redemption, space, eternity. CLASSIC song. Who hates this? No one. It touches you in every place. Things get a little weird when he sings, "Time can do so much." Those are eternal words. Then he sings about the rivers going into the sea. Very mythic, the penis into the woman. Unity, wholeness. Appreciate it. It makes complete sense that this was used for the end of Quantum Leap. That's probably what started me on this whole kick. I watched it a lot between classes at Kutztown University, when I came home (total commuter). Either way, I never get tired of their recording of this song. Spector knew how to craft and they knew how to sing it. I hope these posts made some kind of sense in their brevity and you enjoyed them. This song really contains it all, so listen again if need be. They knew how to sing, Spector knew how to produce, and this is one of the timeless singles. Put it up there with "Summer is Icumen In." An achievement for humanity.

I'd also like to mention some songs which didn't get posts here: "Teenager in Love" by Dion and the Belmonts; "This Diamond Ring" by Gary Lewis and the Playboys*; "Like a Hurricane" by Neil Young; "The Rain, the Park, and Other Things" by the Cowsills; "Bus Stop" by the Hollies; and "Clinch Mountain Home" by the Carter Family.

*I swear sometime I'll do a post about my dad, Allentown, and listening to the "oldies" station as a kid. I hate that term, but the music is fucking timeless. As much as I love Black Flag and Dead Kennedys, I'll post a million words about Gary Lewis.

"Days" by the Kinks

Thank you for the days/Those endless days/Those sacred days you gave to me.

Are you seeing what I'm saying now? It's all about transformation, regeneration, the cycle of time being so constant it ceases to feel like normal time; the ability to overpower and surrender to your lover, your personal god or goddess. It's about sensation as the drug itself, altering all perception. Upon further inspection, I may be inclined to even include "Victoria" in here. It's a different kind of love, but it's true. This is my pick, though. He seems to understand the pull of time without really succumbing to it: "You took my life/But then I knew very soon you'd leave me/And it's alright/Now I'm not frightened of this world, believe me." At the start we looked at people who were afraid of where they were at. Now we can see characters in the future, looking back at the past, content with who and where they are.

I believe they're miming to the 1968 recording.

"More Than This" by Roxy Music

This is probably a bit past their prime, but it's undeniable, despite the guitar playing being a little too 80s elevator at the end. It doesn't matter, because Ferry was a great songwriter, and as much as I love Brian Eno, Roxy Music was really about Bryan Ferry trying to pin someone down that he could love for a long time. It doesn't matter if he was obsessed with models, he was ultimately trying to find the one. Just check out the way the video meshes religion and sex. Pretty obvious. Siren is my favorite, but this song is my pick.

The tune here is so pristine that you almost enjoy that feeling of loss as you sit next to him while he remembers the past. At least he's mature enough to accept that it's over. Listen to the way the vocal melody in the verse starts out tight and then relaxes--he's trying to show you how a relationship plays out, beginning with intensity and then growing slack. He's playing with time. He should know. And him singing "It was fun for a while," while he dances in a fire? Music video has so much potential and no one wants to realize it. It is the new film, if you choose to accept it, essentially making dreams into a concrete art form. Really brilliant stuff. Good work. This is one of those songs I've played on repeat endlessly while driving, wanting to cry and feel something amazing and cathartic, except I'm, you know, going to the grocery store or something. But that's all part of the beauty.

"Strangers in the Night" by Frank Sinatra

Strangers in the night/Exchanging glances/Wondering in the night/What were the chances/We'd be sharing love/Before the night was through?

That's not family friendly. And I like it. I suppose I don't have to elaborate much. These two spirits find each other during dream time and sync up, as they should, so that both can be whole. Nothing new there, but I chose this because it's such a damned good love song. Whether you like him or not, I find this hard to deny. It's what we all want in life, anyway. Unless you're carving up prostitutes you pick up on the side of the road. But even then you want it and can't deal with it. Choose the healthier option. Listen to Frank. I did in high school when I was depressed out of my mind. Kind of makes me laugh. But he's got some great material.

Side Note -- "Summer is Icumen In"

Perhaps one day, after much research, I'll do a post on British history. I feel very in touch, in a way that's hard to define (because I'm new to it), with British history. My ancestors are British on my grandmother's side. On one hand this depresses me. My ancestors from the Mayflower undoubtedly owned slaves, or at least their descendants did. They probably ate some corpses, too, but I can forgive that way before the slaves. Still, that Anglo and Roman mix is part of me and I feel something special deep inside me when I watch The Wicker Man or anything else relating to British history. I feel it reading Shakespeare or Marlowe or Chaucer. Even Wilde and Austen. It is an important part of who I am, though I never thought I'd say it or care. So I present this old English song, also used (in another rendition) in The Wicker Man. My ancestors made many mistakes, slavery and monarchy among them, but no civilization has been without some gross injury. You cannot have a society with conveniences without using slavery, which is one reason why I'm anti-society even though I'm a social person (I believe in small, chosen, social groups). But, I must celebrate certain aspects of my heritage, and this is a wonderful appraisal of my favorite season, along with Autumn. So God bless. Despite our many flaws, human history must be celebrated for its virtues. And here is one branch I'm willing to extend.

"Willow's Song" by Magnet

A fan video, but it's my favorite song from one of my favorite movies, The Wicker Man. I would like to meet a person who can resist this tune. And if you think this is amazing, just see it in the context of the movie.

Who is there?/No one but me my dear/Please come, say how do/To the things I'll give to you.

It's no surprise that a movie about the virtues of Paganism would touch on the themes I'm laying out here. If there was one religion I'd follow, it would probably be Paganism (though I would be Amish if they weren't religious). If music was ever the voice of God, this is it. She is your Lord, inviting you into the deepest regions of yourself and existence. I could find few finer love songs or examples of music, period.

I love how quaintly she speaks about "improper" things, how easily she accepts that which Christianity would find dark and immoral. This is why I find most religions to go against humanity: they want us to feel guilty for our natural impulses, yet how many Christians use industry which destroys the planet their God gave them? Not very religious, is it? No one is religious. Only some accept this fact.

I should also mention that Eli Roth was pretty clever in his appropriation of this (via the Sneaker Pimps' nice cover) for Hostel, another movie I truly adore. That will probably get its own post at some point.

Really, all I can say here is that nature is beautiful. Appreciate nature. It's why you're even alive, no matter how much you love the city and your iPod. Enveloping yourself in nature is like worshiping your love, showing gratitude toward your parents, and helping those you pass by in need. Do it, please. And stop relying on the commercial things in life, which only divorce us from ourselves, fostering racism, sexism, homophobia, and any other prejudice in the name of profit. Let this song be an inspiration to you as it is to me. It is THE hymn in this list. She sings of practices which are eternal, so long as animals live, and which should be embraced and deified. I'm talking about love making, in all its beauty. So love each other and appreciate yourselves and your art. Worships the animals instead of statues of dead men who may have saved you.

"European Female" by the Stranglers

My favorite Stranglers song. This is a real beauty and, like many other songs here, sounds like something no human could write. It's a perfect song. They get nailed for being a "sexist" band ("Peaches" is a good song), but I think this proves that old "interpretation" wrong. It's about the arrival of unification, or individuation, as Jung called it. It's the loss of the concrete world and the embracing of the eternal, that which cannot be defined through mere language. The image-ideal has become reality and it is beautiful. Quite a step for a band with the reputation they have. "Golden Brown" isn't so different, either. People would probably tag the "feline" imagery as being sexist too, but I see it as empowering. They want the woman to be powerful. That's a turn on for them. Nothing wrong with that. To me she's only caged in the video to illustrate his effort to understand and define her. You see the cat moving around free more than caged, you know? Nice noir imitation too. Very appropriate. "We'll be together for a thousand years..." GREAT line. Time broken, in just a few words.

It's unfortunate that the video here is so quiet. The song truly is a classic. Track it down in a better form. The vinyl is very nice.

"God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys

The g33ks will probably complain because this is the alternate take with Brian singing lead instead of Carl. Fuck off, I'm using YouTube.

I may not always love you/But as long as there are stars above you/You never need to doubt it/I'll make you so sure about it/God only knows what I'd be without you.

MEGA example, here. He's dropping chronology in the opening lines and gives precedence to Him, the One, to the constant. In touch with the knowledge and with his honey. The way it ought to be. This is the voice of a mature character and like these other songs you get hope and tragedy intermingled, as love can only be. Tears of joy, erotic pain. You get that contradiction because you can never quite escape time, though you want to. The knowledge always exists and becomes an obsession when the love is lost. I also really get pleasure from his use of the sailor's map, the stars, in his telling his love to just hang onto something besides himself. An obvious pick, but for obvious reasons. I could probably choose "Don't Worry Baby" or "The Warmth of the Sun," but who cares--they had so many amazing love songs. Brian Wilson is entirely about love. That's what happens when your dad beats the shit out of you and you can write better songs than him. The music alone is pretty tear-worthy.

"Forever Came Today" by the Supremes

There you were/Standing there as your eyes reached out to me/.../At last, ooo/My forever came today/When you walked into my life/And made my lonely life a paradise.

This is what they're all going for in these songs: a unification of people and the self which transcends time and supersedes conscious, rational thought. Real liberation. They're waiting for the arrival of their real, whole self within the mind to signify the happening of true love. You can only really be loved if you really love yourself. A great summation, by Holland-Dozier-Holland again, of what I've been writing about.

They were the first band I listened to when I left home, age 20, for Washington State, traveling alone in my packed Jeep Cherokee across the country. This was the song that struck a chord. I wanted to escape and found things I never counted on, which I'll write about at the right time. My paradise became more of a lonely life, but it was worth it, only because I'm circling back. And I can still feel this song, probably in more ways than I could in that lonely car where no one else could sit if I wanted them to. I felt like I was out of time, arriving in unknown states where no one knew me and I didn't have to worry much about schedules. It was one of the happiest periods in my life, something I had to do alone even though I long to find someone who will understand how necessary it was. It was also probably the first time I felt the material in these songs as if it was my own; the first time I had an adult running through my head, instead of just seeing sex and relationships as a ground for narcissistic possibility. And I'll never be able to relive it with someone else, so in a sense it may as well be fantasy, which is exactly how these songs play out. Perhaps that's the nature of a rite of passage.

"Do I Love You?" by the Ronettes

Phil strikes again. This is my favorite Phil production, aside from probably "Be My Baby" ("Black Pearl" is really personal, too), and it has many virtues, not the least of which is being inspiration for "Heroes and Villains" by the Beach Boys. But we're here to talk about dirtier, more romantic things.

Would I die if you should ever go away?/.../Oh, I swear I'm going to get you/if it takes me all my life/I'll hope and pray and scream and scream/I'm gonna be your wife.

This is galloping, flooding, like waterfalls of femininity. In the chorus all they have to do is moan and say, "Do I love you? Yes I love you." It's like she's using masturbation as a love letter, being strong enough to make herself look so vulnerable to get this guy. That's what makes her so special, not him. She's showing herself off sexually not as a form of enticement, but to say, "I'm desperate for you." The song is a musical form of display. When we're really infatuated with someone don't we show off ourselves similarly? She only exists if he does. So they must exist together.

"Be My Baby" by the Ronettes

Perhaps the greatest love song of all time, and I don't say that because I'm a big Brian Wilson fan. This just seems to capture everything I require in a love song.

The night we met I knew I needed you so/And if had the chance I'd never let you go/So won't you say you love me?/I'll make you so proud of me/We'll make 'em turn their heads every place we go/So won't you please be my baby?

Ahhh...definitely check out the full lyrics. There's some heavy stuff going on.

She mentions a specific moment and starts planning her future around it. The hoping, the waiting, the anguish. To her the yearning is more important than the love, which implies a real, mutual connection. The song connects so well because the drums are like a heartbeat: constant, timed, rhythmic. In the chorus it's a little more forceful, sounds like two people having sex. She's dreaming, fantasizing...like all people in love she's in and out of the real world, fluctuating. Another aspect of this time thing is, when you're a teenager, your body is obviously changing--growth and time are evident. But at the same time you think you'll live forever. That's one reason why these songs are the way they are. They're short and sweet--defined--while being repetitive, which sort of contradicts the chronological aspect. Spector, no matter what age, knew what he was doing by throwing these three women out there to sing this song. The pride in the lyrics relates to the religious aspect, the beat is violent, and she's looking for love. She's stuck hanging in time until he finally agrees to be her baby. She wants to pervert and control time, too: "For every kiss you give me/I'll give you three." She's going to take control.

Jesus Christ, and that haircut. And when they sway as all the instruments drop out except for the drums...

Phil was probably in convulsions while she was turning on America when this aired.

Not to be repetitive, but I have to really give it up for the blend between the backing track and the vocals. Just the way the drums and melody sway while she's selling you on this idea of living together in paradise is so sublime--in the real sense of the word--and then you see the three of them shaking it before these stupid hanging screens you'd find in some "modern" 60s home. It's a real treat for me. Bring back those fucking skirts, for the love of God.

If you've played this as much as I have, then you're really tired of that jackass introducing them too.

"Remember Walkin' in the Sand" by the Shangri-Las

"Leader of the Pack" is a classic, and her voice is majorly sexy in it, but I can't pick it due to the lyrics. So I pick this one. I love her voice because it seems way off, but it's really arousing, probably because of that. Plus, the music just hangs and sways like the most engaging overcast day. I love rain and I love storms, because they look how I feel: grim, but actually nurturing. You need the rain. Dark clouds are beautiful. If you don't like storms, you won't understand how sexual this song is: "The night was so exciting/When he touched my cheek," with all those seagulls going crazy, probably dying in the lightning. Real beautiful. Haywire electrical brain aneurysm. Thanks to love.

This is like a sexy funeral march, a black parade.

Then they go into beatnik mode in the chorus, which is just this reverent little poem to memory. As you can tell, I have a real hangup about memory. I used to find myself thinking, "At this exact time last week I was doing ___," very often. I don't do that much anymore, but I do love the human capacity for memory. It's one of our great gifts, and I fear suffering from Alzheimer's. I love reliving my past, though I try not to get obsessed with it. Music is a great memory enhancer, so you get why I'm writing all this.

Time: it seems like yesterday her baby went away, but it's been two years ago. He breaks up with her by mail while away. Complete pussy. Curious that the song gives you the impression that he's dead, but she's really just lost him. In a way, she's dead. The other girls are like these skeletons just swaying to the song. "Softly we'd meet," is a great line. Better than Dylan. This girl has such huge power, without the ability to wield it entirely. In other words: major crush material. Kind of like Carrie, I guess, but I don't like Stephen King enough to want to actually sit through many of his books.

For good measure, here's "Leader of the Pack":



I love how all these songs have this galloping beat which sounds like people having sex. No wonder these singles were hugely successful. Now the radio is just bland pacifying shit for people who don't know any better. Give me the sex, love, and gore, again. And rock on, girls.

"Thinkin' About You Baby" by Sharon Marie

Anyone who knows this knows it because it was written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love of the Beach Boys. They remade it as "Darlin'," which anyone who knows this...knows. Wonderful Spector imitation, with a sensitivity and lust he could never muster. The dude just wanted to conquer, but was wise enough to let the women sing those conquering words. It's the only reason why his music is listenable and worth worshiping. If this song is the sound of a woman pleasuring herself to overcome her loneliness, then most of Spector's heroines rely on the guy for physical gratification. It's true that that happens, but he's only seeing part of the picture. Brian got the whole thing.

I lie awake in bed/As thoughts go through my head/Thinking of what I'll do/To make you love me too/I hardly sleep a wink/Just lie awake and think/I'll do anything...

I should probably quote the whole thing, because Mike Love was a pretty great lyricist. Anyone who knows this song...knows he gets maligned for pissing on the Wilson legacy, but he had some talent and a great voice. I love how snotty he sounds, like John Lydon if Lydon worked a gas station and had the lyrical talent with nothing to say.

Anyway, the girl in this song is real tortured, so of course she gets me completely worked up, especially when she stops singing words at the end and just lets syllables tell the story. She's another one caught between moments, unable to sleep and yet not able to see her desires materialize. When you can't sleep, time never seems to flow properly. The numbers on the clock simply keep changing. The thoughts go through her head like clouds whose distance can never be ascertained. Everything is visual, felt emotionally and not physically. Don't you hate when you can't sleep? It seems to strike out of nowhere. The bell at the beginning sounds like an alarm clock. I just noticed that. Even the line, "I lie awake in bed," alone is so priceless. Like all poetry, it's an inspiring contradiction which will never let go of you.

"One Fine Day" by the Chiffons

This is by Goffin/King, so you know it's a winner. I have to briefly mention that I love how she wrote all these songs for guys, too, like the Drifters and the Monkees. People make a big deal out of men writing girl group songs without mentioning Carol King's immense talents in the teen department, regardless of the group's sex. "Up on the Rooftop," "Locomotive," "Porpoise Song," you can't beat her.

One fine day/You'll look at me/And you will know/Our love was meant to be/One fine day/You're gonna want me for your girl.

There's something about those girl group voices that's so sexy and nasty, but wholesome (hers in particular is like the most blissful pornography, especially with the double tracking). This is a big personal favorite, some of the greatest music I've ever heard. "You'll be proud to have me by your side." Yes I would, so get there. I would murder large groups of disabled veterans to have a woman write this for me. The narrator's smart enough to see the future, to have been totally into the darkness and back. When she says, "You'll come to me when you want to settle down--Oooh!" what an orgasm! Joyous and with just the slightest timbre of tragedy in her voice, a real arousing combination. You want to save her and delight her. She's smart and she's tough and she'll love you. I've played this too many times to mention publicly. Powerful music. The opening piano bit is a little misleading, because this is a heavy song emotionally. I wish my 45 wasn't so busted, but it's powerful no matter what condition. One of the great singles. It's way more aware mentally than the songs sung by men, bar perhaps "Boys of Summer." But it's fun to contrast all these songs as if they're speaking of the same events, isn't it?

"There's Always Something There to Remind Me" by Sandie Shaw

This has always been one of my favorite songs of all time. The Naked Eyes' version has a cool backing track, but they don't understand what the hell they're singing about. I also like this video of Sandie. She looks like a cute, angry, Mennonite librarian. My kind of woman. Perfect hair, too. And the fact that she won't even dance for you when the song gets lively? Too cool. Marry me.

I walk along the city streets
You used to walk along with me,
And every step I take recalls how much in love
We used to be
Oh, how can I forget you

When there is always something there to remind me
Always something there to remind me
I was born to love you
And I will never be free
You'll always be a part of me

When shadows fall, I pass a small cafe
Where we would dance at night
And I can't help recalling how it
Felt to kiss and hold you tight

Oh, how can I forget you
When there is always something there to remind me
Always something there to remind me
I was born to love you, and I will never be free
You'll always be a part of me

If you should find you miss the sweet
And tender love we used to share
Just come back to the places where we used to go,
And I'll be there

Oh, how can I forget you
When there is always something there to remind me
Always something there to remind me
I was born to love you, and I will never be free
When there is always something there to remind me.

Obviously Bacharach and David knew what the hell they were doing. You don't just write music like this, it comes out of the ether, the interior, the deep unconscious. From the lyrics to the sexy stutter in the chorus, this is a perfect tune.

It's a real hymn, actually, to lost love and the art of loving. When Sandie sings, "When shadows fall," I die and am reborn. She's creeping slowly through her own unconscious as the issues slowly surface, wading in the ruins of her lost love. "If you should find you miss/The sweet and tender love we used to share/Just come back to the places we used to go/And I'll be there." To have these beautiful experiences and have them fall apart and disappear--that's what these songs are about. Always caught in this cycle--is it time or constant and formless? It's cynicism which makes us age, not time. And she understand the beauty of being bound: "I was born to love you/And I will never be free." It makes my eyes water. The sentiment is negative and positive. Either way, true. You can never truly let go, because the imprint is always there. B.F. Skinner knew it. We are formed more than we form ourselves.

These songs are powerful like the irrational, the unconscious, like emotion, and they never quite have form because they can't wholly be articulated. These feelings are the enemy of language, which is why we (or I) cry when really in love and we're trying to express that or express just the general happiness we feel. It cannot be done. You can never truly let your partner know the depth of your feeling. You only hope they feel the same way and understand through that. This ultimate achievement in song shows us how imperfect we are.