Here is an excerpt from my novel The Falling Circle, a story about being down and out and punk in the big city. Available on Amazon.com
It was an unusually cold night. The biting cold seemed to make the night extra dark. A good gust of wind would shoot by now and then as Preston held his arms close to his side, trying to keep warm in his tattered Derby jacket. Wisps of his wind driven hair kept poking him in the eyes. He would have walked faster, but his buddy Retch was taking his time as Retch coolly strided down the street.
Normally Retch’s mosey would have been quite infuriating for Preston, especially with the freezing weather, but tonight was an exception. Retch had invited him to the warehouse to do some speed with the rest of Stinkhammer gang.
Now Preston did not have to crash at anyone’s place that night. He could get wired and buzzed off of some cheap brew and just hang out all night. No need to feel like a bum, because he didn’t have to grovel for a sleeping space.
Retch walked along in his shredded T-shirt with his naked, tattooed arms hanging out, apparently unaware of the freezing cold. He hardly said a word to Preston during their entire walk
Getting into the warehouse, Preston saw that the other members of Stinkhammer were hanging out with Ike on the floor of the warehouse.
“Hey Preston,” said Ike.
“Hey. It’s really weird to see you when you’re awake.”
“Yeah.”
“You hangin’ out?” asked Preston.
“Naw. I gotta crash soon.”
Preston had to snicker.
“If they ever make sleeping an olympic event, you’ll be famous,” said Preston.
“Yup.”
Ike eventually wandered off to his room. Preston went off with Retch and his bandmates, Skor and Jason. They went into Jason’s room, which was the largest personal space in the warehouse. The plain wood and particle board room wasn’t so much wide as it was long. Jason had gone to the trouble of claiming a long section of the warehouse wall, near the entrance to the large rolling steel doors, when they were building the living spaces. He had to limit the amount of space he took up along the wall when he was building his place, so he basically ended up with a long hallway of a room.
The interior of his room was interspersed with most of Stinkhammer’s band equipment. It was poorly lit with infrequent and randomly placed light bulbs, which gave it an eerie quality as the proliferation of equipment and junk created many shadows and dark corners. As you walked through Jason’s oblong room you had to step over pieces of lumber, cords, and defunct musical equipment such as old amps, music stands, and broken guitars. The far end of Jason’s room was well lit. That’s where he had his couch, an easy chair, and his bed, as well as a large screen TV. An old, large, overturned wooden cable wheel made for a table. The TV was a mystery, being as Jason would not tell anyone where or how he acquired it, and he was not nearly well-off enough to afford buying one outright. He wouldn’t even tell Retch, and Retch was pretty much his best friend.
The air of Jason’s room was strangely stifling, giving off a feeling of stillness that emphasized the enclosed nature of the place.
Skor and Preston sat down on the couch while Retch sat down in the easy chair. Jason sat on his bed. Retch rooted through his jacket and pulled out a huge plastic baggie of speed. Preston had no idea that Retch had been carrying such a huge stash on him.
But Preston was only surprised for a moment. He quickly remembered that these guys were hardcore and long practicing tweakers.
“Fuck,” said Retch uninspiringly.
“Fuckit,” said Jason.
“Fork,” said Skor.
“Fork?” said Preston.
“Did I say fork? I meant four.”
“That’s fuck,” corrected Retch.
“I’m gettin’ sick of saying fuck. Can’t we think of some other f-word to explete all the time?”
“Explete?” wondered Retch aloud.
“Fornicate?” suggested Preston.
“Too wordy,” said Jason.
Retch pointed to the mirror and blade. “Jason?”
“You can do it if you want.”
Retch started making lines. Preston deduced that Jason was, more or less, the leader of the band, though the rest of Stinkhammer claimed they deferred to him only because they stored their equipment in his room. Still, Jason was the most stable one of the group, and any stability at all, especially with these particular individuals, was a pretty good qualification for leadership.
“Pussy,” said Skor.
“Fuckin’ pussy,” said Retch.
“What, a cat?” said Preston.
“Yeah, I fucked her cat all fuckin’ night long,” said Retch.
“That’s been done,” said Jason.
“What? Fuckin’ her cat?”
“No, that stupid line.”
Everyone was slumped back in their chairs except for Retch, who was leaning over the mirror that was covered with speed. Preston was sitting straight up against the back of the couch, as he was becoming tense and anxious because of all of the speed on the mirror. Preston could hardly believe the size of the lines that Retch was making.
“Fuckin’ a,” said Retch.
“Fuck you,” said Skor.
“Have you ever wondered about the term fuck you?” said Preston.
“Fuck who?” asked Jason.
“Fuck you?” replied Retch.
“Fuck me? No, fuck you.”
“Fuckin’ a.”
“No, seriously,” continued Preston. “I mean, what does it literally mean? I mean, you got a verb, ‘fuck’, which is a swear word that means sexual intercourse, and then you have a second person singular object ‘you’.”
“What th’ fuck are you talkin’ about?” winced Skor.
“What does it mean literally? Everyone knows ‘fuck you’ is supposed to be a really foul insult, but it really doesn’t mean anything when you look at it literally.”
“Fornicate you,” said Jason.
“Dude, your like, totally blowin’ my mind,” said Retch.
“Okay, You have ‘fuck’, which means to have sex, and then you have the word ‘you”
“Have sex you!” exclaimed Skor.
“Well, fuck could mean just sex,” said Preston.
“Sex you!” said Retch.
“Naw, sex is too general,” said Jason. “It would have to be ‘fornicate you’!”
“Sexual intercourse you!” bellowed Skor.
Retch seemed to be taking a long time making the lines. Preston knew these guys were using crank practically all of the time, so they were in no particular hurry to get started on their new batch. Everyone in Stinkhammer had all just recovered from a fairly long speed binge and they were just getting started on another.
“Yeah, it is really weird when you think about it,” said Skor.
“I mean, does fuck you mean that you want to fuck the person?” continued Preston as he was trying to keep his mind off the speed.
“Well, then it wouldn’t be much of an insult,” said Retch.
“Naw, that’d mean you were a homo,” said Skor.
“So you’d just be insulting yourself,” said Jason.
“Maybe they really mean they want you to get laid,” said Retch.
“Doesn’t that mean, you’d get sexual intercoursed?” said Preston. “In other words, they were hoping out loud that you’d get laid soon?”
“This is getting complicated,” said Skor.
“Let’s stop talking about it,” said Retch.
“Fuck you!” said Jason.
“Intercourse you.”
“Fornicate!”
Preston couldn’t help himself any longer. “Hey Retch, are those lines ready yet?”
“Oh, sorry dude.” Retch suddenly realized that he had become too caught up in line sculpting. Etiquette was not lost on Retch, however, as he handed the mirror to Preston who picked up the straw and then hesitated a bit. He looked down at his line which was quite large, at least for him. He set the mirror back down on the table.
“Dude,” said Skor, noticing Preston’s apprehension, “What’s up?”
“I’m just not used to having lines this big.”
“He doesn’t do it for lunch everyday like we do,” said Retch.
“Right.”
“This might take me more than one hit guys,” said Preston, as he leaned over to do his snort.
“Hey man, the pain is one of the best parts,” said Jason.
Preston carefully bent over his line. He clumsily touched one end of the straw to the beginning of his line and started slowly inhaling because he wanted to try and get all of his monster line up in one snort. As he started sniffing, the sharp grains of speed thrashed the inside his nostril and his head started spinning. He had to sit up before he was done and take a breath before he snorted up the rest.
“Come on dude, hurry up,” grunted Skor.
Preston bent down again with his blushing face and stabbed at the rest of his line with one more mighty snort. To his surprise, he finished his line on the second snort. As he sat back up his head started spinning and tears were rolling down his face.
He had to sit back and let the spins take over as everyone else did their lines. He could feel his skull creaking under the weight of the rush, and his eyes felt as if they had gotten three times bigger. The lights appeared brighter and the room had gotten larger.
After what seemed like a long while, the spins calmed down and Preston didn’t feel so wired anymore, but he still felt fairly high. He did feel like he had come down enough to socialize with the Stinkhammer gang.
Retch decided to enliven the conversation by explaining to everyone how large his penis was.
“Dude, I don’ wanna hear this,” protested Jason.
Similar protests followed, but Retch continued to brag. “All mah’ bitches say it’s the biggest one they’ve ever seen. They’re so amazed, I can hardly believe it myself, it’s just so damn big.”
Jason countered that he was probably overcompensating for something. Skor insisted that there was no way it could possibly be bigger than his. Preston tried to veer Retch off of his topic by trying to start a completely different conversation.
But there was just no stopping Retch. For quite some time, every word that came out of his mouth had something to do with his penis and its wondrous size. A few reiterated their desire to not hear about it anymore, but that only seemed to encourage him.
It seemed to go on forever. Actually, it went on for about an hour, as Retch endeavored to find new ways to emphasize his insistence that his penis was of an exceptionally large size.
Finally, Preston stood up. “Okay Retch, whip it out.”
Retch suddenly froze.
“What?” flustered Retch.
“Come on, drop em’.”
“What the fuck are you talkin’ about?”
“You keep telling us how large your penis is, and we don’t want to hear it. So just drop your pants, whip it out, we can see how big it is, and you won’t have to tell us about it anymore.”
“What…” Retch stumbled over his words. “Hey, you’re a fag! You wanna see my dick!”
“No, I don’t wanna see your dick, I just want you to stop talking about it!”
“There’s no way it could be bigger than mine,” said Skor.
“Oh yeah? And how big is that?” asked Jason.
“Dude, I actually only have one leg.”
“Oh yeah?” said Preston, “I ain’t got no legs. That’s how big mine is.”
“Does that mean you have two?” asked Jason.
“Naw. It’s complicated. I’ll tell you later.”
“Hey, I can hammer in nails with mine,” said Skor.
“I can crowbar off padlocks with mine!” said Retch.
“That’s nuthin’. I can sledgehammer concrete with mine,” said Jason.
“Well I can go up to bat with mine. I’ve hit homers with it before.”
“Yeah?” said Preston, “Well I can make mine rotate.”
“That’s nuthin’,” said Skor. “Mine can rotate so fast that I can attain flight!”
“Dude, mine’s so big,” said Jason, “That I had ta’ have an interdimensional portal put in my pants, otherwise I’d knock over buildin’s in my sleep.”
For some time it went on. The more they talked, the more fantastic their penises became. Before they finally exhausted the subject matter there were penises in that room that shot out laser beams, that were equipped with highly advanced scanners that could detect virgins and horny women, that had psychic abilities that could hypnotize people; Penises that could punch holes in wallboard, penises used as paint rollers, coat hangars, yardsticks, sledgehammers, pole vaults, pool cues, sailing masts, traffic barriers and super telekinetic penises that could haul cars and similarly large metal objects around.
Preston tried to get in on the rest of the evening’s conversation, but Retch and Skor dominated most of the talk with their speed-enhanced motor mouths. Jason pretty much just hung out in a corner and drank for the rest of the evening without saying very much. After awhile, Preston started to wonder what time it was. There was no way of knowing whether or not the sun had risen, and Jason seemed to have an aversion to keeping any kind of timepieces around his place.
It was just as well that Preston didn’t get in on the conversation. You never knew when you might offend any of the members of Stinkhammer. He remembered that he had gotten Jason all riled up on one occasion when he casually mentioned Joseph Campbell, and another time he merely mentioned the subject of mothers and Retch got all bent out of shape. They were usually a pretty amiable bunch, but they all had a myriad of extremely obscure and eclectic sensibilities that were basically impossible to ascertain beforehand.
Eventually, the band got up to practice. They all suddenly stood up in unison and decided to go out to the warehouse floor. It was as if they were all working off the same internal clock. Preston followed them out onto the warehouse floor and was hit by a blaze of bright, dull-blue sunlight that came in from the high warehouse windows. He grimaced at the sight of natural light.
Stinkhammer got into their pre-rehearsal quibbles and Preston sat back down on the familiar park bench. Stinkhammer eventually started to practice, and Ike, no doubt, was soundly sleeping away in his room.
Preston knew that in a few days he was going to pay dearly for having gotten wired.
It was quite interesting to Preston when he thought about how he had spent the entire night with a group of people who were in just as bad, if not in a worse, economic condition than he was in at the moment. For some reason, they seemed to be able to glide along with all of the disheveled flop houses, rotten food, ratbag clothes, and all of the other amenities that came with lower class living. As much as it always seemed to be on his mind, it never seemed to be on theirs. Either they hid it really well or it just didn’t bother them all that much, a premise that Preston found quite hard to believe.
