Gutter Folklore is a collection of stories I wrote waaaay back when, some of my first attempts to write short stories and a somewhat cohesive narrative. It’s also the stories where I initially developed the extra-urban punk-crust extraordinaire Skye, a persistent character in my fiction.
Cruising on a morning shot, Yuri sat at the kitchen table sipping at the last remnants of room temperature coffee. None of his fellow Hell Nosers were wandering around the house. He knew a few people had gone off to work and there might be a few people still crashed in their rooms.
Yuri was thinking about food. He hadn’t had a decent meal in a couple of days, and there wasn’t anything around the kitchen that could provide him with anything resembling any appreciable amount of sustenance. He already knew this even without looking through the fridge and cupboards.
The desire for a good meal was rather askew for Yuri, for full fledged meals were hardly ever a concern for him, but his blood had been driven too thin and his yearnings gave way to a pointed sense of hunger.
This morning his hunger had driven his brain to a single minded want:
Splitway’s.
Splitway’s was a cool and funky burger joint just off of lower Haight. Yuri had that particular restaurant on his mind because of the gigantic cheeseburgers they served there. The cheeseburgers there always had a thick layer of cheese, thick onions, and tons of fresh mayonnaise. Yuri was driving himself crazy just by thinking about it.
Though fatigued by horse rides and low blood sugar, Yuri decided he had to make the journey. It had been too long since he had been there. Something in his soul desired the reacquaintance with wondrous mastications gone by. Despite his burning burger desire, Yuri wondered if he could make it there, as he felt especially drained this day. He also had to wonder how he managed to bring himself to this lost craving. The memory, not only of the place, but of his edible lust for their fare, seemed to jam itself into his mind as if out of nowhere.
Yuri observed himself and realized that such a trek called for some more personal grooming. He took himself to the shower where he almost fell asleep standing up for the rush of warm water.
Searching through his room for some decent clothes, the cleanest shirt he could find was a Hop Skivvy shirt. He stared at the front of the shirt, wondering if he could dare walk the streets with such an old and hackneyed logo of a once proud and raucous punk band that had gotten popular and sold out a few years ago.
After several minutes of pondering and a few more inspections of his other shirts he realized that the Hop Skivvy shirt was the only decent thing to wear, being as every other shirt was too radioactively grody, even by his non-discriminatory personal standards. If he wanted to wander the streets full of people and sit in a restaurant, he had better swallow his pride and risk looking like a poseur.
Yuri had to stare at the shirt for awhile before he could bring himself to put it on. He cursed himself for having kept it at all.
Reluctantly decked out in his poseur duds, Yuri staggered back into the kitchen. He felt his limbs list under the weight of his fatigue and he realized he needed some temporary sustenance. He looked around and remembered that he had already exed the last of the coffee. His eyes fell on the sight of some of Pel’s rice cakes.
Yuri made his way to the living room while gnawing at a rice cake. He had been reluctant to do it, since consuming a Splitway cheeseburger would be quite a feat in itself. He didn’t want to ruin his delicate appetite with any amount of preliminary food, even if it was just a wimpy little rice cake. It was a trial, choking the rice cake down his dry throat, but he wanted to have something to give him some kind of extra energy on his quest.
Yuri spaced out on the couch as his shallow reserve of energy worked on digesting the rice cake. Yuri looked towards the blank TV screen, pondering how weird it looked when it wasn’t actually on, which was rare.
Yuri’s eyes started to droop. He felt clean and fresh after his shower and change of clothes, giving his rejuvenated skin a warm, blanket feeling.
Suddenly, from the back of the house, a couple of soft thuds. Then a door opening and closing. Someone had just woken up.
The shirt!
Yuri shot up from the couch and quickly shuffled to the door, opening and closing it as quietly as possible so as not to arouse suspicion. He crept down the front steps of Hell Nose House, jamming his hands in his Derby coat pockets, trying to cover up the Hop Skivvy shirt.
He didn’t feel as burnt out as he had anticipated as he started to drudged down the street. But he kept in mind that he had just started his journey. The wind was kicking up, shoving away what little heat came down from the partially hidden sun.
The street was fairly crowded. Just Joe Shmoes and Jane Does here. No need to worry about the shirt just yet. Yuri would flinch when short spikey colored hair would approach, or an all black wardrobe.
A slight trip. His ankles felt weak. Yuri forgot about the shirt and concentrated on walking. The wind sent an army of cold ants running across his skin, followed by the flow of numb goose pimpled warmth. That helped him along as he was energized by the rush of his wriggling nerve endings.
After a few blocks the landscape wasn’t so drab. Yuri saw the four corners of an intersection stationed with Socialists trying to hock their newspapers. It was a welcome sight. Yuri usually knew one or two of them when he ran into this cross section assault.
Sure enough, he noticed his friend Brit who was calling out to disinterested passersby. No doubt he would welcome someone to talk to. Yuri crossed over to his corner.
“Hey Brit, whatcha doin’ out here?”
“Just talkin’ to people. Tryin’ to sell some papers.”
“Cool man. Keep up the good fight.”
“Echh. It’s a drag man. Sometimes I wonder if I should just chuck it. It don’t seem like nobody’s listening or caring at all.”
“Come on man, there gotta be plenty of freaks around here.”
“Yeah, but most of them don’t care about this stuff. Especially those stupid little fashion punks.”
“I know what you mean. I got into a fight with my friend Sherrie about the police crackdown in the park. She was all talkin’ about how they were supposed to be just busting gutter punk.”
“She said that all the gutter punks were just a buncha rich kids tryin’ to be cool.”
“What a load a’ shit!”
“Yeah. She got that from reading the paper. We were debating it
and getting all worked up and then I lost it and called her a fascist. She totally blew up at me.”
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