"To the Gills": A story based on "Terrapin" by Syd Barrett, as suggested by writer Misti Rainwater-Lites (41/100)

To the Gills

I started thinking a lot about unrequited love not the summer my brother drowned, but ten years later, after I had just turned thirty and there wasn’t really much else going on to think about. In the time between, I tried to do everything right, but not for very long and not with a lot of gusto.

Duane was two years older than me and above all else I desired his looks—his jaw was squared off more than mine and it brought all the elements of his face together—and his girlfriend, Rose, who fell between us in age and had dated me for two weeks before deciding, finally, on Duane. I couldn’t fault him on matters of taste or turpitude, so I blamed no one and assumed myself to be all the better off for it. After the current grabbed him, I ended up transferring to a college in Utah. I never moved back even though I had exhausted my chances with most of the girls and all of the trout, and on occasion I felt as if I missed home. It’s possible that I didn’t, that I was just being sentimental for my own selfish needs. It was impossible to tell: any sort of longing manifested itself in my brother the same way one might see a dead-end from miles away and avoid the road altogether.

Still, there were deep, clear lakes spotting the upper peaks of the mountains and towering light-haired women of Northern European descent to keep me distracted. Often, it was enough, to simply not desire more than what was available. I could live for days off the brief, undivided attention of a waitress who would laugh when I intended her to, and then for a few days after that stand at the cusp of the Great Salt Lake, never quite feeling as if I’d given enough back, but content nonetheless.

It was without warning, then, that I tracked down Rose and decided to start pursuing her romantically. Soon, I had cashed in my vacation time to drive to Mississippi and turn something that was practically nothing into a large-scale bad idea—always considerably easier than the inverse.

* * *

In a way, we had been together twice already, albeit the second time was both brief and in a haze of crooked mourning. It didn’t take long for us to consider the feelings of the deceased, and soon we had thrown bags of wrenches into the cogs of what may have been working between us. It was better left as it was: the first time a hiccup and the second nothing more than a dozen or so underwater kisses at the public pool after it had closed.

Those times were spent mostly in various stages of nervous movement, sneaking over the fence and then, once in the water, pushing off opposing walls with our feet and almost chipping our teeth against one another when our faces met. When we were too tired to swim but not ready to leave, we’d sit silently together underneath the counter of the concession stand. What was there to say?

* * *

Toward the gray and uncertain third quarter of the drive to Mississippi I had a type of dedication to time-management that took precedence over my feelings. I didn’t want to cut my losses and spend three more days getting home—I was sick of biscuits and gravy, the minor variations on the thickness of sauce or lightness of biscuits, but always the same taste, more or less, no matter which roadside diner it was—so I drove on.

I made an appointment at the salon Rose worked at. No name, just a 3:00 who needed a haircut. I sat down in the chair and looked at her in the mirror while she threw a cape over me and made small talk.

“Do whatever you want,” I told her. “I need a new look.”

She was wearing sandals and shorts and she had the same legs I remember, tan and hard. Her upper body had changed a bit, as if she had put on weight and then lost it and now she was getting used to the unusual places it remained, under her arms and breasts and neck.

A few years ago, I started going by my middle name, Joseph, which is the name I gave her when she asked. She didn’t recognize me otherwise, and after awhile it got to a point where it would have been awkward to bring up history. It seemed perfectly moral to be both who I was and who I wasn’t completely not.

She had turned me back around so I was facing into the rest of the salon. “You don’t swim, by chance, do you?” I asked her. It was then that I think she figured it out. Not the half-truths of my plot, but the loose threads joining back together over large amounts of distance. She walked away slowly off to the side of me and went through a door, either outside or to the backroom. I spun around and looked in the mirror. With my hair half done, I looked like my brother. I took my fingers and slicked my hair back a bit, stubborn all over, and though it lay down for a second it soon began to rise to its ends.

It was getting dark early, and when I went outside and looked around I was washed over with the blue of the moon. Science dictates that the stars were sharp and shaking with energy, but when I looked at them they seemed as smooth and calm as still water.

**********



Lyrics

Syd Barrett is that crazy dude who Pink Floyd wrote a bunch of songs about. Some folks stand by Piper at the Gates of Dawn as the best Pink Floyd album. Even though I'm not one of them, I still call dibs on the name Rowdy Roddy Piper At the Gates of Dawn for my solo album.

Misti Rainwater-Lites is a wild Texan, sort of like Terry Funk meets Hope Dworaczyk. Her writing has appeared all over the damn place, and you can check out her videos on YouTube. (Might I suggest "Anal Lollipops" for y'all?) (And since it came up on the YouTube search, might I also suggest "Tampon Lilliopops" by Skinless for y'all?) Some of you might know her as the person behind the coolest pen-name ever: Roxi Xmas. Some of you might not. If so, you're fuckin' up. Do some Googling (and visit her blog, Chubacabra Disco).

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Next week: a story based on "It's a Long Road" by Dan Hill, as suggested by musician Topon Das of Fuck the Facts.

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"Drench Your Bad Ideas In Diesel Fuel": A story based on "Parting Words" by Backwoods Payback, as suggested by musician Mike Cummings (40/100)

Drench Your Bad Ideas In Diesel Fuel

Light them up like the 5th of July. Fireworks. Half off. Put a roman candle in your mouth and repeat the worst things you’ve ever said. When you get to the end, start over.

Pull out a tooth—a canine from your bottom row—and stick a firecracker in there. Don’t light it. It’s stupid to light it. It’s something else entirely to lick the tip hanging near the end of your tongue, picking out the flavors, dividing them into categories. Phosphorus: chemical. Anticipation: criminal.

In the movies, Arnold or Sly drive the motorcycle out of the airplane while the fuselage explodes behind them. They land in the canopy of a redwood or the deep end of a swamp. When you take off, do it over open land, agoraphobia be damned.

Here’s what you do when you get motion sickness in a car: slow down or close your eyes or stop. When you’re nose-diving at a hundred-and-something feet-per-second on a third-hand Harley Davidson and you get motion sickness, rip the side-mirror off and bite down hard. It'll look like the glass is falling up. It won’t do anything to help you, but think of it: first the glory and then, the glory.

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[No Video]

[No Lyrics]

Backwoods Payback is a band from Pennsylvania who put out a demo called Whiskey and Arm Wrestling, so you already know they're cool as fuck. Their sound is one of fuzzed-out power, giant riffs and rhythms that sound like they're from, where else, the darkest parts of the deepest woods. Their new album, Momantha, sounds like someone filled a dumpster with peanut butter and Jim Beam and then plugged a Sunn head into it. Buy it or die.

Mike Cummings is the guitarist/vocalist for the band Backwoods Payback. He likes motorcycles and Black Flag and he has a Zakk Wylde guitar. Much like previous Small Stone contributor Gideon Smith, Mike is a writer himself, having put out the book Confessions of a Lackluster Performer, wherein he goes over the peaks and valleys of being in the underground music scene for the past couple of decades. Buy that, too.

(I'd like to extend a special thanks to Scott from Small Stone Recordings for hooking Mike up with this project. He runs a great label with some of the best heavy rock there's ever been. Without a lot of the bands on Small Stone, I wouldn't play the music I play or listen to the music I listen to. Thanks for everything, Scott.)

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Next week: A story based on "Terrapin" by Syd Barrett, as suggested by writer Misti Rainwater-Lites.

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"Let's Go Shoot Her While She's Crying": A story based on "Black Coffee" by Sarah Vaughan, as suggested by writer Dena Rash Guzman (39/100)

Let’s Go Shoot Her While She’s Crying

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Lyrics

Sarah Vaughan was an American Jazz singer from New Jersey. I don't know much about her--I know--vocal jazz never hooked me--but she seems like all the other extremely talented people in the jazz world who led a tragic life we were all charmed and horrified by. I read a long essay on Anita O'Day once, and she seemed to be the most sane out of all of them, and she was still batshit crazy. Still, that voice, those voices. Damn.

Dena Rash Guzman is the second in a trifecta of talented, cool-as-fuck knockouts to participate in OBCBYL this season. (Chloe Caldwell was the first, and Misti Rainwater-Lites is on deck in a couple weeks here.) Dena currently resides in Portland with her family and her dog. She's got a bunch of irons in a bunch of fires, so make sure you visit her at H.A.L. Literature (not music, but definitely rock & roll lit project out of Shanghai, for which Dena is the North American Managing Director) and Unshod Quills (an everywhere-all-the-time lit journal run by Dena). She's working on her manuscript(s), too. And she's a literary pin-up! That's it, I'm pulling a 1998 and telling people she's my internet girlfriend. Yell at her on Twitter and read everything she writes.

ALSO, in an OBCBYL first, Dena has also written a story about "Black Coffee." She did hers first, but I didn't read it until now, and it's pretty damn cool, so you should all hop over to Redneck Press with Fried Chicken and Coffee and check out Dena's story.
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Next week: a story based on "Parting Words" by Backwoods Payback, as suggested by musician Mike Cummings of Backwoods Payback.

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"Refund": A story based on "On To You" by The Constantines, as suggested by musician Kevin J. Frank of Haymarket Riot (38/100)

Refund

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Lyrics

The Constantines are the most Canadian band ever other than The Weakerthans. They sort of remind me of Lucero when Lucero reminds me of The Replacements, so they pretty much kick ass. Steve Lambke has that Jawbreaker rasp in his voice and the songs are mighty tales of personal achievement/fuck-ups that never err on the side of sentimentality or whining. Features former members of the band Shoulder, who sometimes did err on the side of sentimentality, but still kicked plenty of ass.

Kevin J. Frank sings and plays guitar in Chicago's Haymarket Riot. In 2007, I saw the band in Dubuque, Iowa with Tornavalanche (same day I saw William Elliott Whitmore and met the girl I'd date fir the next couple of years). Personal attachment aside, they were really nice dudes and they kicked total ass. Their tunes are angular and frightening, the mood is as unstable and the beat is not. I don't know if this is the same Kevin J. Frank who played drums in Silvertide, but if it is, that's pretty cool too. (I liked that "Ain't Comin' Home" song!)

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Next week: A story based on "Black Coffee" by Sarah Vaughan, as suggested by writer Dena Rash Guzman.

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"B Sharp/C Flat": A story based on "Bicycle Bicycle, You Are My Bicycle" by Be Your Own Pet, as suggested by writer Kevin Wilson (37/100)

B Sharp/C Flat

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Lyrics

Be Your Own Pet was a garage-rock band from Nashville, TN. They were around for about four or five years before breaking up. In that time they put out a string of EPs and two full lengths, all of it pretty much the most fun nihilism ever. They sing about riding bikes and fucking shit up, for fuck's sake. That's pretty cool. Jemina Pearl is the scariest dream girl ever.

Kevin Wilson, while not the scariest dream girl ever, is still a pretty dreamy artist from Tennessee. His debut story collection, 2009's Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, is a combination of Rick Bass and Donald Barthelme's powerful absurdity. "Blowing Up on the Spot" is about a Scrabble factory, spontaneous combustion, a woman at a candy shop, and a pair of brothers--the youngest of which who won't stop trying to kill himself. More importantly, it's completely believable and endearing, the ways in which Wilson shows people at the end of their wits, and the situations we all know that come from being in such a position. He's got his first novel, The Family Fang, coming out this month, so pick it up. While you're waiting, check out some of the stories he's had published online. (I suggest “Blue-Suited Henchman, Kicked Into Shark Tank” over at SmokeLong Quarterly, who are awesome even if they've rejected me over a dozen times. Maybe that's why they're still awesome, actually.) (Also, looking through that list, I notice references to Lori Carlson, The Who, and others. KW was OBCBYL before there was OBCBYL. He's the Iggy Pop of lit. Sort of.) He blogs here.

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Next week: A story based on some song that's been suggested by musician Kevin J. Frank of Haymarket Riot.

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Sittin' In: "We Can’t Even Elegantly Bleed" by Melina Rutter, as based on the song "Failure" by Swans

I've been on and off for the past month or so, but I've got an excuse. A few of them, in fact.

1) I'm editing and contributing to a local zine. It's called ruix. Saying that ruix is a monthly zine by a collective of Dubuque musicians and artists who share the common goal of promoting and sustaining local music, art, and literature gets you close to an explanation. Saying that ruix is for those looking to capture and consider original sounds that are bent, but pure, gets you even closer. The collective behind ruix has not gathered by chance. Its brain—its brawn, too, for that matter—is borne from the natural forward motion of the arts community, the progeny of community and imagination. Everything is happening now.

If it's local and original, we want. No cover bands, no arts and crafts fairs, no bullshit. This project is consuming my life right now, editing all of the content in addition to writing original articles, show reviews, blurbs on new albums, and other odds and ends. If I've done any writing lately, it's been for ruix, which you can find on Facebook or on the plain ol' world wide web.

2) I'm in two bands, both of which are in the process of recording albums. My main project in which I play guitar and do vocals, Legal Fingers, spent most of last week recording the drum tracks for our debut sleaze rock album, No Time For Tenderness. (Featuring the hit single "(I Just Wanna Get All Right) Tonite!")In addition to that, we're breaking in a new vocalist who is talented as all get-out (and a hot chick, to boot). I'm teaching her the old ones when we're not at practice working on new songs for her to sing, and I've written four songs in the past five weeks that I hope will all make the cut when it comes around to throw her into the full-band mix. I also play bass in a street punk band called Bucket House Hooligans. I joined the band a couple months ago, and I'm still getting a handle on the tunes, which I'll be recording here shortly for the band's debut album, Dubuque (That's not me in the video).

3) I'm running a six week YA writing workshop. I've done this every summer for the past three or four years, for all the reasons anyone cites in doing something like this: teaching kids not to be dickheads who suck at writing is a good way to give something back and keep up on the basics myself, in the process learning something, teaching something, and being looked up to as a mentor. Warm fuzzy whatevers all over the place. But, as much as I love them all, it takes time to figure out what we're going to talk about, what and how I want to explain my comments on their written work, and the hour round-trip commute (and hour and a half spent in the actual workshop). They're great and it's satisfying, but I'm on week six of six here, and I'm getting to be glad my English degree has nothing to do with traditional education.

This is in addition to thirty three hours a week working as a janitor, between four and eight hours a week as a door-guy at some music bars in town, and still trying to do cool shit like meet Hacksaw Jim Duggan (and Terry Funk!) in Waterloo, Iowa. That said, I hope to get back in the OBCBYL game full-fledged once the workshop and recording process are both over. The zine is still taking a lot of time, but once we get used to deadlines and figure out the best ways to work alone and with each other, things will smooth out. Until then, here's one of my absolute favorite stories that's been sent in to me, Melina Rutter's "We Can’t Even Elegantly Bleed."

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We Can’t Even Elegantly Bleed

We used to have to stand in rows while the nuns checked out our fingernails. There was a kid named Shane Braddock whose father was a miner in Wyoming, and his hands were clean, the cleanest. Every day we watched the nuns shine their approval all over him because of his clean, square-cut nails, his long, tanned hands. To us, it was the way he wore his jacket, too, the dark disconnection in his glance, the bump on his nose that made him look like he’d just come up from a fight. Their approval was endless, all-encompassing. It made everything about Shane Braddock enviable, no matter how amiss it was.

He saw his father only once that year, and when the time came around we knew, because he had his pockets full of gravel that he brought out in the yard, pointing at some near-invisible sparkling flecks. It was a warm, windy day, and we were all squinting and restless. “Gold,” he said. “It’s gold my father brought for me.”

The day Shane Braddock brought his so-called gold to school was the only day that year he was punished. When it came time for the inspection, his hands were smudged black, nails full of dirt. Some of us leaned forward in line to get a better look. “That gold is dirty stuff,” someone whispered and a few of us laughed.

But in truth we were undone that day. Shane Braddock with black hands, Shane after his once-a-year-father, Shane who had special rocks dug up from the earth, was more enviable than he’d been with the nuns’ approval all over him. We looked down at our own washed-quickly hands and saw our dishonor.

* * *

We were eleven that year and had stashes of shameful, beautiful things hidden wherever we could make them last longest. We’d stolen cigarettes from our older sisters, chewing tobacco from a cousin, small nips of whisky straight from the liquor cabinet, ink bottles from the counter at the art store, ten bucks from a drunk aunt’s wallet, the key to the basement, some poker chips, baseball cards, and always the magazines we weren’t supposed to know about, a few we’d found used in a dumpster behind someone’s building, and those we’d dug a hole for in the yard and buried. There was a girl on one page called Sweet Tooth Savannah and she was our chosen one, the girl we wanted most. She lay in a bathtub filled with licorice, her eyes sullen, breasts exposed, dark hair indistinguishable from all that candy. She had black licorice ropes wound between her fingers like snakes or jewelry.

* * *

We heard about the mine collapse on TV during dinner. We knew it was Shane Braddock’s father’s mine because one of our mothers took their dresses to Shane’s mother for alterations and it was certain, tragically, unbelievably; it was Shane’s father’s mine, yes.

Some of us were stupid enough to ask about gold.

The mine was called Freedom but it was a coalmine. A coalmine, and nine men were dead underground, their faces blackened like Shane Braddock’s hands the day he was punished.

We went to sleep feeling too full from our dinners, babyish, hemmed in. We wanted to climb out the window and run the seventeen blocks to where the Braddocks lived, near the train tracks and the highway, where we could sit in the warm, dusty night on the porch and share our sleeplessness. Instead we turned over and over in our beds, unsure of what we had lost.

* * *

Shane was not in school the next day and we circled his empty spaces hungrily, in packs. The closer we imagined ourselves into his life, the more adequate we became. We took turns collecting his schoolwork for him, hoping to bring it by his house ourselves, but it was always collected by some adult or another—“the neighborhood pulls together in times like these,” was how one of our mothers put it. After some weeks it became clear to us that Shane would not return. We were told the mother couldn’t afford the city anymore, much less the school, and had moved Shane and his two younger sisters back to Wyoming.

Years later, we’d still be in the old neighborhood, just blocks from the classroom where we were made to stand in rows, compare ourselves against each other. We hadn’t seen the Badlands, the Rockies, the Snake River. We knew there were Indians who lived on all this land farther back than we cared to envision, and we’d have told our well-schooled kids about their battles and horses and visions without ever having met one.

We saw Shane Braddock one day, coming down long and loose from the elevated tracks; we knew that look of his even with twenty-five years piled on it. He was more torn up than we were, pinched, lined, underfed. He rolled a cigarette as he walked. He moved outside of the city-rhythm, any native could see that. He was there, coming down the stairs, then stopping to look far down 125th street, and then he was almost gone, his back to us, moving into the crowd.

He had gone down with his father in some pit unknown to us, he had left us, his stolen pocket money, his Sweet Tooth Savannah, who was his as much as ours; he had faded into some margin of half-existence. “Gold my father brought me,” he had said, and we could laugh for days.

But there were our washed-quickly hands, again, and there was the certainty that it was we who had given in, we who had been tricked, strung along, and we watched him go—quick in his old canvas shoes, his cuffs falling past his fingertips—again.

**********



Lyrics

Swans are a band led by Michael Gira. Imagine the pants-shittingly downtrodden and tortured you've ever felt in your entire life. That's what listening to Swans is like. They're probably the best band I can hardly bring myself to listen to sometimes.

Melina Rutter is a slender girl in Germany who writes awesome stuff at bark (a culture, literature, and art blog) and her own personal blog, Invisible Adventure. She likes tattoos and good tunes. Born on Earth, dead on the moon.

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Next week: A story based on "Bicycle Bicycle, You Are My Bicycle" by Be Your Own Pet, as suggested by writer Kevin Wilson. (For real this time, hopefully.)

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"A Priest and a Rabbi Walk Into a Car Crash": A story based on "Love" by John Coltrane, as suggested by musician Steve Marion of Delicate Steve 36/100

A Priest and a Rabbi Walk Into a Car Crash

When Father Garrison and Rabbi Kohn both stepped onto the accident scene at the same time, they were surprised to see each other, as though they'd walked not into chaos, but into the set-up for a joke. The cars had collided at their front corners and then slid around each other in such a way that their tail ends touched, like two people in the beginning stage of duel. Garrison and Kohn each had their instincts: the Father to the knocked-out mother and crying child in the station wagon and the Rabbi to the nervous and harrowed teen in the Saab. They thought nothing more or less of each other for this, and in the odd spaces that appear in times of disorder, were thankful for the efficiency of their reactions.

They'd met a few times before in passing, at interfaith events or conferences. After the accident, realizing their previous appointments were as good as cancelled, they decided to go to a nearby café and discuss the accident. Neither mentioned the ways in which they followed another instinct, to bond over grief and reflect on what is gained when nothing is lost.

* * *

Earlier in the day, before the accident and the café, a woman had come into the church and done a tarot reading for Father Garrison. He was in the confessional finishing up with one member of the congregation when the door opened and then immediately closed again.

“Touch the cards,” the voice said.

Father Garrison reached up and placed the tips of his fingers on the cards and then leaned over top of them to peer through the screen. A dark figure, like everyone else on the other side.

“These things usually start off with something along the lines of ‘forgive me father, for I have sinned’ and not a request to touch a deck of cards.” He had become more serious in these later years, for the first time feeling as if he were forced into the priesthood by his family and then, after time, by convenience.

The figure on the other side of the screen was still, but Father Garrison could hear shuffling and, on the small shelf reserved for the folded hands of kneeling confessors, the laying down of five cards. He sat back in his chair, curious.

* * *

Father Garrison came over to the table and lightly placed two cups of tea in front of him. “Rabbi Kohn, do you know much about tarot cards?”

“Is that what the disco singer says she’ll do on those late night infomercials?”

“Not exactly. A woman came in today for confessional and mentioned something about them.”

Rabbi Kohn nodded, but was obviously thinking about something else, already having passed off the situation as a non-sequitur, a way to not talk about the accident.

Father Garrison’s card in the first position was the Knight of Wands. “The horse is riding through the desert,” the figure said. “Constant movement is necessary so you are not burned on the hot sands. If you stop, you burn.” Her voice wasn’t that of an old crone or a young gypsy. She was as worn out and non-descript as a news anchor or a waitress in a big town. “The horse is moving to the left, the path of non-traditional thought.”

“Miss, this is an obvious fabrication, and I don’t feel it’s necessary to make a mockery of my life as I’ve lived it for our lord and savior Jesus Christ.” Father Garrison’s tone was level and stern, but he didn’t even bother to lean forward, a defeated edge in him that made the woman continue, unabated.

“Your card in the second position is what you cannot see: the Hierophant. You may be feeling a lack of respect for ceremony and the law, perhaps doubting your knowledge of tradition.” She drew for him the Ten of Cups in the third position, showing that he is able to do away with what he’s comfortable with. Then the Two of Swords in the fourth position, his inability to change intuition or rely on other senses, blind in his situation but unafraid and, in fact, centered.

Father Garrison moved his head from against the wall and took a slight glance through the screen. He quietly asked if they were finished, but he was ignored again. “Your last card in the last position is your overall outcome. The Fool.”

“Wait just a damn minute,” Father Garrison burst out under his breath. He did not realize until a long lull in conversation with Rabbi Kohn later on that he had swore in the house of the Lord.

“Now now, Father,” the figure said, for the first time sounding as if she were deviating from a script. “The Fool in the final position it not bad. Look forward to a new beginning of simplicity. A fresh start with a straightforward heart.”

Father Garrison stood up and then sat back down when the woman said, “Doesn’t that sound nice?”

* * *

“Do you remember why you became a rabbi?” Father Garrison asked Rabbi Kohn.

“Ah, boychick, what a heavy question!”

“I used to think so myself, but . . .”

“But?”

“But now I don’t.”

“Well, I mean, I had a good education as a young Jew in the Midwest, that was a good start. I learned early on that the Jewish peoples have a rich history, one of sorrow and longing and, above all, hope. I just wanted to learn and teach, be burrowed in so deep to that one thing that it surpasses faith and become knowledge.”

And like that it became quiet, God as uncomplicated and sensible an intangibility as love itself. Father Garrison sat back slowly and thought of the baby crying in the backseat of the car, pieces of the windshield shining like heaven in her hair.

**********

John Coltrane was a jazz musician who pretty much ruled. He made a tenor sax sound heavier than any metal band. He died of liver cancer at the age of 40. He also did a shitload of drugs and was sainted by the African Orthodox Church in 1982.

Steve Marion is the main creative force behind the band Delicate Steve. He likes doing yoga, which I tried to do once, but stopped after finding out it's more breathing exercises than Tae-bo. The new Delicate Steve album Wondervisions is cohesive not despite of its wandering, psych-melodies and soundscapes, but because of them. You can buy it here.

"Butterfly" from Wondervisions

"The Ballad of Speck and Pebble" from Wondervisions

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Next week: A story based on "Bicycle Bicycle, You Are My Bicycle" by Be Your Own Pet, as suggested by writer Kevin Wilson.

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