PARKING_02

Feel the weather turnin caint you, Caleb says. Aint soaked thru by noon an pissed off. Got to wheres I aint wearin underwears cause it just get soaked thru and strung up my ass like a damn thong. Jess laughs. Smoke comes from her mouth and nostrils, one cuffed with a tiny gold bangle set with miniature beads color of rainbow. "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" on the radio, the dash heat-ruptured and cracks shown cargut like plain foam buttered bread yellow. Jess reaches downside the chicken bucket and pulls a leg out and takes a bite and turns and there's Caleb looking at her weird, smoking, quiet. Crows caw. Pines shake in wind, their needles sizzle like frying bacon. Jess smudges the grease from her lips. Wipes the chicken grease on her cream coffee thigh. Caleb leans in and kisses her. Tastes like chicken. Like smoke. Her lips slick with grease. He finds her tongue. She bites his. He pulls away. She laughs.

Zippos cigarette. Romeo and Juliet / Are together in eternity. Think we gone beat Mary Persons, Caleb says. I mean, they bound to sneak up on us sooner than later. Aint even come close in five years. Jess sighs. What coach think, she says. He aint said it if he thunk it, Caleb says. All he kept on with is focus. That all he said for weeks now. Focus. Caleb White, focus. Focus on the ball. Focus on one game at one time. Aint gone go undefeated in single Friday night. Aint gone make that touchdown pass to beat the next ten teams. Aint gone win region without it. Focus. Jess laughs. You want this, she said, handing the chicken leg out to Caleb. It's too damn greasy. They done changed they recipe up on somethin. Don't taste right.

Caleb cracks a beer. He sips it. Come on baby / Don't fear the reaper / Baby take my hand / Don't fear the reaper / We'll be able to fly / Don't fear the reaper / Baby I'm your man. What you spose that tallet doin on that car, Jess says, exhaling. Smoke spun about the dash and became waves and mountains and then lakes and hills and then nothing. Fucked up aint it, Caleb says. Where it come from in the first place. Some joker musta brought it here. Jess turns to Caleb. You aint think folk doin they bisness innit? Caleb laughs and sips his beer. Won't put it past em, baby. Caleb throws the chicken leg out the window. I'm bout to go sit on that damn tallet, Caleb says. Chrise, I got to shit. No you aint, Jess says. You think I made it up, Caleb says. I got to go. Then you gone off in them woods, Jess says. An what the hell you gone wipe yourself off with. Jess slaps Caleb hard on the arm. He laughs. He crushes the beer can. I'm gone hit that chicken leg, Caleb says, tossing the can. Can sails off to the left and lands without a sound on pine needles browning. You throw like that Friday night and yall will get beat, Jess says. Come on baby / Don't fear the reaper. Crows caw.

Never unnerstan what the fuck this song was about, Caleb says. Sound like it about killin yourself and then it sound like it about people savin themself and then they just singing there like so la la la la la like they aint said nothin afore bout killin oneself. Aint he sang somethin about Romero and Julet, Jess says. About that story we read in Miss Rawlin's class. Boyfriend and girlfriend an they folks aint want em to be together. Caleb laughs. What you daddy think bout Jessica Chesser gettin a fuckin nosering. Jess pouts. He like to pull it clean out my nose when he seen it, she says. Bet he did, baby. Bet he did. He a mean sumbitch to be as old as he is. I aint fuck with him I known that. Caleb cracks another beer. He drinks. You get me one of them, Jess says. Caleb reaches behind the seat and pops the cooler top and grabs a beer and cracks the top and hands it to Jess. She puts her hand in his lap. Caleb drinks. Your dick hard enough, she says, laughing. Get any harder liable to crumble, Caleb says. Crows caw.

GOT US A BLIZZAR

Alma not seen snow in seventy years. Least that what Chess Orthcutt tell me when I walk out the trailer to warm up the truck. He come up walkin Piner Street as he do ever day, bentback, hands clasp behind his tailbone, cigar stabbed in corner his mouth. Turn of cen tree, he says. Last time we get snowed in. Member it like yesterdee. Dumb sumbitch Clarence Waslin aint kept nough gross rees on hand an had to lock is doors high noon. Selled out ever thin. Chess never stopped. He just kept walkin and kept talkin as he did and by time he clear out of view I still hear his voice. Big heavy hard voice for man his age. Frailest thing on him his shoes. He live for nother eighty years if he live a day. Honk the horn as I round Dixie Ave, Orthcutt still there shufflin along, still talkin, cigar there still stabbed brown unsmoking. Snow slick and slushy and still coming down slowly and driftin into the truck's windsheid. Flakes flip into the glass and print the glass diamondian, jus as the white paper flakes do when cut well and open on up, all they angles fanned out, all the lines and triangles buried in the whitle, here and there triangle stranded in the white and opening and closing. Flakes hung in air and some were whisked away and some hit the shield and stood their shapes and melted instantly.

Whole damn town emptied out their homes into streets. Winter coats and hats and snowshoes attic'd and forgotten remembered and found. Children in fathers and grandfathers hunting clothes. Children wearing wool socks on their hands. Attemptin snowmen like ten and twelve of em scoopin up snow and it meltin away in they hands.

Stop at Jakes and buy case of Miller and a bottle schnapps. Bought it for the snowman on the label and the candy cane walkin stick. This crap taste like mouthwash you know, bud, Jake says. I drive round a while and drink the schnapps. Jake was right. It do taste like mouthwash. But the more I drank it the less it mattered. I werent really watching the road. I watchin snowflakes. Ran clear off Peters Street and set there drinkin schnapps and then cracked a beer. Drank it down halfway quick there, window down and the snow comin in the truck and melting there on the side of the door and the radio on and Elvis sing Tutti Fruitti. That was skinny Elvis not fat Elvis, Tad Merle says on the radio after the song end. Went to school with Tad at Huber High. Merle must've ben the worst goddamn placekicker in South Georgia. He missed all but two extra points whole time he played. Coach Jonah Bell tell me he had to play Merle on count of Tad Merle Sr gave so much money to the school. I tell Tad that once when I was sideways. We at Flo's gettin lit. I member that shit clear as wellwater. He start cryin like a little kid. Face get all red and he sobbin. I aint regret it at first but now every time I heard him on the radio it make me sick a little bit to my stomach.

Set there long while drinking beer watchin it snow. Sun aint come out and it gull gray all day. Drive down Oglethorpe Street near Tramlintowne where them palms line the ways and looked up at the palms and all the snow coming down around them. Snow slick their sawteeth leaves and hang crusted in queer runs of ice on their long brown trunks. No cars out. Stop plain in middle of Oglethorpe Street and get out with the schnapps bottle and lay down and did me a snowangel, arms and legs just a flapping. Thin Elvis playing Hound Dog. Drop the bottle and got hold of it fore it all spilled out. Seen Gordon Ransom comin and seen his lights piss yellow in the twilight and they all dull with the snow comin down as it is and Ransom drive by in the work truck all slow and looking crazy and he yellin at me, you best get your drunk ass out the road fore you get kilt. He honk the horn over and over again. Stood there laughing at him and watch as pelicans come in formation, six of em, big gray bodies and those stiff long beaks stuck out, flown over the palms snow still shakin out the sky. They fly clear over Oglethorpe Street and past Tramlintowne and on out Broxton way. Pelicans.

Kimber Massey drink the rest of the schnapps. Always had to get sideways before we foolt round. She aint say nothin but just goddamn giggled til she piss her pants. I aint beleived her til she thrust her crotch up at me and I felt the denim and it warm as blood and smelt like chicken fryin. She keep my hand there once I touch it. She turn up the radio and there Tad Merle playin Thin Elvis gan, that song bout the train, one sound like old Ray Price or some shit. I says let's go see Shithead an she aint say nothin. Kimber got her bluejeans undid and got her hand over mine and breathin heavy and got her fingers over mine and I got my finger there, right there, and she says, Aw you found it sugar, and then she start laughin and I kept my finger outside there jus set there and she buck slow up into it like she on a horse. Then I hook my finger in there good and she moan like she slipped down slow into hot bath and then the truck turn up on two wheel and rattle goddamn awful and we find ourselves up in the woodline. Damn if I aint hit a tree square.

What in the hell, she says pullin her bluejeans up. She scoopin all the empty beercans out the floor and tossin them on the ground and she keep sayin What in the hell. I set there lisnen to them cans clinkin. I set there lookin at the front of the truck an it aint look too too bad. She walk slow over the road and there in middle road set a calf dead. It covered up in snow and snow ice over a bit and seem a glass shell on the calf. Seem been dead a while. It got two heads, Kimber says. It got two damn heads. I come over and lookit the calf and it do have two heads. We set there and drink a beer and look at it for a short while. Eyes on the left head aint right. They like marbles like red marbles. Ones that look like planets with those bands of color wipe through them. They aint right. An the hooves aint right neither. I crouch down and set my beer down in the snow and hold my hands out near the head an Kimber says, Goddamn you aint gone touch it now is you. An I jus set my hand down on the head that aint right, this slick ice head with red marble eyes, an it the coldest thing I ever touched in my life. I can hear Merle on the radio sayin, Can you bee leave this Alma County? We got us a blizzar. And then I pick the goddamn thing up all by myself and Kimber screamin at me when I put it in the truckbed.

She says, What in the hell we gone do with a two head calf this time night? An I tell her we gone carry it to Shithead and she says, Shithead working at Dairy Queen now, and I says I known that sugar. We gone to Dairy Queen.

THROUGH A CAN DARKLY

ANOTHER ONE FOR DESSERT

MEMORIALIZED_02

HIGH IRONIC CONTENT

(Found and lost and found again;sorry LA Weekly readers.) Dad drank Pabst in the Navy. Said he had to use a "church key" to open it. Everyone else on the carrier drank Pabst. Officers drank Pabst. Enlisted men drank Pabst. Folks at bars sailors crashed on leave drank Pabst. Only time he didn't drink Pabst was when he was in Boston. Said he couldn't get it there. Said he drank Narragansett, or "Gansey" to locals, when he was in Boston. Said sailors cracked a raw egg into Gansey to make it taste better. Said he saw locals cracking raw eggs into Gansey to make it taste better. Gansey must have tasted like a urinal cake.

When he got out of the Navy he continued to drink Pabst. I remember the cans in the fridge. But he didn't stay true. He drank Schlitz and Miller High Life and later drank Coors Banquet exclusively. His dad, who drank Meister Brau exclusively, called Pabst "headache beer." His dad gave him a case of Heineken every Christmas. I drank more of that Heineken than he did.

But I liked shitty watery American beers as a kid. I liked Pabst. I liked Milwaukee's Best AKA "Beast." I liked Busch. Pabst was $10 a case. Perfect for us. We played quarters. We played submarine. We played King Turtle. We shotgunned beers. We funnelled beers. We sprayed them on each other. We were kids drinking adult beverages. What do you expect?

Bought Pabst off and on throughout college. Bought it off an on in the years after college. And it was around that time began to see kids drinking Pabst in bars and clubs. Like, exclusively. Everyone was drinking it. Everyone looked the same. Skinny. Tight pants. Plastic neon glasses. Thrift store t-shirts. Mustaches. Logger beards. And Pabst. Everyone had Pabst in their hand or in their glass. That was the beer to drink.

For a while it was OK. Pabst was cheap because everyone was drinking it. I could buy a double deuce of Pabst at a bar for $2--about what I'd pay for it at a gas station. But prices started creeping up over the years, and "everyone" got even larger. Pabst ads were in music magazines. Pabst billboards were up around the city. Pabst tatts were on "everyone." Indie-dramas showed people drinking Pabst. Every party you went to had a keg of Pabst. Music festivals were sponsored by Pabst. There was free Pabst everywhere. It was the cool cheap not-so-bad beer for everyone and it was everywhere and cool and cheap and not-so-bad.

Then the price went up. A six of Pabst is almost the same price as a six of Budweiser, the premium American beer. A six of Pabst tall boys is the same price as a six of Coors Banquet talls, and is almost a dollar more than Nautral Lite, Miller Light, Schlitz, or Old Milwaukee. It's expensive. So why is every kid with a fixed gear bike still drinking it?

Pabst defies every rule of artificial cool. Its ubiquity makes it normal, therefore uncool. Its price makes it unaffordable and therefore uncool to the trust fund kids who want to appear blue collar by drinking it. The blue collar crowd who originally held Pabst as their brand is gone. They've moved on to Budweiser or stepped down to Natural Lite.

Not one to necessarily believe in the sorta "brand conspiracy" ala Naomi Klein's NO LOGO propagated, but the ascendency and permanence of Pabst has been one weird airborne toxic event. I don't know if I'll ever drink it again. I can't shake the new potent associations, And, honestly, it's too goddamned expensive for me.

BLAZE BEERS

BUUUSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSCH

YOU'LL NOT GET NO BEER HERE

HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH?

How much would you pay for a six pack of beer? Let's say it's "good" beer. Let's say it's really good. How much are you willing to pay for it? Six dollars? Eight? Ten? How about $18? There's no way in hell I'd spend that on a six. I hate going out precisely because I loathe paying $6 for a pint of Guinness. I loathe paying $2 for a Schlitz tallboy. The most I've paid for a six was just over nine dollars for Skullsplitter. Great name, but I never bought it again.

My beer philosophy is simple. Keep a variety on hand. Domestic, microbrew, imports. It's always the same and the fridge is always stocked. The most expensive beer in the fridge, bar none, is always Duvel. But the taste. The effect. Since I can't pelt my brain with Stan Laurel's fossilized tongue, I drink Duvel. Odd, disorienting, happy dumb drunk it is. Isn't it? But it's not worth $18. No beer is.

My friend T and ran up a $90 bar tab on "seasonals" and whiskies at this horrible in-town Atlanta bar in an hour. How much is too much? We were shocked. And drunk. I don't remember them being Scotches. Maybe they were. The "seasonals" were shit, though. Tasted of burnt malt and berries. At least that's what I recall. I have a great photo of T hugging a burned-out pickup truck on the walk back home. If I had it on this computer, I'd post the fucker. Best thing about that night was getting introduced to Teacher's and taking her to bed.

Then there's Guinness. I once spent close to a $100 on Guinness at a bar in Red Hook years ago on St. Patrick's Day. There's a certain point where the pints become weightless, airy intake, and the aftertaste fleeting, milky, honeyed, chocolate. When you reach this point, it's trouble. I remember everything about that night, however. I remember drinking Bourbon with P on the train. I remember the annoying girls in chunky "Flashdance" leggings and faux furs walking ahead of us, smoking cloves. I remember retching on clove smoke. I remember saying fuck it and chipping in for a cab ride. I remember the doorman looking at me like I had my genitals hanging out of my pants. Maybe I did. Jesus. How much is too much?

RHEIMS, ADIEU

Matthiessen being Christian name, Intelligence a/k/a "Mother," deftly annoints jejune spook, "Rimjob." Kraut occupied France, oui, rendezvous with female operative in Operation Ripcord's midst. Instruction delivered over pot roast bacon and prunes, whisky, vichy waters. Matthiessen can't get past Harlock's knack for cupping his testicles when enunciating to hyperbole, like to make a point. E.g., "Plaaaace Car-du-nul Lew-soh, Pee-tah. This is key." Words come painfully, perhaps partly to convey surgical quality of pending mission.

Jump goes automatically. Never recall the leap, chute opening. Downy drift from heaven to hard ground. Place Cardinal-Luçon quiet mantra as wind whips about canvas jumpsuit. Dust off. Blend in. Hand in glove. That easy. Streets cobblestone, tightly drawn. Matthiessen told only operative's origin country, Russia, and predilection for champagne cocktails, saucisse, non-life yielding coitus. Blind search amongst jack-booted lot. Swastika set into mind as constellations, glimmering dead geometry. Air-raid siren squall. Allez!

Innkeeper makes "Rimjob" in millisecond. Unpleasantries exchanged. Key to skyline room handed over, along with tablets amyl-nitrate. Rheims cathedral's butresses soar to a sky covered with sad gray cloak. Glasses the street. Swings binoculars as scythe. Songs of Thomas Tallis burn behind glass stained.

Matthiessen checks action of Walther. Clothes laid out. Impeccable. Inkeeper rings room, utters, "Raven." Mattheissen hangs receiver up. Dresses. Wonders why given name "Rimjob" over three Lucky Strike, whisky dram. A note to enjoy fine Scotch. Avec plaisir, thinks Mattheisson, bringing bottle to its bottom third.

By chance. Tavern littered with Großer Generalstab sipping schnapps. Waiting game. Arranged meeting ends in Italian Necktie for Field Marshall von Sharnhorst. Onlookers all French, nod collectively in silence's roaring metastasis. Tavern smells of rotten earth, cumin. Operative Minx disappears in Gauloises. Mattheissen toys with melody torn from Chick Webb record. There are two men pork-pie hatted men, huddled over drips of Pernod, playing cards.

Minx meets Rimjob, whispers, "Knockwurst." Unpleasantries exchanged. Two enjoy earnest fare whilst proprietor hacks Field Marshall's body to bits in back. War is hell, but they'll always have Rheims.

DOMESTIC CANS

Schaefer: Borbetomagus guitarist Donald Miller immediately engages in a conversation with me re: Big Red One. Then Sam Fuller in general. Backyard. Leaves changing. Some months post-Katrina. Borbeto, a "snuff jazz" trio, in town for WREK's Destroy All Music festival. Conversation lulls and Miller asks if I've got a beer for him. All I got is Schaefer, I say. Mmmm. Schaefer, he says. The beer that tastes like pennies.

Genesee: Tacky Party. Folks out of town. Coins rolled and turned into 15 cases of Genny. Not bad. P and I are dressed entirely alike in 70s suits, paisley ties wider than hammerhead. When the beer runs out, P pulls secret weapons from gymbag. Lemon extract? You gotta be fucking kidding. Not at all. Bums love it. Pure alcohol. Don't remember rest of the night and spent three days trying to get the lemon taste out of my throat. Wendy's chili - and copious amounts of Wendy's hot sauce - finally removed it.

Ballantine: Has that Zeppelin symbol on the label. Only drink Ballantine in St Simons. Only place I can find it. There's some ancient grocer that carries it. All of their carts are rusted from the salty air. A buddy's bachelor party sets us up in a beachside manor. R and I are sent on a food/beer/etc run. Hundreds of dollars later we're back in a borrowed car, smoking dope we found in the glove, decimating a six of Ballantine we'd bought seconds earlier. Zeppelin II in the CD player. We stay parked for its entirety.

High Life: I like buying those ponies. Think they're six ounces. Used to buy them when I'd wash the car. Figure I'd have a "little beer." Easy to drink. Quick drink. Listened to all of Melvins Gluey Porch Treatment's on the Volks' shitcanned stereo. Before I know it, 12 ponies are gone and I'm not so interested in washing the car.

Schlitz: T and I blow off the day with a 12 of Schlitz tallboys. A four hour asskicking at Risk. Backyard, mid-summer. Some shrubs via Humboldt County glassworks. I've never had my ass handed to me like this. Hear a noise. M, whom I haven't seen in probably 18 years, walks around the side of the house, 9mm drawn. He's a cop now. I looked you up on the Internet, he says, looking at the Humboldt County glassworks. Hmm. Schlitz, he says. Just the kiss of the hops, I say.

Ranier: Ranier Beer. K and I spent a New Year's Eve weekend in Seattle way back when with R & J. Must have gone through a two cases of this beer in two days. New Year's Day, sitting there with R and Bloody Mary. It's dark out, I said. Sun's going down. What the fuck time is it? Three p.m. R says. Welcome to the Pacific Northwest. Happy New Year.

Little Kings: Independence Day. Poolside. Barbecue. The crew is exposed to the horrors inflicted on KA Chapter, Stetson University. They shall remain unmentioned except the prediliction for laying genetalia on shoulders unawares. Too many men, too few women (isn't Rollins a hopskipjump?). Beer run. Two cases of Little Kings before 11:30 p.m. Three hours later, mixer run. J is pulled over. Son, how much have you had to drink? Officer, only five Little Kings.

Olympia: Pre-Bob Dylan. J shotguns case of Oly. Walk to Chastain augmented by psilocybin eating. Imitations of Chaka. Show starts. Hour later J spends all 20 sublime minutes of "Joey" puking on the lawn. Dylan never plays that tune. Wanna go to Waffle House? Play Bocephus' "Young Country" on juke. Five fucking times. Don't know who drove back.

Narragansett: Per dad - a New England breakfast consits of a shit, shower, shave and a pint of Narragansett embellished with a raw egg cracked into its foam. Is it good? If you like iron filings and raw egg, yeah. It's good. Fair well and ado to you fair Spanish ladies...

HANGOVER BEGONE

You've been drinking for 14 hours. Beers, Mezcal, maybe some glue. What can possibly make you a quarter human again? A massive plate of potatoes, eggs, cheese, and cactus. If you're thinking ahead, you put away some ground beef, steak, or pork from the night before. Go ahead and chop that up and season it. Three or four eggs to a pan, let them set. Add your meat. Brown chopped potatoes. Add minced onions - maybe two big ones. You need them. Some Monterey Jack on top and into a warm oven. Open a jar of jalapenos, of nopales.

If feeling particularly dented, crack a Tecate and mix 1/2 and 1/2 with Bloody Mary mix or tomato juice. Hangover begone.