Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York
It was gray out. The sky was darkening all around as we drove through a wasteland of urban sprawl shopping malls just outside of San Antonio. We were heading back home to Austin after another event – setting up lights for a young New York couple’s million dollar wedding reception at a Spanish Mission in the Hill Country of Texas. Seven straight days of work in the Texas heat. My body and head were heavy with fatigue. Storm clouds threatened on the horizon as Jimmy drove the white sedan, pushing the pedal and breaking the tired silence between us, “You ever heard of ayahuasca Corey?”
“No. Why? What is it?” I said, staring blankly into the distance.
Somber looking cars passed by in the opposite direction in a steady stream as traffic cleared ahead of us.
“It’s a South American hallucinogen used in shamanistic ceremonies. They call it ‘the vine of the soul’. I tried it a little while ago in Austin with a group of people and a shaman who were all in white robes in someone’s house on the south side of town. I met one of the guys at a bar one night. The stuff made me puke twice, then brought up a bunch of issues with me and my dad that I realized I needed to resolve. I don’t know why I thought of it just now. And I know that I just recently met you, but the thought that you should try it, just came to me,” he said as the rain started falling. “Somethin’ tells me you’d appreciate it.” I stared out the wet streaked window, fading into sleep, thinking of the French girl, Marie, from the New York design crew who I’d met on the job that week. I thought of the intensity of her eyes, and how I didn’t seem to choose the women that I fell for in my life, they just seemed to appear. And we barreled down the highway into the approaching darkness.
“Ayahuasca, huh?” I said before passing out.
A few days later Asa, my half Indian, fully crazy friend, came bounding up the stairs and across the landing to my second floor apartment.
“I’m going too!” he yelled before he even got to my open door. “Book me a goddamn ticket!” He stepped into my apartment wearing his uniform of black shoes, shorts and a gonzo t-shirt, his unruly black hair flailing behind him. “We were supposed to go on a fuckin’ road trip with the extra money from these last two jobs. And now you’re chasin’ some damn French woman to New York fuckin’ city. Jesus! Okay. But you’re not leavin’ me. I gotta woman there too. I’m goin’!”
“You sure?” I asked as he eyed me wildly, blocking the sun from my doorway.
“Yeah, I’m sure. You’re gonna need help on this one. She’s a French New Yorker. A horrible combination for a woman. You’re goin’ into the lion’s den on this one. You need backup. Plus, I wanna see Stephanie. Buy the goddamn tickets and I’ll pay you back! I don’t have a credit card.”
A week later I was standing in Marie’s apartment, a fourth floor, four room railcar walkup with turquoise walls not far from the Williamsburg Bridge. She lived in a neighborhood where the hipsters melded with little Puerto Rico. Spanish music and hip hop played out of nearby apartments.
Asa was somewhere in Manhattan with Stephanie, the girl he’d met on the same job that I’d met Marie on.
I opened the fridge in Marie's cramped kitchen looking for a beer. Near the back a small jar of brown liquid caught my attention. I pulled it out and looked at it, trying to figure out what it was. “What’s this sludge?” I yelled to Marie who was unpacking a suitcase, in her bedroom, at the other end of the apartment, her brown hair falling over her shoulders as she leaned over the her suitcase that lay on her bed. She turned and looked at me through two rooms, her petite frame tensing slightly as she turned and walked toward me. “That’s ayahuasca,” she said in her thick French accent as she came into the already overcrowded kitchen. “The guy who I am subleasing this apartment from brought it back from Brazil. Maybe you should try it some time. But not this stuff! It’s not mine.” Her accent lending a seriousness to her tone.
“That’s strange,” I said, putting it back in the fridge, an electric anxiety flooding me, “Jimmy mentioned this stuff to me just after I met you.”
The rain fell hard from the gray sky outside the windows the next day as I organized Marie’s library while she was at work, daydreaming as the rain poured down, picturing myself living there in the apartment with her, ensconced in Williamsburg, reading books, in love. And I thought of the brown sludge in the back of her refrigerator.
The next few days me, Marie, Asa and Stephanie drank our way through New York City, the Lower East Side, from a friend’s apartment where they tried to shave Asa’s ass, to dive bars throughout where Marie and Asa called each other ‘frog’ and ‘stupid redskin’, and I began to fall for Marie making hazy and crazed proclamations of drunken love.
It was our last night in New York City. Me, Marie, Asa and a buddy of ours from Austin who’d moved to Brooklyn the year before, drinking and listening to country music at Marie’s. We’d just recently introduced Marie to the sound, and she couldn’t get enough of the real stuff – Hank Williams Jr., Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, etc. Sinner/saintly music from red dirt America that seemed to coo to her slightly uptight French New Yorker aesthetics. Late into the night we turned the speakers up in her low lit apartment, toasted to life and danced in the tube like living room filled with books as the outlaw music played out of the open windows into the harsh concrete and steel night of Williamsburg.
Midnight approached and Marie went to get more beer from the corner store before they closed to keep the party going. When the door shut and she was gone I drunkenly leaned over and told Asa about the ayahuasca in the fridge. “What kind of jungle juice is that?” he asked. He’d never heard of it before, and his eyes went wild with the thought of a new drug as he brushed away the long black curls of hair falling around his face. “Let me see that shit,” he said as he got up and walked into the darkened kitchen. He opened the fridge and I reached in and pulled out the jar with the brown liquid goop buried in the back. His eyes narrowed in the dim light from the open refrigerator door as he took the jar from my hand and stared at the sludge. He sniffed it and cringed then downed half of it instantly, slamming what was left on the counter top. “Your turn,” he said unflinchingly. I looked at him. “Drink it buddy. Trust me,” he said smiling… And I drank it down.
Sometime later I found myself in the pitch black closet of a bathroom. I didn’t know what time it was or how long I’d been in there. I felt like I needed to throw up. I couldn’t tell if it was because of the drug or the beer or both. Whatever the reason was, I didn’t want it to come up as I figured that that would just make things worse. I took off my clothes and climbed into the shower where I sat on the floor letting the warm water wash over me, trying to determine if I was high or drunk. Then I heard Marie’s voice in the background sounding far away, searching for me, comforting. Suddenly she stepped through the darkness, as though it were a veil, and into the shower. An orange tunnel of light emanated from her stomach. LOVE. It was pure unfiltered love, spreading over me, through me, absorbing me, filling me. Her soft words penetrated me, comforting. Her hand stroked my hair reassuringly. And I melted in into the unconditional grace of her overpowering, overwhelming orange glowing, radiating, all encompassing love.
In the early morning I awoke to Asa standing over me. His hair seemed to be moving. “What are you doing?” I asked him. “Do you see them?” he wanted to know. “The little green men. They were peeking at me from the plants in the other room,” he said, then turned and walked away and I fell back to sleep. I woke again a little while later to Marie laying on top of me in bed, her blue eyes staring at me intently. Light poured in through the window above the rusted fire escape outside where I thought I saw a little green man looking at me. Tracers curved around the outlines of the room. Marie was dressed for work, glowering at me, “Did you drink it?” she demanded.
“Yes,” was all I could manage.
Her weight shifted off of me and as she stood and I remembered the orange tunnel of light, and the outpouring of love.
“Oofff, I can’t believe you. That was not mine. I have to explain it to him now. I can’t believe you!” she huffed.
“It was amazing,” I said and smiled, “you were pure love.”
Her stance softened.
“What did you see" she asked reluctantly?
“Pure love pouring out of you.”
“Really,” she said, “You have to tell me about it later. I have to go,” she said, fighting off a smile. “I can’t believe you drank it. You’re supposed to be with a shaman,” she said, then leaned in and kissed me, “You’re crazy.”
“I was with Asa. He’s my shaman,” I said, “You were pure love.”
She laughed and shook her head, then turned and left for work. And I fell back to sleep.
I woke up around noon.
Rain poured down from the desultory sky outside of the smudged windows. My head ached. The room crackled with a faint hum of a distant electricity. I looked around. The place was a mess. Beer bottles and clothes were strewn everywhere. A frantic panic gripped me. We had to get out of the city. We’d already missed our plane two days before. We’d missed work. We were running out of money and wearing out our welcome. I got up, threw on some clothes, walked through the room filled with plants and Marie’s desk to the room with the books and the couch where Asa slept and woke him up.
“We gotta go.”
His eyes tried to focus. “I know,” he said, “The room’s been movin’ on me. I’ve been hearing things. Somethin’s not right. I saw green men spying on me. We gotta get outta here.”
“Yeah, I saw one too.”
Within fifteen minutes we were packed out the door, drenched in rain heading toward the Port Authority and Greyhound.
In Manhattan crowds of sullen people under a sea of black umbrellas filled the streets. Cars honked and screeched. My senses seemed on edge as dark skyscrapers loomed overhead. “I don’t think I can make it,” I said.
“Hang in there buddy. I’ll getchya outta here,” he said as I ducked into a liquor store to buy some whiskey to wash away the hangover.
By the time we got to the Greyhound ticket office I was buzzed, and were soaked, frazzled and weary. We stood at the ticket window pooling our money, having trouble making simple additions. The stoic old man behind the counter watched us without concern and nodded as we counted, then took over for us and told us we had enough to get us to Oklahoma. We had to get back to Texas. But Asa was from Oklahoma. His younger brother lived there. Close enough. From there we’d figure it out.
After we bought the tickets we wandered the station in a dazed state confusion, disoriented and shaken. But as we huddled on the ground near a garbage can in the corner of the loud monolithic surroundings, out of the way of the other deranged and haggard passengers a shared sense of well being permeated us.
Asa looked at me cockeyed and smiling. “Do you feel it?” he asked.
“Yeah. I feel alright,” I smiled, and we laughed, as we knew that we should have felt fucked given our situation, not a dollar to our names.
“It’s gotta be that drug,” Asa said looking out into nothing, “I’m still tingling inside.”
As the bus hurtled across the land away from the chaotic city toward middle America we sweated out the toxins of the week, curled up in the back seat as the sun rose and set for seemingly days on end with a comforting yet maddening regularity. We were cramped and uncomfortable yet exhilarating and manically alive, laughing at the absurdity of our hungered and weary misery in the grand scheme of things, as somehow, perhaps because of the lingering effects of the drug, we knew that everything was as it should be.
During a ten hour layover in St. Louis we lay in the grass of a park and stared up at the dull glow of the afternoon sky. I felt like something had shifted in my life. And I knew that things were going to different somehow from then on. Something in the air. Something from the week before. Something in the drug.
Asa and I spent the day talking about the crazy paths of our pasts that had led us to meeting each other five years before, reliving the funniest of the stories from our stagehand days on the road in Texas touring with up and coming country acts. And as the light began to slowly diffuse to dusk and sketchy figures filled the park we talked and laughed and made grand plans that we’d soon get ourselves into, like seeing the ports of the world working as Merchant Marines, or working together on fishing boats in Alaska, then raising dogs and running the Iditarod. And as much as I wanted to believe in the thought of adventure that being with Asa always promised I somehow knew that none it would ever come about, and a sadness followed me as we head back toward the Greyhound station beneath the slowly darkening sky.
And I knew as the bus plunged into the heartland toward the fading red orange horizon that things would never be the same for me or Asa, and that I’d chase that vision of love that’d poured out of Marie.
Five months later I had moved to Brooklyn with Marie. We were visiting Ecuador together, staying in the Andes in a small town at the foot of an active volcano. I was working on a book about all my sad and crazy years when I got the email that Asa had overdosed during SXSW in Austin. ‘Well, it happened,’ the line from Jimmy had read, and I thought about all the adventures that we’d never get to have, and I cried as I wished him a safe journey to the Great Buffalo in the sky to whom he often prayed. He was a good friend and better traveling companion, my foul-mouthed shaman who’d inadvertently guided me from one shore to the other in the ongoing struggle of my life. And I miss him dearly.
Showing posts with label The Beginning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Beginning. Show all posts
Friday, 13 August 2010
Sunday, 22 February 2009
Foof...
Helotes, Texas
Once again we were all shooed away as the wedding party was likely to spill over at any moment into the courtyard where we had posted up. So we took our drinks and headed out back behind the catering tent where the workers party was still going strong around my car. And at some point during our backwoods party as we continued to get drunk Marie ended up with a full bottle of Tequila in her hand and one of my amigos prompted me to express to Marie how I felt about her. I told her that I loved her and that I wanted to marry her. To which she stood up, indignant, and said in a French accented fury “Oh! You shut up! You are crazy!” then opened the bottle of Tequila and began to pour it over my head, telling me to shut up as everyone howled with fits of laughter at the scene.
But I wasn’t deterred or to be outdone. And as I took my Tequila soaked t-shirt off I remembered the handcuffs that I had stashed away in my car from my days as a Corrections Officer and went to get them as I threw my Tequila drenched shirt over a tree limb to dry out. I’d show her who was the fucking boss, I thought, as I pulled the cuffs out of the middle console and latched one end on to my left wrist and walked back over to sit down next to her on the ground as the music blasted and the commotion of conversation distracted everyone from me. As I sat back down on the ground I immediately slapped the other cuff on Marie’s right wrist to which she jumped up screaming “Oh! You did not! Oh! You did not! What are you doing?! You get this off of me right now!” And everyone screamed with laughter.
I wasn’t going to stop.
I loved her.
And I told her that I did. I told her that she wasn’t getting away, that I was going to marry her, and that the cuffs weren’t going to come off until she said that she would marry me and that she loved me too! To which she finally consented after much protesting and shrieking in French.
As I took the cuffs off of her as my Asa pronounced us man and wife.
We all continued to drink and get stoned as the wedding party wound itself down and Marie and I decided to go and take a look at what remained. There wasn’t much left. A weeks worth of work was abandoned and forgotten in a few hours. There was impermanence to it all that I despised.
And as Marie and I walked backed towards my car under the full moon, past the catering tent we stumbled and fell into a tarp that was laying next to the industrial sized dumpster that had collected the trash of the week. We began laughing as we tried to free ourselves only to get more and more tangled up as we rolled around on the ground and finally began kissing. She kissed me like no one had ever kissed me before, long kisses pressing her mouth against mine, threatening to suffocate me. She kissed me with an intensity that bordered on desperation. And as I tried to figure out how to get her clothes off and had my hand up her shirt Asa and his girl pulled the tarp back to see what was going on. They laughed as I told them to go away and pulled the tarp back over our heads.
And that was it.
The next morning as I left her Motel room I told her that I’d love her forever to which she shrugged her shoulders and said “Foof…”
Love
Once again we were all shooed away as the wedding party was likely to spill over at any moment into the courtyard where we had posted up. So we took our drinks and headed out back behind the catering tent where the workers party was still going strong around my car. And at some point during our backwoods party as we continued to get drunk Marie ended up with a full bottle of Tequila in her hand and one of my amigos prompted me to express to Marie how I felt about her. I told her that I loved her and that I wanted to marry her. To which she stood up, indignant, and said in a French accented fury “Oh! You shut up! You are crazy!” then opened the bottle of Tequila and began to pour it over my head, telling me to shut up as everyone howled with fits of laughter at the scene.
But I wasn’t deterred or to be outdone. And as I took my Tequila soaked t-shirt off I remembered the handcuffs that I had stashed away in my car from my days as a Corrections Officer and went to get them as I threw my Tequila drenched shirt over a tree limb to dry out. I’d show her who was the fucking boss, I thought, as I pulled the cuffs out of the middle console and latched one end on to my left wrist and walked back over to sit down next to her on the ground as the music blasted and the commotion of conversation distracted everyone from me. As I sat back down on the ground I immediately slapped the other cuff on Marie’s right wrist to which she jumped up screaming “Oh! You did not! Oh! You did not! What are you doing?! You get this off of me right now!” And everyone screamed with laughter.
I wasn’t going to stop.
I loved her.
And I told her that I did. I told her that she wasn’t getting away, that I was going to marry her, and that the cuffs weren’t going to come off until she said that she would marry me and that she loved me too! To which she finally consented after much protesting and shrieking in French.
As I took the cuffs off of her as my Asa pronounced us man and wife.
We all continued to drink and get stoned as the wedding party wound itself down and Marie and I decided to go and take a look at what remained. There wasn’t much left. A weeks worth of work was abandoned and forgotten in a few hours. There was impermanence to it all that I despised.
And as Marie and I walked backed towards my car under the full moon, past the catering tent we stumbled and fell into a tarp that was laying next to the industrial sized dumpster that had collected the trash of the week. We began laughing as we tried to free ourselves only to get more and more tangled up as we rolled around on the ground and finally began kissing. She kissed me like no one had ever kissed me before, long kisses pressing her mouth against mine, threatening to suffocate me. She kissed me with an intensity that bordered on desperation. And as I tried to figure out how to get her clothes off and had my hand up her shirt Asa and his girl pulled the tarp back to see what was going on. They laughed as I told them to go away and pulled the tarp back over our heads.
And that was it.
The next morning as I left her Motel room I told her that I’d love her forever to which she shrugged her shoulders and said “Foof…”
Love
Saturday, 7 February 2009
Ray Of Hope
Helotes, Texas
The day of the big Jewish wedding reception came quickly. The bands were pulling in and shuttle bus loads of Jewish wedding goers began rolling up. And by the time we'd put our finishing lighting touches on the event and'd been shooed out of sight by the party planners, Asa and I were ready to get drunk. Jimmy, our truck driver Mike, and Nick our fearlessly stoned leader were going to stay on call for the event in case of trouble. Asa and I, however, were going to get drunk and hopefully cause trouble.
So we got in my car sped towards the nearest liquor store a half an hour away in a barren wasteland of strip malls on the outskirts of San Antonio where we stocked up on “Sippin’ Sauce” for Jimmy – Johnny Walker Black Label; cheap beer for Asa, Nick, and Mike, while I stocked up on Blue Moon beer. My body was so wrecked from the week of 12-16 hour days and I had such a thirst that by the time Asa and I'd made it back to the site I'd dipped into Jimmy’s sippin’ sauce and'd finished off more than a few of my Blue Moons.
It was a full moon out. And it was going to be one of those nights. It was in the air.
By the time the wedding party was in full effect we were having our own party out in the woods behind the catering tent and band dressing rooms. The doors to my car were open with the music blasting and most of the people from the different crews that'd worked on putting the event together were gathered in a semi-circle on the ground like we were at a keg party in high school passing bottles and joints.
In the midst of this Asa and I decided to go and scout out the party and get a look at the wealthy and bored crowd. After deciding that we weren’t missing anything by not having any money we walked the grounds stumbling upon Marie and some of her co-workers ensconced in a corner of a courtyard in an outdoor sitting area under strands of string lights. Marie's tanned skin gleamed in the slight haze of my alcohol buzz and I threw myself down beside her on the love seat that she was reclining languidly on. And by the time that I'd told her gay co-worker that I'd marry him if I were gay too Marie'd gone to get us a couple drinks from the bar. And I saw my opening. There was a ray of hope as she sauntered back with our whiskey on the rocks.
I was going to get laid.
LOve
The day of the big Jewish wedding reception came quickly. The bands were pulling in and shuttle bus loads of Jewish wedding goers began rolling up. And by the time we'd put our finishing lighting touches on the event and'd been shooed out of sight by the party planners, Asa and I were ready to get drunk. Jimmy, our truck driver Mike, and Nick our fearlessly stoned leader were going to stay on call for the event in case of trouble. Asa and I, however, were going to get drunk and hopefully cause trouble.
So we got in my car sped towards the nearest liquor store a half an hour away in a barren wasteland of strip malls on the outskirts of San Antonio where we stocked up on “Sippin’ Sauce” for Jimmy – Johnny Walker Black Label; cheap beer for Asa, Nick, and Mike, while I stocked up on Blue Moon beer. My body was so wrecked from the week of 12-16 hour days and I had such a thirst that by the time Asa and I'd made it back to the site I'd dipped into Jimmy’s sippin’ sauce and'd finished off more than a few of my Blue Moons.
It was a full moon out. And it was going to be one of those nights. It was in the air.
By the time the wedding party was in full effect we were having our own party out in the woods behind the catering tent and band dressing rooms. The doors to my car were open with the music blasting and most of the people from the different crews that'd worked on putting the event together were gathered in a semi-circle on the ground like we were at a keg party in high school passing bottles and joints.
In the midst of this Asa and I decided to go and scout out the party and get a look at the wealthy and bored crowd. After deciding that we weren’t missing anything by not having any money we walked the grounds stumbling upon Marie and some of her co-workers ensconced in a corner of a courtyard in an outdoor sitting area under strands of string lights. Marie's tanned skin gleamed in the slight haze of my alcohol buzz and I threw myself down beside her on the love seat that she was reclining languidly on. And by the time that I'd told her gay co-worker that I'd marry him if I were gay too Marie'd gone to get us a couple drinks from the bar. And I saw my opening. There was a ray of hope as she sauntered back with our whiskey on the rocks.
I was going to get laid.
LOve
On Her Scent!
Helotes, Texas
The rest of the week that we spent on the job at the old haunted military fort I tried to seduce Marie without even the slightest response or acknowledgment from her. As far as I could tell, to her, I didn’t exist. Asa'd made better inroads than me, which was surprising, considering he is a beast of a man without a conscience or a soul. Nonetheless he'd managed through his powers of talk, his comedic skills and his ample stash of opiates to wrangle one of cutest girls from the fancy design firm into our room nightly for a few beers, a few pills and a little making out. It was disgusting to behold. The first time they made out in front of me in the other bed I thought that I would hurl. No man should have to witness Asa Tom manhandling a woman. And despite the fact that the girl was able to coax Marie to our room for some of Jimmy’s stash of herb I still wasn’t making out. I threw everything at her, my whole arsenal of charm, wit, comedy, verbal wrangling, seductive looks and poses, my 10th grade French and even a few thinly veiled threats to simply fuck her. None of it was working. The best I could seem to do was to simply get her to laugh now and then. Asa, on the other hand was a magician, and is probably one of the funniest people on the face of the earth. He managed to make the girls snort with laughter on more than one occasion. Without him I would have been dead in the water. And between the three of us: Jimmy “The Kid”, Asa “The Indian”, and me, we managed to keep them entertained and stoned enough to keep coming around long enough for Asa to touch tit and for me to seem like a fairly harmless guy. But in fact, the only harmless guy in the room was our fearlessly stoned, middle aged, married crew leader who got so high that he sat in the corner and giggled like one of the girls. And although I don’t think that Marie even knew my name at that point, I wasn’t deterred. I had her scent.
LOve
The rest of the week that we spent on the job at the old haunted military fort I tried to seduce Marie without even the slightest response or acknowledgment from her. As far as I could tell, to her, I didn’t exist. Asa'd made better inroads than me, which was surprising, considering he is a beast of a man without a conscience or a soul. Nonetheless he'd managed through his powers of talk, his comedic skills and his ample stash of opiates to wrangle one of cutest girls from the fancy design firm into our room nightly for a few beers, a few pills and a little making out. It was disgusting to behold. The first time they made out in front of me in the other bed I thought that I would hurl. No man should have to witness Asa Tom manhandling a woman. And despite the fact that the girl was able to coax Marie to our room for some of Jimmy’s stash of herb I still wasn’t making out. I threw everything at her, my whole arsenal of charm, wit, comedy, verbal wrangling, seductive looks and poses, my 10th grade French and even a few thinly veiled threats to simply fuck her. None of it was working. The best I could seem to do was to simply get her to laugh now and then. Asa, on the other hand was a magician, and is probably one of the funniest people on the face of the earth. He managed to make the girls snort with laughter on more than one occasion. Without him I would have been dead in the water. And between the three of us: Jimmy “The Kid”, Asa “The Indian”, and me, we managed to keep them entertained and stoned enough to keep coming around long enough for Asa to touch tit and for me to seem like a fairly harmless guy. But in fact, the only harmless guy in the room was our fearlessly stoned, middle aged, married crew leader who got so high that he sat in the corner and giggled like one of the girls. And although I don’t think that Marie even knew my name at that point, I wasn’t deterred. I had her scent.
LOve
Friday, 6 February 2009
How I Met Marie
Helotes, Texas
I met Marie at a job for a fancy New York Jewish wedding reception in Helotes, Texas. I was working for the lighting company for the event. She was working for the design company.
Helotes is just outside of San Antonio and the event was at an old Spanish military fort where Grace Kelley had honeymooned. More recently Ava Longoria and Tony Parker'd their wedding reception there that was featured in all the gossip rags that dominate the grocery checkout line. Supposedly the place was haunted. It had a history, a history that we'd add to in our own derelict way.
A friend of mine'd gotten me and another friend on the job. The hours were going to be long, the money was going to be under the table and the room and board were going to be provided for.
It was a dream job for us.
We’d decided in my car on the way down from Austin to Helotes during the hour and a half ride at 6 o’ clock in the fucking morning after loading up the box truck full of our shit that it was going to be the best week of our lives.
We all hated the work. But we were all broke. We needed the money. We needed the job. And we were going to make the best of it.
It was me Asa and Jimmy in the car on the way down - the three fucking deranged amigos.
We’d just finished working Austin City Limits less than five days before.
The job was going to be long hours and grueling work but we needed the money. We’d each spent all of our money that we’d made from the ACL on past due bills, opiate habits, alcohol and weed, collectively and respectively. We’d all gotten caught up and back to zero in our lives and the Helotes job would put us into the black.
When we arrived at the job site the sun was just coming up, there was dew on the ground and dread in the car about starting the work. Fortunately breakfast was being made for us which would buy us a little time before we had to start lifting shit. Unfortunately the old woman who was cooking for us camp style was completely incompetent. She was a mess and so was our breakfast. But it gave us some time to bitch and whine and stuff our faces before our fearlessly stoned crew leader started telling us what to do.
Once the sun was up and hot enough to kill the dew we were told to go to work. Which was fine. We’d gone prepared. We’d bought dozens and dozens of Redline energy drinks. They were like drinking liquid crystal methamphetamine. And, besides that, we had The Great Buffalo on our side. The Great Buffalo was our great spirit in the sky. Asa, who was half Cherokee Indian had introduced us to The Great Buffalo during the Austin City Limits festival. He'd gotten us through with flying colors. And we were sure He would not fail us again.
We'd been working for a day and a half before Marie rolled onto the scene. Jimmy and I were standing in the sun trying to figure out how to do something or other when a white van pulled up at ninety miles an hour blaring hip hop and blowing a dust cloud over the both of us. She stepped out with a cigarette dangling out of her mouth like a fucking desperado, wearing shining blue pants that were tucked into her big black boots riding boots. When she spoke I had no idea what in the fuck she said or where she was from. When I asked her she looked at me as though I was the most retarded person on the planet as she blew smoke from her nose and said – France – with as little enthusiasm as someone could possibly muster for a response. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. She looked like a Picasso, round but angular, soft but with an edge. She glanced at me briefly. There was a slight buzzing in my ears as I stood transfixed by her under the hot Texas sun. The air around her took on a crystalline appearance. Time seemed to slow in the blazing heat. And I knew that I was in trouble. She had one hand on her hip and the other pulling incessantly on the cigarette lounging in the corner of her mouth as the sun glinted off of her brown hair. Her eyes were pools of endless blue. She was bewitching. She had me fucked up.
As she and the other girl left in the big white van leaving us in a dust cloud of blaring hip hop I told Jimmy that I was in love, and that I was going to marry and fuck that woman.
“Good luck Corey. I hope that happens for you.”
LOve
I met Marie at a job for a fancy New York Jewish wedding reception in Helotes, Texas. I was working for the lighting company for the event. She was working for the design company.
Helotes is just outside of San Antonio and the event was at an old Spanish military fort where Grace Kelley had honeymooned. More recently Ava Longoria and Tony Parker'd their wedding reception there that was featured in all the gossip rags that dominate the grocery checkout line. Supposedly the place was haunted. It had a history, a history that we'd add to in our own derelict way.
A friend of mine'd gotten me and another friend on the job. The hours were going to be long, the money was going to be under the table and the room and board were going to be provided for.
It was a dream job for us.
We’d decided in my car on the way down from Austin to Helotes during the hour and a half ride at 6 o’ clock in the fucking morning after loading up the box truck full of our shit that it was going to be the best week of our lives.
We all hated the work. But we were all broke. We needed the money. We needed the job. And we were going to make the best of it.
It was me Asa and Jimmy in the car on the way down - the three fucking deranged amigos.
We’d just finished working Austin City Limits less than five days before.
The job was going to be long hours and grueling work but we needed the money. We’d each spent all of our money that we’d made from the ACL on past due bills, opiate habits, alcohol and weed, collectively and respectively. We’d all gotten caught up and back to zero in our lives and the Helotes job would put us into the black.
When we arrived at the job site the sun was just coming up, there was dew on the ground and dread in the car about starting the work. Fortunately breakfast was being made for us which would buy us a little time before we had to start lifting shit. Unfortunately the old woman who was cooking for us camp style was completely incompetent. She was a mess and so was our breakfast. But it gave us some time to bitch and whine and stuff our faces before our fearlessly stoned crew leader started telling us what to do.
Once the sun was up and hot enough to kill the dew we were told to go to work. Which was fine. We’d gone prepared. We’d bought dozens and dozens of Redline energy drinks. They were like drinking liquid crystal methamphetamine. And, besides that, we had The Great Buffalo on our side. The Great Buffalo was our great spirit in the sky. Asa, who was half Cherokee Indian had introduced us to The Great Buffalo during the Austin City Limits festival. He'd gotten us through with flying colors. And we were sure He would not fail us again.
We'd been working for a day and a half before Marie rolled onto the scene. Jimmy and I were standing in the sun trying to figure out how to do something or other when a white van pulled up at ninety miles an hour blaring hip hop and blowing a dust cloud over the both of us. She stepped out with a cigarette dangling out of her mouth like a fucking desperado, wearing shining blue pants that were tucked into her big black boots riding boots. When she spoke I had no idea what in the fuck she said or where she was from. When I asked her she looked at me as though I was the most retarded person on the planet as she blew smoke from her nose and said – France – with as little enthusiasm as someone could possibly muster for a response. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. She looked like a Picasso, round but angular, soft but with an edge. She glanced at me briefly. There was a slight buzzing in my ears as I stood transfixed by her under the hot Texas sun. The air around her took on a crystalline appearance. Time seemed to slow in the blazing heat. And I knew that I was in trouble. She had one hand on her hip and the other pulling incessantly on the cigarette lounging in the corner of her mouth as the sun glinted off of her brown hair. Her eyes were pools of endless blue. She was bewitching. She had me fucked up.
As she and the other girl left in the big white van leaving us in a dust cloud of blaring hip hop I told Jimmy that I was in love, and that I was going to marry and fuck that woman.
“Good luck Corey. I hope that happens for you.”
LOve
How The Name Of This Blog Came About
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York
It was on my second trip to New York to visit Marie that the name for this blog came about. It was my last night in town before I flew back to Austin the next morning. Marie came home to find me on the couch in the dark. She asked me if I was okay. I was fine I said, just a little hungover from the night before, sweating the spirits out, not wanting to go back home.
I'd missed my flight the night before as we'd gotten drunk in Manhattan at The Gramercy Park Hotel drinking Bohemian Sidecars that I'd ordered like Tequilla shots in Mexico not bothering to check the price of each one that turned out to be $15 a pop. I'd learned my lesson about ordering drinks in Manhattan - I shouldn't do it.
I was feeling sad about leaving her again. I was in love. I knew that for sure. And when I'd come back to the apartment the night before after missing my flight to find her in the kitchen cooking me dinner and crying I knew that she was in love too.
She said to get up that she had a friend who she hadn't seen in years who was having a going away dinner around the corner and that we were going, that she'd treat.
The guy's name was Francoise. He was from South Africa. He was friend's with Marie's second ex-husband (not technically ex as they still weren't divorced after 7 years, but close enough for me), and he and Marie were born on the same day. There were around ten to twelve people that'd showed up at a low lit place only a few blocks from Marie's apartment. After introductions were made we ordered food and drinks and joined in on some conversation that revolved mainly around film making, as Francoise was a filmmaker, and so were some of the others. The setting and the conversation were all very New York to me and seemed a long way from the usual absurd and over the top drug and alcohol stories that seemed to dominate my life and conversations in Austin.
At some point during the night when people started to clear out her friend Francoise came over to us and gave us his undivided attention as a few of the others that were left talked on the other side of the table. After a few minutes of talking he looked at me then looked at Marie and said that it was obvious that we were in love. He looked at us again then asked Marie how long we'd been dating or seeing each other, or what it was were doing? And I laughed as I knew what was coming - Marie did not like "us" and whatever the fuck it was that we were doing to be classified in any way. He looked at me as I laughed. I shrugged my shoulders. I wasn't going to touch it. It was a sore spot with Marie. I'd been through it in our short time together. I'd often made the mistake, out of habit, of referring to her as my "girlfriend" to which she would turn on me scornfully and say in her French huff, "Oh, I am not you're girlfriend." So I shut up and looked at Francoise and shrugged my shoulders again and smiled, looking at Marie. I liked putting her on the spot with Francoise. I wanted to see her squirm a little. She blushed, and slightly annoyed by it all said, "We'll I'm doing it. Whatever it is. I'm doing it..." And I said triumphantly that it was settled. She was the girl that I was doing in New York. Francoise and I laughed. Marie rolled her eyes as usual. And it was settled.
LOve
It was on my second trip to New York to visit Marie that the name for this blog came about. It was my last night in town before I flew back to Austin the next morning. Marie came home to find me on the couch in the dark. She asked me if I was okay. I was fine I said, just a little hungover from the night before, sweating the spirits out, not wanting to go back home.
I'd missed my flight the night before as we'd gotten drunk in Manhattan at The Gramercy Park Hotel drinking Bohemian Sidecars that I'd ordered like Tequilla shots in Mexico not bothering to check the price of each one that turned out to be $15 a pop. I'd learned my lesson about ordering drinks in Manhattan - I shouldn't do it.
I was feeling sad about leaving her again. I was in love. I knew that for sure. And when I'd come back to the apartment the night before after missing my flight to find her in the kitchen cooking me dinner and crying I knew that she was in love too.
She said to get up that she had a friend who she hadn't seen in years who was having a going away dinner around the corner and that we were going, that she'd treat.
The guy's name was Francoise. He was from South Africa. He was friend's with Marie's second ex-husband (not technically ex as they still weren't divorced after 7 years, but close enough for me), and he and Marie were born on the same day. There were around ten to twelve people that'd showed up at a low lit place only a few blocks from Marie's apartment. After introductions were made we ordered food and drinks and joined in on some conversation that revolved mainly around film making, as Francoise was a filmmaker, and so were some of the others. The setting and the conversation were all very New York to me and seemed a long way from the usual absurd and over the top drug and alcohol stories that seemed to dominate my life and conversations in Austin.
At some point during the night when people started to clear out her friend Francoise came over to us and gave us his undivided attention as a few of the others that were left talked on the other side of the table. After a few minutes of talking he looked at me then looked at Marie and said that it was obvious that we were in love. He looked at us again then asked Marie how long we'd been dating or seeing each other, or what it was were doing? And I laughed as I knew what was coming - Marie did not like "us" and whatever the fuck it was that we were doing to be classified in any way. He looked at me as I laughed. I shrugged my shoulders. I wasn't going to touch it. It was a sore spot with Marie. I'd been through it in our short time together. I'd often made the mistake, out of habit, of referring to her as my "girlfriend" to which she would turn on me scornfully and say in her French huff, "Oh, I am not you're girlfriend." So I shut up and looked at Francoise and shrugged my shoulders again and smiled, looking at Marie. I liked putting her on the spot with Francoise. I wanted to see her squirm a little. She blushed, and slightly annoyed by it all said, "We'll I'm doing it. Whatever it is. I'm doing it..." And I said triumphantly that it was settled. She was the girl that I was doing in New York. Francoise and I laughed. Marie rolled her eyes as usual. And it was settled.
LOve
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