More new stuff. Your thoughts? ------- Then there was the day when I was finally accepted by the artists. A lot of their trash was hazardous materials. “Dr. Junk,” an artist with a periwinkle blue mohawk hailed from the goth-inspired and gloomy domain. “Climb aboard, we have some fine bud for you.” The name of the artist’s vessel changed frequently. On that memorable morning, it was Picasso’s Ear. Other times it was Creep or Jodie Foster’s Navy or Schoolyard Massacre. Every new name was posted on a chalk board above the diving deck, the previous incarnations erased and forgotten. I climbed aboard and viewed the works in progress. Here, a large muddled piece where the artist’s blood has been mixed with the watercolors and spattered across the canvas. There, a silk-screen area churning out glow-in-the-dark agitprop posters for the “wheat pasting team”. We smoked pot and bullshitted about the abysmal state of life. The usual emo shit. I left with a couple of joints in my pocket. Area B-9 was a co-dependent fun-loving community, and we floated through those lazy summer days and foggy nights on the lolling tides of the bay. For recreation, I paddled the kayak through the undulating waters and my shoulders and arms became more muscled and sculpted. I found a full body suit, fins and a mask on the Run Aground Sue, taught myself how to snorkel, and was introduced to a strange underwater world of submerged wrecks. No coral reefs. No brightly colored fish. Only corroded jagged metal and barnacle encrusted ruins, eel grass and unknown dangers shifting in the cold currents. The recyclables salvaged from my neighbor’s garbage provided pocket change and I augmented the coin with part-time jobs. Data entry for an insurance company one day. Cold calls for a carpet cleaning company the next. Jobs that paid $50 after taxes at the end of the four-hour work day. I first met her at a dwarf self defense class. Not a class for defense from ankle-biters, but a class where dwarves and midgets learn to defend themselves from us. Normal sized people. Normal sized people who might decide to attack a smaller person. I was the classroom’s heavily padded punching dummy. A snowman wearing a hockey goalie’s face-mask. The part-time pay helped support my habits. I have a habit of writing. I drink sometimes, too. Dwarf self defense class is where they’re taught to kick, punch and head-butt. Dwarves are short but they are tough. They’re short which means they’re crotch tall to me when they’re kicking and punching and head-butting. They’re tough which means my nuts were sore at the end of the day even with the padding and a sports cup. Talk about earning fifty bucks the hard way. Her name tag read “Hello. My name is.....Vessica”. It wasn’t just the dwarves or midgets over the course of four hours, but also an assault by brown-uniformed girls and blue-uniformed boys. A phalanx of loud children gleefully and repeatedly kicking and head-butting the scary punching dummy. My name tag read “Hello. My name is....Danger Stranger”. I never saw her again after our brief and violent encounter. She never showed up at any of the soirees on Possy’s or graced a bar stool at Ye Olde Salt. How could I remember her even after all that torture? Easy. She was a perfectly proportioned woman other than the fact she was slightly taller than one of those expensive and disturbing “life-sized” dolls. The kind with human hair and a painted porcelain face. Except this doll had skin the color of caramel and a face like Halle Berry. For real. When you think about it, having a doll-sized version of Halle Berry head-butt you repeatedly in the nuts is not the worst way to earn fifty bucks. Weeks later, we met again at the recycling center on 13th Street.
Posted on: Sat, 07 Sep 2013 01:25:36 +0000
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