vr
a novel
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
June 1997
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
From: Nichelle
Date: 1 June 1997
Subject: The "She's Too Fat" Polka
We're all fucked up. Every single fucking one of us is fucked up. We either
whack off too much, drink too much, use too much heroin, chain smoke, rape
little church boys up the ass, whatever. Some of us have eating disorders
too. The only difference is that the ones who eat too much look like fucking
pigs. If only every ugly characteristic and habit was reflected in the face,
and in the body... We've all got fucking blood all over our God damned hands.
At least fucking ArchDeluxe isn't here to tell me how fucking normal she is.
Peek into the window of any house, on any street. Tell me what you see.
I didn't want to write this e-mail, and I wouldn't have if Gabriel hadn't
kicked me in the back and said "Fuck you, cunt" when I rolled him over. When
he's drunk, he groans and yells until he can fall asleep. He thrashes around
in the bed, kicks, rolls around, sometimes falls off. Sometimes, while he's
sleeping, I've got a stash of goodies hidden out in my backpack, and I eat
it all up while he's dreaming about slender sorority girls. He keeps saying
he doesn't like sex any more. I want him, he doesn't want me, and we're both
going blind whacking off in the shower. I wonder if he has to close his eyes
and think of someone/thing else to even get it up.
So we had a big fight. I've been uptight and bitchy. I'm nervous about the
move. I said something needs to be done about our sex life. I even asked him
how often he used to eat out his other girlfriends. "What am I supposed to
tell you? Every time I could get them alone. Every time they took their pants
off. Three times a day." I don't even know if he knows how to do it right.
He does it like a kid eats the cold vegetables left over on his plate. Just
eat it as fast as possible and get it over with.
It isn't my intention to criticize Gabriel all night long. He's a big, bad
motherfucker. He was "shocked by my body when he saw it and is still shocked
by it." But he has stuck with me for over a year. He never shipped me back.
A big problem like obesity isn't just one person's problem. It not only affects
my sex life, it affects my friendships, my work, my clarinet playing, everything.
Everybody I've ever known well has had at least one bad habit or trait, usually
a collection. Anyone I know who hasn't got one is someone I just don't know
well enough yet.
I don't want to fight any more. I don't mean to stab you in the back. If
I say ugly things about you in this letter, it is only to make the point that
we're all difficult to live with in one way or another. I want you to live
with me. I want you to come with me to Seattle. Our sex life is fucked up
as long as I'm fat. That's just the way it is- neither of us is really comfortable
with my body. It shocks me too. I'm trying. I'll try harder. Remember what
you told me before I came here? "You can work on your eating and I'll work
on my drinking." I hope neither of us is giving up.
Nichelle
From: Nichelle
Date: 1 June 1997
Subject: (no subject)
After what you said about taking abuse on the list, that might have been
a pretty mean letter. Sweetheart, I never wanted to write to the world. I
love you. I jumped 150 times this morning. I'm doing well. I need your help.
Please don't be angry- I was tired last night. It's been a tough week.
Nichelle
From: SAGReiss
Date: 4 June 1997
Subject: Discography
Bartok, Bela Sonata for two pianos and percussion
Berg, Alban Fuenf Orchesterlieder nach Ansichtskartentexten von Peter Altenberg
Ives, Charles Symphony No. 2
Orff, Carl Carmina Burana
Schoenberg, Arnold Pierrot Lunaire
Shostakovich, Dmitri Suite on verses of Michelangelo
Shostakovich, Dmitri Symphony No. 7 "Leningrad"
Stravinsky, Igor Pulcinella
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: SAGReiss
Date: 5 June 1997
Subject: Famous last words
The last man I saw as I was walking out the door was the braindead busboy:
"Where did you go, Florida, Mars?" "I went to the Virgin Islands, Mark. I
wanted to meet someone like you." Those motherfuckers owned my balls for two
years. That's it. I've had enough, as one waitress famouly said when told
there were no bananas. I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner, Calamity Kate,
but I wanted to leave with quiet dignity. I've seen so many people try to
quit and get screwed, fired or fucked. The letter is in the mail. A few last,
funny stories from Hell. Jim the bartender has only one topic of conversation,
his drinking, which seems like a major-league problem to me. He takes Prozac
for anxiety, as he calls it. He says it's all because he was raised at the
House of Providence by nuns who beat his orphan ass. He's a big man, well
over six feet, close to three hundred pounds. I don't know. Thoughts race
through my mind too fast to write down, or perhaps my concentration is fucked.
I'm so nervous about this quitting shit, but it's done now. Holly trying
to get yet another bf arrested at the hotel. He works in accounting, a Cuban
or Puerto Rican or whatever, like everyone who fucks her white-trash ass.
Apparently he grabbed her by the snatch in front of three hundred engineers
and screamed: "You fucking whore." Whatever, we've seen this three or four
times before. Brian, the fat room service gay boy, told me as I went to pick
up my check that he had put his fist through the computer screen at work
and made up some bullshit lie to tell Slammy. He's not the first to have
hammered our chicken-shit Unix machines. I did briefly see the cunt, but
I pretended not to notice. I was talking to Mark, the room service gay boy.
I had brought down a tray I found in the hallway: "You have to do my sidework
when I come back." "Just put it anywhere in the kitchen. Don't break it down."
I didn't. I can't complain. I've taken more than fifty thousand dollars out
of that shitty hotel. I leave under my own terms. I think they'll pay me
the last hundred and fifty dollars. I'm sorry I haven't been writing. I've
been trying to rest up, relax, get drunk, whatever. We've been a little stressed
out about the move. Things won't get back to normal until we drive across
the land, find a flat in Seattle, get jobs, Nichelle gets orgasmized at school.
Things should be under control by my birthday, if not sooner. My new e-mail
address will be at Blarg. The MSN account is always good as a back-up. I
really haven't used hotmail yet. I'm going to see about forwarding e-mail
and the web site from Dreamscape. Maybe I'll use the typer to keep records
of our trip. Maybe Nichelle will take pictures of me and negatron passed
out with Matilda in Minot. Maybe we'll get to Seattle...
Apartment 7
1009 Madison Street
Syracuse, NY 13210
5 June 1997
Lowell Beebe-Center
Sheraton University Hotel
801 University Avenue
Syracuse, NY 13210
Lowell,
Please accept my resignation. I shall not be returning to work on Saturday
14 June 1997 nor thereafter. I am still owed one week of vested vacation pay.
Thank you for your help in taking care of this matter.
Respectfully,
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
cc: Mike, Tammy, Pat
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: SAGReiss
Date: 7 June 1997
Subject: Two tails
A quick note. I thought we'd look at these two pieces of rhetorical bombast
which Nichelle and I have talked about briefly. Please give us your thoughts,
or I'll give you mine, before or after our hiatus (Tuesday 17 June through...)
Keep the faith.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch
of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything
before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we
were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so. far like
the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its
being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison
only.
(I can't answer for the text, especially the punctuation, but Chas was not
very good at that anyway...)
It is now the fall of my second year in Paris. I was sent here for a reason
I have not yet been able to fathom.
I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. A
year ago, six months ago, I thought I was an artist. I no longer think about
it, I AM. Everything that was literature has fallen away from me. There are
no more books to be written, thank God.
This then? This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character.
This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged
insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man,
Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will. I am going to sing for you,
a little off key perhaps, but I will sing. I will sing while you croak, I
will dance over your dirty corpse....
To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and
a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordian, or
a guitar. The essential thing is to WANT to sing. This then is a song. I am
singing.
(That is the text as best I can type it, without tabs which get fucked up
on the 'net, with CAPS for italics, and I'm unsure of the spacing of the suspension
points. Nichelle is bugging me about the pizza. Oh well. If anyone has the
text of John Keats' "What the Thrush Said" handy, I'd like a look. I saw
a beautiful extract, and Nichelle has packed up the few anthologies we've
got. Thank you. Good luck. Bon voyage. Bon appetit.)
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Nichelle
Date: 7 June 1997
Subject: Nichelle's "Babes of the Web"
I hate the women men love. I will find fault with every woman on the World
Wide Web. All of the horrifying little Cindies and Candies and Jennies. There
are thousands of them out there. I wonder where they come from… Probably the
pretty girl next to you on the bus has a beaver shot up on the web. The girl
at the supermarket. The sly-eyed cocktail waitress. She knows something that
you don’t know. Her round little perfect butt-cheeks are spread open on Mister
Horney’s House of Pornie. There’s fake spoo on her lips, drooling down onto
her perfect fire-engine-red lips and pearly white teeth… Fucking cunts who
can’t count up to ten without help, who read Green Eggs and Ham when they
need an intellectual challenge and giggle at the line: "Would you, could
you, in the dark?" I hate every fucking one of them.
A few random pics from the web…
Let’s call her "Billie". She’s a domestic shorthair giving a blowjob to
someone we’ll call "Biff". She’s in a child’s bedroom, equipped with stuffed
animals, child’s bed spread, sports pennants pinned to the wall, and is wearing
a white tank top and tennis shoes. "Biff" appears to be her Junior High School
gym coach, and he’s got on his referee shirt and sweat pants, pulled down
just under his balls. "Billie" is peering at the camera at kind of an angle
with a "naughty" look on her face with "Biff’s" cock head in her mouth and
her cheeks sucked in.
Next, we’ve got "Muffy". She looks a little like a cocker spaniel, with
her hair tied up in a long, hot pink ribbon on each side. Her lips are painted
bright red, and she’s got "Joe’s" cock kind of next to her wide-open-in-surprise-to-see-the-camera
mouth. She’s kind of sticking her tongue out to the side so it looks like
she might be giving him some sort of blow job."Muffy" and "Joe" appear to
be lying down in front of the fireplace. With her tongue hanging out like
that, I’m beginning to wonder if "Joe" has been filling her water dish regularly.
Now we see "Cleo" (do forgive me) with her gold-beaded-head-thingie, sequined
"gown", and long coiled metal snake bracelet, with some anonymous dick in
her mouth. She’s got on $27 worth of eye makeup, and a hairstylist who really
knows how to hide those pesky dark roots.
I’m disgusted already. Three pics from three different sites, nothing that
has anything to do with real women or real sex. Is this what men really want?
Is this what they really whack off to? Women peering over their shoulders
with their hair "tossed" back. (It took 45 minutes to give it that "tossed"
look.) Every woman should have long, flowing hair, enormous yet somehow perfectly
round breasts, bright red lips, perfectly manicured fingernails, dark mysterious
eyes, perfect straight, white teeth. And every ugly, smelly, stupid asshole
deserves a woman like this. Why shouldn’t I cry about it? Don’t you see how
sad it is?
Nichelle
From: SAGReiss
Date: 12 June 1997
Subject: No sleep for the damned
@join negatron
You join negatron.
victim's shelter
You see nothing special.
victim (asleep) and negatron are here.
negatron says, "what's up?"
You say, "What the fuck are you two doing? You bastards."
negatron says, "two?"
You say, "Oops, sorry, I thought maybe victim was your anal sex slave."
You say, "I can't fucking sleep. We had a nightmare of a day dealing with
these robber-baron banks and shit."
negatron says, "how bad was it?"
You say, "It was fucking ugly. We called the same bank office four times
to find out if they would do what they wanted and got four different answers.
No matter what we fucking do, they'll charge us some outrageous fees."
negatron says, "what is it that you want them to do?"
You say, "Just ways of keeping our money accessible. But we need a credit
card and so on. It just gets a little complicated. Plus the fact that Nichelle
thinks they're all thieves, whereas I know they're all thieves."
negatron says, "last year a canadian bank made the highest profit of any
company in canadian history. more than gm canada's best year."
You say, "And I bet they're honest as the day is long."
negatron says, "i don't know. i think the banking system is a bit better
here than there. no mom and pop's third bank of minot or anything like that."
SAGReiss . o O ( Speaking of GM Kanada, I bet they don't tinker with their
employees' pension at all. )
negatron says, "i don't recall reading that they invested most of it in
bre-x."
You ask, "So I'm s'posed to be happy that it's the international brother
Dave Rockefeller who steals our cash?"
You say, "It's not how they invest the pension funds. It's what they "borrow"
from it."
negatron says, "somebody has to do it?"
You say, "I admit, he's got a hard job."
negatron says, "autoworkers are overpaid whiny unionists anyway."
SAGReiss wishes he was an overpaid whiny unionist.
negatron says, "i've got an exam in the morning. summer classes are supposed
to be easy. this one isn't/"
You say, "You've got to understand, I'm not a twenty-three-year-old punk
kid like yourself who thinks he can conquor the world if only he can get off
the prairie or suck bgates' cock or whatever. I have to fucking work for
a living. Luckily Nichelle found a beautiful ad for waiters at a country club
near Seattle. I can just walk in and make ten dollars an hour."
You say, "Fuck those exams. Chris has a new job as a geekmeisterin and she
has no sheepskin and can't do half the shit you can. You just have no balls."
negatron says, "there isn't anything for punk kids on the prairie"
You exclaim, "I'm telling you Chris is like me, undiplomaed in literature.
Just save some fucking money and I'll fix you up in Seattle. I've got my finger
on the jugular vein of the internet. As Buk used to say: "I WILL FUCK ALL
OF YOU CUNTS DRY!"
negatron says, "i've never saved enough money to leave this place."
You say, "Well, so, we're going to be there for at least a year. That almost
gives you time to graduate. You can save fucking carfare and enough to buy
me a few bottles of J&B so I'll be nice to you..."
negatron says, "what do you mean by at least a year? have you got other
plans?"
You say, "I have no plans at all. Nichelle also might graduate in a year.
She then might go to a more posh school on the East coast, if the money is
right."
negatron says, "i don't think u.s. immigration policies are friendly to
undereducated white trash boys like myself."
You say, "Fuck that. You don't understand the politics. You have to talk
your way into a job first. They will get you the working papers. You will
be almost graduated in a year. Besides, if we go back to Boston, it's the
same, software heaven. You just need a place to crash and some friendly advice.
Fuck, if you can kick ass on the 'puter, the rest will take care of itself.
I know enough about the geeks online to know they don't give out praise easily.
If you can do your shit... Fuck, Chris can do it..."
negatron says, "i understand that if i get the degree i'm eligible for indefinitely
renewable one year nafta visas."
You say, "When are you planning to graduate, when I'm of retirement age?
You don't think I want to hang around forever on this bleak-ass continent?
I'll do one year in Seattle, one year in Boston, and then I'll either drink
myself to death or move back to the civilized waters of France."
negatron says, "well shit, they must need geeks in europe too."
You say, "Of course, even more so."
You ask, "Surely you don't plan to piddle around there much longer to get
the sheepskin?"
negatron says, "two more years."
negatron says, "i'm in no hurry. i enjoy the piddling."
You say, "I believe that like I believe I like working for ten bucks an
hour."
negatron says, "do you think i want to get a real job and have to work for
a living?"
You say, "No one in his right mind would want to do that. We do that because
we are beaten, defeated by the obscure forces of life itself, lost, lonely,
hungry and alone. Don't worry. I'll think of something. I'm always thinking
of you. Some day I'll need you. Or you'll need me. A few people with some
skills who really don't give a fuck can do a lot of things. True, we lack
the killer instinct of the bgates/drockefeller crowd, but I think we can work
out something."
negatron says, "it's getting late. i better get some work done."
You say, "See you in Minot."
negatron says, "yeah. fuck i'm going to be doing a lot of driving next weekend."
@go home
Apartment 7
one-bedroom flat
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: Columbine
Date: 12 June 1997
Subject: Re: No sleep for the damned
Hey, negatron, just so you have a confirming opinion from someone other
than Gabriel :) - You certainly can get a good computer job without the thrice-damned
sheepskin. I wouldn't describe this as a good job exactly, but it pays the
bills and feeds my popular culture and restaurant dining habits. I could get
a better one if I didn't like the goof-off factor here (not to mention inertia).
In Boston at least, there are more tech jobs than there are heads to fill
them.
I chose Boston over Seattle 4 years ago when I made the big leap from Louisiana,
so I'm obviously biased. But the market in Seattle is good too, according
to a "friend on the inside" I have there.
Course, I also understand the appeal of staying in school and not entering
the real world ....
-columbine
From: Murder
Date: 15 June 1997
Subject: (no subject)
I am no longer undergraduate scum. The commencement ceremony took place
on Saturday the 14 and I am done with Central. The final concerts were
two spectacular performances of the Brahms Requiem by our orchestra and
choirs. I will no longer have e-mail until the beginning of September
when school starts at Rutgers. Sorry for not returning your phone message,
Nic. I haven't paid my phone bills and my phone service has been "temporarily
disrupted." I will be in Spokane on the dates you mentioned (I don't
leave for Europe until the 25th) so it would be great if we could hook
up. I'll send you my parents' phone # and address privately. I wish
I could write more here, but I have to pay for the time on my school
account since I am logging in from Spokane and it's long distance. I
will only have this account for a couple more days, so if you must reach
me, do it very quickly.
Murder
From: SAGReiss
Date: 15 June 1997
Subject: http://www.sexyrene.com
Now here is a site I like, not perhaps what I dreamed of when I first had
boyish visions of unlimited sex-porn online, but nevertheless not bad. It's
a free site, since I know you're all too cheap or too poor to pay, but it's
not exactly an amateur site. It's a commercial site. She shows a little pussy
and promises more for a reasonable fee, but that's not the point. The point
is two-fold. First of all, while she's not an amateur, she's definitely not
a pro, or at least she's such a second- or third-rate pro that it's very funny
to watch. More important, she has a character on LambdaMOO. Her name is Nosredna--oops,
strike that. Nosredna is my very good friend from the Seattle MOO, so don't
fuck with me or I will toad all of your asses. She asked me if she should
get MUSHclient: "Well, I like it. I know that negatron uses it and he's our
Archwizardasshole, so he should know about these things. Of course you run
Lambda, so you should know about them too." Of course I won't tell you sexyrene's
Lambda character. That would be far too easy. Besides, I'm sure she'll eliminate
the URL from her description as soon as she realizes she's going to get a
hundred million pages per day. The Civil War hospital is about to get on
the road. I was horribly ill Monday, which of course Nichelle wouldn't believe
because I am never ill and tend to be discrete about these things. She was
ill Thursday and Friday, and Matilda got sick on Saturday. We'll be lucky
if we make it to Minot, only to find that negatron has finally got a date
with the captain of the ladies' snooker team from North Dakota State and
won't be able to join us. Sid and Nancy meet Godzilla. negatron will probably
die without ever leaving his precious Wheat Province prairie and all we'll
get in Minot is a couple of "I fucked Lieutenant Flinn" tee-shirts. Oh well,
at least we're getting the fuck out of Syracuse.
RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss
From: John
Date: 20 June 1997
Subject: Sid and Nancy meet Godzilla...
i've just returned from meeting the notorious gabriel and nichelle in minot,
nd. i was asked to let the world know that they are still alive. as for me..
i guess i'm not quite dead, just exhausted. details to follow.
From: Kathleen
Date: 23 June 1997
Subject: Re: Vacation
some people say you quit. I quit, too. I cant' stand watching already fat
people eat baby back ribs - it makes me ache.
have a grand vacation. advise pretty regina on strausbourg.
katy
From: Kathleen
Date: 23 June 1997
Subject: Re: Famous last words
good for you. Have a wonderful life in Seattle - it is beautiful there.
From: John
Date: 23 June 1997
Subject: you are now entering the american sector
i'm all rested up now, so i guess it's time for the promised details...
left saskatoon thursday afternoon about 1 PM after writing an exam on
which i did quite well. i arrived at the us border about 5 hours later,
just before 7 PM. north dakota is directly south of saskatchewan, but
due to some odd quirk of politics we are in a different time zone half
of the year.
the border crossing is in the middle of an otherwise unmemorable prairie
village. the us customs station is an ugly unwelcoming brick building
containing enough cops to police a small city.
i pulled up to the stop line, turned off the car, and waited for the
inspector. i was hungry and shaky, running on caffeine and nicotine. my
throat and mouth were dry. the inspector came out to my window and asked
me a few questions. where was i from, what was the nature of my visit,
how long would i be staying..
cops make me nervous. i answer as well as i can, but my dry throat makes
it difficult to speak.
..had i ever been arrested, fingerprinted, indicted, convicted,
imprisoned..
i'm told to pull my car over to the side and come inside the building. i
become more nervous as i enter the building. i don't trust these
assholes, i know their paranoid world doesn't allow for the possibility
of a young male making a short cross-border trip without committing a
few felonies. i've been through this before..
i'm given a form to fill out, then questioned again about any past
arrests, convictions, etc. i'm asked why i'm nervous. i don't have a
satisfactory answer. you can't tell a cop that you hate cops, they think
you need a reason and get even more suspicious. i'm taken into another
room, asked if i have any weapons or drugs. i empty my pockets on the
counter and turn them out. i lift my shirt. i'm told to sit down and
take off my shoes, lift my pantlegs, pull up my socks. back into the
front room. i see through the window seven or eight big men searching my
car. one of the cops at the counter asks me whose car it is. it's mine.
you didn't steal it? no. when was the last time you used drugs? i don't
use drugs. you never have? no. what is your occupation? i'm a student.
are you working for the summer? i'm taking a summer class and working
part time. when does your class meet? 10:30 to 12:30 daily. what about
tomorrow? i'm going to miss it. oooooohhhhhhh? yes, i talked to my
professor about it and he was okay with it.
they are finished searching my car. my identification and keys are
returned. a fat cop puts out his hand for me to shake. i shake his hand
firmly. he wishes me a good trip and says hopefully i won't be so
nervous next time. i leave this outpost of the ministry of love and head
for minot smoking a much-needed cigarette.
an hour and a half later i was in minot. gabe and nichelle were late. i
walked around a bit, bought some cigarettes and a coke, went to the
motel. they let me into the room without paying and i sat down to watch
some tv..
more later.
From: SAGReiss
Subject: The Last to See Them Alive
Date: 25 June 1997
That was s'posed to be the title of my last letter from Syracuse. It's
the name of a chapter from Truman Capote's frightening book In Cold
Blood. For those of you who grew up with the memory of Charles Manson
still open like a fresh wound, this non-fiction novel makes Helter Skelter
look like a Disney tale, except perhaps for Disney's promotion of alternative
lifestyles. Charles Manson had some style, some mental power. The two
murderers in Capote's sordid story are brainless, bungling hicks, mental
and physical mutants, so dumb that the cops had a hard time catching
them because they, the cops, were too bright. They wandered into some
lonesome house on the Kansas prairie thinking there was a hidden treasure
and senselessly blew a whole family's brains out with a shotgun. To
go backwards: I wept as I left the bar, holding hands with two old
black men, Mister Betsey and Lou, aged seventy-five and eighty-five
respectively, the latter though with a thirty-six-year-old mistress
and a daughter who has just graduated college. (This letter, by the
way, was s'posed to be called RLMOObashing, but I'm a little behind.)
Nichelle decided to give me the baptism by fire, so I had to drive this
white monster home from the airport during rush hour in a driving rain.
The minute I got behind the wheel of this everything-automatic behemoth
I though: "But I don't know how to drive an automatic. We're three
thousand miles away from our destination. I'm going to kill Nichelle,
Matilda and myself. I have driven a dozen times in ten years." I guess
we made it, no tickets, no accidents, no DWI, no open-bottle law. (I
kept my beer in a coffee mug.)We've got a lovely flat on Capital Hill
one mile from the open market and the posh hotels downtown. The outside
of the "Hawaiian Apartments" is painted the ugliest color of orange
I have ever seen. Anyone who wouldn't pay a hundred and fifty a month
more to live in Seattle rather than Syracuse is crazy. The snail mail
address is Apartment 101, 235 Bellevue Avenue East, Seattle, Washington
98102. It's small, 594 square feet, maybe fifty square metres, but clean
and modern. I just hope there's a sleazy bar nearby. Nothing special
happened on our cross-country trek. I heard one funny joke on TV. A
guest keeps asking the waitress for a quickie. Finally she answers:
"It's quiche." When I got to the front desk in Minot, North Dakota.
I said: "I've reserved the First Lieutenant's suite. The name is Nichelle." "She's already here." I thought: "That's funny. I've just
left her outside in the car fussing with the cat, the backpack and
the cooler." "Is she tall and skinny with eyebrows that look like breakfast
sausages?" "Yes. She just checked in about half an hour ago." Good,
I thought, and then my brain did something weird and irresponsible:
"She didn't try to pay for the room by any chance?" "No sir. She just
signed the slip." He showed me negatron's signature on the reservation.
"Fine. Here's my credit card." John forgot one little telling detail
of his law enforcement saga. One of the asshole cops asked him: "If
I bring the dogs in, will they get excited?" "Well, I've got my shoes
off, you pervert. What exactly do you do to excite your dogs?" It was
something like that anyway. Actually I got to meet two rl johns. Murder
came to see us yesterday in Spokane. Both of them are skinny and look
very young.
From: SAGReiss
Date: 27 June 1997
Subject: (no subject)
John, Paul, Steve and Sid." So we watched two silly-accent shows on the
video last night, Trainspotting and Sid & Nancy. The former was brilliant,
beautifully integrated use of various cinematographic effects, a very steady
hand on the camera, lovely dialog: "Some people look down on the English,
but not me. They're just wankers, but we are colonized by wankers, effete
assholes." OK, so the word "effete" may have been a bit much, but the film
was outstanding, no particular hurry to get to the silly little excuse for
a plot, a dumb-stupid twelve-thousand quid drug deal (sixteen minus cost)
which was all worked out in the last half an hour of the movie. Sid and Nancy
was another matter, this dumbass love/hat(red) story with the music of the
Sex Pistols, the only thing that could have made the sordid little tale at
all noteworthy, as an ersatz backdrop. What Elvis Presley was to Frank Sinatra,
what Mick Jagger was to Elvis, Johnny Rotten was to Mick. When we first heard
that savage burst of noise, Anarchy in the UK, back in 1976 or '77, we went
crazy. We were hearing what had previously been undreamt of. The movie was
just a lot of: "Fuck you, Sid." "No, fuck you." I'd have rather seen a documentary
on the Pistols, such as Gimme Shelter on the Stones. More memories of our
trip. The weather played a cameo role, with a tornado in North Dakota which
never quite materialized and an earthquake in Seattle, as we sat quietly at
the bar of a Mexican restaurant. negatron has this thing called the Goosemobile,
a puke green Honda station wagon. He's probably a wanted felon all over Kanada
because he grimly ran down a goose one drunken night, causing a very impressive
gash in the hood. He'll tell you more of our close encounter of the weird
kind, including my famous tetrachrome whiskers, since I last shaved on my
last day of work, 30 May. To end on an upbeat note: the Sheraton has sent
me a check for a hundred and fifty dollars, my third week's holiday pay. You
see, my friends, it pays to be honest, noble and generous of spirit like myself.
(If that doesn't work, just fuck them up the ass with no KY.)
May 1997
July 1997
vr: 1997
