home |
musings index |
feedback |
other journals
I woke up around 2pm and attended to the unpleasantness with my gum, using abuse and saline solutions as a cure, which, punishing though it was, it felt like.
After an unsatifying Plan 9 Used CD hunt, I ran across none other than Nellie Appleby of Fairview Farms fame. She'd just spent some months in Ecuador, gotten married to her Brooklyn boyfriend, and now here she was again on the streets of Charlottesville. This town is weird like that; people have fascinating life changes and then they are back in town for maybe only a few days but it's as though they never even left. Today was full of such events.
She and I drank coffee outside Higher Grounds, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the pacing of the fabric of time. What the hell is that supposed to mean?
Over at Cocke Hall, I set Nellie up with an e-mail account. Now she can be reached at m3atballs@hotmail.com. I also printed out some poetry to read at tonight's Downtown Artspace opening.
Then Nellie and I went to the Orbit Pool Hall on 14th Steet. She bore with her a postcard written by some dude she'd met hiking in the Andes whose uncle happens to be a bartender in the Orbit, actually working at the time of arrival. She didn't know quite how to break it to the the bartender that the pineapple bedecked postcard was actually for him. When this revelation was made, however, the beer Nellie and I shared was suddenly free. Taurus Rising rejoiced.
Sometime in our conversation in the Orbit, I sneezed vehmently and compared it to orgasm. She asked if I had sex much lately. I said no. This was her way of breaking to me that the rumours are true: she had in fact just been married to her Brooklyn boyfriend.
She and I each took 5mg of Ritalin that she somehow had in her possession. We took 5mg each later on in the evening as well.
Back at my house, the Dynashack, when Nellie's warm welcome had died down, she gave me a haircut. After a few misteps that would have had me looking a little tiny bit like Billy Ray Cyrus, she managed to give me a cool "mod" haircut much like her own. We drank tequila as she worked. Soon I was covered with little segments of hair, as was the kitchen. There is a noticeable amount of grey in that hair these days.
I let Nellie drive my Dodge Dart to the Downtown Mall so we could partake in the first friday of the month art opening extravaganza that can be counted upon to make at least one day of every month exciting in this town. She parked almost directly in front of Gallery Neo on 2nd Street, so that was the first place we went. As usual for that place, the crowd there was elegant and mature, the art was sophisticated, and the vino flowed copiously. Showcased this month was the works of artists who incorporate bits of text in their creations. Steve Keene, the guy who does vibrant manic acrylics on plywood, was one of the four artists featured. His texts are essentially stream of consciousness, little fragments he hears on the radio as he works. Also shown was the works of a woman named Susan Bacik who does little mosaic-tile covered sculptures. They are like more conservative versions of the works of bozART's A. Faith. A lecture explained all these things while I was there, but I didn't take notes and so don't recall the names of 50% of the artists featured. I chatted some with Lydia Conder, the woman who runs the place. She is interested in getting a web page put together for the site. This is something which I am more than capable of doing, but it would violate my non-compete agreement with Comet (something I signed before even I knew HTML) if I were to do it for hire.
But at the Downtown Artspace, where I went next, there are none of these problems. Not everyone there loves me, but it seems like everyone respects me, even for the half-assed paragram poetry I read there. And everyone always says wonderful encouraging things about the enormous rooster I painted on one of the doors there.
I did note that the sign I painted at the bottom of the stairs the other day had been completely reworked. I was a little insulted to see this, but then again I didn't really like the sign anyway.
Okay, so I drank a little more vino and then began to read my poetry, interspersed some with the more sober readings of Jenfariello's petite female poet discovery, Erin Knowles. She was a little shy about starting (as I would have been in a more sober state). But soon enough we were trading off reading poetry and interrupting the conversations of our rather substantial audience. Of coures, I knew this, and at the end of poems I would urge people to continue their conversations, only to urge quiet again so I could tell the next poem.
At 10pm or so came the featured moment of the evening, a performance of a Richmond hard core band known as Viscious Dog #7. I was all hyped up for this and danced enthusiastically but gently. I LOVED the music. Unfortunately, I was bad at getting anyone else to join me for more than a few seconds. But there were a few teenagers who got into the mix a little, as did a somewhat out of place Jenfariello, who I grabbed by the arm at one point. But the singer for the band, an elegantly dressed dude with tracts of different-Manic-Panic-coloured hair, seemed to be pleased with my energy. At least our energy was at a level that we were forced to shed our shirts (and he his coat and tie as well) at a certain point.
Then I could be seen reclined in a human puddle on the floor, having my hair caressed by a number of female friends who had been too lazy or cool to dance with me. As an act of gratitude for my support, the singer for Vicious Dog Number 7 tossed a tape of the band's music on me and it stuck to my bare sweaty chest with a slapping sound.
I'm sure Jessika and Sara would say this is a result of my Venus in Capricorn and my Sun in Aquarius in the 11th House. The Venus in Capricorn makes me tend to use romance as a means to other ends and my Sun in Aquarius in the 11th House makes me strive to unify groups of friends into functional, compatible alliances.For some odd reason, in my drunken state, I wanted to completely unify our brief little association with kisses. It wasn't difficult to persuade Eliza to kiss me, but I had no luck with Ami. She explained that she didn't want to piss off her housemate Jenfariello. Then she proceded to say I'd really missed up by not pursuing my January romance therewith. This may also sound really strange and perhaps perverted to the reader (and now it isn't anything which I understand or of which I am proud), but at the time, perhaps because of the Ritalin, it all seemed natural, effortless and sincere.
Jenfariello was upset about my behaviour, but she joined me anyway on a foray to Miller's, where I ran across a perplexed-looking Farrell, who chided me about alledged advances I'd made on his date last Friday at the C&O. That was an event which I had almost completely blacked out. I told him he could do the same with my date in the future as compensation. "But not tonight," he responded. "Not tonight," I agreed.
I went back to my house, the Dynashack, where Elizabeth was hanging out with Jacque DeBeauffort, the artist. Jacque had been telling me all night how awful he thinks my art is and, by contrast, how great my writing is. That's how he is. He always qualifies praise with an insult. He was to tell Elizabeth at some point (or several points) later that night. "I love you. But I hate you."
I walked west down Wertland until I encountered a group of hippie juveniles, including Jatasya, Fatima, and a number of skinny adolescent males. I chatted with them briefly and allowed the adolescent boys to sip some the vino I carried with me in a small jar.
The departed with the arrival of Jenfariello, whom I accompanied back to her place. She and I fell into some manner of dispute shortly after I got there, so I departed rather abruptly.
Jessika's injuries from the Carter's Mountain accident weren't too severe: she has a faint discolouration on her forehead ("the Gorbachev scar") and a thin vertical gash under her nose. A short wad of hair is having to regrow from scratch in the center of her forehead's hairline. Inside her head, however, Jessika says she's not really the same anymore. She has problems such as dizziness, auditory hallucinations and strange dreams.
The fun at Goth Central didn't last long. Persad returned home and wasn't happy to see such a gathering of people. So we all left, well, all of us except Persad and Theresa, the latter of whom sacrificed the evening for domestic tranquility. Clearly she would have much preferred to go hang out with the Malvern Girls. I don't know what became of the Redheaded Aquarian Heroin addict girl.
Monster Boy and I went to my place while the others figured out what to do. There had been plans to maybe go to Big Fun for a sort of reunion at the now desserted farm house in the blowing fields 18 miles south of Charlottesville. But since I had to work the next day, I wasn't going to be able to do that. We sat around and listened to Sepultura's Chaos AD and waited for the others to arrive.
Soon a little party was happening in my high-population-inhospitable room. Not only were joined by Leticia, the Brazilian Girl, and Jessika and Sara, the Malvern Girls, but we were also joined by my housemates John and Ches, who were no doubt curious about the undivined return of people who had been perhaps given up for dead. John had never met Sara, but he'd often expressed fascination with her, partly from tales I've told and partly from her Attention Deficit Disorder-influenced performances on videotapes shot at Big Fun. He was so enthusiastic in his greeting her that he later expressed to me the fear that he had "blown it."
By now, Leticia the Brazilian had complained about the Sepultura and we were playing the Descendent's Everything Sucks. John had scraped together some partial bottles of booze and even mixed me a martini complete with olives (being a bartender, he is qualified to do such things).
I was by now pretty drunk, but I was actually rather more sober than earlier in the evening. The others all shuffled off their respective ways to bed and I put a book over my unfinished martini so I could drink it another day. The time was 4am.