Why I Committed Suicide (28 page)

A little after daylight peeked through the trees I was all set up so I took some bong hits and settled sleepily into a lawn chair, waiting for the people to arrive. It was off and on the whole day, and in the morning, just when I was beginning to think nobody would even come by, I got swamped.

My roommates woke up to find all sorts of people walking around in our yard and driveway, peeking in through the windows looking for more stuff to buy while I was scrambling around trying to haggle with Mexican ladies who didn’t speak English and trying to adjust the camera to preserve the insanity for my class project. I was wheeling and dealing with fistfuls of cash, even selling people the weird shit that I never thought we would sell in a million years—the shit I thought I would have to pay somebody to take away. An Indian guy bought the old Commodore 64 computer we had in the pile and I could tell by the look on his face that for the $5 he paid, he thought he was getting a bargain on top-secret technology. I sold several bags of children’s clothes from the 70’s for $10 to a Mexican family who had a van with a ladder. Even our friends who stopped by later in the day to make fun of our bogus stuff usually bought
something.
The camera ran most of the day, I just shifted the angles on occasion to make sure I had enough footage to edit and satisfy the parameters of my assignment. People kept coming up to make offers on the camera, naively trying to haggle me into selling them a thousand dollar camera for $20. Man please!

We actually made a lot of money even after getting Dan totally drunk and sending Jenifer on a smack run. Gabe is definitely the hook up now for heroin and he’s enjoying his status as a necessary step in the process of hooking up. He finally got Donut to introduce him to his dealer so he can get it cheaper and directly from the source without any of the middleman hassle. Whenever I have to deal with him there’s still a bunch of bullshit where he makes a big show of being put out (roll eyes here), but he’ll bend over backwards for Jenifer so she likes to go over there by herself. My stomach doesn’t spin anymore when I do smack and I really enjoy the warm relief that it brings to me. I feel so instantly comforted when I inject it now and I’m easily able to get a lot of stuff taken care of that I would normally dread.

“I’ve got the ways and means to New Orleans, I’m going down by the river where it’s warm and green. I’m gonna have a drink and walk around, I’ve got a lot to think about.”

—Concrete Blond, Bloodletting LP

Mardi Gras was bad ass this year! I didn’t want to write that we might be going down there ahead of time just in case we didn’t make it down at the right time again. The air was thick and grim, hanging upon us, tinged with the grey humidity that is Louisiana. The streets smelled like stale beer and sweat, creating a festering wound of a party. This time, Kirk, Jenifer and I all decided to make a spur of the moment road trip, mainly because Kirk wanted to break in the car his mom just handed down to him. It was kind of a wild and wooly week to remember but I’ll try and put down the highlights.

The crowds were more outrageous than I can ever remember. I suppose that as I get older, youth is starting to seem more impetuous or I’m getting less tolerant of drunken bullshit. The crowds just weren’t as friendly as I expected. Something was missing or maybe the proliferation of black gangs everywhere getting into tense mini brawls made the tone seem overly hostile. You can do practically anything you want during Mardi Gras except fight and fuck in the street but somehow we kept getting stuck in packs of people where two black dudes would end up fighting for some stupid reason or another and then get carted off to jail. When there was a scuffle it got difficult to protect Jenifer from the sway and pushing in the crowd but the police were usually on top of any bullshit before it got too crazy.

It was Kirk’s first Mardi Gras and he seemed more enthused by the experience than we were and I think he was actually enjoying himself. Kirk’s kind of a mild-mannered drunk and even though everything was all raucous and helter-skelter, he still had a happy grin on his face most of the time.

Jen and I were coming off a weeklong H binge so our bodies were edgy and less tolerant than they could have been, but fortunately we had brought along some glass vials of liquid morphine (which I scored from a friend who robbed a pharmacy) to help us deal with our mild withdrawals, but things were still kind of off-kilter in our bodies. Morphine is ok but it just doesn’t have the same punch that H does. M is a little more serious and it’s easier to overdose since it doesn’t really fuck you up, plus it’s a pain in the ass to fucking break open WWI style glass vials (ampoules) and try to suck all the juice out of them.

We had a great time of course. We saw John Goodman, the actor from
Rose-anne,
wander out on one of the balconies sweating and drunk off his fat ass. Girls’ tops started coming off and tits were everywhere as soon as he came out there, but John was pretty oblivious to it all. We went and walked down by the Mississippi and I picked up what I thought was a crumpled piece of paper off the sidewalk to be a good Sam-aritan and throw away, but when I looked more closely I saw it was really a crumpled up “THANK YOU FOR POT SMOKING” sticker and inside was about an 1/8
th
of really good weed! So thank you, whoever left that there for me. I thought Kirk’s eyes were going to pop out of his head when he saw what I had found; he’s never experienced the weirdness that follows me and Jen when we travel. We appreciate and accept good fortune but don’t dwell on it much anymore. That way lies madness believe it or not. We added the kind New Orleans weed to our own stash and frequently got high in the downtown parking lot.

New Orleans was still New Orleans. We ate beignets at the Café Du Monde, sipped their strong coffee and watched this teenage mime full of angst literally go fucking postal on the crowd that was watching him. He started yelling at the people (so
they CAN fucking talk!)
and he even decked some senior citizen before some jocks in the crowd held him down for the cops. It was one of the strangest things I’ve seen in my life. I’ve seen the street performers fight each other for intruding on pan-handling turf, but I’ve never seen a mime get violent, I just thought they were all gay, gentle-spirited boys.

A lot of daylight hours, a lot of walking trying to show Kirk everything in the city. If we hadn’t been slightly high and if Kirk had been gone it would have been very romantic for the two of us. One day we’ll get out here by ourselves. Not every journey can be comfortable; the most memorable ones often are not.

Sweet morphine dreams erratically lulled me into sleepyland last night. It gave me an odd feeling of peace and happiness that washed over my pinched body today. It’s like everything feels the way it should feel. It started with an amazing dream I had this morning and on our drive home I realized what it was. Somebody has died recently and they are watching over me. They are at rest and I am tuning them in as they watch the world as a whole entity for the first time in their existence and embracing it in them. Like a giant bear hug on a fuzzy dog, the world is right today.

I’m sorry that this person died but they are happy… I just wonder who it was. New Orleans is one hell of a wicked city with lots of ghosts. I’m sure glad we came this year.

David, Bryce, Kirk, Jenifer, Gabe, Dan, Jerry and I all went to the Lollapal-ooza concert today. I went to the first one back when I started college, during that awkward summer transition from high school graduate to college freshman. At that time Lollapalooza was the motherfucking shit. I was finally out of hell school and I got the chance to see Jane’s Addiction and a whole day full of other cool bands. That first tour pretty much raised the bar for concert achievement in the nineties, after that, paying $20-$30 to see one or two average bands stumble through their hits on tour was tame and weak. Lollapalooza set the standard that should have always fucking been there. At the end of “Gift”, there’s a tour highlight of Perry and Ice-T standing in each others face singing “Don’t Call Me Nigger” by Sly Stone. Where else do you get to see the Butthole Surfers shoot a shotgun out over the crowd while busting beer bottles over their heads? Where else do you have 50,000 white kids screaming “Fuck the Police” in unison for one day? Where else do you get to see the Violent Femmes play a quick daytime set? It was one of the great ones. That first concert influenced and opened my mind nearly as much as seeing the Dead did. In fact the festival environment was obviously patterned after the Dead shows.

Since the first tour, the bill has generally declined to feature more flavors of the month than established quality, but I’ve been to every one of the shows so far and I had a fucking blast each time. I was starting to think I might have to quit going to the Lollapalooza tours altogether but this year featured the Beastie Boys along with The Smashing Pumpkins in a double headliner show and it was totally awesome. Following tradition we all tripped. It was the first time Jenifer and I had done acid in a long time which made a lot of the opening bands we didn’t know much about more interesting. We got to see George Clinton and his P-Funk and The Breeders who I really wanted to see since I’m a big Pixies fan from way back. Nick Cave was there too and it was an really odd experience to see him and his band playing out in the sunshine; it made Bryce’s acid kick in and the whole scene was freaking him out until Jenifer grabbed him by the arm and said “It’s gonna be ok sugah.” To see the effect that her words had on him, to see the relaxation come over his face as his brain came to grips with the possibility that “yeah, maybe things were gonna be ok”, reminded me so much of why I love her and the amount of goodness she has inside her. I try to write down what I can but as much as I try and gather the best details of my day, those
unimportant details
that mean so much when I’m out with my friends are ultimately best left to memory and imagination. My words can only serve as
my
reminders to scenes that I can’t replicate anyplace but in my own head.

Towards the late afternoon Kirk, Jen and I snuck off to the second stage where it was rumored either The Flaming Lips or Verve were going to do a special set but it turned out that The Smashing Pumpkins came out in all their indifference and put on a pre-concert. They just played all their old stuff out of appreciation for the fans. Not even for
their
fans necessarily. They came out on the second stage without anybody in the audience having any idea who was even going to play—they just wanted to play music for fans of music. It was really cool because you can no longer see the Pumpkins in an intimate environment. Their album I raved so much about finally took off, they’ve been around and won all the awards and now they pack arenas full of screaming fans. I’m glad I saw them at the Bomb Factory way back when I could still afford to get close to the stage. By the looks on the other band-mates faces it seemed like Billy Corgan, with his Uncle Fester baldhead, was making them come out and play in the hot sun for us, reinforcing my image of him as an old geek that used to love going to concerts just like me. It earned my respect and they were very careful to end their small show right as the B-Boy’s came out on the main stage.

I ran like hell through the crowds of people and joined the rioters, making a desperate plunge to get close to the stage area where I found some cuties near the front and proceeded to stand with them and sing along to the songs like an annoying fuck while I danced like the funk master I am. It was an incredible set, a cornucopia of hits that even included a tricked up version of “Eggman” off
Paul’s Boutique.
Now that I have seen the Beasties in concert I truly can die a happy man.

After sitting in the sun all day, drinking beer and frying our skin and brains, we could only stay for the first half of the Pumpkins main set when they finally came back out to finish the concert. They started playing after dark and this time when they played it was the total opposite of the private show we got from them earlier. The whole band had on silver suits and rock star gear with full stage lights and amps that could make your ears bleed. It was pretty awesome to feel the power chords rip the place apart and the energy they put into everything, but by that time Jerry was feeling pretty ill from the day and it was time for us all to go. I don’t blame him. I was pretty much running on adrenaline by then since even the acid had worn off a while back. Gabe had already gone a long time ago. He’d managed to sneak in some syringes to do in the bathroom; and after that, he wasn’t very interested in the shows.

We all piled into Jerry’s car and left with our “Aloha, Mr. Hand” tour shirts, memories, idle minds and ringing ears. Jerry drove about 90 trying to get us home and got stopped for speeding through Farmer’s Branch for his efforts, about a ~ mile from where I grew up. I pretty much thought Jerry was going to get arrested when he got pulled over, he had been drinking all day long so I figured he was going to jail and I was likely fucked too since I was stuck in the backseat riding bitch between two people who were likely holding drugs of some sort. After a long and freaky ordeal to convince the officer he wasn’t drunk, including having to walk a fucking straight line along the highway, Jerry got us all home without another incident. I took some roofies, ordered a pizza and did bong hits until I passed out, letting my tense muscles relax into sweet oblivion.

I woke up late sometime today, sunburned and tweaky from the acid residuals despite the roofies, and then goofed around with Jenifer all day. My ears are still ringing from the barrage of sights and sounds I experienced yesterday. The blue skies, the trampled ground, the cornucopia of eclectic people flitting about around us, good music, all that magnetism and us. I went to Lollapalooza #4 and I had a fucking blast.

Today was the day that the absolute final movie projects for my film class had to be presented. True to the nature of the procrastination monkey on my back Dan, Jenifer and myself filmed the entire thing over the weekend on a shoestring (no-string, not even velcro K-Mart shoes) budget. I titled it “The Date, I’m Late” and I’ll be the first to admit it’s not my finest work but I tried to add a little flair with the time I had left. It’s basically a regurgitated plot where something disastrous happens on a first date situation. Blah blah blah, since I had to focus on laying down a music bed for one of the parameters of the project, I couldn’t find a way to get the dialogue-driven script I wrote to match what I wanted to do. We’re required to capture certain angles and use the camera in innovative ways which I suppose I could have done during the discourse of the innuendo-laden script I threw together, but like I said, I procrastinated and eventually ended up with a silent film that is backed with this cool jazz piece I found. Plus it was easier to write
and film
on the fly what I knew would work rather than come up with a more abstract and drug-addled plot line.
I’m justifying the suckiness of my own movie, aren’t I?
I must be ready for Hollywood.