THE SUBURBS

ARCADE FIRE'S "THE SUBURBS" has been my favorite album since I was old enough to know what it means to have a genealogical place in the world. I was born in Mahattan and lived there for many years but my real home is suburban New Jersey and it probably always will be. I fear and loathe the city, I've come to realize in my 25 years on this earth, and my true home is the suburbs of NJ. There are good things about it and bad things about it. ARCADE FIRE weighs them both and speculates on the future for suburbia, and, ultimately, the world at large.

CHILLWAVE, or C86, is one of my favorite musical genres and chillwave band REAL ESTATE, New Jersey natives, really strike a chord with me. Their self-titled debut album may not be their most musically accomplished but it's my favorite one. On songs like "Suburban Dogs" and "Suburban Beverage" they capture the milieu, the tedium and boredom, of suburban New Jersey while relishing in it, languishing in the general peace and privilege of living in such a place.

This is an album that feels good.

These are albums that I proudly identify with my home.

im glad my cat isnt mad at me: fuck

you can’t write through tears, i’m convinced it’s impossible.  that’s why when i tell you i was crying 30 seconds ago it has to be stylized.  there’s no way to put abjection on the page or screen.  there just isn’t.  this is why you can’t write about cataclysmic happenings from inside of them.  your brain just can’t process that shit.  it’s too much to be dealing with abjection inside and writing about it outside at the same time.

this why most writers’, especially young writers’, attempts at writing about pain fail miserably.  it tends to be, on my end, “i don’t believe you” or “who gives a fuck?”  most writers just don’t know how to convey abjection while not being inside of abjection, which is a necessity if you’re going to write anything powerful because, as i’ve established, it’s impossible to write about abjection from inside of it.

These people would talk about anything

These people would talk about anything: what drugs he's doing, what party should they were at when she told him about the rape, anything.  Keep me distracted.  Keep me distracted.  Keep me distracted.

The air comes funneling out of the vent in my wall and it's too clean and new to be Lynchian like it should be.  Maybe in a couple years.

We ate the Wendy's and then hotboxed his car.  Dave threw up.  We ate a bunch of xannies.  Xavier and Thomas blacked out.

On the streets, at night, Bob stabs a woman, just 'cause.

This is not the the end.  Wait, I guess it is.

24 hour abortion of a short story

Pot and cigarettes breakfast with anarchists.  Oh, we talked.

"i’m writing a one day short story.  it might end up being one word long, it might end up being one sentence long.  who knows?  i’ll post it here at midnight." I posted on tumblr as Built to Spill spiraled from my turntable's speakers.  I know that you'll get yours when you get empty.  And then: It's so close.  At least, that's what it sounds like to my weed fogged ears.

A blur an image a smear.  A person?  A shadow.  This is all on tumblr.

No Recess.  About 15 minutes into this recording of a dead heroin addict.

Pennington and awful pain.  I try to smoke and sing my way through it.  Windmills of your mind.  Tumblr bombards me.  I'm officially DISTRACTED.  Thumbs up.

I'm bored.  I smoke tons of weed.  I'll pick up more later.  I drive to Wendy's.  I don't really remember much about this part because I was stoned but I know I ordered some kind of chicken sandwich, fries, and a Dr. Pepper.  It was around 5:00.  I guess an early dinner?  Who cares.  I eat at weird times anyway.

An alien invasion happened.  Things got abducted.  Things got destroyed.  The president's brain grew cancerous and developed a tumor.  Clinton was caught in the oval office masturbating with a golden eagle up her cunt.

At home I pretended I was masturbating to Xavier Dolan masturbating to Jake Gyllenhaal.  When I came I needed to get high again.

Drones over the suburbs.  It's scary to wake up.

Waiting for coffee to brew.  Cofee and half past 6.  It might be ready.  I'll go check.

"Sprawled" excerpt

i told you that I've been writing

This song is proof that I'm trying

Dedicated to Majical Cloudz.

I started smoking when I was 18.  A pretty late or pretty early start, depending on your perspective.  That's me, not smoking weed.  They prescribe me cigarettes because it's the only thing that helps my ADHD.  I don't know if that's legal.  My words seem to come out better, more fluid, with smoke hanging in the air and a cigarette between my middle and index fingers.  It's not that I don't think I'll get cancer.  It's just my thing.  

Peaches got the most delicious peach cigarettes on her study abroad trip to Paris.  Greg told me she had a threesome with two guys while she was there.  I guess that's how kids act these days.  I'm so dated.  I'm 13 years old at 26.  I guess I never grew up.  We live in mansions now but none of us are happy.  There's a layer of ice covering everything here.  Even if I cracked it with an ice pick I just wouldn't feel right.  I don't know what I'm doing.

Mom's gone.  I woke up to a house that was silent except an unanswered telephone.  I put my hand on the ringing phone, hesitated, then heard a giant crash outside, then two more.  Three cars are flipped over.  One is wrapped around a tree and if I look close I can see two bloody bodies, maybe three if that other thing counts as an actual alive person.  These days, there's nothing unusual about that.  The ice changed everything.

This place started getting icy when the clowns stopped coming to town.  We all liked the clowns, they either scared us or made us laugh but the point is there was verve to their presence.  Now the writers have lost their muse.  How sad.

What is there to write about?  How the climate change catastrophe rained down unbreakable ice to cover every surface?  Did mom pay the heating bill this month?  Does it even matter?  From here, looking at all the dead bodies being shoveled into a paddy wagon, it's still difficult to believe.  But it shouldn't be.  

I grabbed a pair of mom's high heels, put them on, and lay on my bed smoking cigarettes until the entire pack was empty.  This is where my journey started.  With me in need of more cigarettes.  The problem with buying cigarettes, in this new world order, is that nothing is for sale.  If I want to keep smoking I'm going to have to loot a place for a carton or two.  Again I glance at the freshly rolled, unlighted cigarette on my bedside table.  This is asking for trouble.  This is saying, "okay.  I'll be a part of this world."

I light the cigarette, my last rolled one now that tobacco can only be stolen in packs.  Is it worth it to venture out there for cigarettes alone?  I feel bad thoughts entering my head, thoughts of this very real, this really real apocalyptic world we're living in, and I know I'm going to need more medication.  By medication I mean cigarettes.  I'm not on Adderall right now.  I can't remember the last time that drug was even for sale.  The pharmaceutical companies all died in the frost, and when we weren't out celebrating the passing away of those bastards we were alone in our ice covered homes, freezing to death.

I need to get out of here.  I zip up my motorcycle jacket, put on my vegan Doc Martens, and open the front door to an icy hellhole.  All I need is cigarettes, I tell myself.  All I need to do is loot a pack of cigarettes.  I can do this.  I can.

The world ended last year and I can't remember it happening.  Things sped by in those days, all types of things: me undoing my body with smoke, the 20 degree summer, and finally the frozen rain.  The frozen rain is what did it, I think.  That's what brought the world to a standstill.  The ice on my house, the ice on the abandoned driveway, and even though I might not want to I know I need to find mom.  If I'm leaving the house for the first time in over a year, I might as well go full force.  I need my cigarettes.  I need my mother.  The ice can take care of anything else.  I just need my cigarettes and I need my mommy.  I take one more look around the abandoned house then melt open the front door with a blowtorch.  When I get outside, what feels like 100 pounds of ice fall on my head.  Things go black.

I wake up on the steps outside my front door and there's blood on the back of my head.  Sprawled on my back, I look left and see bloody ice.  I don't know if I can do this.  I have to do this.  I see the three car pileup more clearly out here.  Squinting into the distance, it looks like three dead bodies are sprawled across the ice covered road.  I walk over there and fall 27 times before I make it to them.  When I do, I see the corpses up close.  Twisted, distorted bodies on the road and a voice from one of the cars.  There are living people jammed into this one, I know because their screams cover everything like a thick layer of ice.  I can't take it so I crawl inside the car, a VW van, and undo the belt buckles of everyone in there.  There are three girls and two boys packed into this car and I try to drag one of the girls out but she wails in pain, so I back off, but that just makes her scream even harder.  I finally get everybody out of the overturned van.  Everyone's pretty much writhing around on the ice, with their broken bones and everything.  The boy with shoulder length black hair spits blood and looks up at me.

"Hey, do you think you can help us turn this wagon over?"  The VW is obviously stolen, and all the seats have been removed.  I spot three large bottles of Wild Turkey in the back seats.

"My name is Chris, by the way."

I nod.  So far, no one else is saying anything.  I introduce myself and reach down to shake Chris' hand from his incapacitated position on the ice.  When I pull away my hand is covered in blood.  I address Chris.

"Yeah man, but I mean, are you okay?"

"Oh yeah," Chris said.  "We're fine.  We just had a near-life experience."  He says this through a cackle that makes me uneasy.  

"Help me," one of the girls wails.  I wrap my arms around her and my face turns red.  I can't deal with this right now but it could be my only way to locate my cigarettes and then, more importantly, my mom.  I pull the girl up to her feet.  When everyone from the van is standing it clears room to access the interior of the vehicle and I find one more girl in there.  Her neck is snapped and her eyes tell me she's gone.  I drag her lifeless body out of the car, then turn to face Chris.  

"Is she dead?  Oh fuck.  We lost Amber.  Guys, we lost Amber."

The girl I helped to her feet says, "oh, come off it, Chris.  Don't say her name.  Don't tell him our names.  Names don't exist anymore."

It's true.  No one refers to anyone by name anymore, just "him" or "her" or "you" or "them."  I decide to lean back against an ice tree while everyone gets their shit together.  

"All right," Chris says.  "Now can you help us?"

I help them right the VW and Chris thanks me.  He offers me a ride somewhere and I'm too dazed to decline.  I get into the van, along with three girls and one boy covered in blood and wincing from broken bones.  Then Chris gets in.  The other people in the van near instantly grab one of the bottles of Wild Turkey and pass it around.  The girl I helped offers me a sip.  I take the biggest gulp I can then pass the bottle on.  Chris starts the ignition on the VW and after about ten tries gets it to start.

"So where are we going?" I ask Chris.

"Wherever," he responds, then cackles that same icy cackle that sends chills up my icy spine.  We speed off into the distance.

"So what's your name?" Chris asks from driver's seat.

"Chris, stop it.  There are no names.  You know this."  The same girl with the name problem who I helped up yelps this from the back half of the van, where most of us are bumping and rolling around with the Wild Turkey.  The other boy is in the passenger seat.

"I was just trying to be polite.  Jeez," Chris says.  At this, everybody starts laughing, even me.

"Although just because something's antiquated doesn't mean it doesn't have value--" 

The boy in the passenger seat holds a finger to Chris' lips. 

"Shhh.  It's okay.  There are no more names.  Just accept it.  Everyone else has."  The boy says these words slow and comforting.  Chris takes the boy's hand in his, squeezes it, and focuses on the road.

When the Wild Turkey gets passed back to me I take another huge gulp and then I retry my question from earlier: "Chris, dude, where are going?"

"New York City, brainiac.  That's where all the action is going down, right?"  My stomach sinks when I hear this.  New York is a warzone and I don't want any part of what might be happening there.  Besides, there's no way mom would be in New York, or even the United States.  There's just no way.

"Can you just drop me off at the train station?  It's on the way.  Actually it's just down the road."

Chris sneers at me, then says "alright, it's your funeral.  New York is where the last of the battles are being fought though.  You sure you want to miss this?"

I think about it for a second, about what could happen if I stay with them.  I don't have to think long. 

"Yeah," I say.  "I'm sure."  I could have gone with them.  I could have trusted them.  They looked like anarchists.  But who could be sure these days?  

cum
pussy
cum

24 Hour Party People

It starts with a line of coke.  Up my nose, off a silver tray one of the girls here hands to me.  I don't know anybody's name.  I do another line.  For a second I don't know anything and then I'm talking away.  Then it continues, with another line, off a different tray that a different girl hands to me.  At least I think it's a different girl.  Everything here looks the same.  The evening morphs and dissolves as it rolls on, one line after another,

Self-Injury Awareness Day

We’re in Tom’s parents’ living room passing around a blade.  It’s Self-Injury Awareness Day so we decided to party extra hard.  I'm having a psychotic break and this is the truth.

you wouldn't get it

We ghould around a days away

More or less.  I basically broke it now.

This sapphire gem is worth plenty.

“I love you, which is why I can’t love you”

Some pretty words from a pretty face with

fucked up everything all over it.

Plagiarism, who gives a fuck in the face of death.

I do not care about your Whole Foods store

I eat fast and furious, if you get that call me

Fast propellers picking up dust and it’s

Sand in my mouth, sand in my mouth, sand in my mouth

We don’t really take it seriously though

Maybe that’s for the best.

Do not do that line of coke;

Cook your own.

My feet are numb from sitting on them.

Signing off/