time stands still

See this picture?


In a way i was trying to write this then. I was too close to it then. I just wanted to romaticize the whole thing.

Then later, when i was smoking Pall Mall's, eating Xanax, and watching chris hose blood off the back of his skull, i tired again. The passing of a great time into an unsure, insecure transitory period made me want this to happen again. It still didn't work.

We can calculate the speed at which other galaxies are running away from us by their redshift. Google it if you care. Anyway now this part of my past is moving away from me at exponetially increasing speed, i enjoy looking at it's color more than it's content. it's sort of the reverse dragnet- the names are real, but the story has been exagerated or altogether made up to make the guilty more interesting. so here is a little bit.:

sweat dreams>we spend our days at + far and away from work, after the jump



i'm not wasting any more time trying to be clever. laying face down on a warm/damp matress, one has a hard time justifying spending time friviously. or constructivly for that matter. what matter? what kind of expression is that? stop. stop trying to be clever. that was the first fucking sentance. quit it.

okay so the matress is damp, and warm, but i haven't wet myself. i promise, not with urine anyway. it's 110 fucking degress in here, and it's most likely 10 am. maybe 9:30. it heats up fast in my room, so i'm sweating like a pig. i'd get up and take a shower, but there's no soap in there. just a sticky, nasty floor. i'm fairly certain the light doesn't work.

you've proabably gathered using the bathroom here is an uphill battle. i try not to fight and climb, espcially when i'm this sweaty.

i'd get up and get some water, but there are no glasses in there. just a sticky, nasty floor. it smells like beer and there are fruit flies. the kitchen is another uphill battle. we've established that is not my game.

in the south, there are two major epochs: b.a.c. and a.a.c. (pronouced BAK! and AAK! when you tell your friends), that is before air conditioning and after air conditioning. all that lived b.a.c. and perserverd are better and stronger men than us. i was born a.a.c., and, and as all children of my generation i am totally unequiped to deal with soul crushing heat of august in south carolina with no air conditioning. sometimes i imagine what the brave souls of the BAK! era must have done to cope. or i try to, but my imagination fails me. it's 90 degrees or more until around midnight, and it only really starts to cool down around four or five in the morning. to make it to five in that kind of heat, you're going to need to drink: beer, many, many cans. they get warm so fast, you have to drink them faster, and with all the sweating you have to replinish your fluids.

another uphill batttle, but i'll fight this one.

so: i've taken all of the sheets off my bed, and pillows and blankets also. they just get soaked with my sweat, and the matress seems to better suited to repel mositure of this magnitude. there's a fan in the window, and i'm not wearing any clothes. this is the only way i can sleep. full of beer. damp matress. the fan blows more humid mess on me. and now it's 9:30, or maybe 10, and the sun is way the fuck up, and it's hot again.

the a.c. stoped blowing cold happy on us almost a month ago. our fat landlords won't fix it. fat fucking redneck trash. they have terrible skin, too! i bet the a.c. works at the godawful ranchhouse they live at, but you couldn't tell from how much the fat ugly motherfuckers sweat, from the front seat of there goddamn AIR-CONDITIONED ford truck. they offered to take us to church with them the other day to "get out this dang old heat." what kind of trash tries to bribe you with GOD's a.c.? we broke one of the windows out after they left, to appease HIM for thier sin. clever, huh? i'm trying to stop that \\\\\!remember!/////, but IT MAKES ME FEEL SO GOOD. the window in my room is broken out to, and that's a good memory. but it makes me think of a bad memory. so maybe it's just a bad memory.

i want out of here, right now.

i cry. why not? it's free.

***

so we're at work now, in the walk in cooler, because it's more or less the oposite of our trailer-home, ]because[ it's very cold in here, ]]because[[ the beer in here is also actually cold, ]]]because[[[ here are cans of nitrous oxide charged whip cream to suck the joy from, ]]]]because[[[[ it's sunday ~again~ and we're not going to church with the nasty folk who own our nasty home, but NOT [because] we're working today.

]]]]]BECAUSE, because, because, we always have sundays off, and we're not about to change that. but just BECAUSE we're not working today doesn't mean were not at work. I told you all the reasons- they all have b-e-c-a-u-s-e in front of them, in a giant run on sentance, and because this is still 200-fucking-1 and in 200-fucking-you, me all of us, cannot buy beer on sunday in south carolina until 2003 (also the year we'll be 21). and we need all this fucking beer. i told you how hot it is in our shitty trailer that someone broke most of the windows out of. pay attention.

my roomate is slumped against the beer kegs that line the left side of the cooler, a can of ready whip slides

s
l
o
w

out his fingers and hits the floor. i can't hear it, nor can i notice an identical can dropping from hand. my roomate, his lips are covered in redi-whip and are a little blue, but he's not dead or even dying. it's cold in here, and he just huffed some nitrous, so he's looking appros. i laugh a slow, deep laugh at him, and him at me, and our heads ring dead. the door to the cooler pulls open, revealing us in all of our stoned glory- in torn shirts and shorts, sandals, unshaved and most defiently not workng. our faces covered with the evidence of our stupidity. a uniformed, most definetly working person steps into the cooler with us, and draws something from his apron. His nametage reads "Turd Furgeson."

"Fuck, i've been looking everywhere for you faggots"

He's pulling a lighter from same pocket of his apron with the other hand, and reveals the first object- a thin glass pipe, magnificently packed bright green. a little flame and a long inhale and the cooler is filled with pungent marijuna smoke. he reaches past me and pulls another redi-whip can from the shelf, sucking the gas off the top and taking after taking his pause, starts giggling hysterically. joining my roomate on the kegs, he offers the pipe to us.

"It's cool. Bob says we can take two twelves of budweiser if we'll buy two tommrow to replace them."

But there are three of us now, i think, how will this ever do? Turd pulls two twelves down from the shelf and looks my roomate:

"Peter, grab the other two."

Turd's math was shitty if you were on the raw end of it, but it was fine for our purposes. Turning to me, he hands over a giant set of keys attached to a plastic hole punched card.

"When i was leaving the office Bob was on his way to deal with some nigger with cold riblets. Grab a sleeve of Comfort we'll meet you at the togo door. Did you guys remember my river shoes?"

We shake our heads no.

"Fuuuuuuck. Fucking faggots. Goddammit. i should drink all this beer myself."

Peter starts to laugh. I smile and open the cooler door.

"We're fucking with you. What should i do with Bob's keys?"

"Leave them in the door to the liqour room. He'll be wanting in there after he has to deal with that fat fuck with the ribs. He has bbq sauce all over his fat fucking face. Bob will go straight for the tequila."

Peter looks at Turd from behind his glasses "How are we planning on getting beer to replace this tommrow?"

Turd replies to peter without turning around, walking out the cooler door: "Fuck that. We're not paying for any of this shit."

***

The journey to the liqour closet is fret with longing and inconvience. As i pass the drink station the new hostess come around the corner, her eyes lighting up and arms spread:

"Chunky!! What are you doing here!"

My most pressing need is to get that sleeve of Comfort and escape unnoticed, but my most animal need is to get that sleeve of comfort and escape unnoticed. Get it? Har har. If you're dense: i want to fuck this girl, and i'm going to waste time flirting with her. Unfortunately this is 2001, and though i'm better at this than most of my friends, i won't be confident enough for it be easy until 2007.

I take her open arms as invatation and pull her close to me...

"I'm on my way to church. I left my bible on 41 last night. We were sharing our favorite passages. Where were you?"

She laughs, but pulls away:

"My boyfriend took me to Olive Garden. We had the endless Pasta Bowl."

Like i said it's 2001 so i'm funny, but maybe this isn't a great idea:

"Jesus has his own version of the never endless Pasta Bowl. It's called His Endless Love for us. And it's way less than $12.99 at particpating locations for a limitied time- it free, whereever, forever. I hope we see you during our next study group."

She seems a little amused, but more freaked out.

"Okay Chunky....good luck finding your bible. Your shirt has a hole in it."

I'm not wasting any more time trying to be clever. I have to get the sleeve of Comfort.

***

I'm leaving the kitchen rounding the corner toward the liqour room when the fat man with frosted tips who loves Jesus stops me. I'm suprised he's working on a sunday morning.

"Hey there chunky! I heard you talking to Leah about The Good Book. Man i'm glad to hear y'all are interesting in His Word!"

Frosted-tips Jesus Man's name is Richard. He's in an ill fitting applebee's shirt and way-too short black shorts, his computer card dangling on a hoplessly slack bungee cord, draging the floor as he walks. Richard can't tell when i'm kidding, and i like this about him.

"Well, we've all got to do our part. You having a good morning richard?"

His eyes light up at my interest in his day.

"OH YOU KNOW IT! Really though it's a blessed day chunky. Oh....god bless it i almsot forgot...you gotta call man!"

God Bless Richard. He's given me an out from having a conversation with him.

"Line two man....oh, and your shirt's got a big-ass hole in it man! I guess that's air conditioning, right?"

I fake laugh and thank him.

***

So it's 2001 so nobody has cell phones yet. that's not to say they're not around, it's just that at this point you have to really want one to have one. I won't have one until 2003, and rick won't have one until two years after that. but here in 2001, i'm on line two with him.

"What up chunk. I didn't think you were working."

"I'm not....it's like 1 in the afternoon what are you doing up?"

"Oh you know. My parents made me go to church.

"Ohhhhh right. That sucks"

"Yeah. Hey did you say last night you guys were going to go to the river?"

"Pretty much. about to head out now. You want to go?"

"Yeah. Hey, you still have my river shoes?"

"Probably. Do you have any beers?"

"Nah. Hold on...my brother left some in the trunk of my car. Should i bring them? They're all hot and shit."

"Mmmm just like your mother."

"Man fuck you"

"Yeah bring them. We'll pick you up on the way."

***

So i'm finally at the liqour closet, amd i'm way behind schedule. If this were 2003, my friends outside in the car would already be calling me to bitch. Primadonnas. I've only been working here for a few months, and i already know which key opens the liqour closet, so i'm in pretty quick. It's 2001, so we still have mini-bottles, so i grab a shrink-wrapped sleeve of southern comfort. it's 20 bottles, 1000 millileters in all, conveintaly packed for individual use. i close the liqour room door and turn to slip out the fire exit adjacent.

"Chunky!"

Bob is standing about five feet away. I don't know how much he's seen, but it looks like i'm about to be looking for another job.

"Line One. "

Fucking 2001.

"You have a hole in your shirt."

This might seem fucked up. I have a sleeve of stolen liqour in one hand and his keys in another. And he noticed the hole in my shirt. But he's not looking at my hands. He's already looking the other way, muttering about heading to the bank, when i thank him and head to the phone.

***

"This is Chunk."

"Hey dude!"

"Whoa! When did you get back!"

"Yesterday, but i was tired last night. I just hung out around my family."

"Sounds terrible. We're going to the river, you down?"

"Hells yeah!"

"I don't have your shoes anymore."

"Dude....I Don't even need those. I've got dad's truck...can i meet you guys up at the bees?"

"Fuck that. Just pick rick up and we'll meet you there. Do you have any booze?"

"Nah bro....but i got that doh-ja!"

"No one calls it that jesse. bring papers."

"See you there dude."

***

I'm already out the door and halfway to the car when i realize bob's keys are in my pocket. Richard is leaning in passanger window of Peter's car, talking to Dustin.

"Man ya'll be careful out there now. Boy it sound like ya'll are gonna have some fun."

I bark a head's up at Richard and throw bob's keys at him.

"Bob says your in charge until he gets back from the bank. Stay blessed."

"You know it man."

I climb in the back of peter's car in time to see Dustin giving peter a bump off his mother's house key. I'm a little suprised.

"Where the fuck did that come from?"

Dustin digs his key around in a little bag of coke before sniffing it off the end. the key has a smiley face print on it. A family in church clothes climbs out of the car next to us.

"SNMMMP!! Richard. You want some?"

"God Bless him. Yes but for fuck's sake not here."

***