(In 1994 I became the second singer for a band I would later name Exhaust. For five years we outlasted anything TOO detrimental to stop us and that taught me more than the 16 scattered years I spent locked up in classrooms and study halls. I was confronted with human nature and what to expect, and not expect out of life, learning far more than I did from the thousands of dollars my family threw at UAB. I’ve ripped up at least a dozen tries at documenting those memories on paper; I could never seem to get it right. Adventures were tortured, hysterical, endless…
Every minute mattered. And I wouldn’t trade a moment in Exhaust for anything. This is for Andrew… Brannon… sigh and you too Mike.)
Go west. We showed up in the shadows of Los Angeles late. Weeknight. I’d booked the next few shows and spirits were high among the four of us, despite disasters in Flagstaff, Phoenix and New Orleans. Texas, actually, had been kind to us, but I think we’d just gotten lucky.
Renee was just a voice on the phone, one of many Andrew and I called on our list of strangers sprawled across the map, Gainesville to Portland. Pleading with the voices to book an Exhaust show, find us a roof to sleep under and maybe, just maybe, a few bucks for gas. Hat tricks were few and far between. Shudder to Think stayed in the cassette player, and their off-center queer punk lyrics reminded us to play what you want and damn the rest.
There was a lot of non-verbal eye-contact communication behind her back when we met Renee. She was pretty in a punk rock way, with self-torn clothing and intentionally over-bleached hair, fishnets under shorts. She couldn’t help the freckles but they worked on her. You don’t envision a dominatrix in Venice Beach having freckles but… this one did.
Calling the four boys of Exhaust naïve is an understatement. Andrew and I stumbled out of Birmingham’s public school system, while Brannon and Mike graduated on the other side of Red Mountain. On the road our greatest weakness was also our greatest weapon: absolute ignorance to… well, everything. Optimism and self-deprecating humor pushed us past the big setbacks. The breakdowns, the lack of funds, the violence...
We just shrugged when our California shows began falling through, content with sleeping on the floor of her above-garage flat. Enigma was on the radio, and they didn’t tell us anything discernable; but we’d been sleeping on the side of the road and in rat-trap hotels. Meaningless music felt good.
The four of us wide-eyed everything in Venice Beach. The terrible LA traffic that led to the narrow-alleyed streets that led to her dungeon, or more specifically, her place of employment. Retro torture devices were everywhere. Cages, whips and a handcuff pinwheel. The early July heat was put to rest by the Pacific winds, something I was not used to. We walked the handful of blocks to the boardwalk, a place that, to date, had only existed for me in cinema fiction and early 80’s punk rock history. Xanadu, The Jazz Singer, or Colors. Suicidal Tendencies and Beowulf. A huge wall mural of Jim Morrison, Venice’s adopted son, went up in ’91 to stand watch over petty drug buys and purse snatches. The ocean water was California frozen, and burned through my skin. (One of those moments that I mentioned in the beginning)
“White trash is a racist term” Renee said on the way to LA’s seediest porn stores, lecturing me on the pitfalls of my, and the band’s, extremely self-destructive perceptions. We made out in the peep show booths, her in fishnets under self-torn clothing, me in a beat up Liberty Caps’ t-shirt and camo shorts. I remember leaning against the velvet-curtained wall, as far from the real world as I could ever be (The jury’s still out on that one). Jawbreaker came on the radio as we drove back through the black skies and stars of Los Angeles to above-the-garage, and they reiterated that “it gets loneliest at night…”
Our shows under Renee’s wing were perfect examples of Exhaust’s severely poor grip on punk rock reality. A gay rights festival. A block party hosted by drug dealing gangsters (actually, one of our best shows). At another questionable venue, the lead singer of Wish for Eden, a Christian punk outfit, stood in front of the stage, stone drunk, and begged us to take him along on our “way to the top”. The Exhaust response was simply more non-verbal eye-contact communication amongst ourselves, mid-set. Renee’s current boyfriend, and a selection of the Mexican gang he was a part of, waited in the parking lot. Texas, it seemed, wouldn’t be the only time that luck was on our side.
Leaving Renee behind, en route to the Pacific Northwest, was confusing. She’d big sistered us and screwed us up in the same breaths, with poor show after no show after poor show. Brannon went to Shades Valley for Christ’s sake! And here we were getting teary-eyed over a dominatrix in the suburban shadows of LA. She let Mike borrow Rollins’ book “Get in the Van”, an irony too tough to swallow even then.
A year and a month later had not been enough days for us to learn our lesson as we ventured back through Renee’s waters yet again. The shows continued their trend of being disasters or non-existent, only this time we’d been sentenced to sleep outside of her apartment, in the van, in east LA, thanks to a new boyfriend and the history Renee and I had of making out in a porn store peep show booth. A wide-eyed black man woke us at 4am, beating on the side of the van, more confused than us on our intentions. A brief confrontation between he and I resulted in him returning with a cocked and loaded gun, crossing the street, eyes straight ahead, a vigilante/lunatic with a purpose. We fled quickly to fight another day, luck again intervening. And I swore that I’d never speak to Renee again.
Years later I checked an old email address and found a dated plea from Renee wanting the Rollins’ book returned. She was writing a column for Maximum Rock n Roll and Exhaust’s five year run had ended, leaving me to bartend and scheme other ways to waste resources and time. I wrote her back telling her that Mike, now too, was on my list of people I never planned on speaking to again. I added that, in his defense, Mike was currently nine-to-fiving his life away as a bank teller and probably needed that book a lot more than she did. Not all of us can be one of Venice Beach’s adopted sons and daughters.
(The last few pages of this story would read that Exhaust ended the same way it began. Wave after wave of confusion carefully masked by 800 pounds of self-deprecating humor. No one, and I mean no one, was more abusive to Exhaust than Exhaust. But every minute, extraordinary, meant something.
At least it did to me.)
“Untraceable. Untranslatable. I can’t explain all I ever wanted to do.” - Fugazi
3.08.2009
Hey Dad, we wear air masks in fires now
Janey, the runaway American dream cannot just be about survival. Not anymore. It has to be a sincere effort/push/fight to make things better. Make your life better. Make life better. An 8-and-half-year-old’s reasons for getting out of bed every morning are so different than a torn up 35-year-old’s. So angel lets do it. Lets run away. Tonight. America is plastered across this world and surely, SURELY, we can find a fire station that will hire on one lost soul. Yes, we can open another restaurant, and yes, when you're older, you can hostess there if you want.
Coming up I never wanted kids, but situations have a way of finding you. You're mother and I used to fight like caged dogs, the frustration of it all being too much for a naive southern hardcore kid and a temperamental Yankee. I was bartending when your mom went into labor, and I reeked of beer and bleach when I first met you that night. Of course I cried, you were four weeks early and only weighed five pounds. For all my size and tattoos I’m still pretty emo.
East Lake was a meat grinder for teenagers in 1988. Packs of wolves roamed directionless at all hours, cheap cases of beer bought on Oporto-Madrid Boulevard in the backseat, an ounce of pot in the glove box next to brass knuckles. For a solid year the underage hookup for alcohol was a young black woman that worked the 3-11 shift at Conoco. Early one Tuesday night a 13-year-old wandered out of the woods and shot her in the head for a gang initiation. The store never re-opened and for the next three years I watched the weeds grow through the asphalt and over the gas pumps, until the bulldozers finally came to bury a hurt memory.
In ‘02 you were two-years-old and living in Pensacola; I was worthless, in my late twenties with a dead-end job and no future. I’d work until 3am in Southside and drive all night to see you, falling asleep on your mom’s bed and holding your hand thru the crib bars… Headaches and worries of what you’ll think of me if I don’t make things better. Did you know that I opened the Black Market Bar just to impress you? You wanted a restaurant and the Speakeasy didn’t have a kitchen. Silly I know, but I do better on no sleep and cheap coffee anyway. You’re a hell of an influence, kiddo.
In ’07 I wrote a book no one will ever read in a Vestavia library, waiting on you to get out of 1st grade. I bit back tears from your excitement to see me every day, the way your brown eyes lit up... I kindof stand out in the midst of Vestavia soccer moms and Mercedes Mini-vans, which made the walk back to the library that much more fun. We raced across the schoolyard and bounced story ideas off each other, yours always better than mine, at least more marketable…
Your grandparents let go of my reigns after one of my many close calls with self-destruction. Nights were endless or empty, often times both. Someone, lit-up on… something, would mumble, “Isn’t there a witch buried in Bass Cemetery?” and the cars were running. The train tracks grinding parallel to the headstones were impossibly eerie, but we never found any ghosts or witches’ graves. The older kids would make the trek to Mad Dog, way out in the woods of Hoover, home to devil–worshippers, runaway abductions, and animal sacrifices (allegedly). Traci Bishop, disintegrated on Busch beer and handfuls of pills, showed me an arsenal he’d put together for his one-man assault on Satan’s children. Guns scare me now just as bad as they did back then, even more so in the hands of drunken idiots.
East Lake was over run with white trash punks, skate rats and southern-fried hippies, (two of which categorized your dad) the frustration of it all being too much for directionless kids with muscle cars and motorcycles. The neighborhood taught me fear and survival, scarring me on illegal substances, violence, and going to parties. We were Outsiders and outcasts and out of our minds simultaneously, running from wolves and howling like wolves at the same time.
Janey, I’m still hiding from the wolves.
Only now I’ve traded East Lake for the outskirts of West End.
This man just now… his son waited in the parking lot for Engine 14, his grandson waiting in the car, both crying because they already knew. The hotel rented by the day, the hour, the week or year, depending on how far of a slide you were on.
Inside, one bed was covered in garbage, stacks and sacks, the other a sheetless stained mattress of cigarette burns, sweat stains and food condiments. He was dead on the floor between the two, blood staining his face a brown red crust.
I touched his skin for vitals and it was cold freezing. “Why die here?” echoed over and over in my mind. Behind a grocery store in a cardboard box would have had more dignity. Not that it matters where I do it, but I really don’t care to go out buried under garbage in a $75-a-week hotel room, not unless it’s on fire.
So Janey lets run away and you never grow up. The rest of the world is waiting with its scams and grifts to get some sort of foothold in you, or on this planet, or in their own self-worth. But, at 8-and-a-half, and as long as you have someone to protect you, then you’re bases are covered. And for you I’ll tear down the skies, a war against God.
But please…
Don’t outgrow me. Don’t start thinking I’m dumb, or outdated, or overprotective, even though it’s all true. You broke my heart once rollerskating with two of your girlfriends instead of skating with me, then won it back when you bragged to our waitress that I’d ripped back the windshield of an overturned SUV. Keep in mind that underneath this exterior of testosterone, intentional scars, and shaved-head grimace, I’m still pretty emo.
At 8-and-a-half, you can just stare out the window and selectively pick out the good in things. Don’t grow up jaded, bitter at what you think someone else owes you, or what you think life owes you. When I’m with you I try to accept the amazing in this world, picturing how it looks through your eyes.
Please don’t ever grow up, because I’m in no hurry for you to see the world through mine.
So pack a bag and we’ll leave tonight, no set destination. We could follow the footsteps of Andi in Pensacola and jump a cargo train to anywhere, but the “square” I’ve turned into might insist on a somewhat safer passage. We’ll leave behind my anchors, collected from years of trying the same thing over and over just to get by.
Just to survive.
Surviving is not enough, Janey.
You have to make things better for yourself.
Re-define the word “impossible”.
Bring a notebook for my sentences and another for your drawings. Bring books to read and re-read and trade for more books. Wear Converse hi-tops so I’ll never forget East Lake and the kids it chewed up. Worn out soles burning up on pavement. No more stolen graveyard bones, 33-year-old grandmothers, or drug dealing bikers.
Janey, that’s the runaway American dream. Birmingham to Seattle, Key West to California.
Along the way I’ll need you to remind me that life is, and can be, beautiful.
And you’ll need me to protect you from the wolves.
“I can’t seem to scream these words loud enough, or hard enough. Somebody say my name so I know I’m alive.” – Feeling Left Out
“Don’t act like your family’s a joke” – Drive-by Truckers.
Coming up I never wanted kids, but situations have a way of finding you. You're mother and I used to fight like caged dogs, the frustration of it all being too much for a naive southern hardcore kid and a temperamental Yankee. I was bartending when your mom went into labor, and I reeked of beer and bleach when I first met you that night. Of course I cried, you were four weeks early and only weighed five pounds. For all my size and tattoos I’m still pretty emo.
East Lake was a meat grinder for teenagers in 1988. Packs of wolves roamed directionless at all hours, cheap cases of beer bought on Oporto-Madrid Boulevard in the backseat, an ounce of pot in the glove box next to brass knuckles. For a solid year the underage hookup for alcohol was a young black woman that worked the 3-11 shift at Conoco. Early one Tuesday night a 13-year-old wandered out of the woods and shot her in the head for a gang initiation. The store never re-opened and for the next three years I watched the weeds grow through the asphalt and over the gas pumps, until the bulldozers finally came to bury a hurt memory.
In ‘02 you were two-years-old and living in Pensacola; I was worthless, in my late twenties with a dead-end job and no future. I’d work until 3am in Southside and drive all night to see you, falling asleep on your mom’s bed and holding your hand thru the crib bars… Headaches and worries of what you’ll think of me if I don’t make things better. Did you know that I opened the Black Market Bar just to impress you? You wanted a restaurant and the Speakeasy didn’t have a kitchen. Silly I know, but I do better on no sleep and cheap coffee anyway. You’re a hell of an influence, kiddo.
In ’07 I wrote a book no one will ever read in a Vestavia library, waiting on you to get out of 1st grade. I bit back tears from your excitement to see me every day, the way your brown eyes lit up... I kindof stand out in the midst of Vestavia soccer moms and Mercedes Mini-vans, which made the walk back to the library that much more fun. We raced across the schoolyard and bounced story ideas off each other, yours always better than mine, at least more marketable…
Your grandparents let go of my reigns after one of my many close calls with self-destruction. Nights were endless or empty, often times both. Someone, lit-up on… something, would mumble, “Isn’t there a witch buried in Bass Cemetery?” and the cars were running. The train tracks grinding parallel to the headstones were impossibly eerie, but we never found any ghosts or witches’ graves. The older kids would make the trek to Mad Dog, way out in the woods of Hoover, home to devil–worshippers, runaway abductions, and animal sacrifices (allegedly). Traci Bishop, disintegrated on Busch beer and handfuls of pills, showed me an arsenal he’d put together for his one-man assault on Satan’s children. Guns scare me now just as bad as they did back then, even more so in the hands of drunken idiots.
East Lake was over run with white trash punks, skate rats and southern-fried hippies, (two of which categorized your dad) the frustration of it all being too much for directionless kids with muscle cars and motorcycles. The neighborhood taught me fear and survival, scarring me on illegal substances, violence, and going to parties. We were Outsiders and outcasts and out of our minds simultaneously, running from wolves and howling like wolves at the same time.
Janey, I’m still hiding from the wolves.
Only now I’ve traded East Lake for the outskirts of West End.
This man just now… his son waited in the parking lot for Engine 14, his grandson waiting in the car, both crying because they already knew. The hotel rented by the day, the hour, the week or year, depending on how far of a slide you were on.
Inside, one bed was covered in garbage, stacks and sacks, the other a sheetless stained mattress of cigarette burns, sweat stains and food condiments. He was dead on the floor between the two, blood staining his face a brown red crust.
I touched his skin for vitals and it was cold freezing. “Why die here?” echoed over and over in my mind. Behind a grocery store in a cardboard box would have had more dignity. Not that it matters where I do it, but I really don’t care to go out buried under garbage in a $75-a-week hotel room, not unless it’s on fire.
So Janey lets run away and you never grow up. The rest of the world is waiting with its scams and grifts to get some sort of foothold in you, or on this planet, or in their own self-worth. But, at 8-and-a-half, and as long as you have someone to protect you, then you’re bases are covered. And for you I’ll tear down the skies, a war against God.
But please…
Don’t outgrow me. Don’t start thinking I’m dumb, or outdated, or overprotective, even though it’s all true. You broke my heart once rollerskating with two of your girlfriends instead of skating with me, then won it back when you bragged to our waitress that I’d ripped back the windshield of an overturned SUV. Keep in mind that underneath this exterior of testosterone, intentional scars, and shaved-head grimace, I’m still pretty emo.
At 8-and-a-half, you can just stare out the window and selectively pick out the good in things. Don’t grow up jaded, bitter at what you think someone else owes you, or what you think life owes you. When I’m with you I try to accept the amazing in this world, picturing how it looks through your eyes.
Please don’t ever grow up, because I’m in no hurry for you to see the world through mine.
So pack a bag and we’ll leave tonight, no set destination. We could follow the footsteps of Andi in Pensacola and jump a cargo train to anywhere, but the “square” I’ve turned into might insist on a somewhat safer passage. We’ll leave behind my anchors, collected from years of trying the same thing over and over just to get by.
Just to survive.
Surviving is not enough, Janey.
You have to make things better for yourself.
Re-define the word “impossible”.
Bring a notebook for my sentences and another for your drawings. Bring books to read and re-read and trade for more books. Wear Converse hi-tops so I’ll never forget East Lake and the kids it chewed up. Worn out soles burning up on pavement. No more stolen graveyard bones, 33-year-old grandmothers, or drug dealing bikers.
Janey, that’s the runaway American dream. Birmingham to Seattle, Key West to California.
Along the way I’ll need you to remind me that life is, and can be, beautiful.
And you’ll need me to protect you from the wolves.
“I can’t seem to scream these words loud enough, or hard enough. Somebody say my name so I know I’m alive.” – Feeling Left Out
“Don’t act like your family’s a joke” – Drive-by Truckers.
2.18.2009
We’ll start at my left wrist and go up.
Damn these movies and music. The false heroes of actors and the “fuck you” ethics of punk rock have warped me past the point of any safe return. I foolishly set goals that are only probable in comic book pages, three-chord-backed screams or frame grain cinema. It was fun to call it DIY growing up. It was fun to call it entertainment, a hobby, or something to kill time. But now I’m calling it what it is.
A sickness.
I’m not schizophrenic; I just know the world is out to get me. So I’m trading in sleep for worry and heart break. It’s also more time spent with my eyes open. I’ve come to realize one thing and one thing only:
I
live
for sadness.
Broken down cars and busted homes. Who cares about mansions and Mercedes when there’s overgrown houses inexplicably empty for the ground to reclaim? The woods of Newcastle are so intoxicating. Late night legends of three boys that go missing. The late night legends said they cheated moonshiners and the story ends there, no bodies necessary, no graves ever found. Three decades later their ’51 Chevy shows up buried under the old Highway 79.
And that’s only a bit part of one story.
Hey did someone try to convince you that life is a movie? 120 minutes of antagonists and protagonists, a nail-biting problem and the courage to solve it? Do you want to be the well-dressed gentleman at the end of the bar swirling a rocks glass, every word witty and every word… important? You’ve read this far so you’re now down to 119 minutes. Tick tock, tick tock.
Me personally, I’ll need longer than two hours to burn this world down.
So I’m not that gentleman at the end of the bar either. But hey, if you are, rocks glass in hand, raise it high…
Raise your glass for forgotten punk bands. Punk rock never quit its day job or didn’t have one to begin with. Bands didn’t want contracts, or dressing rooms, or roadies. Many refused to even play on a stage. We could play “where are they now” forever but as long as someone remembers then it all mattered. Life Sentence. The Headless Marines. Caustic Outlook. Birmingham punks paid the $5 door to pack out abandoned television towers atop Red Mountain, condemned rental halls in Ensley, hallowed out downtown garages and other places far less accommodating. Three-chord-backed screams taught the ones of us listening a very important lesson.
Accept nothing.
Expect nothing.
The glory of the rock star has faded away.
An eight-page rider sent city to city in preparations for my arrival. Red m&ms, teenage girls, and beer lists. Standing on a 20-foot stage reciting some clever anecdote that will sinkline into a top 10 hit song. Lean over the moat of security guards, point at a girl in the front row wearing a shirt with my name on it, and scream, “this song’s for you, darling!”
Well this song is for Moody Alabama, a little girl lost in Corpus Christi, Texas. She compensated for her missing right arm with unbridled hatred, and justified her hate in loneliness. She wore swastikas on her clothes and seig heiled Hitler, pretending to be white power, but I could see right through it. She fought and picked fights with anyone paying attention until her dad picked her up from the show; a beat up four-door on spare tires, alcohol breath, and jaded over eyes. She told me she’d stayed in Moody for a year and hated it as much as Corpus Christi. It’s easy to hate someone wearing swastikas, but not when it’s a fifteen-year old girl. When you're lost it doesn’t matter which crummy city you call home. You may never be found. (This song’s for you, darling)
The days of the movie star are over.
Reality brutality is far more addictive. Directors struggle to recreate the most fascinating people in history, replacing actuals with script readers and cardboard cutout scenery. Put on your tuxedo and pack into the Kodak Theatre. Hold the gold over your head. Thank your mom and the academy.
Thank God, and
Thank a mother in Liberty, Missouri, outside my window at 7am, digging through the trash of the low-rent apartments I was housed in. I woke up in 2001 working for a law firm in the midst of a multi-million dollar trial, battling over a drug gone wrong. I’d been put in charge of driving the plaintiff’s expert witness from the courtroom to his $350-a-night hotel room. I’d also been put in charge of driving back and fourth to Kinkos all night on cheap coffee and FM radio. I heard her voice, too loud in the freezing winds of the west, her excitement when she’d found a jacket, buried in generic cereal boxes and emptied ashtrays, for her two-year-old daughter. I watched her put the jacket on the small girl, zip it up and walk away. I remember my legs not working for the hour I balled up on the floor, sleep deprived and bawling, as I constructed a mental blue print of this world on fire.
I bit blood from my lip that night as I drove the expert witness back to Kansas City, letting him talk too loud of private planes and celebrity clients. I could only stay quiet, plotting the flames. His empty stories reminded me to remember the three-chord-backed screams learned in an Ensley rental hall…
The superhero is a piece of paper.
Hand drawn to handle the most unreal expectations that life can offer. Bad guys are big and have guns, BUT the superhero is big too, and he’s got heart. Shine the light in the sky; pick up the red one-way telephone…
So someone can save the horror story family of rookie school. The 2.5 kids, plus mom and dad, trapped inside their own burglar bars as smoke and fire raced to annihilate their American dream. The first arriving Engine Company found their charred bodies clutching each other and clutching the bars they’d installed to keep out the thieves. Now they live forever as a spook story for firefighting rookies, a grim look at “the calling”.
So thank you and acknowledgments go to the ones that understand. Please understand that I’m scratching away the surface, leaving only one thing behind. And that one thing is what I’m supposed to be in this life.
This is for you. And
This is for the homes of East Lake and Ensley, too poor for power, every room covered with mattresses and blankets, all while wannabe lawyers argue over socio-economic politics on Fox News and the patio at Dave’s. The kids are awake at 3am because there’s no such thing as a school night. Pot smoke and pills. Gunned down neighbors. And so it goes.
I don’t fight fires in homes like YOURS. The pretty, logical layout, a beeline path to the kitchen, just past the plasma screen TV and marble coffee table, all modeled out of an Ikea catalog. The black smoke-filled houses I frequent have broken chairs pushed against doors, weakened wood floors, and boxes and boxes of nothing. And a lot of mattresses.
This is for Ricky Davis.
This is for the bit parts in my life that let substances stop them short of something brilliant, eating them alive. Hey Scott, to me you're somewhere singing along to those three-chord-backed screams that ruined our ears when we were teenagers. We weren’t THAT close I know, but man I liked seeing you around.
This is for the other side of the street and everyone on it. Because I’m just not the rock star gawk-movie type. No stretch limousine, or cigar-smoke nights of flash bulb fame and too-tall stages. But…
I am still writing MY “Born to Run”.
And I’m taking a whole lot of people with me, chapter by chapter. Sit back, hold on, accept nothing and expect nothing in return. When I strike the match I want you to know who I’m doing this for. Hold my hand, we’ll burn the world down together.
Life is not a movie, or a sold out corporate-sponsored concert. And (unfortunately) it’s not red and blue tights-covered muscles, unbreakable bones and x-ray vision, penciled perfectly in right angle boxes. But I’ll make it something that matters.
I can promise you that much.
“There are only a few things that really belong to me. Who I am, who I was, and who I want to be.” – Bouncing Souls
A sickness.
I’m not schizophrenic; I just know the world is out to get me. So I’m trading in sleep for worry and heart break. It’s also more time spent with my eyes open. I’ve come to realize one thing and one thing only:
I
live
for sadness.
Broken down cars and busted homes. Who cares about mansions and Mercedes when there’s overgrown houses inexplicably empty for the ground to reclaim? The woods of Newcastle are so intoxicating. Late night legends of three boys that go missing. The late night legends said they cheated moonshiners and the story ends there, no bodies necessary, no graves ever found. Three decades later their ’51 Chevy shows up buried under the old Highway 79.
And that’s only a bit part of one story.
Hey did someone try to convince you that life is a movie? 120 minutes of antagonists and protagonists, a nail-biting problem and the courage to solve it? Do you want to be the well-dressed gentleman at the end of the bar swirling a rocks glass, every word witty and every word… important? You’ve read this far so you’re now down to 119 minutes. Tick tock, tick tock.
Me personally, I’ll need longer than two hours to burn this world down.
So I’m not that gentleman at the end of the bar either. But hey, if you are, rocks glass in hand, raise it high…
Raise your glass for forgotten punk bands. Punk rock never quit its day job or didn’t have one to begin with. Bands didn’t want contracts, or dressing rooms, or roadies. Many refused to even play on a stage. We could play “where are they now” forever but as long as someone remembers then it all mattered. Life Sentence. The Headless Marines. Caustic Outlook. Birmingham punks paid the $5 door to pack out abandoned television towers atop Red Mountain, condemned rental halls in Ensley, hallowed out downtown garages and other places far less accommodating. Three-chord-backed screams taught the ones of us listening a very important lesson.
Accept nothing.
Expect nothing.
The glory of the rock star has faded away.
An eight-page rider sent city to city in preparations for my arrival. Red m&ms, teenage girls, and beer lists. Standing on a 20-foot stage reciting some clever anecdote that will sinkline into a top 10 hit song. Lean over the moat of security guards, point at a girl in the front row wearing a shirt with my name on it, and scream, “this song’s for you, darling!”
Well this song is for Moody Alabama, a little girl lost in Corpus Christi, Texas. She compensated for her missing right arm with unbridled hatred, and justified her hate in loneliness. She wore swastikas on her clothes and seig heiled Hitler, pretending to be white power, but I could see right through it. She fought and picked fights with anyone paying attention until her dad picked her up from the show; a beat up four-door on spare tires, alcohol breath, and jaded over eyes. She told me she’d stayed in Moody for a year and hated it as much as Corpus Christi. It’s easy to hate someone wearing swastikas, but not when it’s a fifteen-year old girl. When you're lost it doesn’t matter which crummy city you call home. You may never be found. (This song’s for you, darling)
The days of the movie star are over.
Reality brutality is far more addictive. Directors struggle to recreate the most fascinating people in history, replacing actuals with script readers and cardboard cutout scenery. Put on your tuxedo and pack into the Kodak Theatre. Hold the gold over your head. Thank your mom and the academy.
Thank God, and
Thank a mother in Liberty, Missouri, outside my window at 7am, digging through the trash of the low-rent apartments I was housed in. I woke up in 2001 working for a law firm in the midst of a multi-million dollar trial, battling over a drug gone wrong. I’d been put in charge of driving the plaintiff’s expert witness from the courtroom to his $350-a-night hotel room. I’d also been put in charge of driving back and fourth to Kinkos all night on cheap coffee and FM radio. I heard her voice, too loud in the freezing winds of the west, her excitement when she’d found a jacket, buried in generic cereal boxes and emptied ashtrays, for her two-year-old daughter. I watched her put the jacket on the small girl, zip it up and walk away. I remember my legs not working for the hour I balled up on the floor, sleep deprived and bawling, as I constructed a mental blue print of this world on fire.
I bit blood from my lip that night as I drove the expert witness back to Kansas City, letting him talk too loud of private planes and celebrity clients. I could only stay quiet, plotting the flames. His empty stories reminded me to remember the three-chord-backed screams learned in an Ensley rental hall…
The superhero is a piece of paper.
Hand drawn to handle the most unreal expectations that life can offer. Bad guys are big and have guns, BUT the superhero is big too, and he’s got heart. Shine the light in the sky; pick up the red one-way telephone…
So someone can save the horror story family of rookie school. The 2.5 kids, plus mom and dad, trapped inside their own burglar bars as smoke and fire raced to annihilate their American dream. The first arriving Engine Company found their charred bodies clutching each other and clutching the bars they’d installed to keep out the thieves. Now they live forever as a spook story for firefighting rookies, a grim look at “the calling”.
So thank you and acknowledgments go to the ones that understand. Please understand that I’m scratching away the surface, leaving only one thing behind. And that one thing is what I’m supposed to be in this life.
This is for you. And
This is for the homes of East Lake and Ensley, too poor for power, every room covered with mattresses and blankets, all while wannabe lawyers argue over socio-economic politics on Fox News and the patio at Dave’s. The kids are awake at 3am because there’s no such thing as a school night. Pot smoke and pills. Gunned down neighbors. And so it goes.
I don’t fight fires in homes like YOURS. The pretty, logical layout, a beeline path to the kitchen, just past the plasma screen TV and marble coffee table, all modeled out of an Ikea catalog. The black smoke-filled houses I frequent have broken chairs pushed against doors, weakened wood floors, and boxes and boxes of nothing. And a lot of mattresses.
This is for Ricky Davis.
This is for the bit parts in my life that let substances stop them short of something brilliant, eating them alive. Hey Scott, to me you're somewhere singing along to those three-chord-backed screams that ruined our ears when we were teenagers. We weren’t THAT close I know, but man I liked seeing you around.
This is for the other side of the street and everyone on it. Because I’m just not the rock star gawk-movie type. No stretch limousine, or cigar-smoke nights of flash bulb fame and too-tall stages. But…
I am still writing MY “Born to Run”.
And I’m taking a whole lot of people with me, chapter by chapter. Sit back, hold on, accept nothing and expect nothing in return. When I strike the match I want you to know who I’m doing this for. Hold my hand, we’ll burn the world down together.
Life is not a movie, or a sold out corporate-sponsored concert. And (unfortunately) it’s not red and blue tights-covered muscles, unbreakable bones and x-ray vision, penciled perfectly in right angle boxes. But I’ll make it something that matters.
I can promise you that much.
“There are only a few things that really belong to me. Who I am, who I was, and who I want to be.” – Bouncing Souls
1.19.2009
Five “life sentences”, six counting the title.
I know what I want to be when I grow up.
Pine Tree cliff was 110 feet to the water and don’t let anyone ever tell you different. Legend was the locals, Trussville hoodrats in cut-off jeans shorts and stinking of cheap beer, would climb the pine tree at the top and let their weight bend the bark down until they dropped 110 plus feet into the fake blue water of the quarry. I never saw anyone attempt this, and I never talked to anyone that saw it attempted, but I did meet a lot of people that knew someone who saw the Pine Tree bend. This was miles before Trussville became the white-flight Christmas shopping paradise it is now. Trussville was a one road town with train tracks and rednecks and no Best Buy.
The news crews were there when they found the horse trainer’s body at the bottom of Pine Tree. Neck broken on impact and under a shopping cart that his lifeless body disturbed on his descent to the bottom. A drunk dive gone bad, I was surprised that he was the only body they found that day, underneath swarms of fat starving catfish, sweat soaked mattresses, and Food Max shopping carts.
By my count I jumped Pine Tree six times. Each time I’d wear black high top Converse to deaden the impact of the… impact; shoes similar to the ones I’m wearing now only I’ve “sold out” and gone to low tops. I watched Channel 6 news when they found his body and I swore to my unborn children that I’d never jump Pine Tree again.
Part I
I’m writing this with scar torn arms from not minding my own business. The blood poured from multiple windshield glass wounds, thinning out in the rain of last week’s storms. Reminders of my nosiness consist of small shards of glass that I’ve found hidden in my hands all week long. I stood out in the middle of Highway 31 and thought of a 110-foot cliff and how far I can fall still smiling. Granted, I’m a little crazy now, but I was REALLY crazy then. I should have tried to bend back the pine and fall further.
Her friend came running into the Mill crying and grabbed Charlie, or should I say Officer King. Officer Charlie King and I went back a ways to an era of me waiting tables at Chili’s and him working the graveyard shift at an all-night grocery. I bought skim milk from him every night until the day he quit, graduating from the grocer’s life to being a cop. I soon followed suit and graduated from waiter to bartender, still at Chili’s, where I’d suffer for three more years. I still have nightmares about that goddam corporate restaurant. I didn’t cry when it burned down.
Anyway…
Her friend came running into the Mill crying and grabbed Charlie, both of us working our assigned life slots, police and bartender, only now we’d escaped the melted streets of Irondale for the one-way circles of Southside.
I went outside with the two of them, fearing a purse snatching, a bar fight, or something equally as trivial. The image would be a lot more… severe. Her friend pointed at the car, fifty yards ahead, headlights lit, windshield shattered, and a girl’s chest beating short fading beats, life-leaving rhythms. A year later I sat in the courtroom staring back at her father, my role next to insignificant, a time and place witness of the accused. Her father’s eyes on me paralleled the 110-foot fall into a water black abyss. What else am I supposed to say? Young girls’ fathers are left on this earth to fight their wars for them. The emptiness of his losses, his daughter and her war, is a long way down. An abyss of untouched photos and high school annuals. Cheap flowers left by anonymous friends en route to the rest of their lives.
Part II
So I write these haunted memories with gasoline soaked hands. The gas burned every single cut that hid shards of broken glass. The pickup truck was still on fire with a five-gallon canister in the back that I didn’t feel like watching burn. So I snatched it out. The plastic container had melted across the top and fuel spilled all over my arms. “Throw those fire gloves away”, Archer told me. “That gasoline will never really come out.”
I told Chris where I was going and he showed up to have a beer, passively aggressively trying to stop me. No one ever jumped Pine Tree at night. And no one did it in 15-degree weather. The swim from the bottom to the gravel shore wouldn’t be that far, in the daytime, in a normal swimming environment. But in the quarry, full of stolen cars and concrete-shoe corpses, at night, in the frozen cold, it might be akin to breath strokes in a pool filled with razor blades. It got late and I got tired and I had somewhere to be in the morning, (I always have somewhere to be in the morning). Get a black marker. The excuses keep coming.
So,
When I grow up...
I want to be someone’s memory when I grow up. I want to be a folded over photograph, kept in a wallet or on the dresser. A bookmark. Taped in a locker. Tucked in a fire helmet. Crumpled up and thrown away in the most frustrating of moments, only to be dug out of the trash and taped back together. My dad, the other George Cowgill, made front-page papers fighting like mad in ’76 to save the life of a young black girl crushed in a car accident. I found the paper folded over in a stack of documents, none so memorable as that article. At least not to a seven-year-old boy that would grow up to fight the same wars as his father.
I want to be someone’s ghost when I grow up. A silent nod, a smile. A memory of craziness and laughter. “Hey remember that time George…” My ghosts wake me up at the same time every day, regardless of the sleep deprivation from all-night car crashes, heart attacks or drinks poured.
Sonny Kincaid left his father on a front porch in North Birmingham to stop the Japanese aggression in the Pacific, circa 1943. Until the war’s end he would call the USS Otus home, a ship sailing the war-torn seas to assist submarines and wounded vessels. In 1945 he came back to Birmingham to marry my grandmother, put flowers on his father’s grave and, 37 years later, take me to Rickwood Field to meet Mickey Mantle. I was wasting away in college when I found a handful of black and white photos, “Kincaid” etched in pencil on the back of every one. Photos of the celebration of the Japanese surrender. A corner ripped shot of Sonny leaning against a beach boardwalk railing, smoking a cigarette with the arrogant swagger of a yeoman. Another picture in the handful has been permanently scratched into my shoulder, black and grey ink.
Fathers’ sons (and grandfathers’ grandsons) are put on this earth to continue to fight their wars for them. So if you ever wonder where I’m coming from, or why I do this… Now you know.
No Part III
I’m NOT writing this shivering from a 3am fall in the black sky of Trussville into the black waters of the quarry. Feet and arms bruised from the impact. Soaked Converse. Nose running, swimming in a panic to get to the gravel. I just couldn’t go. Responsibility of job one and job two, and it just got too late. (Get that black marker)
Oh and, thankfully, Chris stopped by for a beer.
“Please remember all of the things I never got a chance to say.” – Rocky Votolato
“I come from down in the valley, where mister where you’re young, they bring you up to do like your daddy done.” – Bruce Springsteen
Pine Tree cliff was 110 feet to the water and don’t let anyone ever tell you different. Legend was the locals, Trussville hoodrats in cut-off jeans shorts and stinking of cheap beer, would climb the pine tree at the top and let their weight bend the bark down until they dropped 110 plus feet into the fake blue water of the quarry. I never saw anyone attempt this, and I never talked to anyone that saw it attempted, but I did meet a lot of people that knew someone who saw the Pine Tree bend. This was miles before Trussville became the white-flight Christmas shopping paradise it is now. Trussville was a one road town with train tracks and rednecks and no Best Buy.
The news crews were there when they found the horse trainer’s body at the bottom of Pine Tree. Neck broken on impact and under a shopping cart that his lifeless body disturbed on his descent to the bottom. A drunk dive gone bad, I was surprised that he was the only body they found that day, underneath swarms of fat starving catfish, sweat soaked mattresses, and Food Max shopping carts.
By my count I jumped Pine Tree six times. Each time I’d wear black high top Converse to deaden the impact of the… impact; shoes similar to the ones I’m wearing now only I’ve “sold out” and gone to low tops. I watched Channel 6 news when they found his body and I swore to my unborn children that I’d never jump Pine Tree again.
Part I
I’m writing this with scar torn arms from not minding my own business. The blood poured from multiple windshield glass wounds, thinning out in the rain of last week’s storms. Reminders of my nosiness consist of small shards of glass that I’ve found hidden in my hands all week long. I stood out in the middle of Highway 31 and thought of a 110-foot cliff and how far I can fall still smiling. Granted, I’m a little crazy now, but I was REALLY crazy then. I should have tried to bend back the pine and fall further.
Her friend came running into the Mill crying and grabbed Charlie, or should I say Officer King. Officer Charlie King and I went back a ways to an era of me waiting tables at Chili’s and him working the graveyard shift at an all-night grocery. I bought skim milk from him every night until the day he quit, graduating from the grocer’s life to being a cop. I soon followed suit and graduated from waiter to bartender, still at Chili’s, where I’d suffer for three more years. I still have nightmares about that goddam corporate restaurant. I didn’t cry when it burned down.
Anyway…
Her friend came running into the Mill crying and grabbed Charlie, both of us working our assigned life slots, police and bartender, only now we’d escaped the melted streets of Irondale for the one-way circles of Southside.
I went outside with the two of them, fearing a purse snatching, a bar fight, or something equally as trivial. The image would be a lot more… severe. Her friend pointed at the car, fifty yards ahead, headlights lit, windshield shattered, and a girl’s chest beating short fading beats, life-leaving rhythms. A year later I sat in the courtroom staring back at her father, my role next to insignificant, a time and place witness of the accused. Her father’s eyes on me paralleled the 110-foot fall into a water black abyss. What else am I supposed to say? Young girls’ fathers are left on this earth to fight their wars for them. The emptiness of his losses, his daughter and her war, is a long way down. An abyss of untouched photos and high school annuals. Cheap flowers left by anonymous friends en route to the rest of their lives.
Part II
So I write these haunted memories with gasoline soaked hands. The gas burned every single cut that hid shards of broken glass. The pickup truck was still on fire with a five-gallon canister in the back that I didn’t feel like watching burn. So I snatched it out. The plastic container had melted across the top and fuel spilled all over my arms. “Throw those fire gloves away”, Archer told me. “That gasoline will never really come out.”
I told Chris where I was going and he showed up to have a beer, passively aggressively trying to stop me. No one ever jumped Pine Tree at night. And no one did it in 15-degree weather. The swim from the bottom to the gravel shore wouldn’t be that far, in the daytime, in a normal swimming environment. But in the quarry, full of stolen cars and concrete-shoe corpses, at night, in the frozen cold, it might be akin to breath strokes in a pool filled with razor blades. It got late and I got tired and I had somewhere to be in the morning, (I always have somewhere to be in the morning). Get a black marker. The excuses keep coming.
So,
When I grow up...
I want to be someone’s memory when I grow up. I want to be a folded over photograph, kept in a wallet or on the dresser. A bookmark. Taped in a locker. Tucked in a fire helmet. Crumpled up and thrown away in the most frustrating of moments, only to be dug out of the trash and taped back together. My dad, the other George Cowgill, made front-page papers fighting like mad in ’76 to save the life of a young black girl crushed in a car accident. I found the paper folded over in a stack of documents, none so memorable as that article. At least not to a seven-year-old boy that would grow up to fight the same wars as his father.
I want to be someone’s ghost when I grow up. A silent nod, a smile. A memory of craziness and laughter. “Hey remember that time George…” My ghosts wake me up at the same time every day, regardless of the sleep deprivation from all-night car crashes, heart attacks or drinks poured.
Sonny Kincaid left his father on a front porch in North Birmingham to stop the Japanese aggression in the Pacific, circa 1943. Until the war’s end he would call the USS Otus home, a ship sailing the war-torn seas to assist submarines and wounded vessels. In 1945 he came back to Birmingham to marry my grandmother, put flowers on his father’s grave and, 37 years later, take me to Rickwood Field to meet Mickey Mantle. I was wasting away in college when I found a handful of black and white photos, “Kincaid” etched in pencil on the back of every one. Photos of the celebration of the Japanese surrender. A corner ripped shot of Sonny leaning against a beach boardwalk railing, smoking a cigarette with the arrogant swagger of a yeoman. Another picture in the handful has been permanently scratched into my shoulder, black and grey ink.
Fathers’ sons (and grandfathers’ grandsons) are put on this earth to continue to fight their wars for them. So if you ever wonder where I’m coming from, or why I do this… Now you know.
No Part III
I’m NOT writing this shivering from a 3am fall in the black sky of Trussville into the black waters of the quarry. Feet and arms bruised from the impact. Soaked Converse. Nose running, swimming in a panic to get to the gravel. I just couldn’t go. Responsibility of job one and job two, and it just got too late. (Get that black marker)
Oh and, thankfully, Chris stopped by for a beer.
“Please remember all of the things I never got a chance to say.” – Rocky Votolato
“I come from down in the valley, where mister where you’re young, they bring you up to do like your daddy done.” – Bruce Springsteen
1.14.2009
Ian Curtis was 23 (June 7, 2008)
I want to write fiction. I spent the year of 2007 writing a book called CLARITY- 75,000 words of my imagination. I’d find myself writing in the weirdest spots at the most unusual times. Holed up in the once called Scrushy Library waiting for Janey to get out of first grade. Or in a casino. 3:00 am in East Lake after I saw my first hanging. I’ve pulled off I-65, I-20, and 459 to jot down some inane plot point or character flaw. I told the few people with knowledge of the book that I didn’t care if anyone ever read it. Just as long as I got through it. Finishing CLARITY, back in March, made me feel complete. Accomplished.
For a day or so at least.
Within a month I suffered a serious drought of depression.
More specifically, I felt empty.
Meaningless.
God, I wish I could write fiction.
Small hotel rooms.
The second room was walking distance from the Upside down Plaza. The old man, I guessed 80 but he was 53, was having a hell of a time breathing. And, since breathing is a necessary skill to sustain life, they called us.
I was a guest, riding with Engine 3 out of Southside, a company known for having the best scenery of any fire station in Birmingham, Alabama, or the Southeast. All day and night the boys of 3 will sit on “the wall” off Highland Avenue watching pretty girls jog by or women in evening gowns wait for the valet to retrieve their Mercedes as they smoke cigarettes outside Botegga. “The wall” at 3 is an easy distraction. I never got much writing done on CLARITY at 3.
The hotel room was a pay-by-the-week affair and the size of a walk-in closet. There was a cot’s mattress on the floor and a legless couch. The 80-year-old-looking 53-year-old man lived there with his daughter and her boyfriend. The young couple was well on their way to over aging too. I used to see the boyfriend at shows, in pool halls… somewhere, but back then his face wasn’t covered in open sores, and his legs weren’t punctured pincushions for needles.
I’d never seen the daughter before but she’d been a looker… once. Not now. For every sore her boyfriend had she had two. Blacken her eyes and loosen her teeth too. The life had bled out of her blonde hair and her dead white skin exposed blue-sick veins. The track marks were one on top of another and looked more like broken bottle wounds than evidence of brown-liquid syringes.
If her dad looked three decades older than his age then she looked four. She was a walking corpse, waiting on the undertaker and her headstone.
The old man’s part-time nurse told us outside that the boyfriend is holding them hostage in that small hotel room. The old man’s medicine, delivered weekly, was divided among them like food for castaways. When the pills run out and the makeshift street drugs they obtain are sold or snorted the mood turns into frustration.
Violence.
And despair.
Engine 3 was getting called to that room on a regular basis; the man’s failing health demanded it. One day the calls stopped. I hate to think the worst… but I do it anyway.
Eventually bruises don’t go away. Teeth are knocked out or rot out and they aint coming back either. Don’t hold yourself, or anyone else, hostage.
The business of selling a novel is a foreign language read backwards. Trying to “sell” anything makes me feel like a bottom feeder. Be the sell, believe the sell etc. Whether it’s cars or gold or encyclopedias, salesmen all possess some gift that I do not have and cannot truly comprehend. Maybe that’s my problem.
But damn, I want to write fiction.
The first room was in the darkness of East Lake and the crummiest room in the dirtiest hotel on 1st Avenue North. The room used to be a storage room, until someone got wise to the idea of putting down cheap carpet and renting it out monthly. I was the only firefighter in the windowless room, the rest of the guys standing out in the hallway to avoid the roaches and blood-vomit stains.
Besides the couple’s 12-year-old son I was the only one in the room not HIV positive.
He was a bounty hunter and he couldn’t breathe or, more accurately, was having a hell of time trying. (Please read above on breathing and it’s vital role in sustaining life). A bounty hunter, 100 lbs and rail thin, wearing all camo. Guns were neatly holstered on a chair. The mattress was a grey stained cot and on the floor pushed against cheap wood paneling.
The bounty hunter found his breath eventually. His wife, 200 lbs heavier than him, cried her eyes out, cheap mascara smearing her face. The 12-year-old never blinked, leaning against the wood paneling in mis-matched shoes and too big jeans. I grew up during the discovery of AIDS, and HIV, so standing in that room I tried, and failed, to fight off my own misguided worries. Her tears…
Fluids.
I took a big step back, out of the room. Eye contact with the bounty hunter as he nodded, happy to breathe. The 12-year-old never blinked. The 12-year-old never blinked. The 12-year-old never fucking blinked.
I tore a sign off a broken coke machine that said, “If you need coke, see manager”. I thought it was funny.
We ran a call to the hotel months later and I went by their room. The door was open and the room was vacant. They were long gone.
I want to write fiction because I am, admittedly, a control freak. I like everything to tie in together and make sense at the end. I love plot twists that, while unexpected, fit. I love writing characters that people hate to love and hate to hate. Fiction makes me feel alive, and driven. Writing fiction makes the author a god.
Writing on the reality of this world doesn’t always give me that heightened sense of existence. On a good day I see myself as a passenger, observant to the details of a world many of us do not know exist, at least existing so close to ours.
Then on a bad day…
I feel meaningless.
More than ever.
So I fight to remember the lessons learned in small hotel rooms. Never let anyone hold you hostage, even yourself. No one can tell me what I’m capable of.
Because I don’t know myself.
“Who’s going to tell you things aren’t so great? We can’t go on thinking nothing’s wrong…” - The Cars
For a day or so at least.
Within a month I suffered a serious drought of depression.
More specifically, I felt empty.
Meaningless.
God, I wish I could write fiction.
Small hotel rooms.
The second room was walking distance from the Upside down Plaza. The old man, I guessed 80 but he was 53, was having a hell of a time breathing. And, since breathing is a necessary skill to sustain life, they called us.
I was a guest, riding with Engine 3 out of Southside, a company known for having the best scenery of any fire station in Birmingham, Alabama, or the Southeast. All day and night the boys of 3 will sit on “the wall” off Highland Avenue watching pretty girls jog by or women in evening gowns wait for the valet to retrieve their Mercedes as they smoke cigarettes outside Botegga. “The wall” at 3 is an easy distraction. I never got much writing done on CLARITY at 3.
The hotel room was a pay-by-the-week affair and the size of a walk-in closet. There was a cot’s mattress on the floor and a legless couch. The 80-year-old-looking 53-year-old man lived there with his daughter and her boyfriend. The young couple was well on their way to over aging too. I used to see the boyfriend at shows, in pool halls… somewhere, but back then his face wasn’t covered in open sores, and his legs weren’t punctured pincushions for needles.
I’d never seen the daughter before but she’d been a looker… once. Not now. For every sore her boyfriend had she had two. Blacken her eyes and loosen her teeth too. The life had bled out of her blonde hair and her dead white skin exposed blue-sick veins. The track marks were one on top of another and looked more like broken bottle wounds than evidence of brown-liquid syringes.
If her dad looked three decades older than his age then she looked four. She was a walking corpse, waiting on the undertaker and her headstone.
The old man’s part-time nurse told us outside that the boyfriend is holding them hostage in that small hotel room. The old man’s medicine, delivered weekly, was divided among them like food for castaways. When the pills run out and the makeshift street drugs they obtain are sold or snorted the mood turns into frustration.
Violence.
And despair.
Engine 3 was getting called to that room on a regular basis; the man’s failing health demanded it. One day the calls stopped. I hate to think the worst… but I do it anyway.
Eventually bruises don’t go away. Teeth are knocked out or rot out and they aint coming back either. Don’t hold yourself, or anyone else, hostage.
The business of selling a novel is a foreign language read backwards. Trying to “sell” anything makes me feel like a bottom feeder. Be the sell, believe the sell etc. Whether it’s cars or gold or encyclopedias, salesmen all possess some gift that I do not have and cannot truly comprehend. Maybe that’s my problem.
But damn, I want to write fiction.
The first room was in the darkness of East Lake and the crummiest room in the dirtiest hotel on 1st Avenue North. The room used to be a storage room, until someone got wise to the idea of putting down cheap carpet and renting it out monthly. I was the only firefighter in the windowless room, the rest of the guys standing out in the hallway to avoid the roaches and blood-vomit stains.
Besides the couple’s 12-year-old son I was the only one in the room not HIV positive.
He was a bounty hunter and he couldn’t breathe or, more accurately, was having a hell of time trying. (Please read above on breathing and it’s vital role in sustaining life). A bounty hunter, 100 lbs and rail thin, wearing all camo. Guns were neatly holstered on a chair. The mattress was a grey stained cot and on the floor pushed against cheap wood paneling.
The bounty hunter found his breath eventually. His wife, 200 lbs heavier than him, cried her eyes out, cheap mascara smearing her face. The 12-year-old never blinked, leaning against the wood paneling in mis-matched shoes and too big jeans. I grew up during the discovery of AIDS, and HIV, so standing in that room I tried, and failed, to fight off my own misguided worries. Her tears…
Fluids.
I took a big step back, out of the room. Eye contact with the bounty hunter as he nodded, happy to breathe. The 12-year-old never blinked. The 12-year-old never blinked. The 12-year-old never fucking blinked.
I tore a sign off a broken coke machine that said, “If you need coke, see manager”. I thought it was funny.
We ran a call to the hotel months later and I went by their room. The door was open and the room was vacant. They were long gone.
I want to write fiction because I am, admittedly, a control freak. I like everything to tie in together and make sense at the end. I love plot twists that, while unexpected, fit. I love writing characters that people hate to love and hate to hate. Fiction makes me feel alive, and driven. Writing fiction makes the author a god.
Writing on the reality of this world doesn’t always give me that heightened sense of existence. On a good day I see myself as a passenger, observant to the details of a world many of us do not know exist, at least existing so close to ours.
Then on a bad day…
I feel meaningless.
More than ever.
So I fight to remember the lessons learned in small hotel rooms. Never let anyone hold you hostage, even yourself. No one can tell me what I’m capable of.
Because I don’t know myself.
“Who’s going to tell you things aren’t so great? We can’t go on thinking nothing’s wrong…” - The Cars
Nothing punk, nothing nineties. (May 21, 2008)
(This blog is part of a book that I’ve said I was going to write for the past four years, tentatively titled “My Dad’s Badge”. So, if years from now you’re reading any of these words in some other form of ramblings – a book, a magazine, or written in crayon on the walls of an insane asylum… don’t complain. This is also a letter to the boys of Station 2, minus the words that would only make sense to them.)
She was wrapped in a blanket and lying on the ground. The first thing I noticed was the church parking lot, full, the service not yet concluded. The call came in during lunch, but that’s okay because it was the first one of the day. She was wrapped in a blanket and lying on the ground, nose broken and face bloodied to all hell. She hadn’t been beaten unrecognizable, but only because the swelling hadn’t started.
She was 18.
He was her boyfriend.
The reasons? There are no reasons and you know it.
Her shoes were gone and her legs were covered in small insignificant scrapes, most of them bleeding. The real problem was her nose, because it was in a dozen pieces and she was having trouble breathing.
She gave the police a fake name.
She refused to go to the hospital, or press charges, or stop the cycle of re-occurring violence.
What little we could do for her on a Sunday afternoon in the shadows of Legion Field was not enough. She needed serious medical attention.
In the middle of having that explained to her, she stood up and ran off.
Engine 14.
For the past year I’ve put in transfer request after transfer request to get to 14. I begged and pleaded to anyone with “pull” that would listen.
Well I’m here now.
“I hope you’re not disappointed, Cowgill. We’ve already killed everyone off and burned everything down,” said my lieutenant on day one. 24 hours later my head was filled with memories of chaos and tragedy.
Day one.
A biker gang surrounded one of their own that’d crashed hard. They made sure to empty his pockets before the hospital ride. A gun, two knives, and brass knuckles.
A hooker ran across four lanes of busy traffic, blood streaming from her head, to tell us she’s fine and that the warrant on her record would land her in jail, not the hospital.
A woman, in a fit of jealous rage, blows up her boyfriend’s car. Molotov cocktail.
The reasons? They have theirs.
Day five. 1:00 AM.
We were wrapping up on a harmless medical call when the fire call came in. Our driver missed his turn and put us at the back of the house, but that worked out perfectly. The rear of the house was lighting up the sky. I was out of the engine before it stopped, nozzle in hand. Two hours later I was a mess. Face black, nose running, soaking wet filthy.
I couldn’t stop smiling and you know it.
3:00 AM.
He was wrapped in a hotel bed sheet and laying against a hotel door. We were watching Scarface when the call came in, but that’s okay because I’ve seen it a million times. The first thing I noticed was the blood; the blood emptying out of him from various wounds, soaking the white bed sheet and pooling on the walkway. He was wrapped in a hotel bed sheet and laying against the door to Room 6, half a dozen bullet holes in his stomach and both arms. He clutched the worst wound over a punctured artery. When he uncovered it blood sprayed wildly. The door to Room 6 opened and a man carried out his five-year-old son, pulling his face tight to his chest. Prevent him from seeing. He stepped over the injured man and his blood and disappeared into the black, keeping his son safe, if for just one more night…
Ask me on my deathbed and I’ll remember that father protecting his son.
When word of my transfer came down the pipeline everyone warned me about 14. 14 is a rundown disaster of a station, infested with rats and roaches. The neighborhood is unappreciative and will label you the enemy. Just like cops.
Well I hate roaches, and I’m deathly afraid of rats.
But I belong at 14. I belong in the middle of chaos and tragedy, a rundown firehouse in a bad neighborhood. I often joke that I should never work at a station my wife isn’t afraid to visit.
The reasons? I have my reasons.
“And in this unstable arena of what’s left or become of my America, I’m asking for this dance so come take my hand…” – Gaslight Anthem
She was wrapped in a blanket and lying on the ground. The first thing I noticed was the church parking lot, full, the service not yet concluded. The call came in during lunch, but that’s okay because it was the first one of the day. She was wrapped in a blanket and lying on the ground, nose broken and face bloodied to all hell. She hadn’t been beaten unrecognizable, but only because the swelling hadn’t started.
She was 18.
He was her boyfriend.
The reasons? There are no reasons and you know it.
Her shoes were gone and her legs were covered in small insignificant scrapes, most of them bleeding. The real problem was her nose, because it was in a dozen pieces and she was having trouble breathing.
She gave the police a fake name.
She refused to go to the hospital, or press charges, or stop the cycle of re-occurring violence.
What little we could do for her on a Sunday afternoon in the shadows of Legion Field was not enough. She needed serious medical attention.
In the middle of having that explained to her, she stood up and ran off.
Engine 14.
For the past year I’ve put in transfer request after transfer request to get to 14. I begged and pleaded to anyone with “pull” that would listen.
Well I’m here now.
“I hope you’re not disappointed, Cowgill. We’ve already killed everyone off and burned everything down,” said my lieutenant on day one. 24 hours later my head was filled with memories of chaos and tragedy.
Day one.
A biker gang surrounded one of their own that’d crashed hard. They made sure to empty his pockets before the hospital ride. A gun, two knives, and brass knuckles.
A hooker ran across four lanes of busy traffic, blood streaming from her head, to tell us she’s fine and that the warrant on her record would land her in jail, not the hospital.
A woman, in a fit of jealous rage, blows up her boyfriend’s car. Molotov cocktail.
The reasons? They have theirs.
Day five. 1:00 AM.
We were wrapping up on a harmless medical call when the fire call came in. Our driver missed his turn and put us at the back of the house, but that worked out perfectly. The rear of the house was lighting up the sky. I was out of the engine before it stopped, nozzle in hand. Two hours later I was a mess. Face black, nose running, soaking wet filthy.
I couldn’t stop smiling and you know it.
3:00 AM.
He was wrapped in a hotel bed sheet and laying against a hotel door. We were watching Scarface when the call came in, but that’s okay because I’ve seen it a million times. The first thing I noticed was the blood; the blood emptying out of him from various wounds, soaking the white bed sheet and pooling on the walkway. He was wrapped in a hotel bed sheet and laying against the door to Room 6, half a dozen bullet holes in his stomach and both arms. He clutched the worst wound over a punctured artery. When he uncovered it blood sprayed wildly. The door to Room 6 opened and a man carried out his five-year-old son, pulling his face tight to his chest. Prevent him from seeing. He stepped over the injured man and his blood and disappeared into the black, keeping his son safe, if for just one more night…
Ask me on my deathbed and I’ll remember that father protecting his son.
When word of my transfer came down the pipeline everyone warned me about 14. 14 is a rundown disaster of a station, infested with rats and roaches. The neighborhood is unappreciative and will label you the enemy. Just like cops.
Well I hate roaches, and I’m deathly afraid of rats.
But I belong at 14. I belong in the middle of chaos and tragedy, a rundown firehouse in a bad neighborhood. I often joke that I should never work at a station my wife isn’t afraid to visit.
The reasons? I have my reasons.
“And in this unstable arena of what’s left or become of my America, I’m asking for this dance so come take my hand…” – Gaslight Anthem
The Places I have come to fear the most (May 13, 2008)
Joe Steele should’ve been a movie. When he was five and six-years-old he’d show up at house fires in East Lake, holding his grandmother’s hand, dressed in a plastic firefighter jacket, boots, and fire hat. Telltale signs, sure, but everyone has great hindsight. He wouldn’t begin stalking firefighters for another 15 years.
My earliest memory of Joe Steele was him just standing there. Standing in his grandmother’s yard and watching cars go by, blank eyes, an eerie smile on his face. That look on his would follow me all the way up Ridge Road and out of sight. Everyday his sanity faded further and further…
Coggins, a firefighter, got hit first when Steele called to inform him that he’d planted a bomb in his garage. After a solid hour of panic the police found a paper sack full of bricks tucked behind a van, the word “BOM” written in blue marker. Coincidentally, two friends of mine would later make national news for a similar stunt that attracted the ATF and FBI. Their incident was a prank with poor timing, taking place a little too close to Eric Rudolph’s Atlanta bombing, 1996.
My timeline of events with Joe blurs at this point. I became a quick and popular target for Joe Steele’s psychotics, being young and dumb-looking and bearing my dad’s firefighter license tag on my gold Mazda 323. Joe began leaving me notes pinned on trees on Ridge Road wanting to “party” or “get high on weed”. He began calling the police to our house, complaining that my dad was beating up my mother (He wasn’t). He called the fire department, saying that I was burning my own house down (I wasn’t).
Then he showed up with a butcher knife. My parents were out of town and I was on my way out the door when I saw him. Standing at the top of our driveway, the blank eyes and eerie smile in place. And a butcher knife in his hand. He was just… standing there. Joe wasn’t very intimidating physically. Average height, too skinny, and short black hair that he cut himself.
But damn that knife, and damn that look on his face.
Needless to say the situation resolved itself, very anti-climatically I might add. He laid down in the street, arms crossed over his chest vampire-style for about an hour, then went home for dinner.
That incident, and others similar, had been enough for the neighborhood. A petition was drawn and honored to have him placed in “learning facility where he could get the help that he needed.”
My dad was called to testify.
The event was nothing short of a circus. For some reason, that escapes all bounded logic I’ve harvested from a lifetime of Law & Order, LA Law and Night Court, Joe Steele’s attorney thought it would be a good idea for him to take the stand.
ATTORNEY: Mr Steele, in this police report they claim you are planning to kill firefighter Buddy Wilks. Is that true?
JOE STEELE: No sir.
ATTORNEY: Thank you. (Attorney turns his back, walks to his table)
JOE STEELE: I’m going to kill George Cowgill’s father.
My dad said that’s when the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. It took the judge approximately seven minutes to rule that Joe Steele did indeed need help and placed him in an institutional learning facility, i.e. away from society.
I eventually moved out of Roebuck, on to the high hills of Sharpsburg Manor. I didn’t travel down Ridge Road as much so I’m not really sure how long Joe Steele was “away”. I did eventually see him again, years later, once again standing out in his grandmother’s yard. No faux bombs, or invitations for drug use. No butcher knifes. He had put on at least 50 pounds of bad weight, and it looked like he was still cutting his own hair.
He still had the blank look in his eyes.
But the eerie smile was long gone.
“I was in my room and I was just like staring at the wall thinking about everything. But then again I was thinking about nothing.” – Suicidal Tendencies.
My earliest memory of Joe Steele was him just standing there. Standing in his grandmother’s yard and watching cars go by, blank eyes, an eerie smile on his face. That look on his would follow me all the way up Ridge Road and out of sight. Everyday his sanity faded further and further…
Coggins, a firefighter, got hit first when Steele called to inform him that he’d planted a bomb in his garage. After a solid hour of panic the police found a paper sack full of bricks tucked behind a van, the word “BOM” written in blue marker. Coincidentally, two friends of mine would later make national news for a similar stunt that attracted the ATF and FBI. Their incident was a prank with poor timing, taking place a little too close to Eric Rudolph’s Atlanta bombing, 1996.
My timeline of events with Joe blurs at this point. I became a quick and popular target for Joe Steele’s psychotics, being young and dumb-looking and bearing my dad’s firefighter license tag on my gold Mazda 323. Joe began leaving me notes pinned on trees on Ridge Road wanting to “party” or “get high on weed”. He began calling the police to our house, complaining that my dad was beating up my mother (He wasn’t). He called the fire department, saying that I was burning my own house down (I wasn’t).
Then he showed up with a butcher knife. My parents were out of town and I was on my way out the door when I saw him. Standing at the top of our driveway, the blank eyes and eerie smile in place. And a butcher knife in his hand. He was just… standing there. Joe wasn’t very intimidating physically. Average height, too skinny, and short black hair that he cut himself.
But damn that knife, and damn that look on his face.
Needless to say the situation resolved itself, very anti-climatically I might add. He laid down in the street, arms crossed over his chest vampire-style for about an hour, then went home for dinner.
That incident, and others similar, had been enough for the neighborhood. A petition was drawn and honored to have him placed in “learning facility where he could get the help that he needed.”
My dad was called to testify.
The event was nothing short of a circus. For some reason, that escapes all bounded logic I’ve harvested from a lifetime of Law & Order, LA Law and Night Court, Joe Steele’s attorney thought it would be a good idea for him to take the stand.
ATTORNEY: Mr Steele, in this police report they claim you are planning to kill firefighter Buddy Wilks. Is that true?
JOE STEELE: No sir.
ATTORNEY: Thank you. (Attorney turns his back, walks to his table)
JOE STEELE: I’m going to kill George Cowgill’s father.
My dad said that’s when the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. It took the judge approximately seven minutes to rule that Joe Steele did indeed need help and placed him in an institutional learning facility, i.e. away from society.
I eventually moved out of Roebuck, on to the high hills of Sharpsburg Manor. I didn’t travel down Ridge Road as much so I’m not really sure how long Joe Steele was “away”. I did eventually see him again, years later, once again standing out in his grandmother’s yard. No faux bombs, or invitations for drug use. No butcher knifes. He had put on at least 50 pounds of bad weight, and it looked like he was still cutting his own hair.
He still had the blank look in his eyes.
But the eerie smile was long gone.
“I was in my room and I was just like staring at the wall thinking about everything. But then again I was thinking about nothing.” – Suicidal Tendencies.
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