Punk rock dating: Chapters 29-34

Punk rock dating chapter 29: The Conference Act 2...

Short skirts and peppermint twists:

I explained to Marie that when Clement hid the code in the pages of "Punk rock dating" that the only way to crack the code was with a copy of her book,"Pieces of Christine" (the only other book Clement ever owned due to the fact that Marie gave him a copy at the 2008 Literary Choice award).

If you put page one of "Punk rock dating" just so over page 11 of "Pieces of Christine" and read downward, new seemingly unintended sentences would form. Once the books were combined our scientists could read the secret instructions on how to build Project 54.

"Punk rock dating" had already fallen into SCORPIO's hands but they were still unaware a copy of "Pieces of Christine" was needed to solve the puzzle. The E.S.Pies had picked up stray thoughts that Marie was involved but they did not know to what extent ...

"...and that is why you're going to be captured and tortured to death by SCORPIO agents somewhere in the year 2027," I explained calmly.

"WHHHHAAAATT?!?!?!?!," shrieked Marie.

"Oh, dear...She's not taking this as well as we had hoped," The S.P. snorted through a dollar bill.

"Oh my god! They can't kill, Marie!" Julie panicked. "If Marie dies then I die too!"

"Relax, I am working on a plan to dismantle the H.O.T bomb. Hopefully by the year 2027 their reign of terror will have ended. If not I'll simply write down the time and location where Marie is captured and all she has to do is be someplace else."

"Orion, uhhh...When do I die? Can we prevent that too?" slouched Clement.

At this point in his life Clement was getting nearer and nearer to his final day. I did not have the heart to tell Clement that his death would be by his own hand. He could prevent it quite easily...by not taking his own life.

"I'll..I'll do everything I can..." I replied, the knife in my heart twisting the night away like an old Chubby Checker record.

"You prose writers and you're avoidance of death cracks me up," cracked up Julie. "Us poets know that everyone dies eventually. The story of our lives ends with a funeral on the last page."

"That's true. There does come a day when we must all accept our final fate," I agreed-but-disagreed. "Nonetheless, I died before you were born, Julie Hales! And yet here we are! Drinking tap water from dirty glasses! Contemplating the mechanics of life and death! Yes! Somewhere in time there is a place we all yet live!"

"I guess," Julie guessed.

Clement took another mouthful of peas, "Hell, kill me now."

Clement Allsworth was half frothing-at-the-mouth-in-animal-love/half suicide calm.

Julie had already been hanging with a ghost...Time travel and lizard-men were a nice way to punch a hole in her day.

Marie couldn't believe she was surrounded by such lunatics.

Life and death had never crossed Marie's mind. She had other places to be...


Come back tomorrow for another relaxing conversation at the Starlite cafe, the special will be "Olde Country Pork and Rice", ladies get half-price cocktails and the live entertainment will be Unca Bill$...


Punk rock dating chapter 30: The Conference act 3...

The Guts of Goodwill:

Clement asked Marie, "Hey, uhhhmmm...when we, ahhhh,...get back to 2009...me and you should ...Maybe...if you don't mind...get together some time...Talk about writing or something..."

Marie gave Clement her weakest smile, "I don't think so, Clement. I have a lot to do when I get back...Sorry. "

"Oh, ahhh, oookay." Clement traced "Why oh why?" in the grease spattered on the table.
Dejection filled his unblinking eyes. He sat biting his lip momentarily then he slowly shuddered back to life....

"Orion, " he asked, "If the Psychic spies got your secrets from probing your mind, how do we know they're not doing that now?"

"The brilliant mind of Clement Allsworth! I love it!," I raved, "Our good friend the S.P. has set up a telepathic shield...He is quite the advanced student in E.S.P!"

"I actually, only minored in it...I'm not that good, actually." The Supernatural Proctologist's dowsing rod was limp from too much coke.

"God! I need to get out of here!" Marie shouted as she got up to leave...

"Yes," I agreed. "I suppose it is time we go our separate ways...Dr. Coorgan?"

"Oui?"

"Can you see Ms. Lansing and Ms. Hales home?"

"Ah! Avec plaisir," he bowed gracefully.

"Clement, do you mind staying a little longer? I believe you and I still have much to discuss...."

"Uhhh...Sure...I got nowhere to be..."

Spoonful of peas.


O ESCORPION II:

I see the torches burn from the top of the hill,

Strewn through the valley are the guts of goodwill,

Escorpion gets what he wanted...

He who speaks of gardens and intends burning lands,


Bodies and bones bleaching in faraway sands ,

Escorpion gets what he wanted...

The half-eaten corpses fix their glassy grey eyes,

As Fourteen spiral horns tear open the skies,

Escorpion stares into the black hole....

We stare at broken clocks, the end of time standing still,

Scattered through the cosmos are the guts of goodwill,

Escorpion stares into the black hole...



In 24 hours we take a closer look at the chemical that bonds families together and the forces of nature and nurture that tear them apart, not to mention who are the League of Assassin Stuntmen?


Punk rock dating chapter 31: Stems, hands, faces...

Behold Chronos:

Dr. Coorgan, Lion of Lyon, adjusted the mechanism on his belt and the lotus in his mind. Time-slides are 75% physical, 25% mental. Julie Hales, all short skirts and peppermint twists, adjusted the hem of her skirt, 75% cotton, 25% polyester.

"Theez will work bettair if you all think of home," Docteur Francois Coorgan advised.

He was talking to the wrong crowd; the word "home" didn't mean a whole lot to these girls.

"Say Au Revoir to 1980." The good Doctor pressed the button on his belt.

I will attempt to explain the sensation to you, dear reader...

If time can be thought of as a river flowing downstream toward the ocean of forever (albeit a rather turgid river, which is natural, explaining the phenomenon of being caught in different time streams (e.g. Jack: "Today is going by so slow..."
Joe: "That's funny, I thought today was going by quick!"), then the only way to explain time-slide is the mentally, physically and sexually exhausting task of swimming upstream though the hurricane of history's horrors. Mating with the moths that eat the outdated clothing in the cluttered closet of Chronos.

Behold, Chronos: Shake his hand; the hand that is continually dying and being reborn at the same time. One eye on the day I was conceived, the other eye on the day I'm laid to final rest, the other eye on the infinities in-between.

The landscape: a city of clocks, roads paved with possibilities, mountains of unused minutes. "How long is right now?" is all you can ask yourself. Is it a second? A spit-second? Forever? Only Chronos know the answers, and all Chronos can do is simultaneously laugh and cry....

Then the smell of home, not literally the home you necessarily live in, but the archetype of home we're born with: the smell of sweet belonging, mother's milk, the smell of cologne as your father gives you a hug, the home in our hearts that never has and never could exist...

Then the dull reality sinks in as you stand in your living room, that all points in time look basically the same... Sure, the Earth looks a little more dead than you remembered it, but the way its eyes light up to see you return...That much is always the same....

"I want you OUT of my house! NOW!" Marie screamed at Dr. Coorgan.

"Au Revoir! See you both again very soon," Dr. Coorgan waived and disappeared into the river of time.

"I suppose you want me to go too?" asked Julie.

This is the moment where possibility and inevitability meet...

"No..."

Marie leaned slowly in and kissed Julie deeply. Loud clashing of tongues, cloudy eyes, storms between breaths.

In a parallel moment in 1980, I was still sitting in the Starlite Cafe with the S.P and Clement Allsworth.

"I try not to interfere with history...That is never my intention," I explained, "but I have to say Clement, I really do worry about you."

Clement looked up from his plate of food, "Nahhhh, don't ever worry about me...I know how all this ends..."

I thought of my daughter. I thought of my wife....


Tomorrow Chronos turns everybody's clock back an hour...juss ta mess wit' ya, shawty...



Punk rock dating no. 32: Precession of the Equinoxes...

The double bodied sign:

As any musical will tell you, the late 60's were the Age of Aquarius. The pacifistic guru space men of AQUARIUS passed the torch somewhere in the early 70's (somewhere between the stabbing at Altamont and the release of the final Beatles album) to the house of PISCES, ushering in the introverted age of pre-apocalyptic slumber.

The age of white houses. The lazy lion, disintegrating in his hibernation. Only opening his eyes once it’s way too late.

The man and the woman, in bondage, so as to not lose one another in the murk...Only they've been in the dark waters so long they've completely forgotten about one another.

We walked through the crowds feeling lonely.

August 23rd, 2085:

"We should get together sometime. Discuss literature. Philosophy. Astrology..."

"Oh my god," laughed Bernadette, "you are so cute."

I don't smile often but in this particular instance I felt I had no choice. "Let me get you my number."

I had no paper on me so I tore out a page from my book,"Clement Allsworth: Between the Unmade Covers" and wrote my number on it.

Bernadette studied it.

"I don't need this..." she handed the page back. "Me and you...we're gonna go out right now..."

I folded the page and put it in my pocket....


Who knows what tomorrow will bring...some predictions: Flying cars by the year 2048 and the return of Planet Bill!


Punk rock dating no. 33: Bell-bottoms, Prophylactics: an All-Weekend 70's flashback...

Night on Disco Mountain:

Somewhere in 2004:

Julie, 16 years old, was cleaning the mothball-ed attic of her grandmother's house when she came across an old "Ladies Living" magazine from the late 1970's.

She spent the afternoon pouring through news stories and articles so long-forgotten that they may as well have been from Venus.

A vintage cigarette ad caught her eye.

"Tarrington Menthol Lights: Step into the 70's" it said. Some glamorous modern disco lady, empowered under the mirror ball: All birth-control and brown polyester, she pushes away a leisure-suited suitor. Cigarette burning between her long fingertips.

She stared at this picture for hours.

The silence in the attic was suddenly broken by the shrill voice of Julie's Mother.

"Julie, we've got to go... Are you finished cleaning up here?"

"Ohhh, yea..." answered Julie, tearing out the ad, and placing it in her jeans pocket.

At home, Julie sifted through her Mother's old records. She found a weathered copy of the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack and took it up to her room. As she lied on her bed, she pulled the piece of paper out of her pocket.

Julie spent the entire evening listening to the music and gazing at at the cigarette ad.

This became somewhat of a ritual; After school the other kids would all go to the local hangout, to their after-school job, or maybe to a friends' house to smoke pot... not Julie.

She would go to a certain anonymous nightclub somewhere in 1977, "Staying Alive" pumping out the sound system in all its falsetto glory; the man in the leisure suit would always approach her and give her a come-hither look. She would coolly puff her menthol and give him the go-tither look. Her long fingers grasped his greasy face and she cruelly pushed him away.

One day after school she hung out in front of the local convenience store.

Some wide-faced tool approached the door, intent on buying a 40 and a skin mag, when Julie stopped him.

"Hey!"

"Yes?" asked the man.

"If I give you some money will you buy me some cigarettes?"

"Sure."

Julie handed him a wad of bills she took from her Father's dresser drawer. She would most likely get the shit beat out of her for this, but it was a risk worth taking.

"You gotta make sure you buy the right kind though! They have got to be Tarrington Menthol Lights! You got that?"

"Yea, sure. Tarrington Menthol Lights."

He took the cash and went in. Julie fidgeted with her sweater until she heard the "Ta-ting" of the bell on the door.

"Did you get them?" she asked excitedly.

The man reached into his pocket and gave her back the money, "Naw. The old coot in there said they haven't made that brand since about 1983..."

Her heart sank.

She walked home and went straight to her room.

That night when she stared deep into the photo she felt a nondescript ache. The ad was now a good time she would never know. The "Saturday Night Fever" record was all scratched up too, she now noticed. She would never hear it like it was meant to be. The Sharp, fresh, plastic smell of a virgin copy. The exciting shock of the needle first hitting the groove. The deep throbbing bass, recorded mere weeks prior, rising from the still fragrant black vinyl. Sharp cardboard cover. John Travolta, finger pointing to a better way of life.

In her dejected state she went through her Mother's old magazines.

There were a few from the 80's.

The magazines were full of attractive cigarette ads but the glossy photos were plastered with warnings of birth defects, cancer, and other grim fates.

She ripped one out and took it to her room.

Lying on her bed, Julie stared at the puffy neon shirts and the headbands.

On the turntable played a pristine copy of "Thriller."

Looking at the photo and listening to Michael duet with Sir Paul was certainly evocative...

It captured the vibe perfectly! She got it!

"The 80's were kinda gay," she philosophized and crumpled the ad in her fist defiantly and snapped the copy of "Thriller" in half with her bare hands...

February 13th, 2009:

The Captain Hotel:

Julie lied on the bed in Marie's hotel room, television flickering silently. She could hear Marie humming a tuneless tune in the shower. Julie felt alone, she looked over at the nightstand and noticed a half empty box of Marlboro's.

She lit one up and said to herself...

"Hmmm. I should've picked up a box of Tarrington's in 1980."...


Tomorrow, it's two-fisted action as we eavesdrop in on Julie's long discussion with her counselor in 2004.


Punk rock dating no. 34: Blurred Polaroids of Love...

Fate: That Wonderful Two-Faced Sonuvabitch:

February 14th, 2009:

The Captain Hotel :

"It's been a coupla weeks, Marie...are you ready to talk about 1980 now?"

Marie gave Julie that pre-lover's spat look. Her eyes a bright yellow "Do Not Cross" sign.

"I don't know who that Clement Allsworth thinks he is! Playing his games with me? Two-bit writer...I ought to call the police on him..."

Julie took a drag from her cigarette, "No, I don't think it was Clement. I think he was taken there like we were...It was that lizard guy...Orion... I wonder if all that stuff he was talking about was true? I think it'd be cool to be part of a secret society! Imagine! Having a secret life nobody knows about!"

Julie's life was exactly that: a secret life nobody knew about...

"I know all that mystic stuff fascinates you," Marie attempted to calm down, "I don't think it's wrong for anyone to have a fantasy life but let's think about this for a minute, Julie. Time Travel?"

"I dunno..." she rolled over in bed, "I've talked to ghosts before...Why can't something like time travel exist?"

"Look, I believe you believe you've seen ghosts. But, me? I need scientific proof before I believe something I've never seen exists..."

"Hmmmm," Julie hmmmed, "I used to think that about love. I believed in ghosts and fate but love seemed kinda unrealistic. After spending all this time with you, I think you might of renewed my faith...Besides, what more proof do you need? We were physically in 1980! I mean, you saw how gay it was!"

"Excuse me?" said Marie, truly offended.

"Oops...I'm sorry...I meant 'how LAME it was!'"

Marie smiled, crawled into bed with Julie and gave her a birdy kiss....

.....................................................................................................

Clement Allsworth paced his living room alone. He didn't notice he was alone, he was so preoccupied with the fireworks in his mind:

"Mary raging storm.
Arithmetic proving perfection.
Running myself to death,
Trying to please her until I am bones.
My final gift: a gleaming skull,
 A pearl for her necklace.
Icy: staring at the the field of skulls, other men who were denied her company.
Everything is calm."

Mary was a fictionalized version of Marie. Mary was the lead character in a book that was in the process of being born, called "Portland Memores."

This was too indirect. The letters M-A-R-I-E had to directly follow one another in order for the sigil to work.

Marie would never be his.

He was amazingly accurate about the field of skulls and the men she had denied. Long fingers grasping their greasy faces, cruelly pushing them away.

He walked to his cupboard, poured himself a rocks glass of Ballentine's, and unfolded a piece of paper from his pocket. As he stared at it, the roman candle in his head pissed out.

"That sonuvabitch Fate has played a cruel trick on me," he washed the lump in his throat down with scotch.

He folded the piece of paper back up and put it back in the front pocket of his stained Dockers.

That sonavabitch fate has played a cruel trick on me too...

You too, probably...


Tomorrow: More pages, more pockets, more poems, more Dockers...