November 2023

Story time again-

From 21 Short Dog Stories -Collected Fiction 2011

The Place Holders

Bellingham 1979

    Crystal Rose (whose real name was Cindy Steginski) sat on a thread worn custard bedspread of an old metal cast-iron head board frame regarding the young man perched on the window sill at the opposite end of her rented room at the faded Leopold hotel on West Holly Street on a mild October afternoon. The breeze from Bellingham Bay was lightly stirring the sheer yellowed curtains framing this guy she had met recently at the Old Town Café.

   She thought. Who is this person? All she really knew about him really was that he was about her own age, had recently drifted into town from back east on a train and was presently looking for work. He didn’t resemble any of the twenty something stereotypes that the late 70s had spit out in dull replication that she had run across in town. Lately the numbing parade of old & young left over hippies, disco hustlers or just run off the mill material possession obsessed vacant drones seemed endless. This one wasn’t even close to anywhere near that bunch of cliché losers.

   He looked like a character out of an old black and white movie she once saw late at night called The Grapes of Wrath. He was thin, wore a shirt with a collar most of the time with either a worn barn coat or thrift store suit jacket and that little black peaked cap. She joked when she first met him that he wore it all the time because he was bald. That day he instantly took it off (he wasn’t) and placed it on her head with a smile. She had liked him from the start. 

   He could be very quiet or talk your ear off. He was a gentleman. She had a strong sense about that or he wouldn’t have never been sitting over there now drinking his coffee and smoking a Camel. His perpetual brown notebook lay open on the ledge next to his leg within easy reach. Every once in awhile he’d pick it up and jot down a line or two and stare back out that window to the street below. Their conversation was easy and sparse, punctuated with the sounds of traffic drifting up here to the 11th floor and that fact was comfortable. She liked the idea he didn’t try to impress her, make her or just be a plain jerk. (She already knew plenty of those and they bored her to tears.)

   She lit a Marlboro Light and asked if he wanted more coffee that was keeping warm in the metal pitcher on the hot plate. He looked over and smiled and said no thanks. Always polite. But there was a sadness about him. This was a guy who knew hurt. And he no doubt knew how to hurt others. Not in a violent physical sense, absolutely nothing about his demeanor even remotely suggested that. But he knew things. Too many secrets about people, what made them tick or be transparent. His exchange for that knowledge was that he was vulnerable. You could see it in his eyes.

  Not doubt about it. This man was a world of hurt.

  The man on the ledge sat staring at his worn orange work boots and admitted to himself that he was completely lost. As nice as the company was at the moment (He did like this young woman sitting over there on the bed smiling at him dressed in her own variation of a Stevie Nicks gypsy) his own situation was utterly baffling. He had run from his life on the east coast (again) in blazing twin flames of desperation and confusion with the vague intent of following a woman he had met on the Pacific Coast Starlight last Spring. She had told him about this small city tucked away on the coast of Washington State. He had returned to his hometown once again, worked for a few months at odd jobs, making just enough money to hop back on the train and arrive here in the middle of the night nearly broke. In fact the little money he had in his possession was dwindling rapidly. In the last few weeks he had been living on couches of acquaintances he had made in town. Mostly artists and writers who had rather meager means of their own to share. Meeting people had not been difficult. Making solid friends had. There was a general estrangement between young people out here. A space of loneliness they all inhabited. Very few of those he had met actually seemed to be from the area. Everyone appeared to be in some sort of transition, from somewhere else. Running from, or running to, the majority appeared just treading this limbo of their youth, like placeholders in time.

   The afternoon was softening, moving towards an early pre-twilight. The delicate hues of the Pacific Northwest sky were defusing into amber shafts casting the bluish shadows on Lummi Island out in the middle of the bay. Below in the city streets the activity had picked up in the rush home in workday routine of happy hours and suppertime. It occurred to him he had to actually think what day of the week this was. Thursday he thought.

   One thing was for sure, he needed to find work. Fast. And some kind of place of his own. He was running out of kind souls to show up at their door as darkness fell. He already knew that crashing here for the night was out of the question. This was just not that kind of scene. He knew that very soon it would be time to hit the sidewalk. He knew of a painter he had recently met who worked at one of the local cafes that might be worth a shot dropping by when his shift ended soon.

  He had been silent for a long time now. Lost in his thoughts. He guessed she had been as well. Neither one had said a word in quite some time. The sunset was speaking, in stray traffic voices from below. Between them the room existed as a sort of stage flat. Their temporary roles in life expressed in their costumes and defined by this silence that neither one seemed eager to disturb. This moment was a still life portrait of two young people cast together in this word picture without any need for speaking lines.

  All at once Crystal jumped off the bed, smoothed out her purple pleated peasant skirt,

with the ruffled petticoat underneath and went over to the mirror on the bureau.

She stared at her reflection as she brushed her blond curly shoulder length hair. There wasn’t much of Cindy Steginski there anymore. That frightened fifteen year old child was long gone.  Back then she just had her newborn son confiscated by Social Services and placed in a foster home. Shortly after that she just disappeared one day from a small Oregon town where she had lived with a maiden aunt after her community actor parents had been killed by a drunken driver when she was eight.

    Crystal didn’t miss or feel sorry for Cindy one bit. Sometimes she doubted she had ever existed. She was Crystal Rose now. Bartender for now, but aspiring Magician and part time Mime.

    She glanced over at the man sitting on the ledge.

 He sensed that but resisted the urge to glance over at her.

  She reached for her small black pillbox hat complete with sheer mesh veil dotted with tiny black hearts and positioned it on an angle just so on her head. She was a damn good looking woman. Sexy even. She had enough experience with the men in her past to be sure of that. She could have pretty much what she wanted there.

Checking her reflection one last time she thought she was glad that the fellow sitting over there didn’t look at her that way. The way most men in her life looked at her and then she wondered what he saw in the mirror, would he ever see beyond his own world of hurt.

She knew exactly how this guy felt and what should be done next.

   Then she was standing next to him smiling and laid her hand gently on his shoulder.

Their eyes locked in a simple soft sentence of mutual recognition, acceptance and

understanding.

It was time to leave.

“Hey”, she said, “you hungry? Let’s go see your friend down at the café.”

And held out her hand.

                                                                                          5/09        

After the costumes came off- New Work 10/23 (additional work pending )

Enough with the Horror

(in memory of the lost souls in Lewiston)

I remember hearing this song

By the mighty Mutabaruka

Years ago where he sang Postpone Christmas this year

So

Hey

Cancel Culture !

I got an idea for you

Make yourself useful

Lets cancel Halloween this year

Rather than Genderizing Frankenstein

No more Jason

No more Chucky

Fuck Freddy all reading

Send the Walking Dead goop to the showers

Where bank tellers, secretaries and supermarket cashiers

Cross-dress as identity free vampiric Zombies-

Let’s skip all the fake blood dripping fangs

From shattered guts and grinning skulls

So you want real horror show

From Alex in Clockwork Orange

 huh ?

Play dress up ?

Try going as the planet

Under the Sword of Damocles

Evil ?

Try Ukraine

Palestine

Gaza

Hamas

Lebanon

Syria

Israel

The Animal Channel Halloween debut for the latest reality

Horror show de-jour

Unwatchable images

Unspeakable atrocities

Off w/ their heads

Off w/ their heads

Ultra violence

Our earth is becoming the last house on the left

Planetary Texas Chain saw massacres

Trick or Treat ? Want a Snicker ?

Kiss my ass

In fact kiss all our asses goodbye

Living on the Halloween Planet

The Modern Martyrs

Innocent costumes soaked in REAL Blood

Nostalgic old school biblical astrocytes

The old terrible now Testament

Broadcasting live on social media

Or pay for view streaming carnage

Better starting thinking

About masquerading as human beings this year

Before your city

Your neighborhood

Your Shopping center

Is the center of hell

We are playing with fire

Every mutherfucking day

And you want to play dress up ?

We are playing with Dynamite

In your neighborhood where the real monsters

Are due on Elm Street

They are already here

in Ukraine

Palestine

Gaza

Hamas

Lebanon

Syria

Israel

Hey Cancel Culture

Freddies got a nuke

Nightmare on your Street

in Lewiston, Maine

Columbus Ohio

Bellingham Washington

Yonkers

Masbeth

The Hamptons  

Right here In Hell’s Kitchen tonight.

As the monsters sets fire w/ a plastic pic lighter to the earths

Family pictures on your refrigerator  

Boo man

Boo

Remember Zappa said It can’t happen here

Well I got your Stark Reality Horror Show

right here tonight

Naked and afraid

VQ 10/20/23