Come Join us for a night of general madness:

 After some mild foreplay and a quick crinkling of a condom wrapper, he is on top of me. Although I am thankful he didn’t try to go down on me, I am barely wet and he’s inside of me. He pets my bangs, brushing them further down onto my forehead. All I see are gold and diamonds as he leans forward and covers my mouth with his, like a lion ferociously yet gently killing a silent gazelle. Despite the bottle of wine which he’d reluctantly downed three quarters of this is still the most sober sex I’ve had in years. Wishing he hadn’t insisted on leaving the unforgiving hotel room light on, I focus on the popcorn ceilings and pray he won’t make me get on top. Not tonight. Not the first time. I am relieved yet slightly disappointed that he didn’t break out with any of the kinky shit that I’d imagined- hadn’t bent me over his knee and spanked me, hadn’t made me call him “Daddy.” The way I saw it I may as well try to have the most interesting and freaky sex I could and perhaps eventually something would take me off of safety down there and release the trigger I keep trying to look away but he keeps turning my chin towards him.

            “Let me see those pretty green eyes…” he says. Being pretty much absent of tits or ass, I always got the “eye” or “leg” men, despite my gimpy calves.

      I try to forget that I hadn’t had time to freshen up my makeup and I look at him vulnerably, sensing this is what he wants. He stares back as if he can see through me, all the way down inside me to the tip of his cock that is gradually going deeper and deeper, harder and harder. I sense he is about to cum so I grab him tighter and prepare to begin my act. I’d gotten pretty good at faking it by now. Breathe hard… scream scream… Oh god oh god….yeah yeah blah blah blah…next. Then all of a sudden he stops. What is going on? He hasn’t cum. He is still inside me but he has stopped moving like he is waiting for me to do something. I guess I have to ham it up even more. I don’t know what to do. Out of desperation, I start to move my body, move my hips, pretend I’m in a sex movie. After a while something starts to feel good. I move my body more, trying desperately to find that spot again. I find it again. I move around it more and more. Something clicks in and I’m on autopilot. I can’t help it now. I realize what is happening but I try not to think about it. I don’t want my nerves getting in the way. I concentrate on the spot. He is still. It is all me. I tell him “Don’t stop…Don’t stop !” anyway. All the years of trying flash before me, all the boys, all the girls, everone I could remember sleeping with are brewing inside me,  culminating to a final climax. It has all been about this moment. Time is standing still. And all of a sudden it comes. Orgasm. Real shrieks of pleasure. Real sighs of relief. Sober.

       As he climbs off of me and I settle into the crook of his armpit, not even worried about the millions of zits whose wrath I am sure to invoke by resting my face on his sweaty tattoo covered chest, I feel something I have never felt before. I suddenly understand why she called him “Daddy.” I feel safe. Like I am suddenly resurrected from the mundane bowels of the concrete jungle out there. Protected by one of its kings.

            When we wake up the next morning, I know it’s time to make the call. My mother is expecting to pick me up from the airport tomorrow. I stare at the beige hotel phone and pray for a wave of genius. I’m twenty two years old. Too old to be worried about what my mother thinks of me. Look at the train wreck she married for Christ’s sake. I look at Jonathan. He’s just out of the shower and he’s sitting on the edge of the bed in yet another pair of eighties mod print briefs taking some cash out of a red and white striped Barbasol shaving cream can and stuffing it in the bottom of one of his weathered, steel toed motorcycle boots. He seems so comfortable in his skin. Suddenly I care more about not hurting him that protecting my mother. My mind wanders to last night. I realize I am not embarrased or ashamed of him, that that is just a feeling I am used to but it does not apply here. I am actually proud of him. Proud to bring him home with me. A calmness washes over me, and for the first time in years I feel like I own my life. I dial the number.

      “Hello…” The soft whispery voice that I was so dreading I am now happy to hear.

      “It’s me…” I say.

      “Amy… oh my gosh I had the funniest dream about you.”

      “Really… what was it?”

      “Oh my gosh… Well I dreamt that you came for Christmas and you brought this tattoo guy with you and gave everyone tattoos for Christmas presents…”

      “Well… funny you should say that…”

As some of you may or may not know or give a flying rat’s ass, I have recently emerged from another long, degenerate sojourn in the dark alleys of Rio de Janeiro. Older, crazier, nastier, worn, torn, down and out and all fucked up… But ultimately victorious for having survived the apocalypse another year with several new books, published and unpublished sitting under my belt like a bad burrito.

That being said, I will be in Los Angeles and New York City shopping said abominations to the literary community in the months of July and August. I hope to have the pleasure of seeing some of you along the way.

I am blogging to invite you all to a Spoken Word thing I will be doing on August 8 (the 40 year anniversary of the Tate, La Bianca murders) along with a star-studded cast including Kid Congo, Genesis P-Orridge at Santo’s Party House in Manhattan (96 Lafayette). 

Unfortunately, the guest list is already full and tickets are going fast. So if you wanna make this scene (which promises to be more fun than a motel room full of crack whores!) make sure you reserve your tickets NOW. You can be the first kid on your block to buy a ticket HERE in advance for a mere 20 bucks.

Tickets are 25 dollars at the door — if there are any tickets left, which is not likely.

If any of you are too cheap or just too broke to make the aforementioned historical hootenanny, I will also be doing a real hot shit reading and signing of my latest book, NARCISA at the venerable La Luz de Jesus Gallery in glamorous Hollywood for ABSOLUTELY FREE on the evening of July 31, a friday. You can even get free drinks there, so you’d have to be in jail or the insane asylum to miss out on that one. For further details, check out the gallery’s website HERE.

Hope to see you soon and we’ll throw a bum on the grill for ya if you decide to show up!

Salve Ogum!

Hasta La Victoria Siempre!

JS

AD: That brings me to another question… What made you decide to put those quotes at the beginning of every chapter, anyway?

JS: Well that was really something weird, the way that sort of came about. It’s a kinda funny story — funny peculiar though, not so much funny ha ha... 

     When I did it, I didn’t have the slightest idea why I felt so compelled to do that shit. It was almost like an addictive vibe spurring me on in the beginning, I guess. You know how you can start a book off with a basic quote the way I did with that famous quote from Kerouac… and then it just felt so good and appropriate looking at it there that, like a good addict, I just started craving for more! Like they say, ‘one’s too many and a thousand’s not enough.’ (Laughs)… 

     So then I came up with the idea of just putting a relevant little literary quote at the beginning of every chapter like that, something pertinent to the overall theme or vibe of the chapter, just like I felt the Kerouac quote was largely pertinent to the whole book itself, at least to its central characters and the whole dynamic going on between them. Cigano’s almost obsessive fascination with Narcisa and his unbreakable attraction to her just seemed to me kinda reminiscent of that same sort of interdependency between Kerouac and his Dean Moriarty character in On The Road. 

       But it was all completely unconscious to me at that point — so much so, in fact that when I gave the original manuscript of the first edition to a professional book editor to look at before I started in on this huge rewrite of Narcisa, the one I’m peddling to big publishers now, one of the first things she said was how much it reminded her of that On The Road feeling.

      Now I haven’t read On The Road in over 30 years… but there it was. Synchronicity. I’ve come to really believe that that sort of synchronicity is like the shadow of the Eternal Muse standing over us, all these little signs and stuff…

     But on a more prosaic, rational level, I guess it just goes to show ya that all those books you read 30 years ago, they’re all still in there, in the computer and it all just comes out in the wash somehow eventually… but I digress…. well not really, I guess, because this is kinda about that computer, but even on a much deeper level, like a weird sorta DNA computer that seems to operate and drive us along deep below the level of our own conscious awareness…

“We’re here sleepyheads!!!” Jonathan yells as he slams the gearstick into park. He gives Dominic a look and they both get out to go get our “rooms.”

      Roxy and I look at eachother and I know we are both thinking the same thing. “Do you have anything?” I ask her and she starts digging furiously through her purse while I go rescue our hostage bottle of wine from the front seat.

      “Tweezers?” she says hopefully.

      “Give ‘em here” I say and we climb out of the van, our cramped bodies unfolding like encapsulated animal sponges just set in the water for the first time.

      “I have to pee.”

      “I know… you go first.” I say as we naturally scuttle away from the bright fluorescents of the hotel driveway casting their evil light that only the flying bugs of night can stand to hover beneath. I find a stone encrusted bench on the other side of the van and I go to work on the wine. The paper part is off no problem. I bend the tweezers flat and frantically try to push the cork inside the bottle. Freedom is not far away. But I hear masculine voices closing in, threatening my liquid liberty. Shit. Not until they approach do the tweezers make me feel desperate.

      “Need some help with that?” Jonathan asks as he produces a larger than necessary switchblade which he whips out and flicks open all in the same lightening speed motion, indicating years of practice. Thank God he is going to have some mercy and finally let me get drunk. He makes short work of the cork and helps himself to a long swig, several swigs, emptying a good third of the bottle. I suddenly feel like the mother hen whose baby chicks helped pick the corn and want to eat all her cornbread. He grunts and makes a face as if he’s just swallowed battery acid and finally hands over the bottle with a sinister and satisfied look on his face that says do what you gotta do, I’m about to get laid.

      I quickly grab the bottle, take a swig and pass it to Roxanne. I notice Dominic has a strange look on his face.

      “So you’re drinking JS?” he asks.

      What did he mean. That’s like asking, “Are you breathing, Amy?”

      “Yeah… here and there… but I got it under control. What about you… you finally got a couple of years under your belt now?

      It suddenly all made sense. The looks on our date, the no drinking in the van, the strained self control he always seemed to excersize around booze that seemed so deliberate. Yep… A.A. Shit. Well, at least Jonathan had come to his senses. But poor Roxanne, if she’d known about Dominic she surely would not have come. I take another good long pull on the bottle.

      “Well… I’m beat.” Dominic says, masking his panic at the newfound realization with an insincere yawn. He’s stuck on a road trip to the most decadant city in the states, perhaps the world with two alkies and a relapser.

      “Ok, well… g’night…” Jonathan says, looking square at Roxanne. She looks at me, slightly panicked.

      I shrug my shoulders. What could I do. “Just think… “ I say, trying to wind the invisible knob sticking out of her back that gives her life, “Tomorrow we’ll be in New Orleans!”

      “Yay, I can’t wait…” She chimes halfheartedly. I’m glad I’m not in her shoes. She hops up as if her springs need oiling and follows Dominic to their room. I watch her dingy, white cheetah print coat with the neon pink spray painted edges get smaller and smaller. She turns, and gives me one last glance. I smile and wave as I guiltily hand the bottle to Jonathan who sits down and puts an arm around me. I feel my shoulders stiffen, knowing I am next to walk the plank.

      It’s not that I didn’t like sex, it felt good I guess. It was just fine except there was always the moment where they expected you to cum and I couldn’t. I try to tell myself that its more of a tool than anything else. That life is a chess game between women- men being the pawns we use to maneuver against eachother. And sex, well that’s just another means to carry out our strategy. This is my mantra. Still, I am nervous. 

to be continued

So, finally needing a little break from the  solitary confinment psychosis of rewrite fever that sets in here in Hollywood, I took up my friend Inger’s invitation to the Art Opening.

I was standing out front of the gallery smoking and talking with my good friend Billy, the owner, when these two overdressed, over-thirty broads who looked like expired strippers attempting to relive their long lost teenage years — desperate divorcees out on the prowl most likely — walked up to Billy and rudely interrupted our talk, brashly positioning themselves right between us with their chubby backs right in my face like a defensive line of football players.

“Billy! It’s old home week!” one of them squealed obnoxiously, working that L.A. Minny Mouse squeek-box for all it’s worth. Poor Billy gets a lot of that. As a gallery owner in a town where everybody fancies them self an artiste, Billy has juice.

“Looks more like old HO week,” I mumbled to myself as I wandered off to the parking lot for a piss.

 Another Saturday night in La La Land. Makes you wanna never leave the fucking house. Call me disgruntled.

 But It’s definitely a good place to be an artist. Fuck all else to do here…

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2009.