Pictures of Tuesday’s event will be up soon!

The long grey eternity of limbo on the river has eaten into the traveler’s brain like an infestation of invisible jungle termites by the time the boat finally reaches its destination. End of the line. He steps like a sleepwalker off this floating Purgatory onto a clattering dock crowded with boxes and bundles and pigs and chickens and people, all clamoring all around like overgrown ants of inscrutable purpose. The traveler walks away from the riverboat, his watery home for weeks now, to finally resume his travels by land. He walks away from the chattering wooden dock, swatting at the living cloud of tiny mosquitoes that intensifies its devouring activity as the day slips feebly into night like a drowning man’s final gurgle.

Jonathan’s dulled senses guide him like a water-logged compass along a primitive street now, aimless, sweaty, dirty, exhausted, stumbling forward, unconsciously swatting, swatting impotently at the intermittent alien humming in his ear as invisible insect predators battle each other for his poor weak life blood. Larger insects, millions of them, billions, trillions, more insects then grains of sand of all the deserts on all the planets of time are buzzing and rattling and chirping and singing and twittering in a mad blood-thirsty riot, a depressing dirge of the infinite malarial swamps surrounding this god-forsaken fly-spot on a moldy map of hell’s forgotten regions. Too tired to think, too tired to breathe, the traveler staggers like a broken war-battered refugee down a muddy road of primative thatched-roof buildings and huts.

Scabvendor.com is happy and proud to introduce Amy Fields as a guest writer today. Amy, a native Texan, for many years was a fashion model, designer and writer in New York City. For the next few days we will be featuring excerpts from her book-in-progress in between our regular blog programming.

Amy is not only a hugely talented writer, but is also a best friend and important member of Jonathan Shaw’s extended family. She has shared these excerpts from her wonderful book, recounting in detail the night she met Jonathan and her initial opinions of him which eventually led to a profound and beautiful five year “marriage” relationship.

Amy now lives in Los Angeles with her present husband, Dharma Punx founder Noah Levine and their one year old daughter Hazel. She remains a close and cherished best friend and confidante to Jonathan.

“Hey Amy!” Roxanne beams as I pass, ever the perky one.

“Hey!” I say trying to match her enthusiasm and force out a smile for her victim as I take a closer look. He seems like a biker type- leather vest, nicer than most. It’s brown, and has designs tooled in it with red thread. This he wears with a skintight navy and white horizontally striped t-shirt. A wink and a nudge to sailors past, it suits him somehow. The lights from the bar flash off the lenses of his black rimmed fifties style glasses. It strikes me as strange as Roxy and I both had a preference for the young and the dirty, and this guy although rugged is not dirty and not young either judging from the grey streak in his otherwise brown mustache and goatee, giving him a most feline quality.

I continue to make my way to the corner where May is saving a seat for me when I hear, “Aren’t ya gonna introduce me to yer friend, Roxanne?”

“Oh sorry Johnny, this is my friend Amy”

“Hi,” I say again, not really wanting to socialize until I had a few drinks in me. Besides, he is Roxanne’s problem as usual, not mine.

“Wellllll,” he grins widely, flashing what looked like two gold teeth complete with a diamond and a ruby encrusted in them. “A tall drink of water for my thirsty eyes.”

Weirdo! I think, giving him an obligatory sideways smile as I make my way to the corner where I can see Roger has a cape cod waiting for me. I quickly down it and it is replaced with another. I need to preemptively numb myself for the prospect of Haydn not picking up tonight. Hoping that if I get drunk
enough maybe I¹ll be too tired to uninvitedly make the trek to his building and lean incessantly on his buzzer, as was my habit. This usually ending in me trudging back to the west side, a rejected stalker.

“No luck?” May asks.

“Nope, not yet.” I reply like its no big deal.

As May and I talk I make a rule for myself- one call for every drink. Still it’s hard to focus on her. I keep looking at the pay phone. The shiny pirate is in my line of sight. He keeps flashing this sinister yet childlike grin every time he catches me. Finally he gets up and Roxanne comes over.

“What’s up with the old dude?” I ask.

She laughs, casually blowing me off like she always dated old dudes. “That’s Jonathan Shaw,” she says as if it meant something. I give her an and so what look. “Remember when we were looking for Dave?” Oh no! my insides shudder. She had only recently stopped blabbing about Dave the glassblower.

He was a guy Roxanne had met a few months ago who had wanted to take her home, professing his undying love for her right there in the hallway of Coney Island High. But she¹d declined, I’m certain in protest to my always leaving her for Haydn, only to wake up the next morning, deciding he really was the love of her life and that she¹d made a huge mistake. So I agreed to help her hunt him down, certain that if I didn’t I’d never hear the end of it. All we knew about this guy was that his name was Dave; he was a glass blower from Seattle, had a dragon tattoo on his head and was hanging out with some Hells Angels. So the next night, after a few shots of courage we marched our dirty boots through the snow down to third street, stood between two barrels of fire, and did the forbidden- knocked on the door of the HA clubhouse. Roxanne assured me it was fine that they¹d once when she was living in her car a while back they had given her tuna fish sandwiches. We were  greeted by a big blob of hair with glaring eyes. After begrudgingly hearing us out, he grunted twice and anticlimactically slammed the door in our faces. We then went to the illegal yet street front tattoo shop on St Mark’s where I remembered now Roxanne asking for Johnny saying she was a friend of his girlfriend’s whom she told me called him Daddy. This detail I remember because shockingly it did not repulse me.

“Oh right.” I come back to the present. That was his tattoo shop. ”I thought he had a girlfriend.”
“Well, I guess they broke up!” she says excitedly, not at all upset for her former friend. “Maybe I can get him to finish my back.”  One of the many veins of her existence- the unfinished humble beginnings of a tattoo on her otherwise clean back. It was meant to be some fantastic, award-winning piece- a garden of life and death or something like that. But in its present state it resembled more of a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, the beginnings of an outline with two or three pitiful looking leaves hanging from her
shoulder.

“Yay!” I say, looking over to where he sat, beaming boyishly, a halo surrounds him, light bouncing from his every orifice. Suddenly, I feel sorry for him. He seems nice enough. I wonder if people used him often just to get free tattoos; if the ex, the one that called him “Daddy” ditched him after she was sufficiently covered. Oh well, you can’t rape the willing I guess.

After the third phone call, busy again, I begin to accept that Haydn isn’t going to pick up tonight. Accepting this involves two tequila shots and a cigarette. I need to seriously begin numbing the functions of my brain
before it’s time to go home and I am left alone, just me and my synapses. May has given up. I can’t blame her. She has to go all the way back to Queens.

“Tell yer friend to come over here, she looks lonely,” I hear the man say.
“Yeah, come on over Amy.” Roxanne motions me over with her hand. I mentally roll my eyes while I force yet another smile and drag my stool around the corner. It’s worse than I thought. Not only am I drugless, dissed and disheveled, but now I’ll be forced to watch this man ogle Roxanne while she bounces and giggles the night away. She keeps repeating the same story about when she met his ex while they were both living at The Hotel 17. I guess they’d had some fly by night plan of starting a band together, which
shockingly was never realized. My brain is weary of this and my mouth hurts from the fake smile that’s been pasted on it. I regret my Southern upbringing that always requires politeness.

The man tries to make small talk with me perhaps trying to change the subject, but I answer him shortly. I’m not in the mood. I am debating whether or not to call one more time. He¹’s on his own. I try to send him ESP signals that he doesn¹t have to be nice to me, Roxanne will probably sleep with him anyway, but he is persistent and he keeps trying to talk to me. So much so that when the bar closes and they decide to go to Roxanne’s apartment, he invites me to come along.
“Really?” I look at Roxanne, trying to judge if she wants company or not.
She’s often scared to bring guys to her apartment on account of the mess.

“Yeah, come Amy.” She seems genuine.  I wonder if the man is thinking he’s going to get something kinky. It wouldn¹t be the first time. There was Andrew, the bicycle messenger who worked for a weed delivery service. We’d all had a good night, too much fun to separate so we went to Roxanne’s place
and made out all night listening to The Best of Leonard Cohen.