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Another excerpt from my upcoming novel Narcisa: Our Lady of Ashes to be released by Heartworm Press this summer.

Journal entry — Love House Hotel. 2:00 am 19 February - Carnival Monday

CARNIVAL - The streets were littered with odd clusters of somnambulant jaywalkers tonight. Fucking Zombies. I dunno if they were all drunk or just so tired, drained of all will to live that they began wandering carelessly like stray chickens right out into the road. Their overall demeanor and body language seems to say Just kill me, I don’t care anymore. I just want to lay down somewhere, anywhere. Anywhere. Even the morgue…
Strange thing this fucking Carnival, I’m thinking, maybe people just aren’t made to have a whole week of license like this with nothing to do but fuck off and drink and raise Hell.
People seem to need to be caged up in factories and offices, put through their paces like lab rats, worked half to death in order to just fucking function in some civilized fashion.
Take that away for five whole days, and they seem to quickly degenerate into savage, unruly, destructive creatures, diving right into the gutter like depraved, masturbating monkeys to wallow in their lowest common shit like lazy, unprincipled savages.
Just look at Narcisa. Her whole life is like some Dark Carnival.
Shit.
No wonder she’s so hot to fuck off back to Alpha Centauri. The fucking Human Race sure ain’t all that.
I’m looking at people scrambling around drunk, incoherent, stupid.
And suddenly they just look to me like rats milling around a big fucking garbage can.
Then it occurs to me. That’s an insult to Rats.
I’m thinking about Narcisa now and I’m picking up on her rage, her hate, her revolt as if it was my own.
And it is my own. It is me.
Like some dark electric current flowing between us.
Because it is us. Twin Flames.
Rats. Shit.
Rats are better than people.
Rats don’t neglect and abandon their young. They may eat them sometimes…
So do people, I’m thinking.
Like Narcisa’s people.
Shit.
Rats don’t smoke Crack.
Rats don’t have to sell their pussies.
Rats don’t get abortions.
Rats don’t have to build jails to incarcerate other rats.
They just eat their young and be done with it when they can’t take care of them.
Not people. People eat their young for fun.
People just keep cranking them out, making babies, throwing them away.
Cranking them out. Throwing them away.
The streets are teeming with them tonight.
So are the whorehouses. The Crack spots.
The prisons.
Hospitals. Morgues.
The nuthouse.
Shit.
Rats just eat them.
Not people.
People just keep cranking out the Meat.
The streets are swarming with the Meat tonight.
And now they are bored to stupidity.
Bored. Idle Hands.
If Idle Hands are the Devil’s playground, then this fucking Carnival is His amusement park Coney Island Magic Mountain Disneyland Knott’s Berry Farm and Sea World all rolled into one…

Copyright 2008 Jonathan Shaw. All Rights Reserved.

NOTIFIÇAO: Os eventos neste site são contos de ficção - registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor, Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são interamente ficticios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa vivo ou morta se trata de pura coincidência.
As vários fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

Due to an influx of emails, we’ve decided to post people’s email comments HERE

 Here’s an email we just got to Narcisa from her friend Hanz - more about Hanz in the last chapter of “Narcisa - Our Lady Of Ashes.”

From: Thomas Schubernig <Thomas.Schubernig@br-automation.com <mailto:Thomas.Schubernig@br-automation.com> >
 Date: May 20, 2008 3:39 AM
Subject: Antwort: Re: narcisa?
To: tál! <cyberxpsych@gmail.com <mailto:cyberxpsych@gmail.com> >

hallo Narcisa,

hallo Jonathan,

I read about the half story.
Oh man!
Things are getting better? iI stopped with “manic mode”.

And somehow i feel like the moron with the Bible in the hand - damned by you and your friend.
I am the one who is blamed by this stories. To be the one who says “no drugs” who believes in God and is talking about changing (your) life.
I will not tell you to change your life and stop taking drugs. Who am I? It is your life, you have to live it - no one else can. if you are happy with this kind of life (and somehow it seems you are and you know the consequences) then stay. Live it.
 

I would just like to be your friend. Who sent you away with the taxi when you wanted to stay… damn, maybe i am a moron well, who cares, i can live with that

When I read through this blog it seems you are living a … kind of … lonely(?!) life. I am not sure if i express things right here.
In my opinion the “small” talk is one of the most important things in life.
With small talk I do not mean cheap talking about the weather. I mean telling somebody about the little things in life. The so called “unimportant” things which normally don’t matter.
I had this with my former girlfriend. Half a year later I still can say this is what I miss most.
Her stories about the kids watering the bathroom, or me arguing with the police about a ticket (I lost). About finishing a climbing project.
All the small things.
I am not sure if you and Jonathan have these kind of conversation. - maybe it´s not important for you. And maybe i am writing some kind of real … shit.
For me you are a strange couple. please get me right - no judging. It’s just totally new and unknown for me. Would like to understand this and you. Although I fear I’ll fail.

So sweet Narcisa,
I am off.

hope to hear from you again,
Hanz

liebe gruesse,
Hanz

———

JS RESPONSE:  Thanks, Hanz.

  I too am struggling to understand all this better.
 And maybe by trying to understand Narcisa I can somehow come to a better understanding of myself, and of all us lost little lambs….
 Maybe this crazy life we’re living and the books I’m writing about it all will also help somehow.
 I hope so.
 All the best.
  Jonathan

——————-

Here’s a brief email exchange between Wes of Heartworm Press (also of bands Some Girls and American Nightmare) and Jonathan-

——Original Message——
From: Wes Eisold
To: JONATHAN SHAW
Sent: Jul 2, 2008 
Subject:

Hey man!
Just writing to say Congratulations. You wrote an incredible book and I hope you like the way it came out. We are SO happy with it.
Thanks for letting us being a part of this.
Hope you are well out there in the world,

 Wes

——Original Message——

From: JONATHAN SHAW
To: Wes Eisold
Sent: Jul 2, 2008 
Subject:

_________________________________________________

Denis fahy wrote:

Went into the weblink. Must say I got a very good feeling when I saw the cover of your book. I am not surprised that you are getting good feedback, I genuinely think you have a very important work on your hands. Keep going with your upcoming edit.

 
The launch of your book deserves a touch of Irish luck!

 
Go n’eirigh an bothar leat (may the road rise for you).

 
Denis

————————————————————————————————————-

We’d like to thank Herb Reichert for sending out an email blast for Narcisa: Our Lady of Ashes. Here’s what it said:

Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2008 21:51:25 -0400 (GMT-04:00)

To:many

Subject: the book is out

My friend Jonathan Shaw just published his first book. It is a high speed smack in the head and push to the heart. I read it — it is very very exciting to read - wild and romantic and philosophical . . . . most of all human and kind. Please support his faithful effort. Thank you in advance.love and peace from,herb

——————————————————————————————————

Diana, on Narcisa: Our Lady of Ashes

—–Original Message—–

From: Diana Budur

Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2008 19:43:55

To: Jonathan Shaw

Subject: ola, e Diana

Hi, Jonathan

I’ve been reading the book and I love it! Awesome writing, beautiful language, I am really impressed!!! The content is also extremely moving…I am gonna be late to the party because I couldnt stop reading it.Basically, it’s more difficult than I could possibly envision it… the deal between the two of you… of course…bjs,

Diana

————————————————————————————

Mayra Dias Gomes on “Things are getting better

“Ha, I loved reading this..I told Narcisa that day that she should write and see how much she would feel better!I knew it! Nothing more enlightning than putting yourself down on paper.Maybe us being friends with her helps, you think? I really like her. Tell her I know all the recent adventures of Paris and Nicole, ha ha ha ha ha .They are retarded and addictive! Beijos!!!!

JS RESPONSE:You rule, Mayra!Yes yes yes, you are right about all that, and writing and love are bringing her back to life!!

She’s been reading your book, Fugalaca to me and we both love it. She says you write a lot like me. I guess sick minds think alike, hein?Narcisa really likes you too, baby…. What’s not to like? And of course you are a cool good positive influence on her and an angel to us all…Xx js

 HERE ARE A FEW COMMENTS THAT MAYRA DIAS GOMES RECEIVED ON HER BLOG REGARDING JONATHAN SHAW. BELOW ARE THE ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS, THE PORTUGUESE ONES CAN BE FOUND >>HERE

fotolog.com/canibalvegan said:Ha! The first chapter hooked us! Were anxious to read the rest of the book! Any idea when it’ll come out here in brazil? I already know Jonathan Shaw - not personally, unfortunately - from some of his journalistic efforts here in Brazil, his writings for Trip magazine, specificlly his articles like “the function of the orgasm’ and the Wilhelm Reiche orgone box and so on… Bye.

JS RESPONSE: thanks so much. Glad you liked it…We’re trying to push a Brazilian translation with editora Record. It would be a collaboration between me and the lovely and talented Mayra Dias Gomes. But, unfortunately, still no official date or commitment…Long live the orgasm, orgone energy, long live the great Wilhelm Reiche!! Atb, js 

fotolog.com/dvar said:Has jonathan shaw written for rolling stone here in brazil? I have heard his name around…

JS RESPONSE:no, I think you’re thinking of a big cover piece I did with Iggy Pop for Trip mag a coupla years back.

 fotolog.com/caril_starkie said:Narcisa - Our Lady of Ashes!Great title!I’m going to read it!

JS RESPONSE:Glad you liked it. Thanks. The original title was gonna be “Savage Grace” , but the gringos beat me to it with some big Hollywood movie with that name so I switched to Narcisa.I think it worked out better anyway. Thanks. Atb, js

 fotolog.com/inconstantine said:Wow, I read the first chapter, its a very heavy text! I got the mixed impression that the character of Narcisa is like some parasite dragging herself around the world, and at the same time something profoundly Baffling, a living puzzle of paradigms of evolutionary changes. Very compelling. I’m curious to see further chapters!

JS RESPONSE:Cool! Thanx for the mini-review! Glad you like Narcisa. She is my goddess! You said a mouthful. I am equally anxious to see those further chapters getting translated and published here in Brazil, Narcisa’s home of origin! Pray for us! Atb, JS 

fotolog.com/cris_ornellas said:Oh man, what a chapter! May some charitable soul please put out this holy book here soon! I’m curious as fuck! Hahaha

JS RESPONSE:I’m with ya there and praying for that charitable soul to show up soon too. God bless readers like you, baby! atb, js

——————————————————————————————————————————–

 Lydia Lunch on “Homeward Bound“

—–Original Message—–

From: Lydia Lunch

Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 07:28:46

To: JS

Subject: Re: Homeward bound

so beautiful it makes me sick

____________________________________________________

Lydia Lunch on “Ashes Ashes Ashes“

—–Original Message—–

From: Lydia Lunch

Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 08:31:51

To:JS

Subject: Re: “Suicidio abortado” - by Narcisa

oh how I do understand tolerating the interminable forsuch strokesof genius-how beautifully, twistedly , horribly wonderful!

_____________________________________________________

Johnny Depp on “Ashes Ashes Ashes“

—–Original Message—–

From: JD

Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 19:38:13

To: JS

Subject: Re: “Suicidio abortado” - by Narcisa

holy fuck.  beautiful.  you and your little girl are certainly chewing on the same spaghetti strand, ol’ mate. i hope all is well, and i’ll just bet it is. love and all=JD

 __________________________________________________________

Orbi Orbison on “Homeward Bound“

—–Original Message—–

From: Orbi

Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 10:50:48

To: JS

Subject: Re: Homeward bound

write me another book jonathan shaw!not a sequel, just another road on the same path…take us all on another stroll in the hellish-heaven park you call love…on a another spin around the block with us on the back of the moto next tonarcisa and you…the first book is done and it’s great enough to warrant another couple hundredpages….

________________________________________________________

Tonico Monteiro De Carvalho on “Ashes Ashes Ashes“

—–Original Message—–

From: Antonio Luis Monteiro de Carvalho Guimaraes

Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 03:25:42

To: JS

Subject: RE: Surto literario

Johnny Boy. This is some serious shit man. Wow. This girl is some really deep creature. An abyssal animal of existential pain. So real and powerful…you are quite right man, this girl is unique.If you ever think she would be up to stand up and read this poem in front of a crowd that would be eager to listen, you know about the Tuesdays of Poetry at Letras e Expressões I am part of. I would be glad to introduce her. She is sure to freak some people out, which I think she would enjoy. I think that could be therapeutic, cathartic and who knows… may be good for her self-esteem. Aloha

 Tonico

 ——————————————————————-

——Original Message—–

From: “Denis Fahy”

Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:32:49

To:JS

Subject: Re: 12 passos

Hey Jonathan - great to hear from you. Was off line for a few days. I enjoyed reading the exerpt from the blog. When you think about it, that is all you need. Your writings are life experiences so a blog allows you to write in real time - something happens one day, you can write and publish it within hours. Your life, past, present and I assume future, is so interesting and full of content and substance. To some extent your creative process is your life itself. I recently spent time with a screenplay writer. The creative process for him is a nightmare as he genuinely needs to create to write. Your creation is your life and in that regard every waking moment is a creation. You have limitless material. It is only fair that you should benefit from having an interesting existance, don’t you think?

A good thing about a blog is that because you write and “publish” so frequently, you are fast tracking the polishing of your writing style. In the past many writers worked as journalists whereby they had to produce every day and this had a positive effect on their writing style. Norman Mailer springs to mind. He developed his writing style while being a sports journalist.

As you already know, I believe you have a very important message and fabulous energy and vitality to your writing. Therefore, if you can figure out a way of getting your stuff out there, I think you will be pleasantly surprised with the results.Over the years I have read a huge amount of biographies of artists, writers and composers. For the really cutting edge artists, the medium they end up in is almost incidental. Their lives are the creation. Goya, a genius, spent the first half of his career painting portraits. This paid his rent and financed his lifestyle which was the true work of art. Try and get your hands on a biography of Goya - his early experiences in Madrid are not too dissimilar to yours in Rio de Janeiro. Now that I think of it, you must do some research on Goya - I think you would find it inspirational.You are in the priviliged position of enjoying limitless material for your writings. Like it or not, JS creates everyday! The problem is keeping up with recording it!!Keep up the good fight.

Love

Denis—————————

from JS

to Denis Fahy

date Apr 28, 2008 3:39 PM

subject Re: 12 passos

Wow denis -you really summed up all my feelings about this thing and my hopes for it in a nutshell here.This is just something that has just happened spontaniously in my life, much the same way as the book “Narcisa” itself simply emerged, demanding to be written..And its all been nothing but a joy and a blessing right from the go, albeit a hair-raising one at times, as you yourself well know, having seen me in the throes of the worst of it.

Like you, I believe the best art has to be spontanious, authentic and , most of all NECESSARY to the evolutionary process of the artist’s life itself, and ideally that of his audience.As Narcisa is fond of quoting, Neitzsche said, “art exists so tha reality doesn’t destroy us.”And there, I believe is the saving grace in all of this for me, for Narcisa, and, hopefully for humanity at large.At the end of the day, its all about sharing one’s experience, strength and hope with others, while hopefully trying to make some sense out of what would otherwise be a cruel and senseless randomness of existence in a godless world of endless shit.. Fuck that!Long live love!Long live art!Long live Narcisa - Our Lady Of Ashes!

Salve o amor!Salve a arte!Salve Narcisa - Nossa Senhora Das Cinxas.

The other day I brought Narcisa a set of colored pencils to draw some of her psychedelic visions with.
Her otherworldly geometric forms and shapes make crop circles look simplistic. She says she doesn’t know what they mean.
One day my friend, Mateus, the spirit medium came over and saw them and when Narcisa asked him what he saw, he said that they were clearly sentient alien “beings”.
Narcisa just smiled knowingly and said nothing.
After 2 years of non-stop crack smoking, only interrupted by intermittent forced nuthouse internments, her artwork has deteriorated visibly now. The shapes are becoming unbalanced, crooked and sloppy. It’s sad to see another brilliant mind eat shit and die. But what can ya do? I know I didn’t cause it and I also know I can’t fix it. All I can do is love her and be a witness to whatever…
When I brought her the pencils, I forgot to buy a pencil sharpener. Narcisa insisted I go back down the hill and get her one. She was adamant and she chased me right out the door, and off I went on another abstract mission for Narcisa.
She couldn’t wait.
When I returned an hour later she had already taken matters into her own crack-blackened, burnt out hands. The new set of colored pencils lay strewn and broken across the floor, looking like they’d been ravaged by a pack of rabid hyenas.
Narcisa, in a burst of wild inspiration, had attacked the pencils in a frenzy with her teeth, sharpening them sufficiently to illegibly scrawl one of her long ranting poetic discourses across the pages of a notebook in big, insane, page-tearing colored letters.
Then she sat me down out on the balcony.
“I gonna never publish this or read it in front of any peoples but you, Cigano. I don’ care ’bout any that shit. So you are my only audience an’ now I gonna read it for you. Ready?”
Ready or not, I sat there in awe while she shouted the following words through the humid air into my face, weaving unseen patterns, alchemical formulas with the musical power of her raw, savage growls of pain and passion - she hates the word ‘poetry’, said if I gotta call it anything, to refer to it as a ‘discourse’…
When she was done she walked across the room and tore the pages from the notebook, furious once again at the betrayal of language, the inadequacy of words to ever express that which she lives and experiences with every excruciating breath of her intensely disturbed existence.
She was about to set fire to the pages and convert it all to ashes when I snatched it away and pocketed it, provoking another near battle to the death, during which she accused me of being a mediocre, hypocritical sellout, among other things for ever publishing my work to be sold in commercial establishments, especially a book about her, for the idiot masses to banalize and… bla bla bla…
Whatever, we somehow survived the moment, though later that night she went out and got herself pistol whipped by someone else a bit less tolerant of her artistic temperament. But that’s another story…
Today’s a rainy Sunday. Narcisa’s crashed out on my sofa, comatose from her latest grueling mission to hell.
While she snores and cries out at the sleep-demons who mercilessly taunt and torment her dreams, I’ve taken the time to translate her ’surto literario’ into English and put it out there before she finds it and destroys it, like all the many notebooks of poetry and writing she’s produced and promptly trashed over the years right before my eyes.
I do feel just a little guilty for sharing this with the world “out there”, as if I’m somehow violating her intentions that her work never be published or even seen by anyone but me.
But I think it’s important. Maybe that’s my whole purpose here…
So I guess, just for today, I’ll have to live with it…

Narcisa’s nuthouse scrawl…

“Suicidio abortado” – by Narcisa

All the same, it’s good to know
I exist
And know how to describe
My steps… Articulations
Perception.
I didn’t inherit it
Didn’t acquire it
Didn’t purchase it
Didn’t find it.
Only experienced it… Intermediately
The little and the much that
I’ve been permitted
And all that I haven’t been permitted too.
Naturally and spontaneously
I feel and know
The limits of organic matter
And the arrogance of the ego
And the sickness of the mind
Even anesthetized.
I choose to continue to exist
And conform to the customs
Imposed and defined by this
Human society.
But should there be no other choice…
I give thanks.
Thanks for the time and for the space
For the scars and for the tears
For the smile and for the pain
For the textures and the flavors
I give thanks for the shapes and for the colors.
For the dimensions
And for the distance
For exhaustion and
For hyperactivity.
I give thanks for the velocity
And thanks for the curves and
Straightaways
Of this existential route.
I give thanks for the discipline
And for the indiscipline
For the sounds, for the songs, voices, tones, rings…
Thanks for the dance…
Thanks. For the shame and for the boldness, the courage to dare.
Thanks for the profit and for the repose
For the neglect and for the
Concern.
I give thanks for the weight and thanks for the taste
Thanks for the scent
And thanks for the pleasure.
I give thanks for the arrogance
And thanks for the humility
Thanks for the abandonment
And thanks for the chance
Thanks for the technology and thanks for
Nature.
Thanks for the joy
And the sadness
Thanks for the vanity and for
The homeless begging destitution
Thanks for the shouts and thanks for the silence
For the public and for the anonymity
For the opinions and for the judgments
For the facts, for the accusations and for the emancipations.
I give thanks for the controversy and I give thanks for the criticism
Thanks for the acceptance
And for the vice
For the hypocrisy
For the humor, for the ignorance
I give thanks for the idea and thanks for the mediocrity
For the transport, for the immobility
Thanks for the morale and for the atrocity.
For the modesty, for the evil
Even for the character and for the personality…
But now, so as not to prolong the boredom
I give special thanks
To Art.

But I am annoying
And compulsive, tedious, rude
And inconvenient…
So, despite having already concluded,
I will continue giving thanks
For the paranoia
And the ecstasy
For the comas and the insomnia
For the attention and for the solitude
For dreams and for nightmares
For perspectives
And for illusions too.
And for so-called ‘honesty’
And for all terrorism and sabotage
I will give thanks
For the efforts and for the indolence
For the revolt rage anger and frustration
I give thanks
For the moments and for the repetitions
I give thanks
For the real and for the imaginary
For curiosity
For all the attempts at superiority
And inferiority
For escape and for courage
For the wars lost and won
For the allies and the enemies
For the strategy and for spontaneity
For the coincidental
For the logical
For the absurd and
For the premeditated
I give thanks
For the doubt and for the certainty of the emotions
For the cost
And for the hunger and the loss
For the priceless and for the reproductions
For the lack and for the leftover…
I give thanks for the deficiency that makes beings reproduce themselves.
And, at the risk of banality, I finally will give thanks for the replicas and for the originals…
And for at last having nothing left to illiterate.

But I would so much prefer to have wings
To fly so far away
And not need to walk so very far
To have to give thanks…
I would thank myself
If I could float unconsciously
In the untouchable and fathomless blue
Of the heavens
Soon to be darkness
But lit by the stars
Which are so far beyond what can be found,
So much more than an existence.

And soon the vultures will have a case of indigestion.
I am not going to rot in any cemetery.
Or be turned to ashes.
What frustration!
To smoke MYSELF would be perfect!
But just for today I will smoke the ashes of the others.
The vultures aren’t starving. They can wait still
For me to duplicate
And die from an overdose of my own ashes.
And yes! That would be the REAL self-sufficiency:
Self-consumption.
My very OWN death.
Not an imposed demise
Nor suicide.
In the meanwhile, I will just smoke
Whatever.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008. All Rights Reserved.

NOTIFIÇAO: Os eventos neste site são contos de ficção - registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor, Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são interamente ficticios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa vivo ou morta se trata de pura coincidência.
As vários fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

HERE IS THE FIRST INSTALLMENT IN OUR NEW WEEKLY SERIES OF EXCERPTS FROM JONATHAN SHAW’S UPCOMING NOVEL “Narcisa: Our Lady of Ashes”–

That fateful night I found her after her long disappearance, standing in the rain outside that low-end whorehouse at the rat’s asshole end of Copacabana. At first I thought it odd to even see her there.
Where was the old prideful Narcisa, the one who was always too good for the life of a low class street hooker?
How the Mighty I Am had fallen from the exclusive top-shelf call-girl joints down the beach to this.
Only seeing was believing that shit.
Narcisa?
There she was alright, filthy, homeless, in burnt tatters.
But still carrying an equally filthy, tattered Louis Vuitton bag that looked like it had been excavated from King Tut’s fucking tomb, along with its owner.
Where was Louis Vuitton now?
Ashes.
Ashes.
Ashes.
Narcisa.
Narcisa.
Narcisa.
And may Jesus help me, when I was broke, unable to buy her all the clothes and shoes and fucking spangles and baubles and gimcracks and whim whams she wanted, she’d just light into me with all the haughty indignation of some pampered, overfed Ipanema matron.
Narcisa.
One day we were walking down the street in this fancy neighborhood, don’t ask why…
Suddenly she froze up like a dummy, right in front of this showy pretentious gingerbread designer boutique.
I looked at her and her eyes were glazed over like she’d just taken a big hit of Crack, staring like one of those crazy drooling bird dogs at the shop display.
I looked where she was looking. A simple purple dress. Nothing special.
What’s up?
I think she mostly liked it because the window mannequin was tall and skinny like her and looked about twelve years old.
Narcisa.
“Buy me that!”
What?
“The mannequin?” I joked.
“The dress, Cigano.”
I thought she was kidding.
For a second.
Then I remembered.
Narcisa didn’t kid.
I started to patiently explain that I’d spent all my money on her last devastating run .
I was so broke now I could barely pay attention.
She left me standing alone talking as she tore off into the store.
While she tried on stuff inside, I wandered off down the street.
No choice.
That dress cost more than a year’s wages for the average Brazilian.
I barely had enough money in my pocket to buy a pair of dead man’s shoes from the garbage-picker sidewalk vendors of Catete.
I kept walking.
When she caught up with me I got to hear all about it.
“You the so big the Jew, Cigano! I say you I wan’ it the dress an’ you gone ‘way. Jew! Jew! Jewish!! You more worst than even real Jew. Is true, man! I know! When I e’stay the New York together my husban’, he never refuse for buy it to me any little thing I wan’. Never! In the New York City, I use-ed have it the whooole closet only for the Narcisa, all ’spensive dress and thing and sooo many the e’shoe! More than e’fifty differen’ the kind the e’shoe. Now you so complain same like big fucking Jew because I wan’ only you buy it to me these cheap Made in Brazil shit. Jew!”
Blaa Blaaa Blaaaa. And where was all that great fucking treasure now?
Ashes.
Blaa Blaaa Blaaaa.
What part of broke doesn’t she understand?
Blaaaaaaa…
I tuned out the noise and kept walking.
Sometimes that’s all you can do.
It would be pointless to remind her that every present I’d ever given her hadn’t lasted a week with her special Midas touch.
Everything Narcisa ever touched was quickly and efficiently converted to ashes.
Everything.
Her infallible affinity for the destruction of material things.
A perverse need to create conditions of total blight around herself.
And then complain.
Narcisa was so attached to her stupid little self-imposed Born to Lose identity, whenever she got anything nice, it suddenly became like this big threat to her whole self image, her very existence. So she just had to destroy it.
Immediately.
If for no other reason than a pretext to keep her endless fucking Pity Party going.
She loved to talk the talk of wise philosophers and poets, forever citing Nietzsche or Sartre or Bob Marley to back up a useless argument, win some inane petty dispute.
Narsica could talk all the talk. When it came to walking the walk, though, she usually fell flat on her face…

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008. All Rights Reserved.

NOTIFIÇAO: Os eventos neste site são contos de ficção - registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor, Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são interamente ficticios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa vivo ou morta se trata de pura coincidência.
As vários fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

Finally, after twenty-plus years of coaxing, cajoling, pleading and basic needling on my part, my ol’ scallywag brother, Jonathan Shaw has put pen to paper, dragging and drudging up virulent and violent memories of his not so cute past and present.  Been waiting too long for this.  So have you, whoever you are, believe me.  If you don’t yet know him, you will. If you didn’t want to, too bad.  Once he’s in, he’s in. J.S.’s words, work, life, lives, deaths, rants, rage, hilarity and taste rank with the best of ‘em. 

If Hubert Selby Jr., Charles Bukowski, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Neil Cassady, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, the Marquis de Sade, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Joao Gilberto, Edward Teach, Charley Parker, Iggy Pop, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, R. Crumb, Robert Williams, Joe Coleman, Dashiell Hammett, E.M. Cioran and all of the Three Stooges had all been involved in some greasy, shameful, evil whorehouse orgy, Jonathan Shaw would surely be its diabolical, reprobate spawn”. - Johnny Depp

She called me from the favela late in the afternoon, right after the big lightning storm.She’d been up there all day again, dodging bullets and smoking crack in the dark little shack they all fester away in up there.Slowly grinding her spacesuit body into ashes and ruin. Turning cheap tricks with other whores and beggers and murderers..A day in the life of Narcisa. Lady of ashes.Now she was bored again and ready for a real fuck and a little tender same- species companionship.As always, I was down.I rode up the hill on the motorcycle, winding along the familiar narrow cobblestone road.As I approached the spot, I passed the big overgrown lot where they throw the bodies up there on the hill. I vaguely wondered if Narcisa’s would end up in those tall tropical weeds rotting away with the other ‘presuntos’.The meat, as those jettisoned cadavers are casually referred to in local bandido parlance up on the morro there by the drug spot…Cruising along, I could see the panoramic view of my city and the expansive blue ocean below imprinting itself on the memory stick of the hard drive called a brain I’ve been given for my long trip here to this ridiculous place called earth. 

the view from Praia do Leme 

 And here I am. Rio De Janeiro. City of God. In the Year of Our Lord, 2008. Gloria a Deus.She was standing by the empty hot dog trailer at the corner that’s only open at night, looking like a hungry adolescent wolf. Savage. Transcendent.My glowing alien white electric eel. My beautiful, etheric undernourished Lolita.Narcisa. Lady of ashes.I felt her hard, scrawny frame fuse with mine as she jumped on the motorcycle behind me. I fondled her bony earth suit kneecap with my left hand as we coasted silently back down the hill.Together. Again..”Let’s do it two time, same like other day, Cigano,” she said like an excited kid nagging her daddy for a toy.I knew she just wanted more money to smoke more and more crack now.And she’ll go to any lengths to get it now. Even becoming Pavlov’s own barking bitch in heat for me, digging a deep pit down into the bottomless realms of my own insatiable lust.Progressive illnesses. Addiction is what they call the shit we both caught here on Earth…Compulsion, obsession, lust. Addiction.Back in the shady bunker of my little room next door to the shabby old Hotel Gloria, I turned on the overhead fan in anticipation of the sweaty hours to come.Two times.I went to my little fridge and poured her a glass of passionfruit juice, discreetly dropping in the knockout drops. I’d fuck her six times more after she went out for her little spin back home to Alpha Centauri.Narcisa’s a liar, like me. A cheat and a thief. A pirate, just like me.But I’m much worse than her. Been here on earth a while longer. Picked up all their fucking tricks.That’s why she hates me.That’s why she likes me.I think she knows I dope up her juice.And even though she complains about the headaches the stuff gives her, I don’t think she really minds too much.After all, it’s really the only time she gets to sleep anymore and visit home for support and orientation. She says she hates to go to sleep, but I know she needs it anyway.She knows I take care of her Earthly needs and that’s why she likes me.That’s why she hates me too.It’s mostly all the earth-bound trauma-memory perils of the outer atmosphere part of her little visits home that piss her off the most.That and my rock-hard dick tucked up inside her that keeps her grounded to earth, without which she’d probably just ditch that long tall perfect supermodel’s space suit body she was given here, just like a little girl shedding her knickers as she shimmies up a tall tree.Then she’d shoot right back home without even a backward glance.Leaving me all alone on this snot ball planet.No way. Not yet.I’m the one that keeps insisting she stick around and fulfill her mission here, whatever the fuck that is.She doesn’t know either and I can’t tell her. But I insist she stay anyway.That’s why she really hates me.That’s why she really likes me too, I think.”Two times for 50, okay, Cigano?” She growls like a horney alleycat.”Ok with me, baby,” I said, throwing on a rubber.As I worked my dick into its good and proper place, we made small talk. As usual, she did most of the talking, telling me her bizarre adventures of the last few hours. Narcisa doesn’t like to listen. But she sure likes to talk.And that’s always alright with me. Her mouth and mine mingling together like one… tongue, teeth, gums, breath, one voice, one ratty warped earth-bound insatiable alien being.One.Then, suddenly the sinister thought came to me.This is how babies are made here on earth. This is how poor suckers like us wind up here.Shit, “What if the condom breaks and you give birth to Satan’s spawn, here, baby?” I said joking.What if?”Fuck that, Cigano. Don’ you know it I got no uterus?”An alien. From Alpha centauri. No uterus. Maybe…”Who told you that shit?” I laughed.”Is the TRUE, Cigano. Can’ to you FEEL it that I no got it the uterus?”"Not really, baby,” I said distractedly, gently working it home to Alpha Centauri. Home Sweet Home. “All I can feel is pussy. Supersonic pussy, baby, and I like it enough to plant my little alien spores up in there…”"Forget it, Cigano,” she breathed into my mouth. “If that shit ever happening, I gonna get it the ‘bortion!”I was deep inside her now, tasting the smell of outer space with the tip of my dick. One body. One spacesuit. On our way together back to Alpha Centauri at supersonic speed.”Then, after I make it the ‘bortion, I gonna EAT it the fetus!” She added.That’s my Narcisa. Thinks she’s been framed. Always trying to beat the rap, shortcut the karma…”You gonna eat it roasted like a chicken? Or a la milanesa?” I asked, not really giving a fuck. Just making conversation to keep her talking. When she’s talking, she doesn’t complain as much about my dick being way up in her spacesuit. And I like to watch her mouth move while I fuck her.”Barbeque, Cigano! On the hot coal, country e’style, man,” she said. I stroked away, picking up speed, countdown to blastoff. “No, Cigano! I got it the better idea” She said suddenly.”I gonna E’SMOKE that shit!”That’s Narcisa. So narcisistic and vain she would rather smoke something, even her own fetus, than eat a scrap of food for fear of gaining a kilo that might weigh her down to earth..And Narcisa hates fat people so much, I really think that’s the main reason she’s so unwilling to quit smoking crack - her insane trauma-based fear of getting fat.Seriously.It really is a great diet plan though, and I highly recommend it for all you fat chicks.But like all good things, unfortunately It has its own little drawbacks.Several pitfalls come with prolonged crack addiction. Stuff like jails, mental institutions, hospitals. And untimely, a premature death.Narcisa doesn’t mind any of that shit. Especially the death part. She says its just a free ride back home to Alpha Centauri.I wonder. 

The other day I asked her why she thought she came here in the first place. She thought a minute, then she said, with uncharacteristic honesty, “Probably cause I complaining too much ’bout the life on there, so they make me come on these shit place for see what’s good… ”Sounded plausible to me. Maybe she’s learned her lesson now. Maybe she’s ready to go home.Ready to die.That’s what they say about smoking crack. They say it’s like taking the diamond lane to the boneyard.Jails, institutions and death. Game over.But If you can live with that simple little program, then crack cocaine is probably just the right drug for your fat asses to slim down fast with too.Just ask Narcisa. Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008. All Rights Reserved.NOTIFIÇAO: Os eventos neste site são contos de ficção - registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor, Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são interamente ficticios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa vivo ou morta se trata de pura coincidência.As vários fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.