THE TATTOO MAGAZINE PRICK HAS POSTED A FEATURE ON JS. HERE’S A LITTLE OF WHAT THEY HAD TO SAY:
“Enter “Narsica: Our Lady of Ashes,” the tale of a man’s love and hate for a teenaged prostitute and drug addict who blows into his world like an unexpected ocean storm on an otherwise calm day of sailing. With his lust for the open road, robust adventures, and thrill for the untamed life, Shaw is the closest thing we have to Kerouac in this modern day and age.”
This is all surely an ongoing huge enigma for me as is everything about Narcisa.There are deep esoteric occult sciences I’ve always had an attraction to, but very little understanding of, since the time of my childhood. Narcisa has delved deeply into the secret sciences since her childhood and I know that somewhere behind those intense bugged-out eyes there’s a vast universe of hidden wisdom and knowledge of things way beyond my ability to comprehend. And most likely way beyond hers too- and that more than anything else is what’s driven her slowly insane, the fact that she knows there’s something terribly wrong with this world and this reality as it’s force-fed to us by the “status quo”.It must be terribly frustrating for her to possess such advanced knowlege and be unable to find the slightest earthly application for it and that’s probably the main reason she wants out of here and wants to go back to Alpha Centauri where things would probably make a lot more sense to her…The thing that makes it so difficult for us to get along is mainly the fact that, because of great suffering, I’ve been set on a path that requires me to seek the truth and the light, while Narcisa seems to try and do everything in her power to avoid the very things I am obliged to seek. But it’s the avoidence of someone who already possesses great knowledge and, for whatever reasons, wishes they didn’t. I think I can relate to that, being that I spent two years between the age of twelve and fourteen dropping LSD an average of three times a week until I was so confused by the nature of reality and the esoteric knowledge I was exposed to, much too advanced for my young inexperienced mind to assimilate, that at the age of fourteen I simply stopped taking all “mind expanding” drugs and rushed headlong into hard drug addiction in a desperate attempt to reverse the overdose of knowledge and vision I’d opened myself up to.Now I’m seeing it and remembering and even reliving it through Narcisa and suddenly it seems quite clear that she’s simply trying to protect herself from the percieved threat of spiritual things.
That’s why its so easy for her to submerge her mind and body into such depths of drug addiction and then the one time she finally gave herself any chance to recover, it was just as natural to her fearful nature to immerse herself in the simplistic, childish and stupid pie-in-the-sky doctrines of Fundamentalist Christianity- at least until the day her soul cried out in rage at the insane hypocracy and dogmatic bullshit of that primitive Evangelical kindergarten worldview and she just went back to the crack pipe rather than seek any real lasting recovery where she’d have to delve deep into her polluted psyche where all the problems seemed to have started in the first place.
Fuck that, too scary and risky, better to just seek oblivion or insanity, anything rather than risk having to look too closely at the issues that had sent her into this whirlpool of self immolation in the first place…So round and round she goes like a kitten chasing its tail away down the rabbit hole, the bottomless pit that ain’t got no bottom…But that doesn’t offer any peace of mind to either of us today and it’s just come to the point where we simply exist on this totally nonverbal level of primal basic animal communication where the only real dialogue between us is fucking or riding to and from the spot on the motorcycle. We don’t fight nearly as much lately as we have in the past, but I don’t know if that’s even a good thing or not anymore…We just sort of live on this foggy surreal spinning ride and we got no idea where it’s taking us. I know I could do better and I really doubt she could do better than me… So sometimes it feels like I’m really getting the shit end of the stick here but what can I do? We’ve wound up here together somehow in this bizarre relationship we both hate and are both powerless to break away from. There’s this brutal sexual energy that keeps us bound together like we’re on a fucking chain gang and I’m thinking where will this end?As many times a day as she wants to go cop, that’s how many times a day I am able to fuck her and cling to her dying body like a jackal feeding on an antelope but who’s feeding on who at the end of the day?
Today’s been four times and that’s on the heels of a thirty-six-hour lights-out blackout where I fucked her six times in her sleep and she wound up sleeping and I didn’t. No wonder I feel like some vampire has slipped into my bloodstream and is eating my life force away from the inside… And nothing seems to stop my boundless compulsion for her - nothing but the most absurd behavior or the foulest degradation can tear me away from her. Tonight at the end of her last run she came up to me all sweet and tender and she’d put on her mini skirt and the cute little purple farmer’s daughter purple blouse I’d bought her in Buenos Aires, just to get my attention- she knows exactly how to reel me in every time, well almost cause when she wakes me out of a sound sleep before noon I want to fucking slaughter her, but for now it’s still early and my dick is still responsive to her seductions and I still feel like the luckiest man alive or half alive, whatever ya wanna call It. I don’t call it anything anymore. I’m too tired.So here she comes slithering up beside me all cute and sexy and seductive, the cosmic Lolita waif in her skimpy mini skirt and her knobby knees and pretty bottomless flashing acid eyes and pink baby doll lips and I go to kiss her and it hits me like a graveyard sucker punch and I tell her “Baby Jesus, when’s the last time you brushed your teeth man? Your mouth smells like an open grave!” But she just keeps kissing me and rubbing up against me like a cat in heat and I know she wants drugs needs drugs.But something strange has happened and these days she’s really horny, really wants the dick just as bad as she wants the drugs and I can feel it, you just know when there’s a change like that going on, especially when you’ve fucked somebody the thousands of times I’ve fucked Narcisa. This morning it was different when she woke up out of the depths of her crash-out, then she really didn’t want to fuck at all, just wanted to get it over with and go get high and she even tried to talk me out of it with a shifty shit-eating grin on her sweet face, telling me she knew I’d fucked her in her sleep and I said I’d only tried and she kept waking up and pushing me off and she looked at me and called me a liar but I stuck to my guns and she had no way of proving it cause she’d been incoherent. Shit, I could’ve let a pitbull fuck her in the ass for all she knew and the truth is we were both lying and both telling the truth a little but she backed down cause she was in a pretty good mood for Narcisa in the morning and she knew she was in for it anyway so she just laid back on the sofa and spread her angel legs and said “So hurry up Cigano and be fast! I gotta defacate and if you taking too long I gonna sheet all over you, got it?”And I thought that would be a new one, even for me and Narcisa, but I didn’t like the image. I fucked her as fast and listlessly as she got fucked and that was it but she was happy and she still got paid a big 40 and I didn’t mind, taking into account the six times I’d fucked her or fondled her beloved bony ass as she slept and snored. So I didn’t really mind fucking her quick and giving her the 40 and just the idea of being rid of her for a few hours was nice and I could go back to sleep and pretend to be living a sane and normal existence so it was all good.But now, later into the day, further into her crack run it was a whole different deal, now the sex is real raw and desperate on her part and on mine too cause we just feed back and forth like that so I really don’t mind keeping going today till my dick falls off and I go home again and take a nap while she goes off to cook her brains some more and I fall asleep and dream of me and Narcisa in New York and I really regret not having spent more time with her when she was there and I even remember that last summer I spent in NYC before moving back to Brazil for good.I’d had a little heroin addict punk rock junkie named ‘Chaos’ at least that’s what the tattoo across her chest said and I’d fucked her at least twice a day and she was young and beautiful and horny and great, but now I think I could’ve been with Narcisa that whole time and it’s just one of those little regrets you can’t do aything about anyway. I dont even know why that keeps coming into my mind. I should know better, know that things all happen when they’re supposed to just like me and Narcisa are happening now.But anyway, I had this dream where we were in NYC together and she takes me to the place where she lived with her magic Jewish gringo and we go to sneak in so she can show me a part of her story and she still has her key and I tell her he probably changed the locks and she just laughs and sure enough her key opens the door but as soon as we get in I see there’s people in there so we beat it the fuck out and when we get downstairs and get on the bike I hear all these catcalls and wolf whistles and I look back and Narcisa’s climbing on the back of the bike but she’s lost her panties like a little girl and her skirt is all coming undone and there’s a school bus and a garbage truck and all the schoolboys and garbagemen are having a great time ogling her bare white ass and she gets off the back of the bike to fix her skirt and it just falls off and she’s standing there naked and stumbling around like a drunk trying to pull her skirt up.Now here comes this big tall black garbageman saying “Whoooeee, now I gonna get me soma dat nice white meat chicken” and as he moves toward Narcisa, I pull the ballpeen hammer out of my back pocket, the everpresent ballpeen I used to always carry back in the day in NYC when I ran with Hells Angels and carrying a ballpeen in your back pocket was as natural as carrying a comb or something.Anyway, I pull out the ballpeen and hold it in my right hand and I walk right up to this big guy and say “That white meat chicken got an owner, dog. If you wanna tear off a piece of that shit you gotta go through me and the price for ten minutes is a five oh… You got that kinda cake, garbageman or do you wanna argue?”As I brandished that bad old ballpeen, I guess he could sense I’d just as soon crack his garbageman skull as stand there looking at him and he split.I woke up thinking of the dream as I got dressed to go looking for Narcisa again calculating that it was about time for the end of her run and time for another desperate crack-fueled lust-fest and as I rode off down the street on my way up to the Casa Verde, I remembered something she’d told me the other day, she’d said:”I get fucked more times in one week with you Cigano then in a year and a half the marry with the gringo half your age. Fala serio, man - I never seen the man so sick to fuck all day like you, an’ that’s after being a whore all the year in Copacabana and having the date with all kind of the mans. Shit, before I am 15 year old I been in every one the best hotel in Rio De Janeiro from Sheraton to Copacabana Palace president suite and all the big penthouse in Ipanema to turn the trick for the big money 300 dollars a fuck and now I only e’stay with you for so little money and I don’ even care, cause you take care for me like nobody ever do before and you still fuck all day and night and never tired…
Well what can I say to that? Its true and when you have such a strong attraction to someone as I got to Narcisa you really never get tired , well almost never…But now its four in the morning and I’ve been fucking her every four hours asleep and awake for the last three days now and I am so fucking destroyed it feels like every cell of my sleep-deprived fucked-out existence just went ten rounds with Mike Tyson on crack and acid then got fucked up the ass by the crack monster like Mary’s little lamb before being made into little lamb stew, crack pellets and smoked up and farted out her fine defecating ass.And now I’m thinking what the fuck am I gonna do? because it’s that horrible witching hour in Rio De Janeiro for me and Narcisa, between 4 am and noon when all I want to do is sleep and of course she just wants to keep going and there is terrible conflict in our respective agendas of priority that has ended up in violent conflict in the past and I’m too goddamned tired to go to fist city with her. I’d rather just throw her a mercy 20, without a fuck, just to get rid of her and get some sleep but even that won’t do cause she’ll just come back when she runs out to extort more money for more crack and it’s times like this I wish I had some secret hiding place where she can’t find me at seven in the morning.I truly wonder if it’s all worth it and if, someday, she will reemerge from the ashtray that is her unholy empire to rise up like a magnificent phoenix reborn from her ashes and fly fly away back to Alpha Centauri or wherever the fuck she’s from.Narcisa has lost all control now… 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.
It’s eight in the morning and I got nothing to do with my life and that’s the truth, and Narcisa’s been up driving nails into my head for days now and it’s raining and I give up and give up and give up again.
I’ve told her everything I know or tried to anyway, I’ve pointed out all the exit routes I know in answer to her little song “can you show me the exit to this shit world?”Yeh, I’ve given her all the information I got, delivered the goods, all the lectures, read her all the books, taken her to all the meetings and the clinics and doctors, cried all the tears, prayed all the prayers - and still she won’t give up, she cannot admit defeat and she’s living in a swirling hell of memory and torment and her goddamned ego will not cannot fucking let go and this is Hell.I am there and she is there and we are there again and again and again forever. Shit shit shit.
Today she came and woke me up again from a sound sleep at seven in the morning again, of course, and I’m thinking is this really what it takes to live as an artist? Is this really what old Bukowski meant when he told me some 35 years ago to fuck off and get a life? Is this a fucking life I’ve got here or just some nightmare replication of Past life karmic retribution?
So here I am again again again standing in the doorway in my underwear as she creeps in trembling and crying toxic crack tears saying some other crackhead aquaintence from the Casa Verde, or from hell (same thing) followed her in the street all the way to the favela and tried to steal her drugs and she punched him in the face and he tried to kill her and I just shake my head thinking what a life, is this what Bukowski was talking about? Shit… It’s the second time already this week she’s come slithering in like this, the other night it was the same thing, she’s getting worse fast I’m thinking… Just a couple of nights ago I remember she’d been wandering around the dark metro station in the middle of the night- God knows why. With Narcisa there is no why, no why not, it just is. So some guy followed her and grabbed her and tried to drag her into the bushes. She managed to escape and call me and I got on my motorcycle and went to get her and when I said let’s ride around and find the bastard and see how he likes getting his head hammered in, I already knew it was useless, that it really wasn’t any person or human power that was stalking her now through the dark streets of Catete now, but incarnate spirits of the damned that her very soul sickness was attracting to her as the inevitable consequence of her own steadfast refusal to give up and throw in the towel and just accept all the help that’s been trying to ger through to her for years as she stumbles and struggles down the crooked path to hell that’s been laid out for her. Like it was laid out for me, for all of us who, like Narcisa were simply born into this world of torture and betrayal with the Devil’s dick up our asses..
I told her again and again that she was no different than so many others, than me and if I’d found a way out then she could too but she’s just never wanted to hear it so that’s that and she’s sealed her fate again another day, another night of pounding fear and torment. She just stood there in the middle of my room and put her arms out like Jesus on the cross above her old drooling sedated mother’s bed of nails and broken dreams and said
“This is me, Cigano. This is my life.. I am born to this, born to be a whore, a begger, a bum, a loser. I got nothing. I don’t WANT nothing! Only thing I want is for feel pleasure! I only wan’ it the Sensation and the feeling, Cigano, got it? Feeling. Sensation. I don’ wanna think or talk or listen to anybody opinion or stupid e’story ’bout nothing! I only wan’ it the feeling, Cigano, the most extreme feeling and sensation, got it? That’s it, nothing more! I am the whore, an’ I only want to give it the pleasure to the man and I only wan’ you give me the money so I can take the drugs and enjoy it the life, that is the plesure for the Narcisa and that’s all I wan’ from the life, got it? That’s it!”
I just looked at her with sadness and pity, the way you look at some terrible tragic disaster and shook my head and said nothing as she took off her shorts again and laid back on my sofa and spread her legs for me, for my pleasure and for hers. Shit..
A half hour later she left, saying, “I no going back to the Casa Verde no more. Now if you wan’ for look me, I gonna be up on the favela for e’smoke in there.” I knew how dangerous it is up there and I knew she didn’t care and I just shook my head again as I watched her leave and I wondered again if today would finally be her last day in this shit world she hates among the living she hates but sometimes longs to be one of because of the ’sensations’ she’s so hungry for.
A few hours later I woke up bleary-eyed and stumbled down to my motorcycle and rode across town for my noon apointment with Dona Marta, the elderly gypsy spirit medium who’s been advising me from the very start of this madness. After waiting awhile in her living room and smoking two cigarettes to wake up, a young gypsy girl came in from the back and told me Dona Marta would see me now. I walked into her little ‘consultorio’ and she stood and greeted me warmly with a kiss on both cheeks, then we sat down. She looked into a clear crystal glass of water sitting on the table between us and watched the movie, telling me about my life. The first thing she said was:
“You’re very worried about the girl. You should be. She’s had many crises, and drug relapses, and now she is going down very fast.”
She was quiet for a moment, looking deep into the water in the glass. Finally she shook her head and spoke.
“The outcome is not good, my son. She is not long for this world, poor thing.”
I just sat there as I had done many times before and I cried. As she spoke on. “You have loved her and been a true friend to her soul. And she has really tried to love you too and let herself be loved. But it is just too much for her. It is too late for her now. She has given up on this world and now she only wants it to end. She really does want to die. It is what she really wants - and she will have what she wants.”
I sat there crying softly as she spoke, cried and cried because I knew it was true. I could see it in Narcisa’s eyes, her body language, her whole demeanor, I could smell it in her hair - she is giving up the fight. And not in any way she could come back from to find recovery like I had done. She had simply layed down her sword and her shield on the battlefield of her life and lay down and spread her legs in defeat for the enemy, for the Grim Reaper’s final cold embrace to come and lift her spirit out of this body, this life, to show her where’s the exit to this shit world at last.
Poor Narcisa. She really never had a chance here.
THE BEACH
Now as I sit here on the beach with my friend Tonico at day’s end, I think of how I would like to take Narcisa’s unrepentant, self-righteous asshole Born-Again Christian mother out into the woods and tie her to a tree and pour sugar water over her and watch the big red ants and other jungle insects slowly eat her alive while yelling in her fat, stupid face,”Where’s your fucking Jesus now you stupid cunt. Now you think about what you did to your children you crooked old cow! Now you think of Narcisa, the sweet innocent child you destroyed, you heartless old cunt! This is for Narcisa!” I am yelling as I watch the big jungle ants crawling all over her stupid face, biting eating devouring her corrupt flesh as she screms and cries. And then I spit right in her eye and walk away…
Narcisa’s almost dead at the end of the last four day run and still she wants to keep going - she asked for food though which was a sign she was about to crash and I put some downs in her soup and watched her go out. Not before she almost tore her skin off scratching at her detoxing poisoned hide, complaining and bitching and lamenting her bitter existence. She wakes up thirty hours later - incredibly I too manage to sleep a full twenty-five hours too, and I haven’t been up for days smoking crack - maybe its all the sex and close proximity with her insane tweeked out energy - whatever- but the sleep is always welcome.
Of course she wakes up bitching and insulting me but I’ve gotten wise to her tricks and I know she’s just trying to get me to pay her to leave. Of course I always offer her an alternative, but she wants no part of it. She’s got the TV on, watching some stupid yankee sitcom and she says “Take me with you when you go to the states next time, Cigano” then I just can’t take it anymore and I tell her,
“That’s up to you. If you want to go anywhere with me besides bed, you would have to quit what your doing and get recovery - like this I ain’t taking you anywhere and you know it. Its all up to you.”
Then the shit starts… “When it’s time for me to dance for you and be the wild crazy sex maniac whore, then you like it, but now you complain and you want me to stop…”
“No, I didn’t say I want you to stop baby - I just said you’d have to stop if you wanna do anything more with me than this - of course I like a wild crazy whore, whaddya think. I’m a man. What man doesn’t like that shit? But that doesn’t Make me an idiot whose gonna marry one and carry some sick monkey around the world to fuck up my life too.. My name ain’t John Gold baby” I laughed, rubbing salt in for her. “You wanna run with a big dog, you’re gonna have to get down off the porch, baby… That’s up to you”.
After that she just told me to shut it and take her to the spot and I did.
When I gave her a mercy 20, which I thought was pretty generous being that I hadn’t had a fuck in days and had been feeding and taking care of her like a crippled mutt, she groaned and complained a bit and I just laughed and she shut up pretty fast. She knew. That must be the worst part for her.
I went for a ride down by the beach and looked at all the other stupid slaves like me and her milling around on their Sunday leisure too stupid and stunned by beer and sunshine and football to even think of their plight and I wondered who’s worse off them or Narcisa? And for a moment I even felt pretty fortunate…
An hour later she called all shook up and crazed and begged me to go get her out of there and I told her to walk down to the Paderia Santo Amaro - ten minutes later I picked her up and she said she wanted to go back to my place and “take a pill and smoke a joint and ‘relax‘” and I saw she was bad off, all jittery and pallid in a cold sweat so I gave it my best shot and tried talking to her for awhile while I rode her around. She had no choice but to listen to another of my lectures. I just said I was constantly trying to show her a way out but I couldn’t do anything to help if she didn’t want it.
“If you like this arrangement baby, you the fucked up crack whore and me the sicko sober john, its ok for me- I’m not the one whose throwing his life away at the end of this little drama. The fact I’m even wasting my breath trying to show you a way out is a simple act of love… That’s God, baby, not me. Don’t you think its a real coincidence that God would put somebody like me right in front of you who’s living proof that an addict can recover? I don’t have to try and help you, ya know. If I just wanted a good time girl to fuck around with, I could sure do better than you, don’t you think? There’s a gang of fucked up whores on every street corner for a guy like me to have his fun with - but friendship, love and respect, that’s a lot harder to come across. If you don’t think so, just keep going. You’re gonna have to learn the value of things the hard way I guess. Too bad, but its on you, so don’t blame me. You’re making your bed and you can sleep in it.”
She finally got me to take her home and then of course she only wanted to take off her clothes and get fucked and leave. Its a funny thing, cuz I could feel that by fucking her, I was giving her something more, I was giving her my life force, my energy, my love and something more - something vital, something human. She clung to me like a drowning man holding a life preserver as I fucked her and she moaned and ghasped like I’d hardly ever noticed and her pussy was sopping wet and I could just tell there’s something powerful going on when I fuck her, beyond the power of thousands of words and stories and opinions and theories I could offer her…
I still don’t know what the fuck is going on, maybe she’s digging the hole to the bottom with me, cuz after opening herself up to somebody the way she has to me, there’s no way its not gonna hurt when I step off again - and I will have to and she knows it and I know it and maybe that’s just the road to recovery or death, whichever comes first. I should know better than anyone just how dark it has to get before the dawn’s light can shine into the heart of a junkie- I’ve been there. 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.
So the day went in a blurry surreal series of impressions and events till I look at my watch and suddenly its two in the afternoon and Narcisa’s saying we should go to the beach. It’s a beautiful, hot, hazy day- perfect for a ride to the beach- but first of all she needs to get some crack and I try to explain that its not exactly the right drug for the beach, but of course her mind’s already made up. She tells me to have an open mind and try something new cause she knows that’s gonna shut me up… and it does.
So she runs off without a backwards glance while I just get on the bike and go down the road and find a little boteco and sit down and get a plate of food, but before I can even finish she’s calling me on the phone asking me where I am.”Where are you Cigano???”… Turns out she finished smoking and went back to where I guess I was supposed to be waiting for her to finish- fuck my lunch- and when I wasn’t there she flew into a mad panic and started running around the very dangerous favela like a headless horseman of the apocolypse till she found a phone and I told her I was just eating and I’d be right back to get her, but as soon as I got back in five minutes she was so stressed out she said fuck the beach “right now Cigano go go go” and that was it.Then I took off in disappointment to the beach all alone, as usual, as she went to smoke her crack and ruin her life some more.Just as I pulled the motorcycle up beside the waves my cell phone rings and it’s her calling collect but by now I’m so pissed off and disappointed and sick of her crackhead bullshit I don’t even answer and that’s that until I get home after nightfall and she calls and I pick up and she says don’t be mad at me and I say I’m not and I go and pick her up at some friend’s house where she’s holed up.She always has all these angels of mercy to look after her all the time, all over the place, cause that’s Narcisa (God love her) and so many people love her too in spite of herself. So I get her and bring her home and she’s so calm and civilized I’m curious now about this friend of hers cause I notice that every time she spends time at this guy’s house she always comes back calm and nice, and I know it’s a real friend, a platonic pal and not some trick.She’s been telling each of us about the other for days now…So after a crazy Dakini dance-fuck she’s looking so sexy and beautiful I don’t even want to risk her walking the streets and picking up another trick like the night before, so I drop her at her friend’s house myself. He’s an alkie and drinks himself into a stupor and doesn’t mind her creeping around in her paranoid hell so it works out. I split saying I’ll be back in a couple of hours and I’m thinking I’ll go up to the Vila and have a go at the little angel from last night but sleep deprivation kicks in and I wind up passing out for an hour at home.When I wake up it’s time to go look for Narcisa so I go back up there and suddenly she appears in a window of a house across from the Casa Verde, the squat she holes up in sometimes, and she wants me to come up and meet her friend Marcos, the one she’s always so nice and calm after hanging out with. So I go up there and he wakes up out of an alkie nap on the veranda just as she brings me in and we shake hands and start talking and after five minutes it turns out we are kindred spirits and know all the same people from 30 years ago and we have so much in common its spooky and it’s this big Bohemian meeting of the minds and we end up talking there on the veranda for hours while she’s off smoking her crack but it’s all a good vibe and she’s so calm and there’s jazz playing on the stereo and a light rain begins to fall and she finishes smoking and comes over and sits on my lap and it’s still a good vibe.I keep talking with Marcos about art and literature and he’s very curious about the book I’ve written about Narcisa, all her cronies over at the Casa Verde are buzzed out about it too and, while this Marcos keeps that bunch at arm’s length, he’s a neighbor and diplomatic about it being on friendly terms with some of the less heinous denizens over there.So they’re all talking about it, thank God none of them have read it- but it’s a good night and finally it’s time to go for cigarettes and he wants a beer and she wants more crack she goes back to the spot to go smoke while Me and Marcos go down to the old Paderia Santo Amaro, the late night bohemian gathering spot. It’s uncanny how many of the same people we’ve known in common over the years and we hang out and talk into the rainy saturday dawn until she shows up all frazzled and shot and it’s time to go home and she’s the homeless waif with cosmic fishbowl eyes and it’s time to crash and she keeps going and she’s driving me crazy.It’s 8 in the morning and I want I just want to fuck her so bad and all she wants to do is keep smoking…. and she never finishes ever ever and I am so tired so tired so fucking tired and I know its all part of her plot and now I remember what her friend Marcos said earlier, a million years ago, when I told him I’d never suffered so much for any woman in my life…He just looked at me and shook his head and said you ain’t seen nothing yet my friend…
Shit.
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.
I’m sitting here in the office editing this manuscript of Narcisa- Our Lady of Ashes some more. It never ends. Jonathan’s in Rio, living out my dream- the fast-paced road of debauchery, being fanned with palm leaves and fed grapes by little Brazilian girls with Tonico Monteiro De Carvalho (who is also in my dream). Waiting on Johnny Depp for a million small favors that could add up to one big thing…. And then there is Narcisa… At this point I’m not even sure what to say about her. Perhaps I’ll write a song about her with Nick…
My new favorite writer, Brazilian hipster novelist Mayra Dias Gomes, author of Fugalaça, sent this to me, recounting her first time meeting Jonathan Shaw. 
“I’m with them!” I screamed appallingly at the security guards controlling the backstage entrance at Marilyn Manson’s concert in Rio de Janeiro. Some of my lucky friends were getting in and I was petrified at the thought of being left behind. My heart pounded dramatically, instigating destructive thoughts. My boyfriend was right behind me. “Get in,” a big scary security guard said as he pushed me inside with violence and banged the door shut again. I couldn’t believe it. My cell phone rang and the accelerated beat of my heart made me jump. Ginger Fish passed right through me with a cap on his head and no make up on his pale face.
“What’s up inside?” Allan – my boyfriend – asked me. I had no idea what to answer. What the hell was up? I had been dreaming about the day that I would be able to meet Marilyn Manson since I was just a little girl. He inspired me, energized me, excited me. I was a girl on a mission and that was only day one. It was my very first assignment at the newspaper I write for and what seemed like a piece of cake– following Manson around until I got something close to an interview – turned into a maddening, nerve-racking experience that day.
I may have gotten backstage, but that didn’t mean I was going to go through the heavy metal door that kept opening to show Manson’s face and closing to show me that I was a loser. I certainly felt like one. The security people were showing no love at all and even the fans with backstage passes were not getting through. Desperate people argued all over me. I eventually got kicked out with raging tears running down my eyes. I was back to my boyfriend’s arms and still cried like a little bullied girl. “I met a nice guy amongst those backstage monsters,” he told me. “He kind of looked like a big bad pirate.”
It was Jonathan Shaw, but I didn’t know that yet. Destiny would clear that up for me, though. Destiny would eventually put him right in front of my eyes and say “Hey Mayra, that’s the guy you have to get to know.” When the sun came up on the next day, we were overwhelmingly exhausted, but followed the tour anyway. We drove to São Paulo, where we watched the second concert, but thankfully did not try to get backstage. We weren’t going to go through that kind of humiliation again. It seemed that we had run out of luck. What could I do? I just partied hard and drowned my teenage angst inside bottles and bottles of vodka. Predictable enough.
Fucking hangover, fucking asthma. I just wanted to puke my brains out and erase the Antichrist from my mind forever.
We arrived at the third place where Manson could supposedly be found – the opening of his painting exhibition– my boyfriend walked in the direction of a guy he claimed he knew. “The pirate,” he told me, as I realized the place was packed with reporters. So he introduced him to me. “Prazer, eu sou o Jonathan Shaw, mas pode chamar de Cigano,” the man said in Portuguese.
His effort was spirited, but he still had a funny dejected American accent. I recognized his name, just didn’t where I’d heard it before. He was drinking coca-cola as opposed to everybody, but me, who drank champagne and waited for Manson’s big late arrival. Jonathan had just told us he was accompanying him.
My fucking head! I needed to sleep.
Somehow, after an extensive and radical experience, my dream came true. The Antichrist was even more brilliant than I expected him to be, and I finally got my interview. It was unbelievable and finally over for the sake of my mental health. But we will skip that part and get to business.
Allan told Jonathan that I was a writer and that I’d love to send him the article I had just published about my passion for Manson. So he gave us his phone number and e-mail. We would definitely call. A strong tattooed guy with a golden tooth is unarguably worth being friends with.We Googled him and our jaws dropped. Oh, the Internet generation! Of course we had read the article he had done for Trip Magazine with Iggy Pop, who we unquestionably adore. Of course we remembered that he was one of the first ever legal tattoo artists in New York. Now it made sense.
We were going to call, but strangely didn’t have to. We were standing in line of our favorite club in São Paulo, Inferno, strategically located in Rua Augusta - the place where you go for drugs, prostitution and rock’n’roll. It was a day after the MTV Music Awards’ in which Manson had performed. I was distracted smoking a cigarette as I waited for my turn to come to the counter and get my card to enter the club. Allan wasn’t. “Cigano!” he screamed. I couldn’t believe it. Jonathan was walking right in front of the club with a little pad in his hands. He stopped to talk to us and explained that he was looking for a place to sit down and finish his upcoming novel. My eyes got bigger; he was starting to grow on me. As I stared at the small pad he was holding, I wondered how anybody living in the 21st century could have those writing habits. I didn’t ask, only admired.
He looked like a beatnik. We invited him to come inside with us and have a drink, but he said no. He had to write and I respected it. A week later I was already back in Rio. I bit my lips and wondered if I should really call him. My curiosity had become unbearable and I had spent days wondering what his words sounded like. He answered the phone. We would meet that night at the premiere of an acclaimed new Brazilian movie called “Tropa de Elite”. I would bring him my book since it seemed like he preferred to speak in my language. Allan and I had a few beers and met him. He had his motorbike parked nearby and told us a little bit about his story. He didn’t drink and was a recovering addict for seven years, but it didn’t matter since he seemed like an infinite and intoxicating person with no needs for alcohol in order to create interesting conversation.
We went to the after-party of the movie, met one of his friends, and got a table at the nightclub where the party was being hosted. I felt like we clicked instantly as we engaged in conversations about punk rock, Marilyn Manson, quantum physics, tattoos, literature, The Secret, secret associations, our deceased fathers, aliens, beatniks and obsessive relationships. He took his little pad from his pocket and asked me if I’d like to hear a part of his upcoming novel, “Narcisa – Our Lady of Ashes”, still named “Savage Grace” back then. Under candlelight, he started reading.
He talked about the pieces of food in the female character’s food and about how he fucked her till his dick got soft. He reminded me of Bukowski, who he told me was an old acquaintance. It was quite impressive. Bukowski was just one of his many famous friends, really. He had tattooed every idol I’ve ever had. Give me a break, right?
As I said goodbye to him and prepared for a trip to London where I would write about the Sex Pistols’ reunion, he said we shouldn’t lose contact. And why would I be stupid to do that? That’s why we have e-mail accounts, right? Since that day, our friendship started to grow. I just know it won’t stop. After reading his whole novel, drowning in tears and realizing it is bound to become an American classic, I feel like if I’ve known him forever. And let’s say I’ve spent a fair amount of time being really investigative online.
There is something about Jonathan that makes you always ask for more. It’s like I’ve already been tattooed by him. His stories decorate me and they also hurt my skin. He has left a tattoo on my heart and in my soul. I guess it’s what he does to anybody that meets him and understands his depth, his beautiful dirt. There is no way of escaping Jonathan Shaw’s words and teachings after he’s crossed your way. He is indeed a pirate, a survivor, a poet, an illuminated soul. You just can’t wait to meet him!
Mayra Gomes fucking rules! Check out her blog– www.fotolog.com/sensationslave
So anyway. Now that I got her back after our brief misunderstanding about the hospital and all that, I got it and once again accepted that for Narcisa there’s gonna be no easy way out of this, and I am definately not gonna be her knight in shiny armor or the caretaker of her life’s path or soul’s progress, only a big lover and friend and well wishing admirer and that’s that.Can I live with that and the fact that she may just have to die on my watch? I guess I have no choice but to live with it, since the only alternative is to bail out and just for today I’m not prepared to. All the other times I got a break from Narcisa- and there have been several breakups of varying lengths of duration- it always happened spontaneously and organically. And when the time comes again I’ll know it, just like for now it’s the time to stay with her. I also know that like everything else, this too shall pass.I know that my friend Lydia Lunch and other dear friends like her mean well and want to see me happy and fulfilled and living a kick ass life- but what they may not fully get is that this is my kick ass life, just for today this is the chapter I’m living a totality of experience through and who’s to say what’s sick and ‘dysfunctional’ anyway in a world that’s proved itself again and again to be totally dysfunctional from the very start of monkey-brain human affairs on this creeping snot ball of reality-reality!Reality, at best, is highly subjective and if you had been subjected to any of the psychedelic surreal extremes of subjective reality I’ve been living in since I was old enough to know I was alive, whatever that meant, then you too would probably put great value in this and every experience that came your way, good, bad and ugly!I remember when I went back to Narcisa after the first month-long breakup, the time she got her head bashed in by bandidos she’d mouthed off to in Copacabana, and the one person who I listen to, my friend Jaycee, told me to just go with the experience and not judge it or try and define it by ‘normal’ standards of sanity or whatever and that was the wisest, most liberal advice I’ve ever gotten about a challenging dilemma, and that’s from a guy I really respect for his hard-earned wisdom, especially cause he’s a guy just like me with a very similar background and insanely abused as a kid, a homeless orphan street running juvenile delinquent just like me and Narcisa, and that’s the only kind of people guys like us listen to anyway, cause we’re really just listening to ourselves, a mirror image of our own souls and that’s the closest thing to the voice of God or whatever a little street snipe like me will get…But I remember that what impressed me the most about what Jaycee said, wasn’t so much what he said, even though that was good, but what I saw him doing and it was this:Now you gotta know that here’s this guy I really look up to as almost like a teacher, a guy I been listening to most attentively right from the beginning of the time I got sober many years ago and a guy I really respect and look up to for all his knowledge…As we’re talking, his girlfriend walks up- this is in Copacabana, right before I loaded up my bike to go down to Penedo and rescue Narcisa from whatever hole she’d dug herself into that time after I’d left for a month. So me and this guy Jaycee are talking and here comes his girlfriend … And she’s a fucking monster!!! Old, ugly, fat, fake tits, bad attitude, looks something like King Kong and more of a fucking man than both of us put together… and rude and stupid. Jaycee tells me she’s filthy rich, whatever, but the point is, here’s this guy who’s really the shit who I really look up to and he’s saddled up with this old dragon I wouldn’t stick my dick into on a million dollar bet and suddenly it just hit me, how could I look down my nose at Narcisa?!?Young, vibrant, beautiful, sexy, paranormal intelligence, cosmic retribution and totality of hungry passionate experience- and an eternal muse to boot! A cathartic relationship that has most likely come into my life experience as a boot in my psychic ass to teach me to transcend the bad information and faulty programming that I learned growing up in a raging war battlefield of violence and abuse and insane betrayal with an alcoholic mother and her husband with the dick of a housefly.So I’m learning not to complain or look a gift horse in the mouth or up the ass. And me and Narcisa have a paranormal screaming make-up fuck and start the whole cycle all over again. What IS it with her that no matter how stupid and abusive and dangerous it gets, the sex is always so hypnotically compelling that as soon as I get back in that insane saddle after even a couple of hours away, I’m in for another wild ride right back to Looney Land without a care or the slightest reference to the past or future?
So we started in and by now it was clear that the worst of her run was over, no need for the hospital or any other kind of intervention, divine or otherwise and if anybody’s gonna end up in hospital at the end of all this it may just as we’ll be me. So off we go galloping, full speed ahead down the road to Hell again and now she’s crossed the point of no return and she’s feeling bold and strong and beautiful again, so now she’s gonna dance, and now that she’s lost 15 lbs in that many days it’s good to watch her dance again and she is shaking it in pure kinetic poetry of motion and it is pure apocalypse ballet.I can’t take my eyes off her twirling whirling hypnotist’s ass and I’m up on my feet drooling and grabbing that ass and my dick is hard and we’re dancing like puppets on the devil’s string and around we go dancing, fucking up down all around knocking shit off the shelves and it’s raining evil spirits of debauchery and carnal mayhem again and I don’t care don’t care. Away we go, just like that last time before we split up in the book.But this is a new book, a new life, a new moment, a new day and it’s just for today, right now Cigano go go and she’s a go-go girl conjured up from the depths of a 1960’s acid trip that never ends.Just for today I am lucky.I am blessed, holy, bathing in this eternal river of motion and sex and sound energy frequency, crazy life blood radio waves and spirit-dancing, way past dawn… and of course after another cataclysmic fuck she needs more crack to fuel the fire in her soul, who cares about sleep anymore and by now its 8 o’clock in the morning and everybody’s going off to work in the robot slave factory, not like in the favela where there’s no nine to five, business is conducted at all hours of day and night under the sanctified gaze of teenage boys holding ak-47s and ar-15 assault rifles and grenades and its business as usual for Narcisa, drug business, whore business, monkey business the way she likes it.Just for today- until our fucking souls rot and why not? Everybody else’s are rotting too down there in the teeming beeping pushing shoving rat race rush hour traffic and that’s the problem with the rat race that even if you win, yer still a fucking RAT and what fucking good is that?So the party goes and goes and finally when I need to crash she goes off and I close the coffin for awhile and just for today all is peaceful and good. I enjoy my nap and soon she’s back and its more more more Cigano go go go and just for today I don’t fucking mind a bit. 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.
The waves are suddenly high tonight, rolling in at my feet by my little shack by the fisherman’s colony at the far end of Copacabana. There’s no moon now at midnight and it’s like I blinked and missed this month’s moon over the last couple of weeks- I can hardly believe it’s already two weeks gone by now since I finished writing Narcisa, after months holed up in a cold Hollywood Babylon winter bubble of isolation and reptilian solitude before coming back home to Brazil.
Two weeks already gone by in a surreal blur of fevered fucking and fighting, two weeks since getting off a red eye flight from Panama City to find Narcisa holed up in some dump in São Paulo waiting like a freeze frame movie monster in suspended animation, waiting like a sea monkey for me to come and pour water on her and bring her back to life.She didn’t die or last long as a born-again Christian either, thank God.She simply went into freeze-dried hibernation for a few weeks since squeezing out a bathroom window in the middle of the night before trudging for miles through the jungle to the highway, hitchiking south to São Paulo in her great escape from the bizarre sinister Jesus camp where she’d spent months giving the crack monster a well-needed rest before getting ready to unleash unholy retribution on the world again.I dutifully got off the plane in São Paulo to bail her out of her plight and the first thing she wanted was to jump right back into our old pathological sicko routine, as if six months seperation and the Jesus camp holy rolling bible banging had never taken place, as if I hadn’t just written her life story, exposing our common insanity for the whole fucking world to see…Fuck me!I tried to show her the “instant underground classic” I’d just written about her and her eyes just fell right on a page where it said, “sex and drugs - smoke smoke smoke fuck fuck fuck” and she said that’s exactly what she wanted to do and nothing else “right now, Cigano, go go go!”And so, after months of stifling abstinence for each of us from our drug of choice or lack of power to choose otherwise, we jumped right in and did exactly that. After a few rounds, and being jet-lagged and bordering on total mental collapse and exhaustion after a marathon four month, fifteen hour a day writing lockdown, I quickly fell into a comatose stupor and when I awoke the next day, the little hotel room had been converted into an ashtray, just like old times- unbelievable! And she was huddled in a corner with a case of paranoid jitters, swearing she never wanted to smoke crack again - I think she really meant it too at the time….So we went straight back to Rio, where by the time I settled back into my little apartment in Catete near downtown, I was stricken with a dangerously high fever….After a few days spent shivering in bed while she sat glued to the chattering television, eating chocolate and cold pizza, I wasn’t getting better, having to get up from my foggy stupor to fuck her every few hours. I finally crawled to the hospital, more dead than alive, where the doctor told me I had a severe case of bronchitis that through total exhaustion had developed into pneumonia and that I was going down down down if I didn’t find a way to get some rest soon.
Of course I tried to make Narcisa understand and of course she wanted no part of letting me get any rest… It all came to a head when I got back from the hospital soaked to the bone from a tropical downpour and hallucinating at the end of a dizzy motorcycle ride where I’d barely made it home alive and I told her she needed to leave me alone for a couple of days.And, like a vampire seeing her energy source dry up, she went instant psychobabble on me and cold cocked me with a coke bottle, sending me right back to the hospital for 5 stitches above my left eyebrow. The doctor who’d just told me to get some rest just shook his head. I guess he’d seen it all before!Narcisa, true to form, didn’t neglect to call my cell phone collect while I was getting my face stitched up to explain to me how it had all been my fault. After thanking her for that crucial bit of information, I told her it might be a good idea if she stayed away from me for awhile.God forgive me, I lied to her and told her the cops were looking for her for her savage assault on my face.Thank God she fell for the ruse, actually laying low for a few days, only calling me collect from time to time to complain that it wasn’t fair. When I could finally get a word in, I told her she should thank her lucky stars that it wasn’t fair, because if life was ‘fair’, she’d most likely be eyeball-deep in her own shit and ugly karma for her countless heinous misdeeds and crimes against humanity over the years.I don’t think she quite got that, and I seriously doubt she ever will. That’s Narcisa, God love her…A friend of mine who happens to be a witch doctor came to visit from Buenos Aires during the time I was holed up recovering and informed me that Narcisa is an energenitic parasite, a vampire who lives and thrives off my life force, and that she was slowly sucking me dry of my vital energy. He didn’t have much trouble convincing me of it since I still had a terribly high fever and could hardly walk across my little apartment to go to the bathroom and had lost ten pounds in as many days. So I managed to dodge her for a few more days, holing up at my rich friend Tonico’s mansion in the hills, during which time Narcisa turned a few tricks and made due without me, biding her time and waiting for me to recover enough for her to get her fangs back in my jugular.Meanwhile I’m getting emails from friends and ex-girlfriends and ex-wives and lovers all over the world telling me I’m the worlds biggest chump and asshole for putting myself in this shitty sewer of moral degradation. Maybe I am. But I just don’t seem to be able to shake her loose for more than a few days. I guess this is what you call an “unhealthy relationship” and now I’m back in it up to the top of my dick-shaft.Today, after two days absence, she showed up filthy, sleepless, grey, demented and dissheveled, begging me to let her in to take a shower and change clothes. What a sight- I had no choice but to let her in. Afterwards she passed out naked on my sofa.After really trying to ignore her for half an hour, finally my dick pointed me right down the road to Hell again and I had my way with her sleeping carcass three times while she snored as peacefully as a sedated maniac. Then I too passed out beside her, napping away the sunny afternoon.When she finally woke beside me at sundown, like Nosferatu crawling out of a coffin, she expertly calculated and extorted exactly the market rate price of three fucks from me!How did she know? She’d been sleeping soundly the whole time! It’s like her pussy has a built in calculator now, or a fuckometer or something! I gladly payed up in a mix of confused admiration and relief to be rid of her again for a few more hours, but I know shell be back soon enough!I just went out and got some dinner and it was good, beans and rice and spicy meat, just what the doctor ordered. Now I’m sitting by the crashing waves here in my little open-air office at the far end of Copacabana waiting for the phone to ring again and I look up and just as I notice it’s after midnight, I see the waning moon peeping over the horizon across the bay over Niteroi.Somehow it’s comforting to know I didn’t miss it completely this month, and I vaguely wonder how I’m gonna explain all this to Lydia Lunch. Shit…Xx JS 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.
Welcome to Scabvendor, website and blog of world famous tattooist and author Jonathan Shaw. As Jonathan wraps up his novel NARCISA: OUR LADY OF ASHES, the press is rolling in. Check back for clips from the feature article in the Folha De São Paulo, written by Mayra Dias Gomes, author of Fugalaça. They will be up soon, along with pictures of some of Jonathan’s best tattoos and excerpts from NARCISA. Jonathan is currently in Rio De Janeiro until the beginning of April when he will return for a small US book tour. Stay tuned for more!
Check out Jonathan Shaw on myspace: www.myspace.com/jsfuncity
