Mark Allen

Original page at left, anagramed version on right. Click each image for original-sized version…

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As more and more corners of the maybe-two-decades-old internet begin to get the hairy eyeball from moi, my jaded interest keeps seducing me to cruise the most public of spaces…after hours, of course. Recently, by the Flickr-ing light of a just-lit Player No. 6, I locked-gaze under the arches with the so-very alute Hilly Blue, admiring his extra-large uploaded After Dark magazine galleries. I was too young to dig this glossy bible for confirmed bachelors and their best-est inner circles in real time, but After Dark‘s kangblabla photo spreads — Fire Island studs unbuttoning their Eleganza in butterfly chairs, awe sooky sooky (“you’re soaking in it!”) zombie disco clowns walking invisible dog leashes on Nautilus treadmills, and Aspen-bound 70’s Hollywood icons gazing pensively through fringe — don’t need the esoteric magnetism of personal nostalgia. Gasp! It’s totally restracto, dude. There’s too much to highlight here, but (plucking a random selection) check out these two clams on the half shell in roller skates pictured above; “Chris Donovan and Craig Dudley pose for photographer Jon Stevens (seen in mirror) After Dark June 1971.” Strike up the band! So bone-jack…yes, for the millionth time, and feast your nostrils on Hilly Blue’s enormous Flickr collection: After Dark before 1973 (942 photos), After Dark 1974-1976 (916 photos), After Dark 1977-1979 (1,180 photos) and After Dark after 1980 (732 photos), or just bookmark it all for some snowy night in front of the fire.

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This completely rational new website has assembled a database of hundreds of celebrity home addresses, with handy links to interactive satellite aerial photography programs. The site’s introduction claims; “Tapping into Windows Live Local, you will get a birds eye view of celebrity houses and neighborhoods, often in amazing detail. Windows Live Local even allows you to rotate the image in four directions, north, south, east, and west.” It’s called CelebrityAddressAerial.com. Start here.

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Bye, thanks.

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For those with ears, I will be making a brief “return” to WFMU as a guest on Michael Goodstein’s excellent and intricate “Choking on Cufflinks” program, this Saturday, August 9th, from 9 pm – 12 midnight.

H.

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Imagine if you will…something I remember hearing. It’s not a memory of a sound, but of a moment — one that happened once, will never happen again, and could never be recreated. Put it into words? We’ll see.

It was my freshman year at University of North Texas, in Denton, Texas. I was living in Bruce Hall (above), which was, and still is, the official/unofficial music and art dormitory at the school. UNT has a famous music school and a rather prestigious jazz program (it was the first university to offer a degree in jazz studies, in 1947). Therefore, a high majority of the Bruce Hall’s residents were college newbies from far and wide who were dead serious about studying music.

The rest of the residents at Bruce Hall were art students, or maybe professional partiers who’d drop out after their first semester. But there were other misfits living there too. These were people who happened to fit right in amongst the rest of the music and art riff-raff there, for whatever reason. One guy who’d lived in the dorm for years was a blind jazz pianist, African American, overweight, around 40 years-old, who always wore a Fedora hat and dark glasses and carried a long cane to help him get around. He was way too old to be there, but made friends quick because he had a loud, boisterous laugh, and was friendly as hell (yes he was a cliche, but a good one). He also l-o-o-o-o-v-e-d the ladies, and wasn’t shy about being as friendly as hell with them either, which made those resiliently sweet Texan gals well-just-never-did-you-mind. He was a charmer, and everybody liked him.

Besides odd characters, the real catch about living in an art and music dorm like Bruce Hall was the noise. And it didn’t come from the artists or the riff-raff. The music students loudly practiced their instruments, non-stop. Any freshman budding career musician worth their weight in student loans practiced, practiced, practiced that first year until the tips of their exposed nubby finger bones were whittled clean. And then they practiced some more. How else could they prepare for careers as full-time lounge band members on cruise ships? Practicing your instrument was a Cruel Bitch God that you sacrificed your dreams to. Music students at Bruce Hall = GOD AWFUL RACKET.

In contrast, any freshman budding career artist worth their weight in their parent’s money spent all their time that first year smoking pot, smoking pot, smoking pot and debating with other pot heads things like…the design merits of Factory label record album covers. How else could they make those all-important connections with “art folk” they would run into years later during their careers in the gallery world…or the booby hatch (or Hell). Art students at Bruce Hall = not any racket above the level normally associated with a freshman dorm.

Categorically, Bruce Hall is an ugly building. It’s old and made mostly of concrete, tiled floors, plaster (walls and ceilings), and fluorescent lights. I swear the pointy roofs were made of tin, but that’s probably not right. The outside walls are made of thick, sound-bouncing brick, and the structure itself (three very tall stories) has three long wings jutting out into a three-pronged fork shape, which creates two large courtyards that resonate like echo canyons (or perhaps like ozone-piercing megaphones on really, really loud days). Can a building be an instrument? There was no air conditioning at Bruce Hall so windows were always open, and any sound in the building carried everywhere and anywhere, in and out.

For musicality practicing, practicality, politeness and the eardrum-and-sanity-of-other-studying-students reasons, there were weird science fiction-y practice spaces provided inside the school’s massive music building: sealed sound-proof pod rooms that had their own separate air ventilation systems and lights, all lined up in eerily-glowing rows in even larger rooms in the building’s basement. But why use those? Most music students just used their dorm rooms to practice in during Bruce Hall’s scheduled daytime practice hours, which were something like 11 AM to 8 PM.

But with everyone in different rooms with different watches and clocks, and anxious about getting started…when exactly was 11 AM? At 10:59, every music student would be alone in their room, ready to pounce, frozen motionless in front of their instruments and not wanting to waste a single second of practice time: bows held over violins, drums sticks held motionless in midair, mouths open ready to vocalize. Whomever was brave enough to start in a bit early would signal that day’s noise-fest beginning, kind of like a tiny piccolo solo at the beginning of a boisterous symphony. It was unpredictable every time: the squiggly low notes of a bass? The blarp of a horn? A tinny violin screech? A vocalist doing scales? Or the blast of drums (drums were the loudest)? But once the floodgates creaked open by whoever was brave enough to start, the sound then instantly came crashing out of every room all at once. From coffin-quiet to World War XIII in seconds flat.

This sound was light years away from the sound of an orchestra pit warming up, way beyond the most amphetamine-fueled free jazz, even beyond the worst Japanese noise music. It was the assaultive clamor of HELL CRASHING UP THROUGH THE EARTH’S MANTLE, all done with music instruments manipulated by overly-eager and un-resting young hands — a billion fusillading, clashing soloists each in their separate, decidedly non-sound proof rooms, who refused to quit until they were forced. Each player in each room was unaware of one another, but also kind of aware. How could they not hear each other? Everybody else could…for miles. One or two instruments bleating away would have been a racket, but the sound of several hundred instruments blasting away independently of one another inside a humungous stone building with open windows, well… it created a new kind of migraine-y endurance test. Being inside the building itself was like walking around with two constantly-running jet turbines strapped to each ear. Walls vibrated, skulls crushed, people clamped their palms to their ears and screamed to no avail. Conversations became shouting matches, phone calls became absurd. I’m surprised there weren’t more heart attacks. Every hall you walked down was a new kind of nerve-kill. Each stairwell tried to simultaneously pummel and swallow your head with involute sound, and the loudness assembled itself around you as you moved inside or outside the building (dissonant versions of moments you heard clustered inside the hallways would be projecting out the windows on the other sides of the rooms, and bounce off the brick walls in the courtyards, repeating themselves). New students who weren’t musicians were horrified that first week. Angry parents pulled non-art/music students out of Bruce Hall and into one of the quieter “business school” dorms. How could academe thrive in such an environment? Even if you were just sitting in your room with the door closed (and window open — again, it was real hot and there was no A.C.), you could alter the sound by turning your head. Sometimes people would temporarily snap and stand at their dorm room windows and scream “SHUUUUTUUUUP!!!” out into the loud, muggy air. It added to the madness.

Everyone just got used to it.

Even though I was an art student, my inner circles and outer circles were peppered with musicians. My roommate that freshman year was a guitar player named Kelly (now of the jazz vocal duo Davis & Dow). Our room’s window faced inside one of the deafening courtyards. About a week and a half into the first semester, on a typical evening as the Bruce Hall practice hours were sputtering to a close (which was another weird moment, where suddenly it became incredibly quiet and you realized you could hear your veins throbbing against your skull). My roommate and I heard the distinct sound of a husky woman’s voice echoing loudly outside, it seeming to come from somewhere across campus, like it had been broadcast through an amplifier. Her voice was saying something in a campy, sensual voice, something attention-grabbing like “Ohhh…your bulge is to DIE FOR!” Just as we sat up to listen, she then boomed, “I want your BUSINESS in my MOUTH!” Huh? It literally echoed. Many of the instruments still playing in some of the other rooms stopped, and laughter could be heard coming out of some of the windows.

“What in the hell was that?” Kelly and I wondered.

That night at dinner, this woman’s voice became the topic of conversation. Everyone in the dorm, even around the campus, seemed to have heard it. The woman’s voice had sounded overly-hoarse, like she was a heavy smoker, or just old. Kind of like Mercedes McCambridge. And what she’d said was obviously inappropriate for a Texas university campus in the middle of the evening, in the 80’s. But even though it was X-rated, it was corny. It was like she was reading lines from a 70’s soft-core porn movies. She sounded like Kathy McGinty crossed with Cookie Monster. The only voice I can think to compare it to is the one heard accompanying the films Travis Bickle goes to see alone in the porno theaters, in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (just more gravelly).

And why had it been sooooo loud? It hadn’t just been someone’s stereo, this was much bigger. Some people guessed that she had been broadcasting from the campus bell tower (which also played automated, chronological tape recordings of tolling bells every half hour to mark the time, tapes which every once in a while would get stuck and then broadcast warbling, warped bell sounds psychedelically over campus — but that’s a whole other story). The sound system in the bell tower was the only thing in place powerful enough to broadcast something like that over the entire campus. Should we go over there and investigate? Would we meet some crazed dominatrix performance artist sneaking in and out of the tower’s ground entrance? Perhaps she was a disgruntled elderly university employee getting her revenge? A sorority girl gone mad? Who the hell was this woman? What was her story? The theories began to form.

The next day at around the same time, our chain-smoking, nymphomaniacal independent broadcaster struck again. Well over the roar of the loud-as-usual practicing instruments she could suddenly be heard clear as day, as if she was thundering out of the very clouds. “Now!” (echo, echo, echo…) she started, “Put your testicles over my eye sockets! Mmm…feels nice!” (echo, echo, echo…). Once again, most room-practicers stopped playing to get a better listen. You heard laughter and catcalls in the distance. Then came: “Grawrr…give it to me now HORSE MAN!” More laughter and cheers. Somewhere in the distance a tuba let out a low tone. Then: “Give it to me HORSE MAN! Give it to me HORSE MAN! Give it to me HORSE MAN!” repeated in a loop. It was obviously a pre-recording of her voice, sampled, coming through a sound system from…somewhere. The loop continued. Those that had stopped began slowly playing their instruments again. You could make out some people around the building actually playing along with the rhythmic sample, loosely but discernibly. Percussionists began to join in and get a real rhythm going. A loud violin created an alternate rhythm. Instruments were played louder out their open windows, people yelled in response. Meanwhile the sample loop kept grinding, “HORSE MAN! HORSE MAN! HORSE MAN!” It all began to build into some kind of demented crescendo and then, at the peak of the frenzied jam, in a squeaking growl the woman’s voice screamed even louder “FUUUUCCCKKK MMMMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!” as the instruments squealed to new heights, and stopped. Everything erratically quelled to a halt. Guess what? It was 8 PM, time for practice hours to end. There were rounds of applause in our courtyard that night.

What…the…hell?

Adding to the excitement, the next day there was a small item about the incident in the university’s newspaper, The North Texas Daily. More than just Bruce Hall had heard it (and maybe joined in). The paper mentioned the “obscene” recordings being broadcast from somewhere on the west side of campus, and under what Texas law they were deemed illegal. The university administration used the paper to apologize to any students who had been offended, and reassured them that campus security were on top of it, as were local police, and that they would soon apprehend whoever was responsible.

So, not surprisingly, the next day the woman’s voice didn’t come. It didn’t for a couple of days. Everyone assumed the woman’s strange stunt had been a spontaneous fluke. Student life commenced.

Then the following Monday…she struck again. Perfectly unexpectedly. This time it was not at the end of practice hours, but smack in the middle of the bright, sunny daytime. “Mmm…I’d say naughty boys like YOU need to be taught a lesson by THIER MOTHERS!” came the first booming round. Her voice seemed to be coming from outer space. I mean this was LOUD, like rattle-the-walls-loud. People in Bruce Hall howled with approval through their open windows (yay! she’s back!), instruments began to strum and blow louder. Then she dead-panned with a resounding echo “Oooooh-Mmmmm…but when I saw that DONKEY DICK of yours I began to suspect that you probably taught YOUR MAMA a thing or two! Mmm-hmmm!” People screamed with laughter. Horns and oboes squawked at the ready, drums began altering their patterns. The woman had a willing audience. And campus security or no campus security, she obviously had balls. Then came the sample loop, “DONKEY DICK! DONKEY DICK! DONKEY DICK!” and the players began to chime in rhythmically, especially drummers. The whole building seemed to jam along, all lead by the god-like voice of donkey dick lady. French horns in wing A of Bruce Hall created droning undertones while she enthusiastically stated “Ooooh yeaaaa…I could wet my whistle while you DRAIN YOUR WEASEL!” and several drummers at the far end of wings B and C created non-stop drum solos as she screamed “Heeeeyyy! There’s something sticky in my hair, and I think it’s your LOVIN’ SPOON FULL!” Instruments played faster and louder, people yelled and roared with laughter. Then, as usual, it was over…just like that. Sixty seconds, if even. The practicing instruments continued to play, perhaps with a bit more spunk.

Over the next few weeks, she behaved like a good serial killer: striking repeatably but unpredictably. Never the same day, never the same time, never the same span or pattern. The student body’s loud, sweltering masses learned to expect her when they least expected her, but it was always with open, sweaty arms. And each time she struck, the blasting instruments of Bruce Hall’s practicing students would seamlessly alter course and weave in her direction, joining in enthusiastically. It would always be over quickly, and then the day’s autonomous noise would continue.

Did she have dissenters amongst the student body? Short and simple answer: no. Was what she was doing “art?” Long and complicated answer: yes. She put everyone in tune with one another, even if just for a moment.

The last day she did it was on a Saturday, a time at Bruce Hall when typically people practiced in their rooms especially loud and boisterously. One reason she’d been able to stay undercover so long was that when she struck, it would always be for an extremely short time. Clever? She never broadcast her porn-y rants long enough for campus security to pinpoint exactly where she was doing it from. At least that was the rumor. But on that Saturday, she let the show run a little long. It went something like this:

“My nipples are ON FIRE!” (loud intro) (echo, echo, echo…)

*Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat!* (drums) (cheers of approval as instruments temporarily get quiet)

“That’s right bay-beeee! Mmmmm…take the Nas-Ty plunge!”

*Loooom-llooom-loom* *booooom-bom-bom-bom!* (xylophone joined with a piano in the distance) (screams)

“Hey hon, I’ll pee in a champagne glass if you want!”

(echo-y whistling and cat-calls) (more screams)

“Hey, oh, did you just step on a duck?”

*la-la-laa-la-la-la! I haaave-a-dooonkey-diiiick!* (female vocalist on top floor imitating woman’s voice in her vocal exercises) (distant laughter)

“Oww! My ass is sittin’ on a hot plate!”

*BLAAAAARP!!!* (tuba solo missing the duck cue by a beat) *Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat!* (more drummers join in) *clung-clung-clung!* (someone begins pounding another far-off piano) *weeen-ween-ween-ween*(a violin stars joining in) (more whistles)

“Hey…mmmm… what’s that back there?”

*Boom! Crash! Braaaarp! Yodel!* *BLAAAAARP!!!* *Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat!* *clung-clung-clung!* (more and more instruments join in, getting more and more frenzied) (more distant yelling)

“Ohhhh… I think someone’s knocking…”

*Boom! Crash! Braaaarp! Yodel!* *BLAAAAARP!!!* *Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat!* *clung-clung-clung!* *Loooom-llooom-loom* *booooom-bom-bom-bom!* *Boom! Crash! Braaaarp! Yodel!* *BLAAAAARP!!!* *Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat!* *clung-clung-clung!* (even more instruments join in, guitars, flutes, more drums, a gong, people start whistling and yelling, even louder, building and building…) (screams of laughter and clapping)

“…knocking at my B-A-A-A-C-K D-O-O-O-O-O-R!!!” (louder)

*Boom! Crash! Braaaarp! Yodel!* *BLAAAAARP!!!* *Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat!* *Z-z-z-z-z-z-t-t-t-!* *clung-clung-clung!* *Loooom-llooom-loom* *booooom-bom-bom-bom!* *Boom! Crash! Clung! Braaaarp! Yodel!* *BLAAAAARP!!!* *Rat-a-tat-llooom-loom-braaaarp-a-tat-a-tat!* *clung-clung-wheeee-clung!* (the instruments peak and peak and a frenzied pace, in pace and volume, people scream and holler out their windows, the instruments continue to play on and on like that…)

If there wasn’t the usual racket going on all around us, we might have heard that her voice was stopping this time because campus security were literally busting open her dorm room door. She’d been found.

The room in question ended up being (surprise!) in Bruce Hall and, (double surprise!) the twist was that the room was located on one of the men’s wings because (triple surprise!) it wasn’t a woman doing it.

The security guys (no joke) busted the lock of this poor schmuck’s door open and came blazing in like they were hunting the Zodiac Killer. They found him sitting there in front of his keyboard, a Fairlight synthesizer programed with samples he’d recorded from a live chat on a phone sex line (this was the 80’s and pay phone sex lines were still a wild new concept, especially for Texas), and huge outdoor sound amplifiers (the kind used for a small outdoor concert) laying on his floor, pointed up and out his room’s windows (not too unusual for such students to have that kind of gear). Reportedly he just looked at them with a huge grin on his face, and red hands.

And I say “looked at” meaning he just faced in their direction. Because guess who it was? Yep. Mr. blind piano player. Apparently, they had a good idea he was the culprit, and were just waiting to catch him in the act. It turns out that, in addition to adding spice to the cacophony of hundreds of musicians blasting at full-volume out of hundreds of rooms of an echo-y building with porn samples, he was also able to hide his porn samples behind the cacophony of hundreds of musicians blasting at full-volume out of hundreds of rooms of an echo-y building. Also, obviously many people on his wing could tell it was coming from the floor right above or below them, but didn’t say anything. Even though the campus security treated it seriously, and the local police were involved, apparently he got nothing more than a stern talking too (at least that was the rumor). At any rate, he stayed right on living in the dorm, now a hero, and more super-popular than ever. He was the dirty old man with a heart of gold (and a kick-ass sound system).

I lived in Bruce Hall for the remainder of that year, and half of the next. And that first week of the following year at Bruce Hall, guess what? Yep. He did it again.

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Hey Jim, go to Hell!!! Jim and I enter part of House on the Rock…

Several years ago Jim and I visited Alex Jordan’s infamous House on the Rock, in Spring Green, Wisconsin. I’ve had the photos I took—during our endless, day-long walk through the structure’s dreamy, fluctuating, warrenlike corridors—for a long time, but never put them up on my site because nine-out-of-ten of them are too dark and blurry (I’m no wizard when it comes to dark settings and digital cameras). Well, I finally weeded through them all and picked out the ones that came out okay enough, and put them in a 66-photo Flickr set.

I kept the photos in the order I took them while walking through the house, so you can kind of know what to expect if you visit the place. In addition to the many omitted fuzzy photos, this set ends up covering only about 10% (or so) of the house itself as it was December and 1/3 of the place is shut down in winter because it’s too expensive to heat. Still, these should give you a colorful taste.

In case you’ve never heard of House on the Rock, it’s the kind of thing that you would have seen on That’s Incredible!, if you’re old enough to remember that television show. The enormous home was begun by an eccentric, enterprising, obsessive man named Alex Jordan in the 1940s. It started as a Japanese-style structure sitting on the edge of a large precipice (it was actually built by him as revenge for being scorned by Frank Lloyd Wright). Jordan liked to impress, had lots of money, and was also a collector of things from all over the world (big things…like plus-size taxidermy, whole warehouses full of discarded pipe organs, giant carousels, and animatronic angel choruses, etc.) and he just started building his maze-like home bigger and bigger and bigger, to contain everything. Soon, whole full-scale city streets (complete with real shops and vehicles) began to appear inside the house itself, and more stuff like that, and eventually the structure became THE BEAST of all architecture. It was later taken over by his son, who continued the madness. Anyway, his family owns it now (or something like that) and it’s an attraction you can go see. Highly, highly recommended. It’s the realization of what, as a child, you dreamed, fantasized…and hoped the inside of Wonka’s factory must have looked like after seeing Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971 version) for the first time, just much, much darker.

Alex Jordan liked animatronics, and his collections are robotically put to work in many of the rooms, which come alive when you put little tokens into these little slots (some just do it by themselves). We found the whole place mind-blowing. It’s moderately priced and well, well worth it. Bring your walking shoes, and show up mid-morning so you don’t miss anything and can really take your time browsing. There’s no way to see it all in one visit. Like I said, we went during the winter when 1/3 of the place is shut down because it’s so expensive to heat—so you might wanna visit in the spring or early fall (hmmm…I wonder if it’s an oven in the summer?). Anyway, The House on the Rock has been covered extensively on the web already: here’s the thorough Wikipedia entry, and you can find some great galleries and information here, here, here, here and here. But I hope my Flickr photo set can at least offer a few unique glimpses for those that can’t visit the actual place because they live in an iron lung or something like that.

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Read my article “Yesterday’s Tomorrow is Today’s Colossal Disappointment: A History of the Future (in Movies)” in the latest issue of Vice magazine, here.

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Go here to read my interview with early 70’s weirdos Hot Poop (any excuse to post a picture of that album cover on my site).

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The year was 1987, a day I’ll never forget.

One of us held the wheel steady while the other took his pants off. “Rembrandt Pussyhorse!,” “No… ‘King’s Lead Hat!,'” “No! No…Spleen and Ideal!” we kept shouting over one another. The crummy cassette player that was screwed sideways into my dashboard squeaked out something too distortedly to be understood anyway. Our excited fumbling made the car sway, which otherwise sped a relatively straight 80-mph line down I-35, the interstate that separates Dallas and Austin. It was a distance my friend Buck and I had traveled countless times, sometimes at 1AM to make a party at 3AM. But this was the first time we were doing it like this.

Once we finished undressing, everything stopped. It’s amazing how hot summer Texas air whipping through the open windows of a Toyota Corona 1980 hatchback can make the air arctic. Nether regions were frozen. Everything on us was frozen—especially our throats (probably because it felt like my testicles had retreated into my larynx). Where was the laughter? The hollering?

If you’d have been us at the time, you’d have thought two guys driving nude to Austin on a self-imposed dare would have been hysterical also. Yet, here we were, letting it all hang out, staring silently at the oncoming interstate rumbling beneath my wobbly alignment—speechless. Coincidentally, the tape that had been playing ran out, and switched off. More nothing. We kept our sunglasses on (to hide our eyes). Buck lit a cigarette.

Nipples-up, we were boringly indistinguishable from every other mundane driver on the Texas interstate that day. But below that, there was w-a-a-a-y too much tactile discovery going on. Do you know how your car seats feel? No, I mean do you really know how they feel? I learned. It all felt terrible. It was like the opposite of “free.” Neither Buck or I moved an inch. But hanging out the window and going “Woooo!” would have felt even terrible-er. It was a numbing moment of mordant, merciless disillusionment. As an fantasy, it had been perfect. As a reality, it had been a life lesson; only those with weak character follow through on every outlandish idea. Knowing when not to deliver on a pact between true friends is what separates the savvy from the nude and freezing. And might I add that, empirically, moments destined to live in infamy suffer greatly from pre-planning—and we’d been planning this stunt forever.

The over-planned plans had been expressed to the delight and annoyance of our friends for a whole year. Buck and I were the ultimate best friends, and had spent much time daring each other that we were one day “…gonna drive to Austin naked.” We’d verbally dissected and bragged about it so relentlessly that talk of it began as an in-joke, then officially became classified as small talk used to cover gaps of silence during cigarettes and post-drunk visits to Denny’s restaurants in remote areas of Dallas during any given 3AM (our prime time). We had envisioned it as the most deranged, genius-ly retarded, and apocalyptically stupid antic that ever would be. There would be red-faced laughter to choke us. Our lungs would explode from their inability to handle our uncontrollable screams, and our brains would implode from their inability to comprehend our own brilliance. We would blow minds. It was a hyperbolic gamble: the plan was envisioned so often that it began to define all of our self worth, and simultaneously became worthless. And hence, the stakes of our bargain soared: if we didn’t do it, we wouldn’t just lose face, we’d lose everything.

And here we were, facing everything while doing it. Feeling “boo-hoo”-ridiculous instead of “ha-ha”-ridiculous, we tried to ignite the lack of drama with passive-aggressive stabs at attention. “Thinking” humor was needed, we “thought” it would be hilarious to transform ourselves into waving, honking, sitting ducks. As cars passed us in the faster left lane, we beeped our horn and waved at the blank-faced (but extremely curious) passengers. The only people able to see anything were positioned high enough to look down on us at an angle as they passed. You know, people in vehicles with really high passenger seats…like big rig pick up trucks, the types driven by tried-and-true Texas folk. Seeing their stunned faces made us smile (finally!) and we gleamed every time someone did a double take and then frantically got the attention of their driver, who would then sit up to peer over and look. What, me worry? It was going to be a super, spectacular day.

Perhaps, because once that novelty wore off, we decided that fifteen minutes of nude driving time had been sufficient. The mission had been accomplished. We could now lie and tell our friends we’d driven to Austin naked, narrowly skirted the law, freaked out everyone who saw us…and technically be bragging the truth.

We got dressed in the reverse order. One held the wheel while the other put his pants on, and our fumbling made the car sway a lot more this time.

As I was stomping my shoe onto the foot that wasn’t on the gas pedal, Buck looked over at me and deadpanned “There’s a cop behind us.” Buck was an expert liar, which meant he was also often very funny. He was a genius at matching the right/wrong facial expression with the wrong/right phrase, during unexpected situations. I looked at him laughing, then towards the road again.

My head nearly ass-ploded when my eyes brushed past the rear view mirror. There really was a cop following behind us. Right behind us. It was a highway patrolman, actually. In an icy panic, I thought of one thing: masturbation.

The word “masturbation” had been written in dust with someone’s finger on my back windshield, weeks earlier, and was still there (my car = always filthy). We never found out who did it, we just went into the parking lot one day and there it was. It was funny, so we left it. Then forgot about it. Now I regretted it.

But no time to worry about the word “m-a-s-t-u-r-b-a-t-i-o-n” written on my back windshield now. I had to be in control, think clearly. Act cool, Mark. It didn’t occur to me at the time how lucky were to have gotten dressed when we did. In the sixty seconds it took to pull over on the highway’s shoulder and stop, we quelled paroxysms while intensely whisper-shouting our agreed-upon alibi: deny, deny, deny.

The patrolman sat in his car behind us for a very long time, building suspense. Buck and I said nothing. Cars whizzed by on our left. It seemed hot again. In a flash, through my mind raced a million different scenarios of me sitting in my car looking up at a big, strong highway patrolman explaining why I had no idea why it might have appeared that two people had been driving nude. My eyes scanned our attire. Anything inside out? Backwards? Should I leave my sunglasses on? No, take them off…too guilty-looking. Wait, no…put them back on. Wait, no.

Eventually the patrolman got out of his car and slowly approached my window (already rolled down) and asked how we were doing that day. “Yes?” I un-simply answered with a strenuous smile. I tried to display how free of care I was by twirling my sunglasses in one hand—which then flew out of my grasp and clanked loudly on the gear shift and then the car’s floor. “Oh…” I said, changing expressions, as Buck and I both almost bumped heads looking down to retrieve them.

In the un-relaxing moments it took him to ask for my license and registration, and eventually coax me out of the car…the topic of garment-less commuting didn’t come up. I’d been flustered by wavering expectations of nude accusations, and acted accordingly: nervously. It was a clever trick on the patrolman’s part. Especially when he asked if he could search my car. I had nothing to hide in my car (he did ask), but still I was worried about what he might find. With vibrating eyes ruining a depicted smile, I answered “Sure…sure, I don’t mind if you search my car at all!” I really should have kept my sunglasses on.

He asked Buck to get out and join me, and we stood in the dirt behind my car as the patrolman began looking through the drivers seat. His probable cause: hope.

It was now very, very hot. The occasional 18-wheeler that would whip past us and kick up dust was the only breeze. I looked back towards the patrolman’s car because a local police car, and another civilian car, had pulled up behind it. Quite a few people got out of both cars, gathering behind the second patrolman’s car. They looked like the residents of whatever town we had just passed through, a mixed medley of locals who’s eyes all stared at us but who’s yapping mouths were all directed at each other. An audience.

I would soon learn that state and local law enforcement had a chummy relationship with the locals in these parts. Authorities didn’t seem put-off if citizens openly gawked, or even intervened in the war on crime.

And the folks gawked all right. Buck and I continued to not speak as we stood behind my car. Buck kept lighting more and more cigarettes. It frightened me a bit, like he was anticipating not being able to at all in the near future. I turned around again to look at the crowd.

Then, I was distracted by loud, gravely footsteps in front of me. I turned back around to see it was the highway patrolman now walking briskly towards me, reaching out for my hand. Instinctively, I put mine out to…shake. Goodbye? Instead, he just held it. I felt a rush of itchy adrenaline under my scalp. He then slowly and wordlessly lead me over to his car, silently placed the hand he was holding on the hood of his car, and asked me to put the other one there as well. Oh.

I remember thinking it was funny and almost cracked up. I looked up at Buck, who had a grave, pale, un-cracking up look on his face. The patrolman asked Buck to sit down in the dirt. I suddenly heard a lone “Whoot!” from the small crowd that had gathered back there.

The patrolman told me I was being detained, and asked if I had any weapons or narcotics on me. No. My sphincter clinched as he brushed his fingers quickly inside my inner thigh. He then reached around. He pulled one arm behind my back, and asked me to pull back the other. The handcuffs sounded metal but felt like plastic. He asked me to try and remove my shoes. I kicked them off (realizing the shoestrings were still unlaced). He looked through them, then helped me squeeze them back on. One of the other policemen who had arrived walked over and started talking to Buck. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Suddenly the patrolman placed his palm on my back and slowly pushed me forward, asking me to lean onto the hood of his car. I heard another “Whoot!” from the crowd. I placed my right cheek on his hood, facing my car.

Onto the hood of his car, and into my field of vision, was plopped a large, rolled-up clear plastic baggie, filled with clumps of green and brown grass at the bottom.

Oh, shit.

He reminded me I was being detailed and told me they had found this hidden in my glove compartment, and would continue searching the rest of the car. I could sort of look up and see they had now handcuffed Buck. The policeman took the baggie again, and held it for a moment in the air. There was a tiny cheer from the crowd. They actually cheered.

I turned my head to the other side and looked far into the small town federation gathered two cars down. I spied one tall, skinny guy who was eating a giant green popsicle and had one bloodshot eye. I recognized him. Buck and I had waved to him from my car not fifteen minutes earlier, while driving nude. Nabbing a pair of nudist dope fiends who looked like they’d wandered too far from fag island was probably a major coup for this town.

Buck and I weren’t exactly gay-looking. Actually, only one of us was being honest with the other about his sexuality, and it was something that, once it eventually surfaced, would end our friendship.

Still…Buck and I looked bad, and not in a good way. We couldn’t afford cool clothes. Our thrift store finds themselves were even second-hand (we inevitably learned about the newest Salvation Army stores too late). My hair was bleached, no…stripped a regrettable, bile-like orange—even though the Clairol kit promised platinum. It was hay-like with dark roots. In the wrong kind of light it looked right, but the sun was out that day. Buck had a tar-black, quadruple-processed mud clump perching on his skull. Born with curly hair, he harshly burned it daily with a sizzling dryer and gallons of smelly gel—a grueling hours-long ritual initiated after he discovered home straightening kits had lied (as a child he used to wet his hair and then sleep with a pantyhose over his head). Then it was dyed it black on top of all that (over his own natural black). He wanted to look like William Reid from The Jesus and Mary Chain, and his hair did (unless there was 0.01% moisture in the atmosphere, which caused the fluffy points to retract inward like an octopus’ tentacles—revealing the trauma of his receding hairline and making him look like Bozo the Corpse). I wore a kelly green polyester button-down vintage shirt that was too small so the short sleeves stuck out at 45 degree angles. All the buttons were missing. Under that I was wearing my Brewing Up With Billy Bragg t-shirt (paid too much for at Bill’s Records) and fart-scented jeans. I’d always wanted teddy boy shoes—the rocker kind from London that have two inch-high black rubber soles and a buckle, like I’d seen in i-D magazine—and you could get them in Dallas at a store called Dress To Kill on lower Greenville Avenue (for about $10,000,000,000). Instead I settled for cheap pleather knock-off from Payless. They had 1/2 inch beige rubber soles that I’d sagaciously altered with a black Sharpie marker. Genius! Instead of socks, I wore blisters. Buck liked to wear white knit polo short sleeve shirts a lot—a jokey leftover from the time we thought it would be hilarious to show up at a goth-y Peter Murphy concert dressed in crisp white tennis outfits; headbands, shorts, sneakers, socks, racquets and all (security confiscated our racquets). But the rest of his outfit that day was sweatpants cut-offs (unevenly) and Converse sneakers. We were mall-ternative. I didn’t smoke…but Buck? He was a cigarette. So we were often hiding behind a Marlboro fog. I had dark circles under my eyes constantly back then, and often appeared sick. Oh yea, did I mention that Buck had the word “P-e-d-o-p-h H-i-t” faintly written on his forehead with black marker? (we’d actually wanted to draw “Pedoph Hitler” but we ran out of room) It was very faded but you could still make it out. Nights earlier during a party at my apartment, we drew it while he was passed out. The trick was always to draw something embarrassing on someone’s face when they were out, then in the morning try and get them out of the house—like to Denny’s for breakfast—before they could look in a mirror and see it, and watch them deal. It was about three days old. Based on our appearance, I began to assume we’d been unfairly profiled by these small town folk, then I remembered the nude driving. I guess the baggie too, now.

I turned my head back towards my car again. The patrolman and policeman were holding the bag of grass up to the sunlight. They looked, opened…smelled. How could I possibly explain? That baggie had been buried in the back of my glove compartment a very long time…and I had forgotten it. Even though friends and I had rolled the contents of that baggie and—quite appropriately—smoked it, that was a technical fact beside the point right now. We were screwed. The patrolman and police officer approached me, holding the bag forward as they advanced. They plopped it down in front of my face again, its open lip wagging in the hot breeze.

“What are the contents of this bag?” one asked.

I looked up at them, sideways, and there was a pause. I decided that honesty was my best gamble.

“It’s grass from James Dean’s grave.” I said.

They stared hard at me through their opaque sunglasses. There was another pause. “What?” one of them stated.

“You see,” I began, my cheek still pressed against the hot car, “I was on another road trip years earlier, and I was passing through Indiana. I decided to go visit the small town of Fairmount, Indiana, the hometown of James Dean – you know James Dean, right? The actor? You do, okay so anyway, he’s buried there now. I’m a really big James Dean fan, or was. Obsessed, really. I have video copies of all his movies, collected a few books and a lot of photos. Okay, so the townspeople in Fairmount were very nice, and pointed me towards the graveyard where he’s buried, and I found his grave site very informal. There were a few beer cans and cigarette butts scattered around the rather ordinary-looking headstone. Actually, it all just looked kind of very ordinary-looking…”

“What is the grass in the bag?” The patrolman repeated, interrupting loudly.

“It’s a clump of grass I ripped out from his grave site!” I blurted rapidly.

No response.

“I took it because no one was around…” I thought to enumerate.

Nothing.

“I…it’s disrespectful I know. I know!” I confessed, slightly catching my breath at the end. I kept looking up at them through the sides of my eyes. I was uncomfortable. They continued to stare, not budging.

“I…thought it might have James Dean’s DNA in it?” I added, timidly.

They took the baggie and turned their backs on me.

Suddenly, I heard a policeman I hadn’t seen before, and still couldn’t see because of the position I was in, approach me and ask me who someone named “Andy Wood” was.

“Who? Who is that?” I said with a quizzical, suddenly relaxed face. Genuinely not knowing the answer to a question made me feel centered again. I heard the mystery policeman just walk away as if my answer had been the one he was looking for. Huh?

I was now alone, still against the car. What was funny is that I was used to telling the story of the James Dean grass to people, showing them the bag and hoping their eyes would light up with questions. The truth was, my acquaintances were usually impressed but pretended not to be, staring blank-faced and shrugging “Oh, really?” half heartedly. Damn, scummy, insincere art friends. These policemen fell into that second category, the pretending to be unimpressed part…except they were being sincere.

Cars kept whizzing by all of us on the highway, me still bent over. This was getting complicated. I could hear what sounded like more cars pulling up behind the second policeman’s car, and more voices. I was getting more and more confused. Why weren’t they asking me about the nude driving? Who was Andy Wood? I realized I had no idea where Buck was. I tried to crane my eyes around to find him.

I decided to stand erect.

“How’d you like me to contact the graveyard people in Indiana?” another policeman I hadn’t seen suddenly came out of nowhere and asked me, causing me to bolt back down onto the car hood. He was holding up the baggie (how did he get it?), and there was a dog—lead on a leash by a patrolwoman—who jumped up and began sniffing at the bag and batting it with its paws. They all must have all pulled up in the other cars I’d heard.

“Are you aware it’s a felony to vandalize a grave site?” he continued, as the dog batted at the baggie with its nose.

It was true. Actually, was it? Yes… it might as well have been, yes. The cops and dog joined the others at my car without waiting for an answer. They continued to search through it. I watched as the dog got into my car and started rooting around as they let go of its leash.

I realized I was probably in the clear because he wouldn’t have mentioned calling the Indiana graveyard if he hadn’t doubted it was marijuana in the first place, even though the whole idea of calling a graveyard to report stolen grass was interesting. But the series of the events had gotten off on the wrong foot, and I felt like the police now had something to prove. Maybe I had just confessed to a worse crime. Maybe grave grass robbing is a gateway crime to eventual grave robbing, and then corpse organ smuggling, and eventual all-out necrophiliac orgies. This is how they break you down, isn’t it? I heard myself saying ‘Yes Sir’ in my head.

I heard my neck popping as I strained it around again to get a better view. I spied Buck, sitting back further, still in the dirt, his hands cuffed behind his back. With his back to them, he was literally arguing with the small group of locals who had gathered to watch. The policemen weren’t even keeping an eye on him. Someone from the crowd was making kissing noises. Great.

Without warning, I felt my arm being grabbed. I turned around to see one of the policemen yanking me up from the car hood. I suddenly heard Buck shouting in a high-pitched, warbly whine. I looked over and saw two policemen standing next to him, leaning down. He seemed to be yelling, trying to explain himself. I thought I caught the phrase “…a charming man!” (which caused the onlookers to howl with laughter). The itchy scalp adrenaline shot through me again. I got worried (about more than just jail).

It all happened really fast, they started handling me and Buck really rapidly. One of the patrolmen lead me over to his car, opened the back door, and sat me in the passenger seat, holding my head down. One of the other police came over and told me to put my feet inside. He told me I was still being detained. I said “What’s going o…” as he abruptly slammed the door shut.

Have you ever been inside the back seat of a police car in the bright daytime, alone? It’s zen-like. It’s sealed very tight, so all sound outside is nearly silent. The windows are tinted very dark, and the black leather interiors are thick with blinking, complex machinery. It’s like being sealed in a space pod.

I could see Buck being led past me, to one of the cars behind me. He looked flustered, his face was beet red—actually purple through the blue-tinted glass. There was a lot of activity, all of the locals were really moving around now. If there was a border between authority figures and townspeople, it didn’t exist here. I saw more dogs. Behind me, there was a circle of police gathered around one of the other police cars, looking at something. Ahead, they now weren’t just going through my car, they seemed to be dismantling the sections in back that held the spare tire and jack. They had the back hatchback pulled fully open. In the glinting sunlight, the upside down, backwards word “masturbation” written on the glass looked like “WASTIN’ BATH TV.”

Suddenly I worried about Buck. What if he hadn’t gotten into another patrolman’s car? Had the crowd of onlookers lynched him?

The door of the car I was in flew open and another patrolman I hadn’t seen yet looked in at me. He asked “What is your name?”

I told him; “Mark Allen.”

“Who’s Andy Wood?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” I said, again confused, “My friend’s name is Buck…”

“We know that.” he interrupted. “Do you know a Morris Smith?”

“Uhhhh…” I began to trail off, my eyes looking away as I genuinely tried to think, adding, “Who, again? I don’t…” The patrolman slammed the door. My confusion was confirmation for him, but it was genuine. I had no idea.

My eyes followed him as he walked up towards my Toyota. I could now see that most of the junk and garbage that had accumulated inside my car had been laid onto the ground or placed on the roof.

As I strained to see, I saw the policemen shoving something in one of the dog’s faces. It was a crumpled up brown paper bag, one which had been stuffed deep, deep into the recesses of my side arm compartment—no doubt buried under moldy Whataburger wrappers and unpaid campus student parking tickets.

Oh, shit (number two).

A rush of creepy nostalgia surged to the surface. Inside that paper bag was yet another plastic baggie, this one wrapped in tin foil. It contained about fifty teeny tiny zip-lock bags, you know the kinds you can buy in head shops? Also, a small wad of cash. Anyway, inside each of the teeny tiny bags was…

The door swung open again.

“What is you name again?” another new policeman who’s face I hadn’t seen yelled inward as the glorious less-hot hair hit my wet face.

“I forgot about that bag. It’s…” I stammered.

He slammed the door again. A lawyer would have scolded me for trying to admit the truth, but they would have been wrong. I was the believin’ type.

Inside each of those tiny clear plastic bags was a little square of white material, neatly cut and sealed. I know…it looked bad.

I looked ahead of me and watched as the police took the itty bitty little plastic bags out of the new baggie, and looked at the little squares of white material in them against the sunlight. They took the money out of the paper bag and laid it on on the hood of my car. Like I said, it wasn’t much, probably $7 at the most. They looked content and preoccupied with what they were doing.

All the people gathered around my car like it was a garage sale. They were still taking things out and putting them on the roof, and there was a lot in there. The two dogs kept jumping in and out of the open doors. Some of the locals standing around appeared to be having conversations about subjects entirely unrelated to what was happening. Besides popsicles, people were eating other food they’d brought with them. It was like a town picnic. I had no idea how I was going to get all the stuff that was piled all around the car back in. Most of it was trash…but there was some clothes in there too, some tapes, an old guitar effects pedal. Somewhere in there was a copy of that famous 1985 Penthouse with the early nude photos of Madonna. It got special attention. On its cover we had used an eraser to white-out Madonna’s eyes, and drew a cartoon bubble making her say “I Eat Human Flesh,” then blacked-out six of the letters at the top so it said “PE – – – – – – E.” First some of the locals were holding up to make others laugh. Then later two younger guys were off further in the field away from my car, slowly thumbing through it. At least it wasn’t gay porn.

I saw one of the other police begin to walk over to the patrol car I was in. I remember getting excited because I thought he was going to open the door again. I needed more oxygen. He walked right past the car even though my face followed him eagerly. I started to feel dehydrated. Despite feeling like you’re in outer space, it’s hot in the back of a sealed police car.

Suddenly the door swung open from a different direction. They had a way of surprising me with that. I instinctively inhaled as a refreshing blast of hot dusty air hit my wet face. A patrolman leaned down and held up the crumpled bag with the pieces of white squares in little bags inside of it. “What’s in the bag that we found in your side arm compartment?” he asked tersely.

“They’re pieces of Morrissey’s shirt.” I tried to say as fast as possible, knowing a had a long, awkward story ahead of me, “He’s the lead singer from The Smi…”

The door slammed shut again.

They were little pieces of Morrissey’s t-shirt. My friends and I were all way into The Smiths at the time. I had seen them perform on their The Queen Is Dead tour, at The Bronco Bowl in Dallas. During part of the show’s encore, Morrissey tore off his white t-shirt and tossed it into the crowd (I was at the front, a standing-only swarm of chanting, ecstatic fans sweatily singing along to every song). When he threw it, there was an animalistic feeding frenzy. People pounced and shredded it like rabid wolves. It was obliterated in less than a second, and I ended up with a huge ripped chunk of it, which included most of the v-neck collar. I would show it to people who demanded to see it. Everyone wanted to touch it. Soon people started offering to buy it off of me, but I couldn’t part with it, so I started selling little pieces of it, or trading them for other things. It became like a little side business for me; everybody wanted Morrissey’ microgerms. One day, while I was in a head shop on Fry Street in Denton, I saw they sold individual teeny tiny sealable clear baggies. You could get a hundred of them for like $1.50. I think they were for crack rocks. I suddenly realized that they would be perfect to put little pieces of Morrissey’s shirt in and sell them like that. Plus I got tired of people touching the shirt all the time…I wanted to preserve its smell. So one night, I cut the shirt into about fifty little perfect 1/4 inch by 1/4 inch squares, sealed them up in the little baggies, and sold them for $5 a pop. Actually, sales had dropped a bit after I’d decided to do that. So, I just kept the whole thing in the bottom of the side arm compartment of my car, where it stayed for the whole summer. Then a year. I’d obviously forgotten about it.

I rehearsed this story over and over in my head as I watched another patrolman walk back to my gutted Toyota, wearing rubber gloves and carrying a black leather satchel. I saw the patrolman with the gloves take out some little plastic vials of liquid and squeeze drop bottles. Next to them, one of the local family’s little girls was apprehensively petting a third drug-sniffing dog as it licked her hands.

I eventually noticed most of the grass from James Dean’s gave was loose and out of the bag, just laying discarded on my car hood, most of it was gradually blowing off and onto the ground by where some people were standing.

One of the police officers came over and opened the door again. I opened my mouth to speak, but instead began licking beads of sweat that rolled down my face onto the corners of my mouth, and just listened. The policeman had a painful look on his face, in contrast to the small group of locals gathered right behind him, looking straight into the car at me, grinning. He stated “I want to make it clear that you are currently being detained by the Texas Highway Patrol under suspicion of the carrying and sale of illegal narcotics.” He slammed the door again. All the locals just stood there still watching me through the glass.

I heard another woman approached the policemen and follow him back to my car, saying “euks-tuh-see.”

I just sat there. God was it hot. I wanted them to take us to jail so I could have some fresh air. Perhaps for punishment for nude driving—a charge I was sure we were going to end up on death row for now—they would force me to take off all my clothes and run up and down the grassy median naked as one of those ironic bizarre punishments you’re always reading about…ahhh, that would feel so nice right now.

I think I might have lost some time, because at one point I looked over and the locals who were staring at me through the glass were suddenly gone, and the mood outside seemed to have calmed. I was starting to notice that it weirdly didn’t quite seem as hot anymore, even though it was, and I felt my heart pounding through my chest, I thought: this is what heatstroke feels like. Suddenly the door swung open again, and gloriously less-boiling air flooded by wet clothes. I looked at another new officer standing there, this one female, holding the door as she said “Mr. Allen?”

“Y-u-u-h-h?” I slurred.

“Could you step out please?” she asked almost chirpy-ily.

I saw an entirely exhausted looking Buck (thank God!) sulking back in the direction of my car behind her, robotically lighting a cigarette as he walked. I looked ahead—the police and townspeople were hurriedly piling stuff carefully back into my car. I tossed one leg over the seat and gravity yanked it to the ground like a raw ham.

“Oh here let me help you Mr. Allen.” she said in a tone people use in nursing homes. She put one hand to my waist and placed another on top of my head as I slipped out of the back seat like a squid flopping out of a sack. She turned me around and undid my handcuffs. I saw there was a visible puddle of sweat where I had been sitting.

“Mr. Allen, we’re writing you a ticket for an expired inspection sticker on your license plate.” This was indeed a fact. I turned back around and stared at her as I kind of rubbed my wrists. My mind had slowed to a near-hallucinatory trudge, but still I was able to think quick enough to not ask why, but, or if.

“Why don’t you go have a seat in your car now,” she said, looking in that direction, “and I’ll bring the ticket for you to sign, and your license and registration back to you, okay?”

“U-h-h-k-a-a-y-y.” I said.

I almost crawled back to my vehicle with the distinct feeling that the ground wanted to rush up and slap me in the head.

As I slumped into the driver’s seat, I looked over at Buck. It woke me up. He’d been in the car for only about two minutes but I could tell he was already on his third cigarette. I smiled, as if to say “Oh my G…”

“Shutupandfuckyouandshutup!” he phlebotomized, staring ahead.

Okay. I looked at myself in the rear view mirror. Both Buck and I looked like boiled, greasy yams.

“They made me tell them the story about the Morrissey shirt again and again.” Buck suddenly offered, adding “…and again and again. And again and again and again and over and over and over.”

“Really?” I offered, and he actually smiled.

“Why aren’t we going?” he then asked in mock-anger.

“I have to wait for my license and papers and the ticket.” I said.

“Ticket for what?” he asked slowly.

“For an expired sticker on my license plate.” I said, adding “That’s all.”

“Oh.” he said, loosing his smile and getting that ironically relaxed look people get sometimes when they find out they’ve won a prize, like the opposite of when people start laughing hysterically after surviving a horrible accident.

We both just stared forward. The officer ran back up to my car window and handed me my license back.

“Here you go-o-o!” she almost sang as she handed me the metal ticket-dispensing box attached to a pen, explaining that 30-to-60 days rule thing.

“Can I ask you a question?” the officer inquired.

“Sure.” I said horsely.

“Why did you sign the back of your driver’s license with the name ‘Andy Wood?'” she asked, turning the box around to look at my signature.

“What? Oh…” I said, scrunching my face and realizing as I spoke, “That! Oh, that doesn’t say ‘Andy Wood,’ it says ‘Andy Warhol!'”

“Who?” she said, her face suddenly dropping as she raised a hand to motion the officer in the car behind us.

She yanked my license back out of my hand, which I hadn’t officially even really taken from her yet.

“Andy Warhol! You know, the artist?” I said as she looked back towards the other officer. She finally disappeared in that direction altogether.

“What now?” Buck said, lighting the last cigarette of the pack.

A few years earlier, Andy Warhol had a book signing at a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Dallas, promoting his photo book America, and I went. It was a big turn-out, and a big deal, for Dallas. All my friends were there. He would sign his book, or other things if you brought them. People brought prints, record albums, soup cans, things like that. I had the spontaneous idea of having him sign the back of my driver’s license, in the organ donor signature area. Andy seemed particularly excited by doing this. He even had someone go find a pen that would sign the plastic laminate and never rub off.

Suddenly the policewoman was back at my window with a less happy look on her face, handing me the license yet again.

“You see,” I started right in, wanting to tell her the story out loud, “Andy Warhol, you know, the artist? He was having a book signing in Dallas…”

Suddenly the other cop ran up behind her and said “We ran the name ‘Andy Warhol’ through the system and nothing came back.”

“Oh yea!” I leaned out my window and turned to say to him, “That’s what I was just going to tell her! See, Andy Warhol, the artist…he was having a book si…”

“That’s all! Thanks!” the policewoman said with a huge smile as she raised her hand in one of those imaginary wall-like hand waves, adding, “Goodbye and have a safe trip!” And they both turned and walked back to their cars without waiting for a response.

What nude driving? We’re sure the Texas Highway Patrol and local police department knew about it, and that one or more of the people we’d waved to pulled over and called it in on a pay phone. Our theory is that they looked at us, and thought searching the car would reveal even more. They were right. I would say that actually they were lucky I had an expired inspection sticker to charge me with, but I think we were the luckiest of all on that count.

“I guess they didn’t want to hear about my Andy Warhol driver’s license.” I said to Buck.

“Can we go get a Big Gulp?” Buck asked, fiddling with the tape deck.

“Let’s each get two.” I said, slamming the gas pedal as I slowly and cautiously peeled out. The sun was about to set.

Mere days after the incident, we returned back to Dallas from Austin. Now I should explain, many of our friends at the time were bombastically shallow. For many of us, it would take graduating from college to realize we’d never really graduated from high school. In these very small circles, making an entrance while bragging loudly about something scandalous that had just happened to you was the most valued currency of power. Getting into those scandalous situations was encouraged at all times, being a good storyteller about them was a requirement, and lying was an unwritten rule.

We burst into my Dallas apartment, finding it filled with the usual mix. Even though it was midday summer, we walked into drawn horizontal blinds and all the lights on. The air smelled of peroxide and cigarette smoke, and a Nightmares In Wax record spun on the turntable. Two boys I didn’t know stared up at us with dripping hair-dye plastic bags on their heads, smoking cigarettes and getting Shimmer Lights shampoo all over the Nightmares In Wax cover. We excitedly told everyone what had happened. Nobody believed us.

“No! No! we really did it!” we whined enthusiastically. We told them how we were pulled over, and everything that followed, the James Dean grass stuff, the deal with Morrissey shirt pieces, the Warhol license.

“You liars!” they each blabbed in rounds. Realizing I had my ticket for driving with an expired inspection sticker as proof, I proudly unfolded and displayed it. Cary-Beth, the most obnoxious and foul-mouthed of all our friends (she was a receptionist for the Dallas chapter of Just Say No!, and dealt crank on the side) yanked it out of my hand and glared at it.

“This isn’t real you assholes!” she scathed, “You Xeroxed this!”

It wasn’t until days later that I realized I couldn’t find my James Dean grave grass anywhere in the car, or the pieces of Morrissey’s shirt (or even the Penthouse). A month later, when I would go to the DMV to update my soon-to-be-expired driver’s license, they would confiscate my prized one with Andy Warhol’s signature. Six months later, Buck and I would have a pathetic falling out and never see each other again. Three years after that summer I would move to New York City and say goodbye to Texas forever.

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Jim (the banjo/guitar picking, yodeling, mountain music-playing, “serious” song-writing and my boyfriend Jim) has a secret past. He used to be in an apocalyptically-inclined, San Francisco art punk band (along with his friends Paul and Dave) called Fagbash, in the 1990’s. What’s funny is that years before Jim and I even met, not only did I buy their Whores Blues EP (and stare at his photo on the back) but I also went out of my way to go see them perform at NYC’s Squeezebox club when they came into town in about 1995. Did I know that the person posing on that stage—and on that album cover—would be my husband so many eons later? Well, the show that night was so chaotic, ear-splitting and confusing that I honestly couldn’t tell what was going on (so…yes). It wasn’t until our second date that the both of us even made that “Oh…that’s so…weird…â€? past connection. Fagbash now have an archival MySpace page full of songs, memories, photos, etc. You many not recognize Jim, he’s the one usually in the glasses and fur coat (although sometimes he donned a J. Mascis-y knit hat to play the drums with—and uh, no, that is not him in the photo above, that’s one of their show flyers).

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A long time ago… when coin-operated Xerox copiers were the highest of high tech in an otherwise drearily lo-tech world, and versatile home computers were still a wet dream…fans of science fiction brandished colored paper, scissors, glue sticks, staplers, ring binders, pens and ink—to boldly go where no man (or woman) had gone before: the late-70’s / early-80’s science fiction fanzine. With both feet planted firmly within their own earnest interpretations of graphic styles of the present (particularly romance novel cover paintings and, to a larger extent, high school yearbook page layouts), these thrifty fans nevertheless weren’t afraid to look forward at what other people in the present thought the future might look like one day. And they drew, cut and pasted everything they saw. The homespun tomes would lay prostrate, arranged according to genre (each wrapped in glistening shrinkwrap, and hope…and maybe a little bit of The Force), usually splayed across unfolded card tables at science fiction fantasy conventions, hawked quietly by costumed fans planet-wide. These self-published nuggets might have disappeared down a black hole if it hadn’t been for the archive-ally inclined internet, which simultaneously revolutionized science fiction fandom while obliterating many of its older styles…forever. Click (more…) below for a kaleidoscopic cover gallery of pure past paper magic—with web links guiding you to names, dates, auctions, sales and the occasional full-disclosure. [WARNING: about 150 small images will load]

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For those that have been following the story of Ioan Tudor in Romania, the man who suffered from the bizarre skin condition (here, here and here), the latest on the story follows below…

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The missionary working periodically with Ioan paid him a recent visit, and shares this report and these photos:

“I went back to see Ioan Tudor last Saturday. It had been just a few days short of one year exactly since I had first seen him. Seeing him left no question that he was much better, and that is an understatement. What they did to him in the hospital, and why, I am sorry to say I think will be left as a bit of mystery—but one that I will continue to look for answers to. The doctors in Bucharest did skin grafts on the palms of his hands and I think you will be able to see that in the pictures. He has good use of his right hand but the last two fingers of his left hand have limited mobility. As to his feet, ankles, and the back of his hands, he said they did not do any surgery—though he is scheduled to return to the hospital in this upcoming week for skin grafts on the backs of his hands. As to the dramatic changes in his feet, ankles and back of his hands, he is unaware that they did anything besides soak his feet, ankles and back of his hands with a solution which he thought was Betadine. I am sorry that I can not tell you more but there in no other sign of invasive care, I suspect that he was soaked in something more like 3 WEA (phenyl mercuric nitrate) and he promises to get me one of the empty bottles. When I used this on him last year there was a noticeable change in the growths. But this then makes me wonder why they did the skin grafts on his palms when such a dramatic change came with only soaking? If you have any questions I will try to answer but as if often the case here, Ioan does not seem to know very much about what happened to him.�

(click each image for larger)

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I have an old T-shirt with a black and white photo of Albert Einstein’s face silkscreened on the front. This shirt is almost a quarter of a century old—I got it when I worked at Bill’s Records in Dallas, Texas (from 1985-87). For the last several months this T-shirt has been neatly folded and placed on the top of a stack of shirts in my studio. The stack gets moved around repeatedly. I am amazed that every time I look over at that stack of shirts with Einstein’s face on the top, a completely different person is staring back at me. Sometimes it’s downright eerie. Obviously, whenever the shirt gets moved, its creases and ripples shift ever so slightly, which affects the “expression” of the silkscreened face photo. The face on the T-shirt is always of Einstein, but isn’t Einstein necessarily. Sometimes the face looks funny, and sometimes it looks menacing. I have recreated the effect for you here: these are 27 photos of the same shirt, shifted slightly each time… (more…)

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In an instant, her predicament became known. It spread from outside, then into the security department, then to the employees, and then the whole ground floor. A crowd of staring onlookers amassed in under a minute.

“There is a woman trapped in the revolving door on the east side ground floor of the store!â€? people yelped, some half-panicky, some half-laughing. “The cops are here, and the fire department!â€? was the announcement that made it more grave, a mood broken by the inevitable half-whispered “Laaaw-suit!â€? yelped in a chiming voice by a Dureen in fragrances—with darting eyes and a cupped hand hovering over her mouth. “Dureen don’t leave your department!” was her quickly-strolling manager’s response, shouted with a pointed finger and a ring of jangling keys, which made her run back behind her counter and unlock her display case again.

“I hope she wore clean underwear.� and “I hope she wore underwear!� were the declarations uttered by the employees who had escaped to go gawking. “Is she hot?� was heard by employees in the crowded elevator on the way down, which was surprisingly spoken by a female voice which caused everyone look around to pinpoint who had said it, but never did.

They arrived from inside the store and outside on the sidewalk in wide-eyed waves. Everyone expected to see a woman in the throes of agony, possibly prostrate, and maybe even pretzel-like, trapped in the very-revealing glass cylinder that encased the revolving door; a butterfly in a jar. There may even be a little blood, some wailing, or at least tears! When people arrived on the scene they were mildly astonished. There was not a face wedged litigiously in agony against the glass, no trapped limbs, no gore that you could but couldn’t look away from, no screams of pain accompanying the store’s canned music, no jaws of life at the ready… but an ordinary woman inside one of the door’s four pie slice-shaped compartments, with her hands on the horizontal rail, literally walking around and around, spinning in the revolving doorway at a reasonable speed, seemingly of her own will. She was in good shape and of normal physical state. Dressed stylishly, or at least neatly and presentably, with auburn, curly hair cut into a bob, and good skin. The only stand out about her, physically, was her facial expression. It was the beaming, grinning-death-mask smile of someone caught in an excruciatingly embarrassing situation who had no idea what to do but smile. Pained, wet eyes…and a mouth with upturned lips stretched so thin and tight over her teeth, it looked like her mouth might give birth to her skull.

Oddly…

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I have a piece airing today on NPR’s All Things Considered called First Football Fever. It’s a drastically shortened version of my original story The Homosexual Brain—which appeared here last August. Check National Public Radio online for air times, streams and archives. Happy Super Bowl weekend!

Not! The piece was weirdly yanked of the schedule at the last second. Oh well. My heroes Larry and Barrett of HearingVoices.com have posted it over at their site for now. Speaking of, Hearing Voices have a new hour-long weekly show coming up on NPR—stay tuned for details. Look for brand new pieces from me there, and otherwise (for older pieces, see column at far right).

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I’m tracing an imaginary line between each framed family picture as I brush my hand gently along the wall, slowly advancing up each step in the stairway that leads to the bathroom. The loud sounds of socializing adults downstairs in the kitchen grows dimmer, their laughing voices bounce all around the excess of cozy surfaces in the home—lots of drywall and carpet—and become more and more indistinct the further I climb. Combined with the central air system roar, their voices coalesce to a soft drone once I reach the top of the stairs…straining to peer down the dark hallway that contains even darker doors into the bedrooms, and an upstairs guest bathroom. Being the only 11 year-old at the gathering, I had asked to be excused to the restroom. The husband and wife who lived there (church friends of my parents) told me it was upstairs and immediately to the left. I turn and feel for the light switch inside the only open door to my left. My hand touches a fuzzy surface, mixed with a smooth coldness. Turning on the light reveals the wallpaper to be done in synthetic crushed velvet and foil—all in gold hues. I sit staring into the bathroom before I enter, my hand still resting on the light switch. All the fixtures in the bathroom are fake tarnished brass. The counter tops are bone-colored fake marble, with those too-perfectly imperfect squiggle lines in them like blue cheese. Wall-to-wall carpet spans the entire floorspace, with giant furry brown throw rugs on top of them anyway…also covering the toilet seat and its tank, which hisses slightly. I hear the muffled laughter downstairs getting louder. More adults have arrived. I enter the bathroom and shut the door.

The light…

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What would it be like to be a WFMU DJ on another planet? Let’s explore the possibility, using the planets of our own solar system as examples! We’ll begin with the farthest-away, newly demoted “dwarf planet.” If the four floors (and don’t forget the basement) of the WFMU in building in Jersey City was to be planted firmly on the ground somewhere in the middle of Pluto (a solid 70% rock, and 30% ice), and you were broadcasting from that building, you’d find little light, few friends, and would probably be complaining about the building’s heating system not working right. It would no doubt be remarkably lonely doing a radio show, literally billions and billions of miles away from the “WFMU 91.1 FM East Orange, WXHD Mount Hope, and wfmu.org on the web” that existed for you on Earth as a station ID only…yet now is oh so very far away (overnight shift anyone?). But whatever you do, make sure you don’t step your suicidal outer space self outside onto the deck of Studio A for a cigarette break, or step outside at all, because Pluto’s atmosphere is extremely tenuous, consisting mostly of nitrogen, carbon monoxide and methane (plus wear a hat, it’s 508 degrees below zero fahrenheit). But, feel free to throw on a long Stockhausen CD and go look out the studio windows pensively—Pluto seems designed for such daydream-y behavior. The glow of Pluto’s frozen methane, ethane and carbon monoxide “lakes” will look stunning from the second story atrium window as well, as they reflect sunlight coming from 3,670,050,000 miles away (give an take a million, due to Pluto’s notoriously erratic orbit path). As for Neptune…

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Ohh…Camille Paglia answered my letter in her latest Salon column (see here for my letter at the bottom, the following page contains her response). I feel just like a 70’s suburban housewife who’s letter was answered in an Ann Landers newspaper column, and then clips 100 copies and proudly dashes around her neighborhood showing everyone. That’s because I am! I love how Camille’s entire column is serious talk about geopolitics, and my letter at the end is gushing fandom for an obscure British comedy from 20 years ago.

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