Pain, So Much Pain

I'm reading Nikki Sixx's "Heroine Dairies" and it has made me feel a good deal healthier about my measly  nicotine addiction. 

Favorite quote so far, (as he is sharing his bed with a porn star):

"The only problem we had was that my dick didn't seem to be aware that she was there.  She kept asking me what was wrong, I was so out of it I though she meant wrong with the world, so I started talking about global poverty and shit." 

Nikki's crazed diary entries are truly saddening, but I mention it mostly for it marks another notch in my return to metal, a love last abandoned somewhere around 1991 when hip hop took hold.

It started a couple of years ago, Iron Maiden, Metallica and ACDC on tour and picked up again with a Kiss concert in April and series of festivals over the summer.  There I punch danced my enthusiasm to, amongst many others,  'Girls Girls Girls' by the mighty Crue themselves. And by mighty I mean fat and bloated.

"He looks like a pig in leather" Sam drawled with her delightful Sydney twang, pointing to Vince Neil who was surely vaselined into leathers that laced up at the sides, exposing small squares of exhausted flesh.

The metal fans have not fared better, gone are the hair teased big titted slut groupies of yore and in trudge the overweight big titted purple velvet wearing hordes.  I am watching Motley Crue and simultaneously attending a village fete in Middle Earth.

As a direct consequence of this unsightly affliction to the scene, myself, Kristen and Sam were hand selected to attend the Rammstein after party admitting even to ourselves how sad it was that we represented the best.   

Naturally, we accepted our fate insisting that token boy Jamie remain in the fold. And herded like groupie bitches after the show we were, weaving backstage behind the tour buses and kept in lines before being released into a frigid tent with an open bar and welcome collection of leather couches.  I blame heavy intoxication for my shameful attempt to slutify, knotting the loose white beer stained tank top above my naval in a provocative display of somewhat flat belly.  The substances wore off when the cold of night took hold, bringing with it an acute awareness of my ridiculous state.

The band arrived and made polite conversation in clipped Germanic brogue to all those who approached, all aside from the lead singer Til who disappeared shortly after myself, Sam and Kristen hovered around him with our mobile phones held aloft.  This respectable gathering is far removed from the debaucherous sleaze of a Motley Crue backstage fuck fest. There were no speed balls, unripened bananas or heroine infused psychosis.  Just delightful chat, my knotted tank and "Bigmouth Strikes Again" easing out of the speakers.

These succession of events were for the most part free passed through a reputable contact I had befriended at a certain heavy metal magazine with which I never spent an advertising dime. Love of metal was my currency and remains a formidable relationship builder, a guaranteed acceptance to the club.  This connection allowed me the privileged entry into the Classic Rock Music Awards a few weeks ago where I got to breathe the same confined air as Jimmy Page, Slash and Alice Cooper to name but a very few.  

And it was at the second after party in the smaller hours of that night that I finessed my way onto a certain man's lap, whose gentle nature so beguils his formidable size and impressive long haired metalness.  A passing acquaintance whose conversation and eyes had an effect that landed as unexpectedly as I had on his lap. Promises to meet again in a couple of weeks proved a gestation period of affection only to be cut down in of all pathetic ways, a celebratory Facebook relationship status update.

In a weakened emotional state I blame on late office hours, I decided to send him this note:

"Pain.  So much pain. x " I typed repeating his hangover claim to me the day after the Classic Awards.  His return was prompt assuming a physical injury had motivated my random communication.  The response I hastened professed heartache and merited the void that followed.

Shame woke me before my alarm the next day and burns bright in the bottom of my somewhat flat belly these four days later.  It seems as though this return to my adolescent music of choice has brought with it adolescent behavior as well.  

Well, I've recently also started buying jazz on vinyl for the turntable I am getting this Christmas so who knows, the Motley Crue T-shirt I am currently sporting may morph into a tweed jacket and composed demeanor before long.

But fuck that shit.

your fan,

a.

/m\

As yet Unfinished

Nico and I are standing on the platform of a Berlin train station paralyzed by the overhead speaker barking German with frenzied authority, "and we're boarding a train to Poland" I say. 

The train was in fact heading for Frankfurt, the lesser known village of Frankfurt that borders Poland.  From there we crossed the border on foot.  "Germany marches into Poland again" says Alex in his clipped German brogue twinged with a gay panache that saves his comment from poor taste.   How strange that what I saw of Poland should remind me so much of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. No 90 pound musicians or baseball capped graduates high on the enthusiasm of living in New York but rather those teenage prostitutes in the making wearing colourful squares of mesh and a sequin.  The older folk were thick featured and shuffled about in all manner of sandals and brown toe nails.  Women came with hair in the three colours, black, peroxide blonde and burgundy, all smoking as though it earned them money.

After an evening of laying in a field recovering from our previous nights revelry, Nico, Alex and I decide to spend our remaining Polish currency on ice cream sundaes that we ate while observing a family sat across from our table.

It was the little girl that caught our attention for at the age of 4 she wore the lined face of a middle aged woman.  We stared at this poor child in disbelief spoon feeding ourselves with mechanical regularity.  The girls family, of which there were several members, sat chain smoking beneath a cloud of smoke that hovered above while the old faced girl ran round and around the table.  Nico declared this to be a "horrible tableau" and we vowed to never smoke again, or at least cut back.

In Berlin I had tried to contact Dirk, a friend of a friends I had met last New Years eve in New York, but after several failed attempts for us to get in contact I turned my attention to Yoni, aka "The Party" an old acquaintance from the Williamsburg party days labeled as such for his prowess on the scene.  If he was there, it was a party, but he was never there for long for there were always more spots for him to get to.  If he came back to finish his night at your venue, that meant it was the best.   The Party only chose the best.

The Party answered on the first ring and even knew it was me.  He said he'd be meeting a few friends for Tapas in the neighbourhood and that Nico and I should join them.  Five hours, four large wines, a schnaps, a shot of vodka and thirty cigarettes later we are at Nilgun's place playing the card game Asshole.  Bettie who works for a fashion magazine, Nina who's head of marketing for Addidas and her boyfriend Matheus who is rolling us a fattie are all sat around the table.  The Party is ever slouched  by the corner balancing his hand of cards, a constant text and his cigarette habit.

"Two bitches" he says slapping down a pair of queens.

We played for 3 hours and all the while serenaded by The Whitest Boy Alive, the band Nilgun's husband plays bass in.  Nico buys the band's t-shirt and we both buy CDs while the drunken group dismantles.  

 "Get your stuff," says The Party, "We're going out."

"Parcour!"

Otherwise known as free running, most of you will now be aware of this urban pastime brought to us by The French (its how they get around Paris to buy bread and cheese).   Madonna tried to ride that wave of street in yet another tragic attempt to be down with the kids (and warrant an excuse to sport a leotard and knee pads.)

My friend Clay told me about this spectacular parcur fail executed on a night out in Brooklyn.  Clay witnessed the attempt, fueled by a sense of alcohol and coke drenched super-power,  of this guy jumping from the top of a building onto the hood of a parked car in the street below.   He promptly broke his leg upon impact and was carted off in an ambulance in a fit of roaring pain and shame just as soon as everyone stopped laughing long enough to summon the medics.  "We just couldn't get over the fact he had yelled the word "parcour!" on his way down" said Clay.

I've invented a lower impact, safer form of parcour which involves jumping over say, a fallen paperclip.   But the trick is to shout "parcour!" whilst performing the act, lest anyone doubt your level of commitment.  

Urban.  

This has caught on with a few individuals in the office who will triumphantly sound the cry while getting out of their seat, or tap the edge of an office wall with their pointed foot as they walk by.

We salute you our fallen urbanite, your antics were not in vain.

Peace.

your fan,

a.

Cintra for President

Worship, fools.  

Cintra Wilson I can safely say is one of my fave authors penning such classics as "A Massive Swelling:  Celebrity Re-Examined as a Grotesque, Crippling Disease" which devotes, amongst many others, an entire chapter to my nemesis, Celine Dione (please die) starting the chapter with the words "all those terrible bones under the angora".

I know, right?

I'm reading her latest right now, "Caligula for President, Better American Living through Tyranny" with a "plot" that essentially provides a vehicle for socio-political commentary spanning from ancient Rome to Bush spawn in waiting. Plenty of Lindsay Lohan and Britney references thrown in, natch, since they are more noteworthy than politics and certainly attract more media attention.  

Her description of Ryan Seacrest and his "startling inability to ever look sincere about anything" should be etched into stone, dipped in gold and flavored with saffron.  

The entire book is one run on sentence and at times my attention shifts to the guy in the tube who's breathing too loudly, but mostly I am engrossed and occasionally do that annoying little burst of involuntary laughter, that "bet you wish you were reading what I'm reading" guffaw that usually grants my book cover with a second glance.

Thanks for helping my January, Cintra.

your fan,

a.