post-beat, pre-apocalypic art, writing, music and what-not Number 1 June 2010 $3.95

Writing: Drew Hubner Jose Padua bart plantenga Tim Beckett Music: Bob Bannister Steve Horowitz Painting: Justine Frischmann Sensitive Skin Magazine is published quarterly (or so) and is available online at www.sensitiveskinmagazine.com

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2 Contents

The Peoples College — Drew Hubner 4

Avenue of the Americas — Jose Padua 10

New Paintings — Justine Frischmann 12

Eight Day Clock — Bob Bannister 19

Uranium City Return — Tim Beckett 20

Invasion From the Chicken Planet — Steve Horowitz 23 & The Code International

Beer Mystic: A Novel of Inebriation & Light — bart plantenga 25

3 The Peoples College Drew Hubner

#1-The Vet He put Juan and I into his play because he saw right away that we had talent I sell nickel bags A lot of the ones who laughed thought he was Pretty good weed sure kind of queer or something but frankly I think Bo Comes in bricks from Mexico was never happier or more turned on as we used to Ive seen the whole operation say then when he was reading Shakespeare out loud The trucks to someone The safe house up on Walton Ave He could have acted out every single one of the We went down to Manhattan to the city to party parts of the play himself if he could have done it and goof around but we never went down there to that way but he was scared of something like the sell drugs rest of us Too much trouble The real tragedy was what happened to Juan You could really get busted wide open down there He called me Che because I had the tee shirt I and you never know you might never not come home was wearing it the first day we came out in front of for a coupla years and When you did it might be in the old tire factory it was a bright sunny day and a pine box and an Army uniform by way of Vietnam they all had handpainted posters and scarves on their I saw it happen to a kid from around our way by heads the name of Rodriguez My own Uncle Willie had a hand in the factory I said I sold weed I don’t smoke it at one time That it was because of the dope that killed my I had no idea it was turning into a college father and my uncle It was Juan that put me on the news report that For the college started my career as a symbol of the underdog For the City University of New York Tell them you oppose all conventional wisdom For our people Tell them that William Blake said that The patriots of Puerto Rico USA And I did For the play Much Ado About Nothing Tell them that you sell weed but you don’t smoke That big funny man with the voice like a horse it because there aint no jobs for people like us in our who all he wanted was to put on a legitimate pro- own community duction of Shakespeare I didn’t like the idea at first of ratting myself out That was the way that he talked on the 6 o clock news but I did it and it felt like a I never laughed at him though a lot of us kids did clean middle finger to all of them and he laughed right back That was the day we met big Bo. We are talking That was Bo the fall of 1970. Beauregard to you He got us registered in the college and we met the He was six feet five if he stood up straight with a Gonzalez sisters one of whom became my first wife belly that stuck out and a couple of spindly legs and the mother of my three children Like a grown up giant bantam rooster like one of They were already in the play and studying to be my granddaddys fighting cocks dental assistants

4 Until what happened to Juan we were partners it Our feelings about war were ambivalent. It was a was the best time in my life 17 is like that lot of fun too. You found out what you were capable We were standing in front of that old tire factory of and what you were not, pdq. Though clearly it was 149th and the Grand Concourse good to get out of Vietnam, we learned a lot. Everyone had on hats and bandannas I reenlisted twice myself and each year I served, We were all growing our hair out three in total, was like a separate epic season of dis- We were mostly PRs a few brothers and Domini- covery. Even after I finished my last hitch I stuck cans and some of the dwindling number of white around as a civilian free-lancing for the government, boys a kind of special forces rehab period that ended Juan said we had to politicize our lives abruptly on April 30, 1975. I re-enrolled at Hostos A cop liked Lucy too in the fall and by spring the city was trying to close She only liked Juan but she wasn’t stupid down our college. Forgive us, for taking it personally. That’s baseball we used to say I started writing at Hostos, finished two semesters Only Lucy got in too deep there then quit and got drafted. I re-upped in ’73, Juan gets rubbed out by a runaway cop car for ’74 and in early 1975 took a job writing up reports starting fires which was three years later after I got on something called the over-integration of Ameri- back from Nam can soldiers. I was one of them. I had a girl there And you tell me that lover boy was not involved until I found out she was pregnant and it was not I don’t buy it mine. Old Bo would buy a nickel bag here and there too Welcome to Operation Frequent Wind, the evac- did I mention uation of American civilians and at-risk Vietnamese. Saying you need to rehearse A lot I had filed reports on, women in danger by But I got money to make relationships with our soldiers. We did it in the empty lot beside the high school A lot were left behind. I got on a helicopter, It was ramshackle Im telling you switched to a plane at the airport and 22 hours later The building up the road was a shooting gallery it was only in my head. It took me awhile to shake with junkies hanging out of the windows day and it out. I wish somehow sometimes I could have just night down under the Deegan was the hookers stroll shaken it out of my right ear but it doesn’t always All in the shadow of the House that Ruth Built work that way does it. It really never does. They and the gold plated Bronx Courthouse say war is over if you want it, sure, but they’re not Wild bro I swear talking about the soldier. So anyway I look back on Vietnam as some good and some bad. 2) What’s the word? Ambivalence, right. It’s a cool word. Time passed. I learned to write, landed a job as a Ezra Pound always said to write with words that tutor in the college writing center and mostly got out are concrete. I was turned onto him by Professor Bo of the dope-selling business. at Hostos, the first time I was there. He probably It might be sort of unpopular to say this but we would have preferred Shakespeare but there is some- treated the movement to save the college like it was thing clean and hard about Pound. He came to New a military campaign. Those of us from the Veter- York in 1970 and met with hippies in Washington ans Club. How could we have helped it? We were Square Park. I saw him there. He was cool, man. against the war like anyone else, I mean who is really I came back and told Professor Bo who I had met for war, but we weren’t against the military. I was in and it blew him away. He gave me a couple of books. the reserves when I came home and it wasn’t neces- He always said college is not about he classroom. It’s sarily a bad thing. It gave us a way to wind down, if out in the world. you know what I mean. We came back from Nam, for good or worse, to

5 Hostos and they tried to take our college away. Well, #3-The Adjunct we took it seriously. Our tactics might have seemed a little extreme. We took over the college. Prevent- There has always been a market. The Harlem ing classes wasn’t our intention. The City University River meets the East River at the bottom of the saved our lives. Bronx peninsula. The Bronx side of the 145 St. We were a new kind of America, born from the Bridge from Manhattan crosses to 149th on the ashes of the South Bronx. A lot talk about how great Bronx side. the Bronx used to be, but the Bronx didn’t fall, it was By November 1975 the Bronx Terminal Market abandoned. We the people started Hostos College. had seen better days, there were just a few legiti- And in the fall of 1975 that Mayor Abraham mate businesses, some big depression era warehouse Beame came up with the idea of disposing of three markets, but when the sun went down it really came City University campuses to save money. Hostos alive. A man or woman in some sort of trouble could was going to be dissolved into Bronx Community get whatever they wanted to salve their wounds. College. Near the river shore, under the moon was an old We wrote letters. We gathered thousands at the Cadillac, a Hoop de Ville with shot out tires, a big th Chase Manhattan Bank on 149 St. near Third yawning mouth where the front end had been taken Avenue. We collected signatures and marched on off and sold for scrap. The scrap metal plant was City Hall down in Manhattan. right across the river and ran all night. A lot of city council members made speeches. It was a student who turned me on the first time, We had eight buses worth of students, community well a tutor. We were talking after class and went for members and faculty circling City Hall with plac- a walk. I didn’t think it was a good idea, but those ards, posters, and chanting. The next week copies were wild days y’know. of the petitions were sent to Gov. Hugh Carey in You never think you’re going to get strung out. It Albany. Two weeks later the coalition occupied the was the day the vet club occupied the board of higher lone campus building 475 Grand Concourse, an education. The tutor was one of the PR activists, a abandoned tire factory. President DeLeon escaped veteran, cool guy, a little crazy, touched by the war. through a window. We turned it into a child care You felt a little scared of him, sorry for him and fas- facility. We showed films about Black Power, Cesar cinated all at the same time. I had done dope once Chavez, Attica and Roy Brown gave a concert. before time after a poetry reading downtown. For On April 3 at John Jay College the professors and some reason it didn’t stick. I was married y’know. administration tried to make up with us, but they But now I knew where to get it. Maybe it had some- had not committed crimes. They had not taken over thing to do with me and Nancy breaking up. a state government building. 10 days later police The scene in my head that haunted me was out invaded 475 and forty of us, mostly students, were our tenement window in Harlem by the yellow light arrested. Most of us were released within days and of one of those bulbs in a cage with someone’s white we went back to classes. shirts and underwear hanging on a line across the We held one last massive last march in El Barrio way all night, my wife out there on the fire escape th from 116 Street on Lexington in Manhattan to when I looked giving a back rub to the brother of the office of Mayor Beame’s and Gov. Carey’s finan- one of her co-workers. I knew it was only a matter th cial control board on 56 and Sixth. Almost five of time. It’s a weird thing when a woman does not thousand marched sixty blocks stopping traffic all want to sleep with you anymore. the way. On June 11 the City University was fully The best idea I had at the time was to get a double funded by the state budget. I kissed my Gonzalez dime bag of dope and share it with one of the kind th sister on the 149 St. Bridge and we made it down ladies of the broken Cadillac out by the water. Some by the market. I got hired as a tutor and a weel later of the guys told them exactly how to do it, but I we found out she was pregnant. figured a girl like that knows her business. It took

6 longer because of the dope but if you shared she bodega, the Melrose Houses. didn’t mind. The guy behind the counter was white. He looked The cracked windshield fogged up so when the like he could have been a cop but something about cop beeped his siren, it startled me. him was off. He didn’t have the right haircut for one They till we finished. When I got out the one at thing. The cop outside burped on the lights. The the driver’s side said, not-a-cop fellow spit into a paper cup and reached Where do you think you’re going buster? under the counter. There was an old woman in I was thinking about rags reaching for some walking over the bridge to bread on a counter and Harlem. she turned at the sound, How about getting in He said, There’s going to be a saw me and sniffed. She and taking a ride? looked at me and she They didn’t cuff me deli on the corner. You go in, knew in an instant that I or anything. We drove I’ll beep the lights and they was compromised, doing east back into the Bronx the bidding of some on 149. The cop driving will hand you a paper bag. madman also laden with looked like an eagle with the recriminations of a this great reddened beak If you run or try to, I will forgiving lord yet in her of a nose. He sniffed, drive up on the sidewalk smile and slight crinkling coughed, drinking what of her eyes there was smelled like gin and and run you over. mercy and understand- lemon soda from a wax ing beyond all measure paper cup that had long absolving my sins, the sweated out any firmness from a straw. His partner hooker’s, the dealer who had sold me the dope even looked rookie cop, ex high school linebacker-type all the cop. I took the bag from the counterman, he over. knew too, stumbled out the door and got back in He didn’t look at me. the car. He occupied himself with the radio, ignored his I tapped the passenger cop’s shoulder but he did partner’s admonitions to me, clearly pretending that not turn. The driver grabbed the bag. the dirty policeman fumes his partner was perspiring He pulled away, and with one hand on the wheel out of every pore didn’t stink into his narrative. The and one on the paper bag, he gunned it. The old lights were on at Yankee Stadium to the north, like Plymouth engine grabbed as we climbed the incline. a great spaceship about to take off, like a separate At the top of the hill the fellow crossing the street society of reality. The car radio played Cosell and started to run. The driver swerved, and hit him in Gifford ABC Monday Night Football. The driver full stride, up on the curb against one of those tall looked at the mirror when he spoke to me. metal things that were used to call a cop or a fire He said, There’s going to be a deli on the corner. engine in the old days. The guy crumpled and slid You go in, I’ll beep the lights and they will hand you down to the sidewalk. a paper bag. If you run or try to, I will drive up on The passenger cop made a choking sound. the sidewalk and run you over. The driver lurched into reverse, bounced back Up on Courtlandt Street, next to a bike shop, he down the curb, turned the wheel and hit him again. pulls up real slow and I get out with him coming to There was an awful sound and we drove away with a complete stop. no lights. The driver pulled to a stop like it was The partner was answering a call for a domestic nothing in front of the projects. His partner got disturbance in the projects. out, looked around, sighed like he had just decided You could see them looming up behind the the weight of the world then ran into the houses

7 with his radio fuzzing, fumbling with the snap over I don’t know. his .38. The driver cop got out slowly after open- Can you repeat the address? ing up the glove compartment and putting the paper I obeyed, dropped the phone and walked toward bag inside. He still had it in his hand. He thought the man. It was hard to get that close because of the better of it, took it out again and stuffed it under the sound. There was a shoe store with the gate pulled front seat. down. I leaned against the gate and lit a cigarette. He never looked back at me. He looked over the There was no one else on the street. It was going bumper in the light from the outside of the houses. on one o’clock. When the ambulance workers pulled He wiped it off with his up, I ran out and flagged forearm sleeve then walked them down, pointed to the in past the usual suspects poor fellow, to Juan Colon. hanging outside. I left the A terrible sound came I retreated to the grate and brown bag. The world of sin from him. He was lit another cigarette. After is too small. a minute I started walking. It was the next day at trying to breathe. A There was a saloon open back school at a rally on the down the hill across from Grand Concourse when I couple of his back ribs Hostos. heard some students talking I walked in, sat down and that I realized I had been in were stuck through the ordered a double gin. I drank the car that killed the Mule’s skin of his back. two more before I sat back brother and there were and lit a cigarette. I already things that I knew that I was had one going. For some better off not talking about reason this made me start where matters of life and death could be decided by crying. A tear ran down my cheek. It felt so good. I luck and circumstance on the whim of a reprobate, don’t why. I went to the bathroom and finished what another mother’s son gone wrong jacked up on gin was left of the dope I’d bought. and soda in the middle of the night in a land where I remember getting into a conversation with the right and wrong are either side of a coin left spin- bartender about the college. He was from the neigh- ning on the sidewalk. borhood and he was curious. It landed tails. What is this whole thing about a bilingual insti- When I got arrested a couple weeks later in a pro- tution? he asked. test at Hostos, I was looking over my shoulder at all I explained what was important about Hostos. the cops. He told me he was the first in his family to go to But that night I walked from the Melrose Projects college, but he had not finished. You should go back, back to the man on the sidewalk. I told him. Everyone at Hostos is like you. Some- He was lying there. body told me they’ll take anybody. A terrible sound came from him. He was trying It’s called Open Admissions. to breathe. A couple of his back ribs were stuck We talked while closing, cleaning up and said through the skin of his back. I went to a payphone, goodbye as he was locking up and pulling down the found a quarter in my back pocket and dialed 911. grate. They asked if I wanted to leave my name, and I It was after five. I went across the street to my told them; office. It was a tiny little room we all shared, a No. combination lounge. The African was there. We Are you on the scene? talked and I gave him my coffee and donut. You Uh, I’d rather not say. could smoke anywhere in those days, so there were Sir, will anyone be there to meet the ambulance? ashtrays.

8 I sat at the chair, leaned back and woke up with a see the big picture and this is how I saw it. This part bolt two hours and forty five minutes later. I had an of the story should be told. The thing is that all of eight o’clock class to meet. We did ‘Sonny’s Blues’ the real militants the ones that took over the build- by James Baldwin and you know what it was one of ings the ones that were pissed off when Juan was the best classes I think I ever had. It was like I was killed by the man, the ones that fought the man were fighting for my life and who I was. It was amazing. students and they were just passing through. That’s The thing is I had started at the City University what students are supposed to do. The ones that stay at Manhattan Community College. The original are the faculty and for that they get to write the his- campus was in a shabby office building in the the- tory. And their history is whitewashed. ater district in Times Square. My first job in the They ignore the killing of Juan Colon and you Bronx was up at Bronx Community. The campus is cannot that’s all I’m saying. Maybe it’s guilt on my the old New York University Theological Campus. part. I’m glad this whole thing is anonymous, not There was a Stanford White library in ruin from a that it was my fault. What could I have done? I fire. They shot that movie Love Story and it came was a hostage. Anyway I got strung out. I started out when I was working up there. ordering a lot of textbooks and selling them back to I remember the first day I was talking to class and the bookstore. When I got desperate I stole them there was a dead dog in the middle of Martin Luther from the office. There were file cabinets and people King Boulevard. I worked at Hunter College and left their books in drawers. It didn’t take much to go at New York City Tech, at Medgar Evers; the thing through them. Sell a book or two and buy a couple to do was to bring a resume to the department sec- double bags. I was ashamed of it but it happened. retary. They are the ones that run the department. That’s how I lost my job. Someone caught me red- And then show up during registration when they handed and called security. The dean of students were looking for warm bodies. Call and keep calling. escorted me off campus. It was funny because the Most of the time I had jobs at least three different whole campus was just that one building. campuses until they made a rule about it, but that He said, I think you should take a sabbatical. was later. It took me a few years to get clean but eventually I sold my first short story for 25$ to the Sewanee I made it back. I never told anyone all this before Review. There were a lot of writers around. Richard but you know it feels pretty good to get it off my Price worked at Hostos and Frank McCourt taught chest. at City Tech. I read that book The Firm in the detox at Lincoln There were bars nearby all of the campuses where Hospital which ironically is right around the corner you could get a beer and talk the talk with fascinat- from Hostos. It was my fifth one. I got arrested ing people. It was Hostos where I got strung out again and went into Phoenix House. I cleaned and it happened after I witnessed the death of Juan bathrooms with toothbrushes, wore sandwich signs Colon. Officially of course no one would say his that said I am an Idiot, the whole nine yards. They death had anything to do with the eventual takeover went hard on me because I had the Master’s Degree of the 475 building but I beg to differ. I never liked in Literature. It was in there that I wrote my first the teachers union the Save Hostos Committee. script. I went out to Hollywood with it. I planned Their hearts were in the right place but they were on teaching out there, but I never had to. The first white boy liberals. script sold and I have been working in the movies I’m sorry but it’s true. They would have never ever since. I have never made a lot of money but sure taken over the building. I do all right. But it was Hostos that I got my start. The students were pissed off after Juan was killed. It was the ferment of the whole place. Every- It’s great to write letters to your congressman and thing was life and death. We were all up against the all that crap. I get it believe me, I am an English wall and it was electric. It was like stepping over the teacher, but I am a writer too and a writer’s job is to third rail.

9 Avenue of the Americas Jose Padua

I am not the Avenue of the Americas; I have never been topless at Billy’s Topless— no one in Manhattan ever called the Avenue of the Americas the Avenue of the Americas we called it Sixth Avenue.

When I was living in Manhattan the bar I went to most often on Sixth Avenue was Billy’s Topless but I hardly ever drank there because I hardly ever drank on the Avenue of the Americas.

I’d shop everywhere, Uptown, Midtown, Times Square, but buying my drinks there felt wrong.

More often than not I drank Downtown, I didn’t want to hang around Uptown for too long where it was too clean, I couldn’t belong, and sometimes I had to work there.

Fuck, some Midtown firm fired me after one day because I smelled like a Downtown drinker— Goldman Sachs, Downtown, let me work for them for two entire months on the nightshift.

I’d never accept myself as a member of high society because Manhattan when it’s dirty is in its glory, I’d take the money and take it Downtown.

Downtown Manhattan in America, I can’t count on one hand the number of times I drank anywhere else in Manhattan, but even when I was drunk I could always count on Downtown.

10 Some drunk dying, some Houston street whore, when I was living there I was alive with my friends and none of us were dying yet and one time someone pulled on my long hair but I was never really attacked.

I left the Avenue of the Americas and I went Downtown into the dirt, to the low and heavy end where all the soot settles, around the corner from the world, from where they saved the robots, before even the places like these I never went were gone.

Then I went down the stairs, said so long to my landlord and drove down south until I, too, was gone.

11 New Work Justine Frischmann

Justine Frischmann employs the Low-Fi materials painting’s historical contract with authorship and of a suburban hardware store to dig through the ash permanence. and rubble of Modernism. Her methodical self‐ canceling is depicted with vandalism, improvised Like hers, our own history is a series of layered era- geometrical methods, and defacements in masking sures. We forget our present is the combined result tape and aerosol paint. An austere and unnatural of harrowing atrocity, large-scale cons, and transcen- color palette of black, white, neon green and salmon, dent accomplishments fueled by desperation. As we alternately erases and reveals semi-navigable archi- confront the work in this show, we arrive in our tectural plans and exploding constructions of Post-Image age, bleary-eyed and burned out by the never-to-be-built-buildings. commercial glut of after-image reproductions. In their deliberate incompetence and casual “failure”, These psychic floor plans and gestural meditations these works are like the boarded up shop windows seem to refer to her childhood home, her father’s and Gone-Out-of-Business signs all around us fascination with the mathematics of sky-scrap- which very well might mark the point of entry to ers, and a family history erased by the holocaust. transcendence and divinity. The failures of reason By repeatedly summoning and then rejecting the that haunt the Modernist experiment can help us values inherited from High and Post Modernism, find our way to a humble logic of everyday beauty. Frischmann arrives at the image’s lack of integrity as suitable criteria for judging value or truth in our If the dumb and desperate graffiti of Frischmann’s time. Her work reveals a basic mistrust of Mate- paintings could speak, it might say, Modernism Was rialism and celebrates impermanence with its use Here and Consciousness Is Right Here, Right Now. of non-archival materials and throw-away gestures. Falling, fading, copying and stealing, challenge - Marian St. Laurent

List of Paintings untitled, (2009), 24 x 18 in, mixed media on canvas - 13 case study 4 (2010), 48 x 48 in, mixed media on wood - 14 prototype, (2010), 36 x 24 in, mixed media on canvas - 15 S.F.M.F. (scream), (2009), 48 x 36 in, acrylic on canvas - 16 untitled, (2008), 20 x 16 in, mixed media on canvas - 17 untitled, (2010), 54 x 54 in, mixed media on canvas - 18

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Eight Day Clock Bob Bannister

Eight Day Clock came out on the Twisted Village compositions you create under the Six Organs label in 1992 to about as much acclaim as a record name? in an edition of 500 copies can get – various people said various complimentary things, but the follow- A. One night I stayed up until dawn playing three ing from Ben Chasny of Six Organs of Admittance, records in a cycle: The Dead C’sHarsh 70’s Reality, in an interview with PopMatters, is about the high- Bob Bannister’s Eight Day Clock and Van Morri- est praise that could be summoned. son’s Veedon Fleece. The original inspiration came from that night. Q. What initially inspired you to create the Q. What was it about those three records, specifically?

A. The Bob Bannister record was like a whole new language with guitar. Every song on that record is like a little way to play guitar and say something—and it all sounds so folky, to me anyway. It’s very lyrical. I really love that record…

To listen, please go to: www.sensitiveskinmagazine.com/eight-day-clock-2/

19 Uranium City Return Tim Beckett

t the end of the road, an airstrip heavy and oppressive. For a moment it feels like we appears, as unexpected as a landing pad have shifted dimensions and landed in another time, for aliens. Instinctively, I look for the the turn of the century say, and that the present and Eldorado Mine and the company town even my own past and the past of the town is still in of Eldorado that stretched around the lake behind the future and there is nothing here but the rocky the airstrip and am startled to find nothing but hills hills, the stands of poplar and jack pine and spruce, andA trees and a muddy black field. The plane lands the warm afternoon sun beating down on the tarmac. and pulls to a stop on the edge of the tarmac. No one The woman and the pilot unload her trays and is there to greet us and we get out of the plane and boxes from the plane, handing things back and forth wait. Behind the airstrip are the familiar hills – as without many words as if they have been through rounded and smooth as hills on a golf course, and this routine many times before. At first the woman covered with pine, spruce and budding poplar - so hardly registers my presence then, when I help her familiar that I listen instinctively for the old rhythms with a few boxes, she opens up a little. and sounds. Though neither town nor mill were ever “So you like living in Uranium City?” I ask. visible from the airstrip I can already sense the dif- Her judgment matters less now that I am actu- ference; knowing that I can cross these hills and see ally here. She smiles with the slight trace of irony only more hills and more lakes makes the silence that I remember as a Northern trait and shrugs her

Tim Beckett 20 shoulders. new, hardly dented or covered in dust. I recognize “I don’t know. My mom’s here so I guess I like the man: he is Jackie Garret, proprietor of the Garret that.” Motel and U-Drive, one of the town’s few remain- A mini-van blazes up the road and stops at the ing businesses, and an old-timer from the town’s foot of the airstrip, and a woman and a man and two other life. We’d talked on the phone before I came teenagers spill out of the doors. They seem slightly up. Jackie greets everyone and everyone greets him, unreal against the stillness. They appear to be broth- relaxed now and laughing as they board the plane ers and sisters of the woman I came in with. The and, relieved that the arguing is over, I hop into the man is thin and wiry and sports a broad moustache; truck and presently Jackie gets into the driver’s side he takes boxes from the plane and into the van, talk- and we pull onto the highway for the seven kilome- ing with the others. His speech has a curious native ter ride to town. inflection - heavy consonants, thin syrupy vowels, sh At first the view is so exhilarating, I don’t want for s - as if he learned to speak on a reserve. I help to say anything. The highway follows the arm of him and the others unload but he doesn’t greet me a clear open lake, then cuts between the two rock or acknowledge my pres- cliffs where they’d dyna- ence in any way except to mited right through a hill take the boxes from my the year before I’d left. hands. If I look at him he For a moment it feels like we Lichen-covered rocks looks back guardedly, eyes flow from the road, and blank, anxious to retreat have shifted dimensions and dusty blue hills float along into the familiar world of landed in another time, the the horizon, as serene as his family. extinct volcanoes. Every After everything has turn of the century say... sway, every dip and peak been unloaded it tran- of the skyline slips into spires that the rest of the place as soon as I see it, family is flying back to so that I feel like I’ve last Fort Mac and the blonde woman is going to drive seen these hills only a couple of days before and this the van into town. A commotion erupts - no one, it is home and I’ve never really left. seems, has a key for the airport fuel tank and there We round a curve and pull into MASL, the sea- is not enough fuel in the plane to get back without plane base on the edge of Martin Lake. There is a a stopover in Fort Chipewayan, a reserve on the far sign with faded letters: ‘Welcome To Uranium City’ edge of Lake Athabasca. and a number of houses around a giant white sea- “I don’t want to stop at Fort Chip!” the man with plane hangar. The houses are abandoned and fading the moustache says brightly as the whole family to grey and the hangar is bolted shut, the white paint points at the fuel tank and the plane, shrugs their on its flanks peeling off, exposing grey wood under- shoulders and shakes their heads. Their voices rise neath. Subconsciously I’d expected to find these and fall, cushioned by the emptiness, and their argu- buildings inhabited and still in use and seeing them ing has a circular frenetic quality, and the more it abandoned shocks me a little. But the shock is miti- continues the more helpless they seem, as if any gated by obvious signs of life - two seaplanes sit in obstacle at all reduces them to bickering and inertia. the water in front of the hangar and further up the Watching them I get the disquieting sense that this lake is the old Kiwanis Beach looking pretty much argument could go on forever if it was allowed to. as it always had: swings on the shore and children’s A blue Ford pick-up pulls in and a very thin man slide in the water; rocky hill rising behind the sand with slicked back hair gets out, holding a set of keys and water sparkling in the northern summer sun. out in front of him and grinning, as if this too has We cross a bridge over the river that runs along happened many times before. The truck looks brand the edge of town. One more turn and we will be on

21 Uranium Road, the main thoroughfare through the bags inside while I check you in.” city. “Lot of thieves around here?” “It’s a hundred times worse than you could ever “No, not too bad. But if you leave them long imagine it,” Jackie says abruptly, “you won’t believe enough they might just grow legs.” what’s happened to this place.” In Jackie’s office the curtain are drawn over the He is right. windows and a single desk sits in the middle of a There are some experiences so profound, so carpeted room. Papers and assorted debris cover the monumental, that you cannot even try to predict desk and the floor and the single couch in the corner what they will be like before you go through them. - a road map of the USA takes up one wall. I sign Despite reading Deborah Foster’s article, despite for three nights; almost $250 in total with tax and being fascinated my whole life by ghost towns and Jackie gives me the key and tells me where my room derelict buildings; despite being well aware that the is. There are eight rooms in all but as far as I can tell town I am about to see would have little in common I am the only guest. The room is bare but comfort- with the town I left behind, I am completely unpre- able, with a small bathroom, a double bed, a TV, and pared for my first view of Uranium City. a lamp on the single night table. On top of the TV Uranium Road leads up a short hill and disap- are two Bibles, open to the same page and stacked pears around a corner. There are the familiar outlines one on top of the other. In the centre of both pages I’d recorded through the undiscriminating lens of is a passage from the book of Ezekiel: youth - the green stucco mass of the old hotel, the yellow cinder block cube that was the bakery, the “Thus says the Lord God, ‘When I shall make you a two-story concrete building that used to be the car desolate city, like the cities which are not inhabited, wash. But what I had recorded as a young man was when I shall bring up the deep over you, and the open windows, vehicles, people, movement - now great waters will cover you, there is only parched brown earth and an eerie oppressive stillness. But for a yellow backhoe parked “then I shall bring you down with those who go in front of the old car wash the street is completely down to the pit, to the people of old, and I shall make deserted; even the windows have been blocked by you dwell in the lower parts of the earth, like the lengths of greying plywood. Disintegrating concrete ancient waste places, with those who go down to the steps lead to the hotel’s main entrance; the awning pit, so that you will not be inhabited; but I shall set has fallen away and the single steel door has been glory in the land of the living. sealed firmly shut, a giant ‘EH’ spray-painted in yellow across the metal surface. Already there is a “I shall bring terror upon you, and you will be no sense that this is a place that has not seen much more; though you will be sought, you will never be movement for a long, long time. found again.” The hotel is particularly hideous. It reminds me of a set of housing projects I saw once in Newark, I study the passage for a minute, wondering who New Jersey that had been torched and gutted in the would have left the Bibles open like this and whether sixties and then just left. It radiates the same sullen it is meant as some kind of message. Then I open the negativity, an emptiness that spreads to everything curtains to let in some light. Just beyond the window around it. is a pile of wrecked cars, some sitting upright, some The Garret Motel is a sparse collection of blue on their sides or piled upside down on other cars as and purple trailers decorated with white trim if some massive accident had taken place a few years directly across from the car wash. A ragged Métis before and everything had just been left. man stops Jackie at the front door and asks him for Too restless to sit still for even a minute, I put my ten dollars. Jackie gives him the money then, when bags on the bed and step back outside. the man has shuffled away, he says, “Better take your

22 Invasion From the Chicken Planet Steve Horowitz and The Code International

A documentation of the Friday night performance Code Ensemble and CalArts students, conducted by of Steve Horowitz’ musical composition on January Devin Maxwell. The theatrical staging was directed 29, 2010 at REDCAT for 10 musicians, 4 actors, 2 by Alyson Schacherer. Narration by KPFK’s John singers and narrator. The video projections were cre- Schneider. Lighting designed by Adam Frank and ated by Zig Gron. The music was performed by The sound mix by Ryan Ainsworth.

Part 1:

To watch this 3-part video, please go to: www.sensitiveskinmagazine.com/invasion-of-the-chicken-planet/

23 Part 2:

Part 3

24 Beer Mystic: A Novel of Inebriation & Light bart plantenga

Furman Pivo believes he [plus beer] may be the cause of a rash swooning, innuendo, heart swooping soundtrack, no of streetlight outages. This sense of empowerment transforms messy exchanges of fluids... him into the Beer Mystic. He has a mission and a mandate. Or Jude, like me, did not believe in pets – except for does he? In any case, 1987 NYC will never be the same and her breasts, of course, ah, those plump, wonderful the rest is history or myth or delusion. warblers. We probably ended up in each other’s arms because we both believed dogs absorb and squander Beer Mystic Invitation: Participate in a unique literary the love that could be meant for unloved humans. adventure that will take you on the longest, rowdiest liter- The dog serves as a sucking psychic drain of not ary pub crawl ever. Follow the Beer Mystic’s story around enough love to go round. the world through a global network of host magazines. “It’s like believing in a hole in your shoe or a leak in a whiskey glass. I don’t see the point of sharing what little love there is in the world with a four- Beer Mystic Excerpts #13-14 legged animal with halitosis.” I mean, am I going crazy; we did just have that don’t care what others say, Jude was whole dog-wanking scenario. Indeed, dogs steal the obviously overdoing it in front of me, the way focus, the limelight, they misdirect libido, they suck she snuggled, rubbed noses with her neigh- you dry of the desire to go out and find a sexual mate bor’s dog in her best Betty Boop voice. Should or have adventures. We clinked glasses, she said “a have seen her stroke its hind leg the way she used to votre santé” and I said “Proust” and meant “proost” stroke a sweaty beer bottle – all promise, suggestion, and sipped to our agreement on pets except war- Iand mirage. She’d somehow coax strange yipping blers, interlocking our drinking arms and thought of yodels from the dog’s maw as if they were rehears- a list of other things we agreed on: Truffaut, Becaud, ing a duet for late-night TV. As if to say, this dog Greco, Veronica Lake, Betty Blue, spitting drinks could be you – or me. I mean, she didn’t even like down each other’s throat. dogs because they compete for attention. Sure, they Controversy allowed her to forget writer’s cramp. liked her for how mossy her crotch smelled. Who I knew she thought she was writing her own ticket, wouldn’t?! her own glamorous fictions, manipulating her own But the sad truth is that people over 30 can no plots. But her pages had odd ways of recombining longer say what they mean. Mean what is said. and morphing as self-doubt plunged her ever further Believe what is said and so respond with secondhand away from a life she might be capable of leading. In notions they have never embraced. Jude thrived on other words, her writing, or her need to write, or, the dramas that unfold in the shady areas of human better yet, her anxiety of not writing it down despite encounter. Insinuation, a copped feel under a table, thinking she should all preceded her and over- a quip, a barb, a rumor about my past. It was all a whelmed her every entrance into her daily situations. jumpstart to a sad heart, a way of gathering attention This is the classic bunkum physics of writer’s cramp. from strangers around the melodrama of her own I tried to explain that it was not unlike the nature life. of the hop plant. The hop female develops a very Jude was a failed romantic who wished love [and bitter and unpleasant taste when it comes into sex] was like movies from the 40s: all soft-focus

25 contact with the pollen of a male hop. a quick, neat squeal as the orgasmic period at the end of the evening’s sentence to flatter me with the [ Jude Falley, author, Furman confidant and paramour: notion of my technique’s efficacy. Sometimes she “Despite 500,000 beers and counting, Furman remains offered questionable advice or dubious quotes. skinny and this bugs me. Why and where does it all go? I write down: “Djuna: Dogs are gods that steal And because I was stupid enough to let him know that, all the affection that might be better spent on fellow it meant that he would parade around semi-naked in my humans.” place, like some deranged Donatello at the slightest hint I write her insights down very earnestly in my of an excuse. Well. OK, my place is 82 degrees any day of notepad. She interprets this as a sign that I’m mock- the year. But still. He says it’s because the calories in one ing her. Or plagiarizing. But I’m not! But anyway, oz. of beer are about 8. Meanwhile an ounce of Drambuie somewhere along the way my own journals began weighs in at 110. Do I drink the stuff? NO. While an demanding that I search the curious perimeters of ounce of a Baby Ruth contains 135. Do I eat those? NO. living on my own. So, when everyday peccadilloes He is skinny because of speed – No-Doz, I hear – and failed, the words I fed my journal would balance all coffee and walking. Always walking. But don’t quote me glory on this failure. The way rust sits on iron. Or the way the shadow of me [or someone else?] paints the twilight street with its own image of stretched and unreal magnitudes. And the more I wrote, the more life had to cannibalize itself in the thrall and employ of the word. So the word became the tick of all life and life became the host of all words. And the ideas for life-as-story collapsed back upon themselves the way deliriously beautiful shadows absorbed the re- invented self in their shivery thickets of shade. Our partings were always like shotgun blasts of emotion, like TV-show over the top: indignation, frustration, revenge, combined with a healthy dose of hair-mussed fury. And from there I would depart, hands in pockets trying to figure out whether it was defeat or triumph I should be feeling. David Sandlin It’s difficult to go home these days, regardless on that. He’s also got a highly excitable autonomic ner- of whether soon-to-be-ex Djuna is around or not. vous system, a high idle, in other words. At one time I When Djuna’s away I’m relieved. But then the con- thought it would have been dreamy to be with him, his tempt of her absence begins to bear down on me face, his sensitivities, but it ended up being the part of every time the clock ticks. So I have walking dreams. him that he suppressed. And the part of him that came to Each block along the way like a page in a book I am the fore eventually made me nauseous. But you can read not reading. more about it in my new book The Big Apple of My I.”] what I’m worried about is how I’m going to verify this whole bio-magnetic “black-eye” phenom to I bide my time, however. Jude’s idea of an ideal Djuna? Prove that I’m part of something unimagina- relationship is for me to worship her and for her to ble, unfathomable, unbelievable? Tonight I think I’m periodically acknowledge my worship by giving me going to try to muster the courage [another beer?] to something of herself [some part she wasn’t using lay it on her. She is home. much anyway]. Sometimes she’ll allow me to cop a I comb my hair; brush my teeth. It’s midnight and feel, offer me the wet scented sigh of her wishbone to Djuna is reading. take home with me. Or sometimes she might issue “I smell that horrible woman.”

26 “Aw come on, mom. Come out with me, see my CON its prefix as in con job!?” Djuna simply isn’t stuff – the night’s my art gallery.” impressed. Why am I trying to impress her, you “Look, in one word, I’m bored and you are might ask. Nice has asked the same thing. pompous.” Djuna – when I’m around, anyway – is sometimes “That’s five words. It’s just cuz you’re...” content to read the most sexist letters in Penthouse “Simply put: not fuckin’ interested. Remember, aloud from her bed. Her every word is now bur- dahlink, alcohol is a poison – why do you think they nished with lascivious disgust, an entire accumulated call it in-TOXIC-ation? – as in lethal. Use is 3 fifths repertoire of spitless, distant, and evasive voices. As if of abuse. Besides, whatever you show me will look to all men are guilty of everything. Except the man who you like whatever you need it to look like. Besides, if supplies the Penthouse? The Times Square ticker they’re artworks or whatever, they’re not signed and man? The wallet? The dickless wonder? so they can’t be authenticated as being yours anyway. And when she gives me the gift of her body, her And we all know that this is the first prerequisite of glassblown breasts [they’d fit deliciously into two high art – proof of authenticity.” damp, Belgian deep round goblets perfect for sniffing Where had I heard a beer’s beautiful flower], this intoxication com- she says; “It’s useless. Like ment before? Whatever. givin’ Dumb Perignon The synchrony between to a wino.” Provocation mind and the phenomenal Her every word is now becomes proof. Anyway, world of perception makes she was never in love with the mundane profound. burnished with lascivious me – she now claims – Oh, yeah, Times Square, disgust, an entire and more with whom she newsstand, Elle? Does she thought I should have read even Elle? accumulated repertoire of been. “Listen, I’ve tapped “Or a TV to a blind into something; It’s got spitless, distant, and evasive man.” She cannot leave something to do with injuries alone. When she’s the secret tradition of… voices. in this kind of snit I’m Hawaiian shamans.” Why reminded of an old beer not! Go for it! “Kahunas pal’s comment about an are based around this concept that the low self – entirely different woman, “I’ve seen prettier mouths our sub-con, say – takes the biological low voltage in the trenches.” force…” “Listenlistenlisten, Djuna – gimme a chance – “Wait, aren’t kahunas like balls!?” Djuna, in 1986, two-time Nobel Prize winner Linus “I dunno… but, anyway, the voltages we gener- Pauling outlined his famous 12 steps to health; one ate and somehow through a hormonal rev-up, it of them, Step #10, says here, was to ‘enjoy beer’...” gets pumped up so it can be utilized by our will- And there I stood before her mirror, Imbiber power. You know, like where there’s a will there’s a Religiosa, plucking hair from my torso. Hoping to way. So the high self – the super-con, call it – can regain that hairless, ageless nowness that used to take this force and further pump it up even higher turn her on, the way I could simulate a boy, a boy she to the highest voltage that a human body can hold, could fuck and sully. Or the girl thing, cock and balls and from there it can make things happen. Mira- tucked back and out of sight. I searched the edges of cles that redraw the maps of fate and ultimately put my body with the palm of my hand for a sign of my out enough lights to repair the rips in our collective bio-magnetic aura. darkness.” “Listenlistenlisten: Did you know that the “Dju ever notice that CONsciousness has as first pharmacists in ancient Egypt had 700-some

27 prescriptions and over a hundred of ’m contained which render it manifest.” beer?...” I told her about my latest black-eye Local authorities bicker and cast blame for the adventures including the string of 26, the “Mafia outages. Con Ed chalks up the rash of outages to Princess”... I’m not quite ready to take full respon- more mundane factors like work being done on a sibility for them but nonetheless. She plugs her switching station. “…And guard you from dread…” ears with her forefingers. I don’t mention Jude, my Some prefer sunspots. City employees believe it’s obscure amourant. She’ll eventually serve as a trump either the cheaper light bulbs of Korean manufacture up my sleeve. Never mind Nice, my ace of spades. being used in the streetlights, or lax maintenance Yea, you got it right, this is a battle of egos and the schedules, electrical storms, godlessness, crack, world is about to be divided between those I can juvenile delinquencies, latch key kids, you name it. count on and those that she can count on... Opposition politicians blame the mayor, the mayor “Oh, you boy, you lucky planet you, knockin’ over blames budget cuts by the previous administra- garbage cans, throwin’ rocks at streetlights. Bein’ tion…. At least I made the papers; the Daily News naughty and so significant and all.” Djuna had mentioned the Alphabet City location as a scene really cultivated a bitchy edge. “Listen to this, ‘Dear still under investigation by police investigators who Penthouse, I am proud of being a grease monkey, called the outages a “suspicious phenomenon.” Look, let me tell you why. One night a pretty, leggy blond there it is on page 38; that’s me. You might have seen came into my garage begging for help, she had no me in the Holiday or ABC No Rio or the Conti- money and so we made another arrangement. After nental Divide, showing this raggedy two inches of I fixed her car, she bent over to fetch her business space on a local page of the Daily News to kindred card. But it seems she didn’t have one although since spirits who looked right through you and always just she wasn’t wearing any panties under her short skirt shook their heads “yes” to be done with it. But also I figured I knew what she meant by her business to total strangers, who just didn’t get it – but that’s card…’ I betchu this shit actually arouses you.” the point! People only get things when it’s already “Innaway. Hey, but, back to... I mean … my … my too late, managing a veneer of politeness before they black-eyes got nothin’ to do with throwin’ stones.” walk off back to the bar, pay phone, toilet, jukebox, A Curlian snapshot right then and there would’ve friends… certainly aided my case. Exhibit #1: notice that the ~•~ photograph documents radiant energy... It would have gone some way towards being seen as evidence When you leave work, if you’re like me, you feel that something of me was illuminating. an imploding anxious emptiness that is desper- “You’re such a naughty boy type and to think you ate to be filled with going out – you gotta go out used to be so… delicious.” or you’re nothing. Staying in is like caving in, like “Yeah, for like a week. Does your chewing gum buried in your own misery. But not having it in you lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight? You bet.” I or in your wallet, means you’re destined to be out went on and on about how in 1932, Dr. Eric Müller without going out – buy a beer, brown bag it, beer discovered that the energy radiating from the body bedouin wandering the streets. But first I rush home can, under certain conditions, be conducted through to take advantage of the one hour of hot water. I lie electrical wires and be made to affect photographic pie-eyed in the steamy tub – make it mine immedi- paper. He said tea and tobacco intake affected the ately by peeing in it. “…And guard you from dread intensity of the emanation. Later studies [by me] / slumber gently and deep…” I think, I drift: I feel point to beer as another enhancer [perhaps because my body, muscular and aching. The worth of work of trace metals] of the aura-like field surrounding is measured in levels of pain. The less lunch hour humans – and lab rats. Synchronicity also does a job you get the more important you’re supposed to feel. here, ascribing certain psychoid properties to the We’re supposed to get an hour, me and Robert, but moving body which, like space, time, and causality, big deliveries of Hammermill paper always come

28 during lunchtime. called a park. And then watching the owner sadly I have to remind myself to write all that down oppressed, squatting down with a plastic sack and when suddenly I hear the dogs outside baying, howl- sadly gripping the steaming turd and sadly carrying ing at the streetlights. The story goes [where’d I read the plastic sack to a sad garbage can. You can also it?] that one guy or more – it’s always guys! – are sadly see them attempt to dodge their civic duty, by going around calling themselves the Canine & Cat sadly ordering, yanking their dogs into empty lots Liberation League [CCLL]. T(he)y come along the or between cars, sadly vigilant before they huff off, avenue with box cutters and slash the leashes of dogs another crime under their belts. This no doubt led tied to parking meters – dogs freed of their mas- to more beer. ters. Slash and run acts. We And what if the dog is intuitively side with these constipated or fussy about liberators. But now hun- his squat spot!? Then we dreds of dogs have formed Furman Pivo has can see consternation, ten- tight-knit packs [organized sion, tempers flair, people by howls and scent] that rove acquired what he calls a begging, coaxing their out into traffic, upset vehicle ‘dipsomaniacal lobotomy,’ dogs, coaching, showing movements, cause traffic how by example – “What jams, gallop down shopping which allows his mind to me, watch me, like this!” – corridors, panicking pedes- and quick kick, an abrupt trians and shoppers. Shop distill the essence from a tug on the leash to express owners complain. There is their frustration. Here too also the issue of canines hit drunken stupor, remaining you see the dog owners by cars – that vague legal unreachable, eluding all dividing up into victims domain sometimes called and victimizers – you can “accidental on purpose.” content ... borrow my binocs – each Often enough for the Post with their own particular to report that the city can’t strategy of how to profit even cart them away fast enough. Chinese restaurant from the chosen profile. owners have been called in to help. They can have as My neighbors also led to more beer. Sitting on much of the meat as they can cart away. But this part shiny surfaces of cars, sitting on garbage can lids is just hearsay or a joke or the Post. on pieces of cardboard as if to say all that matters Maybe that’s what led me to beer – or more is surfaces, their shine, their ability to accept their beer. The dogs. Or the owners of dogs and how weight without groan, the ability of surfaces to sup- they allowed themselves to have all their affections port them, to keep their buttocks warm. This is what rechanneled into these flea-bitten shit machines on their buttocks, the positioning of their bodies on four legs. You’ve got to hand it to them. They have surfaces said to me. And this was sad. This certainly managed to make the most of who they are. led to beer. Lots of it – with the quantity being more There is also the barking – “Ah ah, the dog important than the quality. But the story is not what howleth, the moon shineth” – and at night watch- led to beer but where beer led me. ing dog owners standing stiff and still as if in deep thought or deep shit, staring as their dogs squat [Nice, secret researcher and Pivo’s noctivigant partner between cars to take a dump… maybe it was the sad- and most loyal friend: “Furman Pivo has acquired what ness of seeing this hundreds of times per week – that he calls a ‘dipsomaniacal lobotomy,’ which allows his mind sad hand on a sad limp leash, leading to the neck of to distill the essence from a drunken stupor, remaining a sad dog with sad hunched shoulders sadly squat- unreachable, eluding all content that gives too much ting in the discolored snow in a grimy patch of turf weight to the proposition that one is nothing, nothing at

29 all. His hair looks like it was done by the hairdresser who I hold my breath under water. Count how long I does the Wishniks’ hair. Like a mad professor in CBGB’s. can go before I pass out. I try to identify footsteps And that he carries it off is charming. No? I mean his in the hall – above and under water. I hope it’s not skin’s like that of a ghost threatening to materialize. Like Djuna. I hear my heartbeat underwater. “Foam be a placeholder, an empty glass of milk, the courage of 1000 pillow / for my head. / Beery billow be my bed…” I dreams, a vicious rumor about to blow up in a face, a dusty polish off a 6-pak. Beer bludgeons with the regret of halo in a dingy basement. And when people ask, yes, I squandered idealism. [Less messy than a hammer.] admit it, I have a big place for him in my heart. Life is not Or it tickles tunes from the cranial wrinkles that can rational. You cannot explain love.”] make the whole body hum with delight. The hum of a yogi fixed in transcendence, the hum of a young I lie there in the tub until the water is cold and boy walking through a field to meet his young love. begins to ripple from my body trembling – that’s the There must be a lot of empty bottles in heaven. More broken-dream’s rattle, they say. Like the rattle of a footsteps. I hope it’s not Djuna. bulb with a broken filament. Nighttime brings the I hear the neighbors upstairs dancing. Square roving gangs of youths who are secretly tolerated dancing? Or fighting? I think it’s a guy and his mom. by elders and store associations as they begin their It is always difficult to attach faces to apartment assaults on dogs as sport – wolf dogs [yellow-eyed numbers. Whenever he’s not repairing furnaces he’s malamutes and aggressive, bored wolf hybrids], any home. And she never seems to leave the place – but dog, all dogs really – bashing them into whining, what do I know. She may be nagging him. He may yelping pulps with tire irons and aluminum base- deserve it – or not. He tells her to shut up. I think ball bats. The PING of an aluminum baseball bat he beats her. Boredom is the thing that has character on a canine skull is distinctive and cuts through the gnawing away at our souls. general groaning din. I wonder if they ever meet I fortify with pilsner. Chugged and frothing. I members of the CCLL for a little Eastside Story turn up the stereo, spin the single, worn thin and drama. But, anyway, sometimes it sounds like the snowy from overplay and sing along in my deepest dogs have emerged as the victors because you will basement baritone for the 10,000 time. Baying in my then hear them howling triumphantly in unison loneliness, basking in the pain as I sing along with under the streetlights they confuse for more heavenly Joy Division: bodies. Again, I wonder if dogs [and cats] aren’t part of the problem in New York. Loneliness is perpetu- and ambitions are low. ated because people spend all their love and affection And resentment rides high on their pets and then have nothing left over to give but emotions won’t grow. to others. Pets are like parasites of love. “…In the And we’re changing our ways dreamland of sleep…” taking different roads. I turn up the radio – it’s NPR with the news – to Love, love will tear us apart again. block out the worst sounds of these nocturnal con- Love, love will tear us apart again. flagrations. The news says that a recent study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine notes that The way Ian Curtis sings “Looove,” like a tin moderate drinkers [I prefer strategic imbibers] tend shovel scraping the cement floor of a psych ward to be in better health, better educated, wealthier [oh cell. And again, the voice, in the deepest bass scrap- well], and more physically active than non-drinkers. ing up muck off the floor of a long-dead sea on A green beer bottle floats around me like a buoy “a-paaahrt”… You must know that the words, the in a choppy bay. My mind gnaws away at a thought: way they are sung in punk-Byronic style, has fortified I was once a very nice boy. “As your bright and tiny me singing along in ragged underpants, beer pissed, spark / Lights the traveler in the dark – / Though I teetering on the edge of every word for 1000 nights know not what you are / Twinkle, twinkle, little star.” of loud, speaker distortion, used as a tool against

30 those who would hem you in, surround you, lurking, the marks where in the past I have poked my broom sniveling, hovering, oppressively killing their time – handle up into the ceiling – BANGBANGBANG. and trying to kill yours – in and around this building But do I really expect them to understand what three cringing. The suicide of Curtis is still something I knocks to their floor is supposed to mean? consume like others consume – I don’t know – dirty I get out of the tub and the anxiety of what to do water dogs or cocaine. The tragic made Byronic. with the night begins anew. It’s like anxiety began Bean and cat food cans sail past my window. the moment man went vertical. My fridge only feels “Turn that shit down!” In the hall the next day I try truly empty when there’s no beer in it. My beer is to read faces, try to determine the bean can culprits. neither generic nor anonymous. It is simply put, my Is guilt discernible on a face? And what will I do if friend. The beer has status and pride but is not rid- I do determine guilt? Save some empty bean cans, dled with ostentatiousness – Yuengling Lager. But arrange them on their welcome mat? now I am wandering and a small hovel is no place to The old woman who gets beat by her son washes wander. Djuna asks if I have found a new hovel yet. plastic bags to keep busy. She hangs them out on the No, but I’ve found some walk-in closets I might be line. I have watched her by using a piece of mirror able to afford. angled and aimed up into the air shaft. My fascina- You step into my hallway and you smell embalm- tion with how others deal with boredom devolves ing fluid. It seems the super mops the hallway floor into feeling persecuted by the clumsiness of others. with Flotone, Frigid Fluid Co. That’s what the label I call Elsa. It’s her machine. How and when did it of the plastic container in the garbage says. The stink become a relief to talk to the machines of people wafts in under my door. Smells like a morgue one instead of the people themselves? “My coffin’ll day, a slaughterhouse the next. Is it the conspiratorial include a sound chip. When somebody opens the lid or the happenstance menace of other humans? After it’ll trigger a sound sample – laughter, applause, I another beer I’ll be able to tell. Unless – I mean, you haven’t figured that part out yet. Maybe something hear shit – there are dead bodies being preserved from Suicidal Tendencies ‘by the time they fix my down in the basement. head / mentally I’ll be dead.’ I dunno. I love that And what about that protruding nail at the album: pure, angry articulate hopelessness. I dunno. corner of the stairs that catches skin. When’s some- I hate their second album though. I think I’m gonna body going to do something about it? I guess, like wear a Smilie mask in there.” I hang up. Am I mock- me, they fear vengeful reprisals from the super. Two ing or flattering her when I speak her language? wacks of a hammer would take care of it. But no There is a very fine line between harassment and one dares or even thinks that this protruding nail is come-on. Between pity and hatred. The neighbors odd. I imagine neighbors with matching scars that upstairs drop dull, heavy things on their floor – per- we will carry around for the rest of our lives fanning haps it’s the old lady going down for the count? out across far corners of the world. Head hurt and hurtled? – their floor is, of course, my Don’t underestimate the super; he’s capable of ceiling, is the nature of the universe. Some people ingenious tactics. He has sent water rushing down are most alive when they are meting out vengeance. your walls. Turns them into oatmeal overnight. Can The plaster dust from the commotion above stinks make the heat pipes rattle through your dreams. He when it lands in the tub. Like the dust of a build- may have served in El Salvador or Nicaragua – three ing that has witnessed much pain. Like plaster made doubts lead to three more. from the bones of fallen warriors. Green bottle floats All of this makes me wonder too much – 49% of and clinks into brown. They also run their water so all fatal accidents occur in the home – and too much it whistles through the pipes and my nerve endings. of nothin’ leads to gloom. I’m anxious to confuse the I can’t believe it doesn’t bother them. If you step into boundaries between what is and what should be. my bathroom, don’t mind me, you won’t see genitalia, And if and when we know it – capital I – what do the water’s all cloudy now. Look up and you’ll see we do with IT? Does it really help to know?

31 Contributors

Drew Hubner is the author of American by Blood: has written and produced for a number of artists A Novel and We Pierce: A Novel. His latest work, including M.I.A. She has a degree in architec- East of Bowery (with Ted Barron) will be pub- ture from University College London, has studied lished by Sensitive Skin Books in fall 2011. He Contemplative Art at Naropa University, and Fine lives in New York City with his wife Sarah and Art at the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work children Henry, August and Eleanor. He works has been reviewed in many publications including as a Lecturer of English at Hostos Community the London Sunday Times (Art and Culture), the College of the City University of New York. LA Times, and the London Telegraph. She was a presenter and writer on The South Bank Show, the Jose Padua has written poetry and fiction for in UK’s oldest and most respected arts program, and Bomb, Salon.com, Exquisite Corpse, Another Chi- has presented programs on art, music and archi- cago Magazine, Unbearables, Crimes of the Beats, tecture for BBC TV, BBC World TV (Arts), and Up Is Up, But So Is Down: New York’s Downtown BBC Radio 6. She has written about art and cul- Literary Scene, 1974-1992, and many other jour- ture for magazines such as ID and The Face (UK), nals and anthologies. He has also written features and was a judge for the Sterling Prize. She now and reviews for NYPress, Washington City Paper, lives and works in the Bay Area. the Brooklyn Rail, and the New York Times. He has read his work at the Lollapalooza Festival, bart plantenga is also the author of Wiggling CBGBs, the Knitting Factory, the Public Theater, Wishbone and Spermatagonia: The Isle of Man. His the Living Theater, the Nuyorican Poets’ Café, the book YODEL-AY-EE-OOOO: The Secret History St. Mark’s Poetry Project, the Black Cat Club, the of Yodeling Around the World received worldwide Washington Project for the Arts, and many other attention. He is working on a new novel, Paris Sex venues. He and his wife, the poet Heather Davis, Tete and a new book on yodeling Yodel in HiFi. are the authors of the blog Shenandoah Break- His radio show Wreck This Mess has been on the down. They live with their daughter in Virginia’s air on WFMU [NY], Radio Libertaire [Paris], Shenandoah Valley. Radio 100 and currently Radio Patapoe [Amster- dam] since 1986. He lives in Amsterdam. Justine Frischmann is an artist and musician who has performed and exhibited in Europe, Steve Horowitz is a creator of odd but highly North America, Japan and Australia. She wrote accessible sounds and a diverse and prolific musi- and performed with Elastica and, more recently, cian, with an output spanning the worlds of film,

32 television, games, concerts, and recordings. Steve Soldier, Timber, Sleepyhead and Versus, among wrote the original score to the hit film Super Size others. Bob’s writing on music can occasionally be Me, composed music for literally hundreds of found in Time Out New York, plus there is a slew games & won a Grammy award for engineering of book reviews at goodreads.com. the multi-artist True Life Blues: The Songs of Bill Monroe [Sugar Hill], 1996’s winner for best blue- Tim Beckett has been caught up for far too long grass album. Steve tours and plays with his group writing a novel about his hometown, Uranium The Code Ensemble. City, a near ghost town in Northern Canada. He has received a couple of writing grants from Bob Bannister moved to NYC in the 1980s and the Canada Council and would dearly love a began writing about music for the East Village couple more. He is an editor and contributor for Eye, Op and Ear magazines, then founded the Sensitive Skin Magazine. He is currently hiding band Fire In The Kitchen and started producing out in Brooklyn. More of his writing can be seen the fanzine On Site. By the early 90s, he was also at www.tim-beckett.com. playing with Tono-Bungay, Vodka, Vineland, Cat Power as well as guest appearances with Dave .

33 Sensitive Skin #1 published online June, 2010 www.sensitiveskinmagazine.com

Writing: Drew Hubner Jose Padua bart plantenga Tim Beckett Music: Bob Bannister Steve Horowitz Paintings: Justine Frischmann

now available from Sensitive Skin Books