[272] Screed City
[272]
12/05/2023 Tuesday. Kitchenette Microwave. Room 209. Holiday Inn Express. Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Lucky you. I just finished this allegory novella about the nature of writing, instead of being smart and taking a few days off from tickling, I have decided to sling a few words in your direction. Look, I know it seems like we are ganging up on you, but we are not, this is out of love that we are here right now, I think it is time that you let Jesus into your heart...oh no!
INTERVENTION [WATCH OUT]
Jesus, Jesus everywhere and not a drop to drink. I kid. I am kidding. I've been drunk since last Sunday. Mom, Jayboo, Agustin, Schwartz, I am not mocking the Lord, it's just there is so much Jesus down here! You can't swing your dick at the toilet without hitting a church. When you break open a biscuit at the breakfast nook the words, 'Have a blessed day' comes steaming out. The fucking job site has a prayer session at dawn and if you're not there, David, the GC [General Contractor] makes you stand in his office writing scripture on his dry erase board while he whips you with his "Bible Belt," a sack of burlap he found on site that he cut into three inch strips, tied together, the words, "REEDEM THY SELF," written in red paint marker on one side of the strips. On the other side it reads, "DELIVER THEE FROM SIN." I think it may be illegal, but I don't know the laws down here, ya'll.
The urinal got unclogged. In the honey bucket. Kind of. I can see it building up again. There are four of them. Honey buckets. Seem to be constantly occupied. Somehow. I mean, there are maybe 25 people on the job site. 23 of them men. It takes two seconds to piss. Yet. Yet there is always somebody in there? Doing what? 'Don't leave your cigarette butts in the urinal, please. It makes them hard to re-light-signed, The Drywallers.'
I don't know. This job is weird. Too many days. We got here nine days ago. What are we doing? It is unbelievable. Work, and then more work, and then, some more work. For money, of course, but everything is hypnotic. I get up at 5a. Usually around 3:32a I wake up, spend the next hour and 32 minutes drifting in and out of sleep. Then work. More work. Work some more. Then back to the hotel where I struggle to stay awake past 8p. I am asleep by 9p, latest, and then the cycle repeats.
Today on the scissors lift the hotel called Scott. Told him they were going to shampoo the carpets. His response was natural and fitting. There was nothing we could do about it. It was at least five hours since we had left our rooms. Maybe more. We were working. What could he do? Say no? "Okay, I understand, it would have been nice if you gave me a heads up."
I don't know about his room, but my room was in quite the state when we returned. Yes, the carpets were cleaned, but at what cost? I mean, they knew damn well that we were staying as long as we are staying, don't you think they could have waited? Or! Like Scott said, given us a heads up? I personally feel violated. All of my things were touched. Moved. The way I had left the room was not the way I would have left the room had I known somebody was coming in. I leave the "Do Not Disturb" dangler on the door handle for a reason. I don't want to be disturbed. Not me, not my room, not my being. You come into my place when I am not home and you touch all my shit?! That is fucked up, man!
I would include a photo, but I am too embarrassed. I feel naked, and abused, like a choir boy or one of those candle kids in the Mormon church or I don't know, whatever sex abuse scandal you got from whatever religion you belong to. Yeah, the trans fags are the problem. Not the status quo.
I mean, the last time I went to church there was a glory hole in the confession booth. I mean, I sucked it for Jesus, but unlike this constant fear-mongering about the Second Coming, the dick actually came, IN MY FACE.
HEYO!
Related or not, the novella I just finished used this text as a ballast:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Yates? Kates? Keats? Yeats? Morrissey, the prick, he really socked it to me with his lyrics when I was younger. Now they are burned into my brain.
[Insert Cemetery Gates]
Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and don't forget to pray, otherwise America will die.
Morrisey can suck it.
The Smiths, however, RULE.