Tee-shirt.

There is not much finer that hobbling tender barefoot to your letterbox in clad in counterfeit wayfarers, an electric blue silk kimono and a bad mood while clutching a red bull and cursing the daylight dwellers to find a package containing not only your brand spanking new MC5 tee-shirt but also your Cheap Trick one (“Ohhh baby needs some brand new shoes and out on the street you’ve got nothing to lose…”) fresh from a record store that you once played a show in and that you now  blow your rent money on the aforementioned rags every chance you get.Marc Bolan and Alice Cooper next I do believe.

Slipping into my new rack regaling finery and my usual skin tight jeans I felt the ghost of Lester Bangs eying me up and down and smiling as I zipped up my mandatory knee high boots.Wantonly spritzing my ever tangled lions mane of brunette bad assed hair with a bucket of Bulgari Jasmine noir I winked back. Heady shit.

Real live boys on the other hand don’t want a bar of my majestic self as always. And I guess that its ok.I wouldn’t know what the fuck to do with another corpse anyway.Its forcing me to hone my spectacularly selfish life rather than write another eight million mean fucking love songs.(“You pay hookers to leave so why didn’t she go?”) Way back when my lost love and I were first a-courting we were chatting at The Rainbow one night about writing “You know what we have to to?” I sighed leaning into his perimeter as his fat drunk hairdresser ex-girlfriend stumbled to the bar to rustle up another round “Whats that?” he grinned pale blues eyes with nary a hint of pupil “We” I announced “Have to stop writing the same song over and over” I winked and grinned as he laughed and said  “Yeah! Just changing the names!”

Every time we inadvertently touched I would get an electric shock.We were never not going to happen no matter what the cost.

I still think that I am going to wake up back in Hollywood….

Its cold here now.No summer whats so ever and I feel totally ripped off. I am sticking to small routine though and I think its helping considering that I was dug into my trench pretty damn hard.Just got word that Steve Lucas from the mighty “X” is going to be play with me.I know that Ian Rilen is smiling down on me as I write this. Sue Telfer who is the booker for this month of  merry mayhem has known and nurtured me since I was a big mouthed baby hell-raiser and has been a rottweiler for contacting all my heroes and begging for their inclusion in my acoustic madness.

When my lost boy and I were on the road for so long I came to realize that being up there with just a guitar is the most honest gift that you can give to the people who appreciate the noise that you live to make.Don’t get me wrong,I love being in bands and making the machine work but this is true punk to me as I cannot hide.I cry almost every goddamn show.You transcend.Great! Now I am sounding like a big fucking hippy! Just trying to say that I feel grounded in something good when I do these shows and as long as people keep showing up I will keep playing.

My errant ex is mastering his new album right now in the desert .I am proud that he is doing it but I shudder and we laugh at the songs that he wrote about me.I’m not one to talk though.I have penned some absolute clangers about him that are now getting sung back to me when I play them at shows.Its hard being a writer.You cant not do it,take what has befallen you and put it down on paper.He sent me one of the songs that he had done.I remember when I suggested the title when we were freezing our fur clad asses off in Oslo while working with Turbonegro.It made me smile because it referred to our once illegally great sex life and my perennial dependence on public transport.It also lit me up like an air-strike because Mr Homme had added his spooky backing vocals and a guitar solo to the finished product.Then,to top it off? John Garcia does some call and reply vocals into the fade.I swooned.

And no,I won’t send you the link.Don’t even ask.

Songs are strange and cunning beasts.I was writing him secret love letters hidden in mine years before we stepped it up from friends to lovers.He tends to write when he is cranky but I have that in me as well.My shit is based longing and regret.His is in alluding that he was shagging my friends behind my back.Ce la vie.Honesty,as we are all well aware of, is not only necessary but also very cruel at times.I read him the lyrics to my recently completed magnum opus “I can’t believe you fucked someone who doesn’t dig The Ramones!” and he almost bust a gut laughing on the trans-Atlantic line even though it is about him and one of the finest things I have ever written to boot.We have been through so much together that if you can’t seen the funny side of it at this point? Well, you may as well not look.And you will miss a lot if you don’t.

I tried to turn away and so did he but some people are meant to be with you for life. We are stuck with each other.Tattoos ,blues and all.

I am hiding out from the world tonight.Played guitar till the day dwellers that I share this creaky domicile with had to go to bed and now I am working up my set for when I support The Hard-ons this Friday.I still thank Elvis every morning before I pass out and rightfully so.My existence as illogical as it is is nothing short of incredible and I am booco grateful.Take a gander if you would be so kind…I play shows with my heroes,I am in a great new band,the guitar player from my old band is a certified failure,I get to call the shot on everything I do,my ex writes amazing songs about me as I do about him in return,I have a cool job where I am always right,something that I excel in,just ask me and have a security team to back up the fact,I get booked to play great shows and I have a Cheap trick tee shirt.

Not too fucking shabby at all.

Road.

If anyone is at all curious as to where my good intentions have shored up, the last that I saw of them they were quite happily paving the road to hell.

I feel like I am emerging from a mist of martyrdom.My own and other peoples.Utterly pointless.The food was crap and the service quel abominable.My review of this establishment will not be favorable,consider yourself warned…My stigmata is itching….

It has all filtered down to a dull drip and wielding the wrench of reinvention I have tightened it shut.Enough with the soul seepage says I.These are dangerous waters .These are traitorous tides darling and crowning the hit parade is Maynard crooning to my battered ears with an echo and a promise,with a map and a lesson.“Learn to swim,learn to swim,learn to swim…”

I let go of my anchor and breech the muddy surface like a bustout bullet.That 1st lung lacerating breath? Baby? You have never had it so good.

Dog paddle,Australian crawl,Butterfly,backstroke, boogaloo,mashed potato,hustle,tango,charlie fucking foxtrot over and out.

And lo! Look-e over yonder! Here comes Mick Jagger,skin tight yellow pants,loose hips and urgent information I do believe.What’s that Sir Glimmer twin? Ive got to move? (“Sticky fingers” 1971.)

Being that you wrote “Wild Horses”? Your wish is my command.

The best thing about holding ones breath and going under again,cutting ones self off,is the liberty.Hit the surface and you know you are alive….Hot shit right there.I will take solitude and liberty over pretty much anything anyone has to offer.Including cushion cut diamonds,oral relief and dried mango.Damn straight I am serious. I can deal with disappointing myself .I can,will and am beating myself up and out of it.Elvis only knows that I have had enough practice.I expect never to be let off the hook for past transgressions.What a pipe dream! That is up there with the evergreen “The check is in the mail” and that well polished old chestnut “I wont cum in your mouth”.

It would be expecting far too much from people who have sadly proven themselves to mean,in the big picture-a-rooney,far too little,.So, in the name of science,Led Zepplin and a high stepping good time I ,in turn will also not forgive.

I can live with that.The question is can you?

I have to step away or step on it.Shit breaks because it is broken and all the love,guitar strings,peacock feathers,MC5 bootlegs and angel spit in the world is not gonna hold it together no matter how hard I put my tattooed back into it.I am not mired in anything of importance right now and the more I think about it ,coasting as I have been,as I find my fat sad self doing? It is not lending me any luster whatsoever so its time to harden up and get right.Indulgence,sadly, does not suit me .It makes my self loathing cycle kick in to third gear and hum dozily down the highway to hell,you know the one? Paved with my good intentions?

Hey……

Wasn’t this where we came in?

I have to face facts.I was built for diligence,routine and discipline.Once a grunt always a grunt.Deny your nature and die faster.I thought that I could fix it by fading away.I can admit that I was wrong.But at least  knowing now for sure? Its  a relief.

Five something in the am and I have just used all the hot water.Washed and scrubbed and so on.Being that I am fuck and fumble free maintenance has not been at a premium and my lady garden was in need of a napalm drop.Mohair hot-pants.I blunted three razors on lovely legs ,pits and aforementioned rubber bits.I had to start somewhere.I am gross and hating myself and its just not on.Never before have I neglected my machine to such a damaging degree and it has finally made me sick.

(BLUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH)

And for what? Some kind of lovelorn penance? To disguise my lupine nature and wild white-trash heart? Impossible! I will plead temporary insanity now please excuse me while I chain myself to the treadmill.

As my most beloved third grade teacher once told me,starched of collar and white of hair “The lord believes in starts Michele Marie Madden”. And the hardest thing about them is just that.I am now on my way.

Interesting things fueling me this round (Ding!Ding!Ding!). I have found myself bogged under other people’s anger of late and y’all got to believe me when I tell you that it is one depressing and muy shitty state of affairs.I get to thinking if I hadn’t have let myself go so low for so long I don’t think it ever would have come to this but that and five bucks will get you a coffee.You can’t hang around and cop snide shit under the guise of friendship because the other party feels slighted by some lack in you that you were not even aware of.Something that you didn’t know you were meant to feel or fulfill.

I want to go and live in the middle of nowhere and talk to myself. This people shit? This civilization scam? I say you can blow it out your nine to five ass.You are welcome to it.I am done.D-o-n-e,done.And yes that is a fork sticking out of my behind.

The dirtiest for letter word I can think of at this point in my sound soaked existence is l-o-v-e.Oh honey this? This ain’t a smile silly!Its a scar.

Well,there’s a few less names on my Hanuka list.

Sad but true. You cant make anything up to someone who keeps throwing shit in your face.I am not going to engage so I guess that is me sauntering off into the sunset then.With my fat thighs rubbing together.Ugh.My cup runneth over.Literally.I am living in sports bras and a silken sheen of self loathing.

I want to believe in fate because I am a fool.Happy endings because i am hatefully human.These are faults to be fixed.Errors to be annihilated.They lead to loss and stupidity.What was it that I was after? I wanted to have it all come right so I could shove it up the worlds ass and then righteously retreat,held held high to our compound the desert with my man and make a mess.I get so cranky that it didn’t work out the way I wanted it to (*stamps foot*) .My petulant prince is lost and throwing his fuck into what looks like a raisin faced Slim Jim crossed with a malnourished eight year old boy on smack.Atlas shrugged and Jesus wept.

Whatever right?

So pray tell, what does the Queen of noise focus on in lieu of longing for the irretrievable? Why her month long musical residency sharing the stage with the cream of punk rock royalty throughout the month of April on every Wednesday night of course! Heh.I have locked Blackie in as he is my security blanket when it comes to this acoustic caper.And because his songs just plain rule.

Time to put on The Stooges and clean my boudoir while sipping peppermint tea.Start the starts and smile when the road rises to meetcha.

Cinchy non?

Oui.

Hunt.

(were you not taught to think before you speak?…….)

I don’t stop myself because I am a good person.I stop myself because I don’t know how to stop if it starts.

And if you start me? You have no one to blame but yourself.

Safe for now back in the bunker but some days I wonder for how long?  How long I can hold it at bay? I am not afraid of the pain.Its nothing new.I have had my ass kicked before,you live.What frightens me is me,is what I will do because  I am not going to stand there talking shit,shadow boxing and drawing attention to myself.I am going to go for eyes with my thumbs,to bite lips off,to tear ears from the skull with a mere seven pounds of pressure.Like an animal I will throw my full weight taking no time to consider the landing.

The aim is to maim.

I want to do as much damage as humanly possible in the shortest time.

To deform the face.I want kids to point and stare at what I leave of you just like you pointed , stared and talked shit about me.I want you to live hunted till the day I decide to come back and finish what I started.I want you to feel the weight of the agoraphobia that I have to overcome everyday because I know that no matter what I do and where I go in this country that some ignorant fuck is going to think that they have the right to talk shit about me to my face.I want it to cripple you,for you to be taunted and hunted and tortured just for existing,just for looking the way you do.

I want to be the cause of your effect.

Here,allow me…..

I dream of it.I  taste copper and wayward electric currents flood my hungry mouth. I get wet.You are drunk and walking down the alley.I stalk you and leaping on your back  effortlessly garroting you with a piano wire and with this casual brutality I steal your voice. But I let you live in misery and silence so you can never yell trash out of a car window at another woman as long as you live.You look art the scar in ever mirror,every reflective surface you pass.

Now ask yourself,what is to stop me from following you home?

This is what you deserve you rude,ugly,disrespectful shit stain.This is why I train.I run.I imagine dropping 20kg plates on your head ,of sticking a cattle prod up your ass ,of holding a 45. to your head and making you suck off your best mate who thought it was oh so funny when you were calling me names, until he blows in your mouth ,both of you crying like the bitches you are for daring to give me shit while I was reading on the train minding my own business.While I was politely doing my job,while I was shopping for my grocery’s…

I remember everything.My mind is a bear-trap .Every single look,laugh ,pointed finger,snigger…I have it all logged and filed.Not only are you fucking with a borderline psychotic who reached the end of her rope around the age of eight,you are messing with a writer.A writer that you showed your ID to on the door.A writer and a bitch with a flawless memory who now knows where you live.It won’t be tomorrow or next week,hell it may take me a decade but I will get you.I will unravel all that you are.Rest assured that I will drive you insane.

You will pay.

You wont even remember who I am or what you did because bully-boy fucks like you treat anyone different like shit where ever you go,day in and day out.And for that transgression? You pay double.

Can’t wait to get you alone,separate you from the pack…

You all hopped up on pills and drunk being a weekend warrior and a weekday coward.See,nothing is clouding me sunshine and I have all the time that you don’t.One day all your mates won’t be around and that’s when you are shit out of luck.You wont be the 1st grown man I have made piss in his pants and you won’t be the last.And the true beauty of it? You wont tell a soul what I end up doing to you.The shame will be too great,on that you can trust me.

You sad small lived pea brained cunt.I actually feel sorry for you.You run with a pack and you are ruled by fear.Minimum wage in a job you hate,car repayments,you live in a shoe box shit-hole or still at home,you look like everyone else,same pathetic off-the-wall tattoos as all the other drones,same big screen TV.You exist in debt and cashed in your pathetic dreams, too afraid to do anything different because the other sheep will turn on you.So there you have it big man,locked in a lie and then on your one big night out,your one 24 hour reprieve from sucking corporate cock you come across some one like me….

And my liberty and lack of adherence to any civilian code made you incandescent with rage because all you see before you is shit,a life time of utter dire shit.And what do you do? You lash out….

I’m not like your dumb wife and kids.I don’t have to take your abuse.

I hope,I pray that  someone,some fucking random talks to your stupid spouse and offspring the way you saw fit to talk to me,a stranger,someone you don’t know a goddamn thing about.Hope you wife packs on the pounds through the depression that it causes her (“Honey,why would someone just be that cruel out of nowhere? I just don’t understand….”),drinks all day and stops fucking you.I gleefully hope your daughters self harm and develop crippling eating disorders. Keep drinking,I want you to develop cancer of the liver,keep smoking…emphysema! Keep popping pills.The paranoia will lead to domestic violence.I wish all of this and so much more upon you.

It’s the bloodstained butterfly effect.If you hadn’t of disturbed me I never would have flapped my wings.What the fuck did I ever do to you anyway? You don’t know me.I didn’t start it but rest assured that I will finish it.Not a threat.A promise.

I  have been dealing with your kind as far back as I can remember,its nothing new to me but the world of pain I will open up for you? You are in for the ride of your short fucking life.Buckle up.

One thing I need to know before I pull your plug.Who the fuck are you and what gives you the right?

I will go on,I will remain on the outside,I will lead myself to glory like I always have and you will remain a cliche because that is what you were born to do.

You don’t know me.You don’t know what you are fucking with.

You better hope that cancer,catastrophe or death find you before I do.You better hope that I don’t get bored and decide to look you up.Follow you to work,hack your computer,sow seeds of doubt in your spouse,poison your law,steal your dog,blow up your car….The options are infinite.

When my anger clears I know that I am right to let you live.Anger fades but hatred? Oh!  It goes on and on and on….I want you do live in misery.It makes my existence so very much sweeter.

But I will be the last thing you see before you die.

One way or another.

Bet on it.

Choke.

Its some stupid hour of the morning and I am all knotted up about playing tomorrow night.

I passed out at a semi-reasonable time but my weird dreams of great heights,purple candles and koi fish work me up.Throwing a peppermint tea down my cakehole,I cried while reading a sad story about Lynard Skynard and then decide to connect to the world and see whats cooking ’cause it sure as hell ain’t my fat ass.

My voice is playing fucky and I hope that it decides to be cool come showtime.Why do I do this? I’m ok with it most of the time but the full moon is fucking with my self belief and tender tenuous balance.Makes me wish I was lower in the IQ department and happy working with hot tar for minimum wage. I’m so fucking textbook when it comes to the by products of abuse and abandonment that I bore myself to tears.Ever the child wanting to be wanted.

Yawn right?

I get so wildly superstitious.From the running order of the set list to the pick that my ex used at our last show together,I shit you not.No artist has the right to really claim his output.I am not smart enough to have pulled off half the coups on stage that I have.Truth be told,none of us are.You can practice all you like and Lord Elvis only knows that I do but if you ain’t open to the magic you are fucked.Its just a question of opening yourself just right so that the noise can make it through.We are naught but a motley bunch of conduits.Admittedly with pirate style and fantastic hair but baby?  Its the magic that matters…..

And it makes you weird,not that I had real far to go on that front.The OCD doesn’t really help but you have to have shit a certain way.Chanting  for a strong visitation if you will. Burning hair and saying prayers.I picked up my old girl yesterday and she didn’t want to stay in tune and so then my bitten down fingers decided that they didn’t want to remember a single goddamn chord in some kind of misguided sympathy. Miss Lilli made me dinner (“What do you want to eat?” “Something with vegetables,I have scurvy”) and as we sat outside under a rare clear sky being attacked by mosquitoes  and  the moon admired its big fat reflection in the pool , I sat there like misery incarnate wrapped in an Aerosmith tee shirt and iridescent layers of shimmering anxiety.

Movement is my savior and I ignore it daily only to be consumed by self disgust at odd hours.

Who do I think I am kidding?

When I feel like this I tend to fall into the thought that everyone has an easier time of this caper than me.You only have to read Classic Rock magazine to know that it ain’t true but it sure seems that way when you are standing outside the spiritual studio ,red frostbitten nose pressed against the glass, barefoot in the snow.

Ross is coming tomorrow night.Hope that Mikey makes it down as well.I lived a war with those two.We should have executed the guitar player for treason but you live and learn. Ross confounds me.All that talent and he doesn’t want to play anymore.I get it I guess.Its the grind that makes people give up.I don’t give up out of pure stubborn spite most days.Because no matter how bad it gets if I fade away I lose and I just cant truck none with that outcome.

I will just shut my eyes and wail.

Ain’t nothing’ else to be done.

I always wonder if anyone is going to show up.It eats my nerves clean away.I bet my bottom dollar that I get my period tomorrow.I can hear the full moon chuckling outside my window as I write.

I dream of California more and more but the economic climate is raping my friends over there and it makes me sad.I need to win the goddamn lottery because my work ethic which is usually insanely good has headed south for the winter and is not retuning my calls.I don’t like myself like this at fucking all. It leads to fat and internal disarray. A shabby way to roll all around. I handed out a mess of flyers to my drug deranged infants on Saturday night so it will be most interesting to see if any of them leave their safe zones and venture out to see the girl that they know by another name and demeanor all together.

I will text everyone in my phone though sheer desperation tomorrow.

Again.

Not sure if all my new stuff is ready to air.I will see how I feel.I tend to play shorter sets than most people .I want them to want more,to come back again I guess.That and my muses are real bitches who take their time when it comes to delivering the goods.

Got a charged phone call from my drummer Nathan the other day which lit a spark that I was missing.He went to Cathedral with Marcus the other night who presented Nath with the first six songs on disc of our new band. Nath is a real salt of the earth type so when he told me that he had stayed up till two in the morning air drumming I squealed with glee.That is how I want to feel again.

Suppose that I should try and sleep again.Lord knows I am gonna need it.

The day I don’t choke? That is the day that it don’t matter.

Didgets.

I am not equipped.Its sad how badly I fare with supposed normal integrations of my leggy self and the world.

The weekend was a cluster-fuck as it was Mardi Gras and I am in possession of the worlds shortest fuse.

“Are you a dude?” sneered the civilian asshole ,a bucket of poison in his voice

“I was about to ask you the same thing cunt” I replied with a suitcase full of get fucked in mine.

He ran.Keep in mind I was resplendent in a bra,ripped tee-shirt,full war paint and a snow white Indian feather head dress that went down to my perfect ass.Stacked heels of course.I would have run too.Made me wish that I had of brought my tomahawk.My roommates came down accompanied by my mate Metz and her soon to be wife.I was busy as a one armed man with crabs so I didn’t have a real lot of time to catch up but it was really cool to see her happy and loved up.

There is not a real lot that ever shocks me.I pretty much feel that I have seen it all at this point and have my trip wires in place at all times by every once in a while you get got and the fall out and results when you rest on your dusty laurels can be quite spectacular.

I have forgotten how to fuck.Myself and other people. My dysmorpia puts me in a dead zone as it is and so the question of anyone wanting to get near my mean self makes my defenses act like the Predator sans mask.Good visual huh?

I last got laid in July 2010 and it was a brutal loveless affair.I now know how a blow up doll must feel.It broke my sexual spirit which up until then was doing ok,clean in two. I now live inside myself and stay celibate.There is just no point mixing with the animals.I know that one way or another any kind of contact is going to cost me more that I can afford.What can I afford you ask?

Nothing.Nada.Zilch.Now,consider moi,the wreck that I am and just imagine the shock and can I say distaste that swept over me when a fine young  punk not only expressed interest but….

Requested my phone number.

It fucked up my savior-fare something terrible.

First I had to not only question his taste but his eyesight.This infant had crossed my path before but the cojones on this kid? Impressive to say the least.

Being that my age hovers between 17 (emotionally) 27 (for-fucking-ever) and 125 (In dusty dog years on the experience odometer) I was curious to how old this pup was.With clean green eyes he seared into me and said “24”

24?

Its enough to make me take to my boudoir with the collected works of F.Scott Fitzgerald,a bucket full of generic Valium,a trough of cognac and my 12′ pigsticker  and never leave again.I didn’t even know that they made men that young anymore let alone cocky hardcore punk one’s who think that I am a hot ticket. Look,being as messed up as I am,I am not sure if its flattering or not and I feel like a real turd for being so ageist but child,child,child,I am the most loveless damaged goods on the showroom of life’s killing floor.For the one moment that it stroked my brutalized female ego it then sent me down lower than a snakes ass in a wagon rut.

I have nothing to offer but what I show and give.I do the door every weekend and then leg it back to my cave to hold the world at bay once again.I train from three to five in the morning so deep is my hatred and mistrust of the other animals I am forced to share the planet with.I have been know to growl when approached,…I communicate by way of seldom returned calls and sloppy correspondence.

And this kid says that he is coming to my show.

We spoke for a  while and he seems to be a nice lad but I cant sell myself on again.I can’t muster the song and dance that it takes to be attractive let alone wanted.As I write these words the weight of how sad it must sound is heavy.But I know it to be true. I can never let anyone near me again because the cost is and shall always remain far too great on all fronts.

I would be lying to myself if I though otherwise or acted any differently.

I lay on the pistachio green sofa by candle light tonight.Mark crashed out,Lilli rocking my white wig at Ru Paul so I played my guitar in a trance for hours and got 2 new songs ready for the show on Wednesday night.I will run my set in the bathroom tomorrow when I have the house to myself.It should be a tasty set.I have been dying to play again.

Johnny Thunders,may Elvis rest his shaggy haired Italian soul one sang “You cant put your arms around a memory” .True enough but I have come to realize that you can stay faithful to one no matter if it is a good idea or not.I don’t know what the hell I hold on to most days.A memory? Hope? Usually a bad mood and my beloved Hello Kitty doll as I attempted to sleep though the days as I have done ever since I was little more than a wet teen dream on the longest legs you done ever seen….

I kind of hope that the emerald eyed punk does not show up.Is that bad? My numb responses,my dead heart…

Any kind of hope,my own or anyone elses,brings up a sadness in me that is hard to wrangle. When I sing I shut my eyes tight and feel him by my side when we were good.I still dedicate a song by Mr Cash to him at every show I play.It sounds foolish in light of all the heartbreak but some people are always gonna need a prayer more than you.I express it on up to Elvis and wail like a siren.

Mr 24 made me smile. It was sweet.( thanks kid…)

But the bottom line is that I am just a twisted old fuck who cant see the forest for the trees.

And that is how it goes.

Damn.

My problem? I don’t think I am ever gonna be ready……

Which makes me pretty damn blue because once-upon-a-time-not-so-long-ago I was always ready.

And my body reacts accordingly. Listens to my nerves every whining complaint and explodes. Regard,if you will,a strange continent-like cluster of psoriasis erupting on my butt and legs that I think it is in the shape of the red-bull logo.They should sponsor me. Woe. It looks like shit and makes me feel much of the same.Cheers for that nervous system! ( “Oh! but you shouldn’t have!” ) Behold! A small rotunda around my midsection of “Way-to-early-what-the-hell-!?-who-invited-you-?” premenstrual bloat mayhem,a few Krakatoa sized zits and a-way we go….

An insecurity luau with no blue drinks that you light on fire with umbrellas in them.Great.

My heart was doing its “You ain’t good” enough soft shoe shtick on the train all the way into the city.The endless internal hammering of my ever present Dysmorphia causing me to leave my seat rather hastily to throw up between the rattling carriages.I sat down,feeling faint, wiping my mouth while hunting for gum in my black hole of a bag and I try to remember when I was “Well” for want of a better word ,well better than this anyway and it feels like a lifetime ago….When I lived in Long Beach and was the master of my machine.When me and Leizel would spend a whole day building up a set to shoot in and my confidence before a camera was happily obscene.

To this day,to this fucking second,though all the progress I have made I still have to wonder….How can you love someone and chip away at them? Undermine their sense of self. What kind of dire and absolute monster does such a thing?

The one that I chose to pledge my forsaken forever to,that’s who.

The damage is stunning in its sheer scale alone.The El Capitain of damage if you will.

Granted,I have always had a terrible time with body image.I don’t deny it.Fucking shocking really,I have good phases but it’s a war….From being almost six foot tall at eleven,wearing bi-focal glasses and having braces and cystic acne to starving myself and then getting fat again,obsessive training.Then you have the destructive relationship that lasted a few blood-soaked years with my treasured collection of sharp things and the scars that left behind now covered in countless tattoo’s. I have battled my body constantly and for so very long.Then round 2008, free of my former band and the soak who ruined it,secure in LA and in a great band at long last, I finally got it right and found some peace within myself for the first time.

Ultra fit,very lean and healthy.

And then finally falling in what I thought was true and forever love round the same time? I mean,could it get any better?  I wanted to do it with the lights on. I thought I had it made baby….I thought that I had found the one who could love me just the way that I was….

I was a Californian girl with a ring on my finger,in love at last,a perfect puppy dog and life was sweet. Until I didn’t wear the right shoes one night,until I ordered something different to eat,till I did or didn’t wear make up ,until I trained or didn’t…..

(” You look like a bum!”-“You only change your order if you are with someone new”-“Who are you whoring up to try to impress cunt?”/ “You look like a fucking dyke,make an effort you dumb bitch”-“You look all scrawny like a hard-tail,its ugly,do you wanna be a dude?”-“You have let yourself go I don’t want to be seen with a fat fuckin pig!”)

You see,I was a babe in the woods.Hard to believe after the red-lit street savvy life I have lead I know but I had no idea the depth of what I was dealing with.The effects of the long term so to speak.The man I was marrying was embroiled in a relationship that had spanned a lifetime that no one could tear asunder.Not with all the love in the world.The pain lingers still.Looking back,I can see how hard he tried to keep the worst of it from ruining us but the force was just too great…

And in time I lost my mind.

I got smaller and smaller because no matter what I did it was wrong. I gave my beloved a series of photos that I had done when we first started dating.Sexy moody black and whites taken by my best friend.I was super proud of them and at that point he thought I was pretty hot shit and I think he appreciated the gesture and liked them too.We had one up on the wall in our tiny moss green bathroom in Hollywood and it made me smile every time I needed to use the crapper.

Many months later he asked me who I was fucking while I took the shots as I had done all my make up super sexy and messy.Accused me of being drunk and high in them.Of fucking the photographer.Accused me of doing porn (??!!@!#$?) Absolute and complete insanity.Fans would approach me all happy and I would be cringing inside knowing that I would get chewed out endlessly for it  later ( “When did you fuck him/her you fucking cunt?!” ) all the way home.If I went to the bathroom at a show it was because I was fucking someone, naturally.I was constantly dehydrated because I didn’t want to have to use the rest room.It just wasn’t worth it. I wish that I was kidding here.I was  drastically underweight  because I stopped eating.You don’t eat? You don’t shit… I used to dread people,anyone at all, being nice to me because I knew that I would get bawled out for it . I used to pray for a car crash to take me out.

I would fantasize about our jeep getting hit on the passage side and me dying on impact.Lovingly, in slow motion.It helped….

Smaller and smaller…..

And through it all I believed with everything I had that it would get better.That all would come right and that I,that we would get our happily ever after.I know somewhere deep inside he wanted the same thing.I have to believe that for my own fragile mental state.

It didn’t get better.I lost everything and left…..

Miss Ash came to me by the way of Miss Emma,she of the vermillion lips and effortless grace. Miss Ash is a gifted photographer.An absolute valentine of a girl.Would I like to make some pictures? And in my dark mind I hear his voice….

(youfuckinguglydykebitchslutcuntwhorehardtailhookerfuckedoutlesbiandumbbitch)

When you are broken you tend to,well I tend to dare myself into new situations.I have modeled almost my whole like in one way or another and while it wasn’t out and out modeling work,per say, being in a band and on tour usually found me in front of a camera one way or another and I enjoyed it.It was kind of cool knowing that I photographed well even if I was no great shakes in the flesh,a sweet karmic pay back for years of torture for looking so weird,for being put through hell.Proof is out there that I am good at it too….so I told her,all cocky and such, that I would shoot with her,went to the toilet and was promptly violently ill and then,you are going to love this, proceeded to put her off for the last seven months.

Seven months.

(im too fat,i have to get my teeth finished,im not ready,im too busy,i have to get my hair done…)

Understanding is an understatement of Grand Canyon proportions. But round Xmas she  got sick of my epic procrastinating , rightfully so and locked me in and Friday was the day.Off I trundled to the train station with my matching set of hot pink Hello Kitty luggage that Raquel and Cookie gave me for my long ago birthday in the summer of stars when we would all call each other “Wife”and were as thick as thieves, stuffed with tight black things,abundant war paint and ridiculous shoes.Alighting at Newtown I jumped into a cap driven by a hatchet faced Somalian Muslim fundamentalist with a broken GPS and an utterly disgraceful attitude.After a brisk brush with death when he decided to go the wrong way down a one way street I jumped out thankful for my life and called Miss Ash from outside The Red Rattler bar where fat posers rolled out into the remaining daylight.

Miss Ash popped out of a lane way on studded boots that would have given Gene Simmons a boner and lead me to my fate.

Reese and Miss Kate were at the studio along with a selection of some of the 80’s finest metal although why Pretty Boy Floyd felt the need to cover Motley Crue’s evergreen “Girls,Girls,Girls” will always baffle me.Onward.Let’s get started. My stomach churning.A quick puke and into the pool of unforgiving white light I went.

And the sad thing? None of the shit that I got over the span of my loud life ever really got me that bad.Sure,at times it laid me low but I pulled up you know? Fools are always going to talk a raft of shit so you live with it although at times I have wanted to reenact the last scene of “Jay and Silent Bob strike back” I got by you know? Idiots on the net and so on,I mean,give a fuck? Faceless haters? Really? Exactly…..But when the one who asks your mother for your hand in marriage,puts a ring on it and vows to take care of you till death do you part and you,you great pillock,chose to believe it only to have him,you heart,your other half completely destroy your sense of self worth? Devastating on every conceivable level.

So we shot.And then we shot some more and Miss Kate and Miss Ash were making the right noises while I tried valiantly not to be broken.While I tried to block out the loops of his voice spewing hate in my mind and on the night went….

I found myself tired and melancholic close to midnight on the train heading home.I wasn’t quite sure what it was that had achieved but I knew that it was something.And that like my adored Sgt Elias’s sterling theory on feeling good was more than good enough.

Fast forward a week and I am in bed clad in a sweaty James Dean tee shirt with a heinous  fever and ferocious flu kicking five shades of unholy shit out of my pain wracked frame .While miserably wondering whether I will be able to work on Saturday night without expiring on the red ropes my phone pings.A message from Miss Ash.

“Check your email! xxxx”

And a photograph.

I just cried and cried.Sobbed so hard it shook me.Then Miss Emma called me after she saw it and I just kept on crying.

It was me,a picture of me.And it was amazing.I don’t know how I can feel so sad and broken on the inside and look like that.A testament to Miss Ash and Miss Kate’s formidable talents no doubt.

I have been staring at it on and off all night.I can’t help it.Its not vanity,its a visual validation that I needed more badly that I knew gauging by my reaction.It shows that I am not all the insults that were thrown at  me day after day.It is proof.

Hourly,daily,I feel like roadkill in light of the physiological torture that I went through.If I am not hiding out from the world,I am punishing my body because that thin reedy speed stretched voice inside sneers “If you were beautiful it would have worked out,you failed you failedyoufailedyoufail…” But this picture? It was me.

And you know what? It is beautiful. And do you know what else? He lost. LOST.He lost me and all the good shit that comes in the package deal that I am. I know that I am gonna fight the bad shit and doubt for-fucking-ever but tonight? As snot soaked and ill as I am ?

I have won.

And the prize was me.

As a comment beneath it once the girls had posted it onto their Face-book page read.

“Damn!”

Indeed.

Closure

Pigs ass. Closure indeed!

What am I ? A door? A factory fucking outlet on its last legs?? (Wouldn’t mind if it was for shoes) A play that didn’t make Broadway?

Fuck off.Fuck off.Fuck right off.

I blame reality TV. Now there’s an oxymoron for the ages.Reality TV.(??&^$^#&#!!!!)  Due to this pap I can hardly tell the hookers from the civilian girls come Saturday night as I work the door except that the hookers are more modestly dressed,better spoken and can walk in high heels without looking like a drunk Clydesdale that’s  been hitting the glass dick while these Kardashian/Snooki hybrids leave naught but a nauseating trail of vodka and red bull vomit,chlamydia and fake tan. At least the whores are getting  paid. The hail damage dripping down the back of their thighs seers into my retinas and nauseates me.Nothing is just a”Thing to do” or a “Chore” or “A class to take at night school” any more.

Oh nooooo.Its a “Journey” people.Fucking ding-a-lings and their “Journey”. What the fuck?

Listen up.Since when is you getting off drugs or losing your post baby weight  a motherfucking televised “Journey?” In my book ,both of the latter are usually A)- Court ordered in lieu of incarceration and B)-A diet you fucking glutton.

And once their gotta-loose-weight-get-laid-by-a-has-been-rock-star-become-an-idol (Slight digression here. Um ,hello whopping-great-big-waste-of-money-Catholic education? “Thou shall not worship graven idols.” )

Thou shall worship Elvis Presley,Dee Dee Ramone,Henry Rollins,Geezer Butler and Marc Bolan.Thou shall weep at the Majesty of The Stooges and The Allman Brothers epic twenty three minute version of “Whipping post”recorded live at The Fillmore.Thou shall jump one ones bed to Blue Oyster Cult and Grand Funk Railway.Ok, so the last few were mine but you dig where I am coming from…

WELL!

That’s when these fucktarded load stains get their….. (wait for it waiiiiittt for it,not till you see the whites of their eyes boys…steady now lads….steady..)

“Closure”

Aw.How fucking peachy keen.Could you just pass me that bucket,must have been something I,I,ohhh …blughhhhhhhhhhhhh!*hick!* Oh God! I’m so sorry,wait,let me get a cloth….

Closure.Pft. Even as a theory its gossamer thin and so far beyond moot its a doddle.So you close it.Wee! You will graduate to crayons and wiping your own ass before you know it.Bully for you home-school.Oh and dude?  Mcdonalds called. They want their uniform back….

Examples? I was hoping you would ask….

Let’s say you shut your shitty childhood down,bury it in a shallow grave and coat it in quick lime under the cover of darkness.Done right? Um? Duh people.Haven’t you seen “Pet cemetery”( Ramones do the title song,at Steven Kings request no less,win!).”Night of the living dead?”  You ignorant fools. It will rise again and your looking at an 89% chance you are gonna louse up your own offspring (Source-“Please don’t breed” An in-depth study of stupid people who insist on having Children.By Dr Michele Madden PH(ot)D(amn)) and here we go again.

On fat? You are still you lard ass and once the cameras stop and you don’t have a personal trainer barking at your flabby self like a protein shake freebasing ,steroid abusing officer at Colditz? Its a no brainer so you wont have any trouble with the outcome….You will go back to inhaling ice cream,mainlining soda all the while gorging on Swedish animal pornography on the Internet because you are so gross yet again that you couldn’t get a fuck with a shotgun a point blank range let alone a fist full of fifty’s in Tijuana. Even if you stay thin? You are still going to have the personality of a shaken spider monkey on crack cocaine so who cares?

Next.

One American idol has sustained a career in 12 years.One.Well one that I can recall so that’s what I am going with…The first one,you know,whats-her-name,the chubby one that jumps up and down alot  in her the choruses? Yeah,well her. Why only one?  Because it was a new thing and good luck to her binge eating 3 octave introspective self. Its over kids. And  while I am on the subject, Steve Tyler was Rock and Roll’s dirty Sargent at arms and I demand that the civilians return him at once.J-lo couldn’t name a song off” Rocks”or “Toys in the attic”  if you held a knife to her .

Nice ass though.

Its disgraceful really.

Where was I?….

Closure.Life is always in stasis.The film keeps on rolling. You roll up to the set like a king thinking that your in the lead role,the star, only to get told,by the assistant director no less, that you are an understudy. In the chariot race scene.(Just don’t forget to take off your wrist watch.) Suck it up and shut the hell up. Everyone is in their own movie,don’t you get it?  And some times our parts in each others dramas is not as big as we would like or were lead to believe they would be.Read the contract,get a good lawyer and don’t be surprised if you end up on the cutting room floor.

Such is the depth of personal emotional ties.Shallow,deep…sometimes it don’t float.

Listen up while I expose what a juvenile wreck I am yet again…deep breath….

There are kids from high school that I still want to slowly torture,murder and then leave their bovine  heads impaled on poles in their twee Asian inspired suburban front yards complete with dinky water-features  for their kids to find in the morning ( “Mommy? MOMMY!!!!!!…..) on their way out the door to school.And you know what? You can bet your sweet more-mature-than-mine-ass that they don’t even remember who I am let alone what dire deeds they perpetrated on my  tortured teen-aged self  to plant the seed twenty years ago that has grown into a redwood of seething resentment.

Same goes for lost lovers,friends and family.Its a drift,time is a tide.People just fade away.You have faded away too.And it can and does leave your heart sacred and damaged in a million and one sadistic and sad ways.But that,dear Watson, is the whole fucking point.That,old buddy,old pal is life handing you your ass and letting you know the score.The Sa’ird said in the 12th century.”God will not look for medals,he will look for scars.’

Some times your on top. Sometimes its on top of you.Just remember to roll a rubber onto your emotional retardation,shut your eyes and think of England….

But there is no closure,not really.Only death.So get on with it or don’t ,just quit with the “Closure” and “Journey” claptrap before I come over there and slap the stupid off you with a tire iron..

Even if I could give it,this peace that they desire so badly, I wouldn’t and let me tell you why.For starters,I doubt that I am benevolent enough,in fact I know that I am not ,to provide it,such as it is.Its scab picking.(Ew!!! Leave it alone dirt-hole! )At least don’t do it in public!!! If you don’t learn from history and experience you are doomed to repeat it and if that is your angle? You are on your own.

To whit…

Look at you now,you are finally back on your exceedingly well shod but somewhat unstable feet,shaky but up,when some half wit comes screaming, fuel injected out of your not so recent past and buggers you up all over again “Because” they screech, full of demands and shit while waving self-help books and reality DVDs around alarmingly” I can’t think for myself and I need (yup,you guessed it…) “closure”  This when you should demonstrate the meaning of the word by shooting them point blank with the trusty flare gun that you keep by the front door (The cops ask less questions…)  or alternately slamming the door in their face,driving the deadbolt home and calling the the gang-bangers three blocks over that owe you for that pound of weed to take care of it.

You know that I err on the side of the first choice.

It just brings up all the old shit.Gimme the option of new shit any day,keeps me young,angry and close to the ground.I prefer to be a little more mid 70’s Charles Bronson about it.Get my Steve Mc Queen on if I absolutely must.Its all drama and I am not buying in.I have so many other things that I want to do.Too many books that I have not read,runs I have not taken,songs I have not written.Sir Henry Rollins once barked “There is no such thing as spare time” and I agree. Drama is fuck all but small people making a big noise to make themselves feel significant in the wake of emotion upheaval , lives full of shitty compromises and bad choices. In the end we have no one to blame for ourselves but ourselves.If you need a petrol tanker full of sugar to make that medicine go down so be it.I am tired of ass-clowns that think their trifling existence is a soft focus hallmark movie of the week complete with a tight resolution at the end.They should wish..I ain’t buying what your selling.

Not my problem now get the hell off my property.

We are all guilty.Me too. I am not perfect,nowhere near it but I think that you owe the people around you a duty of care to protect them from the worst of you.It’s the polite thing to do.Christ! You know the deal “Point the finger and you are pointing three back at yourself”  and so on and so forth.Deal with yourself by yourself.(Honk,honk,honk.) There are things that I will probably wonder about to my grave but that is all that I am going to do with it.Wonder.Because in the end that is all that its good for.Its rude on top of all of that,rude to force yourself onto other people with such demands.(fix me,feed me,fuck me,foster me,finalize me..) Emotional assault.

There should be a fine and community service attached to such action.Its criminal behavior of the worst degenerate degree.

I hate bad manners.Fancy pulling that kind of shit on someone.What in the world gives you the right? You ever think about them apples genius? Didn’t think so. Jesus,if they meant anything at all to you when it was good ,respect the memory once you get over wanting to plant explosives under their car and detonate it when they turn the key all the while watching from a tasty well chosen vantage point across the street,one hand down your pants,the smell of gasoline a sensory sensual bouquet..huh?..what?…well,yeah,,blah,memories and so on respect them and leave them the fuck alone. Even if they give you reasons and answers its not going to fix a goddamn thing.

Take it from a fool who tried…Guilty your honor.

And then go and watch “The Unforgiven” with Clint Eastwood and remind yourselves that you are divine.Because you are my little turtle doves.You have class.

Which is more than I can say about all the need mongers attempting to use my fiery self as some kind of heavily tattooed bad tempered catalyst to reach their emotion nadir, their reprehensible redemption..

Piss off.

Shameless I tell you.And not the foxy kind when you wake up in a hotel room in Amsterdam with nothing on but your boots and a dishonest sweat,inexplicable fingertip bruises in hard to reach locations on your person and a police baton wedged under your ass.

I should give seminars in “Need wrangling 101” .Teach from the hip like a pearl handled .44.Help others learn from my mistakes.Pft! Like that’s gonna happen.Um hello? I have to go to band practice.

You know why I chose not to love? Because I am rotten at it.( “C minus Madden.Disgraceful.See me after class.) Proof is in the pudding as they say and my last one, the final fiasco was an utter shit-fight.Problem being that I give myself away totally.Its the emotional equivalent  of pharmaceutical grade morphine and a massive lottery win to me. Fatal .I figure that love, much like everything else, is a learned behavior and you mimic what you see along with what is  what is woven through your DNA .Now,lets just say your cowboy daddy had a hard time not fucking anything on the PTA with a hole and a heartbeat mixed with the fact that you were denied since conception,well?  I would hazard a rough guess that your impulses are going to be just a touch haywire.

So,me as an infant. “Dig if you will a picture” as my favorite midget from Minneapolis would croon so sweet and dirty….I am like one of those kids out of “Village of the dammed” A child of the corn,I mean,I was cold. I have much photographic proof. They say that you are given away.You give someone a gift or a smack in the chops.This is not giving. This is disposal.If you get thrown away it sets the bar.Learned behavior.I have spent my whole life throwing myself away over and over again.On stage all over the world,to the wrong people,to red neon and a million midnights.Trying to win over people who didn’t want me till my heart finally turned to ice.I have eaten ten tonnes of shit with a silver spoon and smiled because in the deepest darkest depths of my DNA it was deemed so.

It was cellular,imprinted into  my very blood.Punched into my plasma.It is what I am.

So anyone coming in to the game at this point thinking that they are going to solve something? For me or them? Shit out of luck.The most beguiling mysteries are the unsolved ones.I am the Marie Celeste of punk rock.

I receive no honest attention from honorable suitors (my wife jest doesn’t understand me) and I would not know what to do with it if I did.(can we just hold hands? is that cool? ) I harbor illicit crushes on men that are half horny and half terrified at the mere thought of me ,that is, if they even know that I am alive.(baby i couldnthandle you) If I told you how little fucking and true affection had taken place in my tenure on the planet you would split your sides laughing at me.Being the beat-up-from-the-feet-up head-shy dog  I am,I am an easy mark for self hating predators if I don’t watch my back…and my front..and all in between.And my dumb ass? I give ’em the works see because I think if someone is as rotten and forgotten as me ? Well then! We will cancel each other out and love will save the day.Right? Right??!!

Ha.Ha.Ha.

HA!HA! FUCKING HA!

So I live with my mistakes I just wish that they would pitch in with the rent.Your co-star is just that,a supporting cast member and don’t you forget it Norma Desmond.You sanity,heart,logic,The great pumpkin,the ghost of Christmas past,I don’t fucking know, whatever it is,well,it changed channel and more often than not it flicked that switch on the remote of existence to actually save your sorry life.Keep that in mind when you wanna be a contestant on “The blame game” .Write that on your mirror in fast congealing murky bodily fluids when you think about going back to a situation or person that will kill you if not figuratively,literally.

Now you have two choices.This supposed “closure” thing (yawn) which will lead to years of that oh-so-tasty wound that you are carting around on your shattered psyche being open and infected with no forthcoming answers, just a well paid shrink and another couple of trillion bucks to Glaxo-Klein for proving happy pills to the unwashed rabble who should have,and this is just a suggestion, tried a hand to hand combat class,became a mercenary for some junta or joined the gym instead .Or you scar up like a Masai warrior and get back in the field.I am a grunt.I need the field and it needs gung-ho motherfuckers like me.It all answers itself in the end anyway.Some shit is automatically closed.Sometimes for you sometimes for them.Its the luck of the draw.

Lock and Load.

Essentially you are always gonna be you and that involves leaning lessons but more often than not making the same mistakes again.So what? Fuck it.Don’t look to someone else to have the answers that you believe are going to suture your emotional hemorrhage weather they caused it or not.Man up for Christs sake! Bob Dylan may have sung ,and beautifully in his own nasal way may I add,that you gotta serve some one but honey? I got to tell you, my emotional waitressing days are through.Those white shoes were doing nada for my sex appeal and the tips were lousy.In closing  Your Honor,I would like to quote another great troubadour, Mr Johnny Paycheck,who so succinctly and tunefully trilled “You can take this job and shove it”

The counsel rests.

Survival of the fittest.I will not bang on about Darwin here but you know where I stand….Make mistakes.Make ’em wearing fierce shoes, hot heavy perfume that leaves a trail of guilty hard-on’s and headaches in it slinky wake and with great slow motion swishy Farrah Fawcett  hair.Make ’em loudly ,strung with abundant bunting,fireworks and red velvet cake for afters.Own them and even more importantly own up to them you heathen little minxes,you burly wild-men,you! Toughen up.It’s hot option and nerves speed up your metabolism so its a win-win situation.Teach yourself.I have found that there is a whole mess of satisfaction in working shit out on your own.Usually harder and takes twice as long but not only are you the star of your own film you wrote the script as well.You are the Woody Allen of the internal cinema of life.

Now just avoid shagging and then marrying your adopted daughter and all shall remain on the up and up….

Well done dark horse,well done.See you at Sundance.

No one can take credit for the re-emergence of you if you do it right.People help and may Elvis bless their kind selfless souls for doing so.Real friends are as rare as non pedophile preachers and should be treasured above all things, but if you go for this closure horseshit? Its handing over the keys to the castle to the one who stormed your battlements and dessicated your internal army  in the 1st place. Moron.I should lock you in the tower for self treason.You get back up? They will take all the kudos and curtain calls for your remarkable recovery and your scars will not longer belong to you,in  fact,no scars for you,you big twit, just open wounds…

Dig the Wagner-esque ring cycle thingy I have got going here?

Pretty slick huh?

Any way ,scars are the business.I should know,I am fucking covered. Leave it open,your life.You will miss out on much random,hectic and amazing shit if you dont and that is a stone cold fact but be smart and guarded,post an armed centurion (Love a man in a leather skirt with good thighs…just sayin’…) or two by the doors to your chamber while you sleep.Be smart and stay gold Pony boy.

Because you never know when you are gonna meet someone who is gonna want to kiss your keloids and baby? If the thought of that alone  ain’t worth the price of admission to life?

I don’t know what is.

Read.

I got a compliment.

Being that it was four in the morning and I was as done with shit as you can get without having a hand gun and a fast getaway car, I didn’t know how seriously to take the aforementioned and unexpected but the sick and sorry need in me that I chase through my endless dark corridors daily with a machete,that I hunt to exterminate with extreme prejudice,did its spastic Hello Kitty- dancing- with -unicorns -and gummi -bears ( “Lallalala!” ) thing while I attempted to remain outwardly stoic.

How was I not going to have a cunt of a night? If you can tell me then we will both know even if it is in retrospect. I got chewed out for my superior skills on the door and then had to suffer through the fact that it was a “90’s” party.My misspent wasted youth is now retro? Pass me that knife if you would be so kind, mucho obliged ….Resigned to my fat addled fate and poor as a church mouse (*) I dug out my favorite paint stained Metallica tee-shirt (Early Pus-head art fucking owns it.) ,wore way too much eyeliner,tied a flannelette shirt around my portly mid-section and sucked it all up.

(*)Which has never really made much sense when you think about how Rome has been raping the gullible peons  for eons, lifetimes,I mean,even the rodents would be high on the hog in Vatican city right? Right?…Hello? Operator?…..

What the hell am I doing here?

So there I am,done with work and sitting on my perch (“Oh,I’m sorry home-school,I am not fluent in “stupid” .Get the fuck out of my sight.”) at the end of the bar counting the minutes till I could bail to catch my train ,aching  feet relaxing into my junkie-shagging-ex-inamoratas road weary black converse,done with heels and fools for another week.Then ,out of nowhere and for no apparent reason,dude there up’s and tells me  ” You are a great writer Michele”. I know right?  Which means that I am getting read.

(Astounding.)

You should have seen the look on my bitter head. “In addition to being a great musician.” he shyly tacks on at the end.You could have knocked me down with a feather.

Well,maybe on Jupiter anyway.

If you could mike up an abortion sodomizing a hangover with a caulking gun you would have a pretty accurate  idea of the music that the plays in my club at that hour of the morning for the pill mangled masses. But as I bungled my way to the staff room to collect my assorted bags of notebooks,boots and crap I could have been cake-walking on marshmallow bunny butts to Chopin. It wasn’t even the compliments,not really.It wasn’t even that he said I was great or that he dug that I write how I talk but there mere sheer fact that someone reads this.That I am under the wheels sending out flares and someone reads this shit?

Dang.

“Its a turning point.” says Miss K  vehemently earlier tonight on the emotionally retarded,nicotine nailed hot-line from the humid jungles of the far north as her insane cat yells through the mesh screen at a rooster in the yard who is giving back as good as it gets .It better be a fucking turning point or else the jailers better start searching my filling for cyanide capsules.

Its all so ill defined and I don’t approve.

I may be a fuck up of the first and finest order,granted, but buried under all this ink, blubber and seething hatred and residing in the spot that my dead heart used to occupy, is a flawless diamond of analytical precision when it comes to my war. So this is fucking with my game plan and I am not amused.

So many things awakened in me over the last year that I have to hunt, to kill. Things that I didn’t want to deal with,that I washed my callused  hands of oh so long ago.(“Skirmishes! I’ll show them a fucking skirmish.Motherfuckers! This is bullshit.How long till my tanks get here? What do you mean you don’t fucking know? I don’t want to hear it! …..Well go and find the fuck out! “) The perimeter is quiet which heightens my sense of foreboding even more.(“Friendly fire? Friendly fuckin’ fire? I got yer friendly fire right-fuckin’-here!”) Correspondence has thankfully ceased on many fronts and if you could taste my relief it would melt on your tongue like Kobe beef or under-aged trim.

I had to call the Saint tonight and tell her that I cannot be the dog and pony show for a few weeks.That the condition of my condition is unappealing,offensive to the naked eye and that the stress of having to preform the universal lie for love is not in my script revision right now.Texts from friends and I don’t answer because if I cant explain this palaver to myself ? How in the hell am I going to explain it to anyone else.

The solipsist has dug in her trench and is activating radio silence.

Maybe Norman Mailer had it right.To exist outside and encourage the psychopath within.Not that mine ever really needs much encouragement.( For that last sentence? Picture- Illegal pit-bull fights,hardcore porn and a mounted machine gun armed by a 17 year old cowboy from Nowhere Ohio being  fired into the endless rice paddy’s below from the open door of a Huey. Soundtrack-“TV Eye” by The Stooges.Loud.) Not knowing what would help me,I hassled my favorite promoter and scored a show on March 7th at The Sandringham.That salubrious inner city shit hole filled with the human versions of  “All tomorrows parties”.(The song by Nico and The Velvet Underground not the poser strewn self congratulatory festival.) Got my brilliant big brother on the bill as well.Its the only time I get to catch up with him and Miss Nina so its a score.He has all his new songs to air out and I have the sacred seven that I am arduously plodding along with for the album that I want to do so much.

Hello Kitty is glaring at me with pure malevolence as I bang out this sturn und drang crap-fest.I know, I am projecting out of pure disgust yet again.Its one am now and I am only just coming to life.I am all kinds of wrong.I dream about running by the Los Angeles river,my blood hot and my aim true.( Remember how good it felt to fall in love,to play music together,to go to amazing shows )

That’s gone to the whores and the hounds in a barbwire hand-basket. And moi?  Well,I am the radioactive dust that remains.

(Ahh-CHOO!)

You know you are fat when you knees ache.Wish I was high like all my lost…….Ha,ha,ha.I kid,I kid! .I gotta hand it to those cunts though,credit where credit is due I say. For their lack of sanity,teeth,a future grounded in any kind of reality whatsoever  (“Oh my sides!stop!!STOP!!!You are freakin’ killin’ me here!!”) and not to mention sense they end up with the best physiques ,the immoral scum sucking fuck bags. My sweat used to burn like phosphorus. Now its condensation,opiate slow,collecting on the mass of me, forming lazy liquid allegiances for its dewy decent .

I forgive my bones in advance for giving up.(“Its ok,I know you tried,c’mon,no need for tears…”) My cheek bones swamped.My hips buried. My lines charcoal.My lines blurred.(in nomine padre,in spirituous in santos.amen)

And I can’t and more importantly wont apologise for what I am because it would be a lie.It is what it is,you don’t have to stick around and besides,the gun isn’t at your temple honey now is it? I have always had it locked steady on my own so there ain’t nothing holding you here.

On your way now….

The less I carry the faster I move and baby you ain’t never seen nobody leave as pretty as me.( Mmmm-MM! ) Can I just tell you that I am a four star masterpiece when it comes to going? You precious little baby! Ain’t you just the sweetest thang!

I was built and reared for nothing but.

But I always arrive back here.Back to myself.  Back to ground zero and day fucking one.My objectives are hard to define and I have a haunting suspicion some motherfucker has been riffling round though my footlocker and that kind of breach in my security makes me nervous about the mission that I am nervous about anyway.It keeps changing.The target is not clear.The machine is not ready but still I have to go….

This is the real deal because it is unsure ,unclean and real.Maybe I should burn the rules and LURP it out.Leave my dog-tags and addled alliances behind and try and prove myself to myself while I still have time.

Now that? That sounds like a plan.

Deal.

Its all relative correct?

I am making handshake deals in empty parking lots at three am with the monkey on my back who also just happens to be the chairman of my internal downward trajectory board .This is the flip-side of manic and far more tiring than the upswing.The upswing leads to thoughts of riotous immortality and so on.This? I find it hard to brush my teeth,breathing is obnoxious,a beating heart is tertiary at best.This exhausts all goodwill and possibility of movement.Its not like I don’t know the terrain.I made the map.I am the Bourke and Wills of bummed out baby.

Hand me that protractor! Step away from the pencils.I am getting down tonight!

But we made a deal see?.Sunday is day zero.The ape chewed slowly on his pound of flesh with huge yellow teeth,ropey strings of fat falling slowly onto the lapels of his Armani suit and I shook his hairy hand ill with anxiety.His diamond cuff-links winked and snickered obscenely in the dim light  from the trattoria that stayed open all night, fast with illegal card games and fenced goods . Dino’s timeless voice drunk and knowing from the Wurlitzer “Like a fella once said,ain’t that a kick in the head ” .He dropped my hand and made his way over to his idling Cadillac with a mean wall eyed orangutan smoking behind the wheel….

Those crumbs in my bed are from the cookie that has obviously crumbled.

I crave silence.All my words turn to mush and I am too salty to explain myself so I don’t.Met up with Ross for dinner at a broken sushi train in the city(a sign?) last night.It was good company and passable food.A decade since I threw him the party to end all parties.His boyfriend snorting crushed up Valium and falling through the window,Persian rugs on the lawn full of a plethora of perverts in fancy dress and me doing a  naked photo shoot in my room with a stoner friend of ambiguous sexuality and a great camera.I have to laugh.

We were fucking magnificent.

Its a wonder that I don’t have bed sores.My Proustian efforts go unread and unrewarded but that doesn’t stop me,no sir.The clicking of the keys soothe.Scratches my sinfully self indulgent itches.Down’s last album on the stereo floating my southern soul.No dispatches from the wanton west but that is to be expected.And today I don’t think that I really care.

One hundred and fifty three is the magic number.

Woke up muffled with codeine ,Hello kitty’s ass wedged in my sleep creased  face and empty Red bull tins under my nest of damask covered pillows.Feel like a life support system to my depressingly massive rack.I look like a cross between a shar-pei’s ass and Jabba the Hut from the ribs down.I flinch in the sunlight and think of my room as a luxury fortress that insulates me and my ever present anger from the lamentable masses.My actions so specific and sedentary right now.Going crazier by the hour and watching it befall me.

Till Sunday…..

I have the anchor of my door duties tomorrow complete with a fly by visit from Miss Emma.It will rouse me and force me to communicate.I guess this is a tenacious thread,I suppose that it is necessary and good.My main mission tonight will be to span my suburb nose burred in a book,secure Japaneses food that is ludicrously over priced and come back to the bunker to work on the seven songs that I have decided will constitute my album.

To keep burning all night long.

Tongue tied and trying to be the pale rider of suburbia can really grate on a cowgirl.The weeks slide by and I watch dispassionately.I wait for orders from my internal DMZ but the lines are filled with static or down completely.Do they want to push me over the edge? I make up briefs that defy the Geneva convention and my platoon look at me disbelievingly but march on my command.The jungle makes you crazy but then again its all relative right?

Sunday mama,enjoy the next 24 hours because this is the end of the line.You are getting off the boat…..

Alpha males send me signposts from beyond the grave,Elvis love ’em .Sam Peckinpah informs me that “Despair is the only unforgivable sin,and its always reaching for us” Reaching? Reaching?? Its chasing me down an endless hall way with a Crisco dipped fist.It sends me cum stained hate mail.I don’t know how I am staying so calm.I guess because I don’t have the energy to panic.I can hardly muster the necessary atoms to roll out of bed and take a leak.I am hording myself for far more fortuitous destinations or at least that is what I am telling myself.

I better get a vision soon though.Dreams- I was real estate hunting with Ryan Reynolds.(?????)

Ross asked me last night why I didn’t move to San Fransisco this time last year.”For the same reasons I didn’t move to Berlin with you” I sighed over a very average soft shell crab roll. I had nothing in me to bring forward .Emotionally sucked dry and weak with it.The thought of fronting a band this time last year was a godsend in ego stroking theory but even making it out the door of my asbestos riddled shack to get to therapy on time was a gold star worthy effort.How in the fuck was I going to get on a plane in that condition?

This truce will lead to good things.It will lead me back to the self that has been stagnant.I am letting the more dainty of my acquaintances drift because I know how abrasive I am on the changeover and I don’t wish to offend their frailer sensibilities. This is a fault that I have never manged to rectify and feel no real urgency towards doing so all in all. Bigger fish and so on and so forth.

Wonder if my i-phone ever turned up again.Heaps of personal pictures and videos.Living with junkies in Hollywood will clean you out every time though.There were sweet pictures of mine and my lost boys hands twined together with our matching tattoos.Shame.Would have liked to have seen those again. And to think that even last year even though we were seperated but talking all the time while he was on tour that I got even more ink commemorating what I thought could be healed and saved.( What he assured me we were working on and aiming to fix.To be together again.silly bunny! )

Victims want other victims or whipping boys.

Or trash.

I was thinking about the phone and the photos as I did an interview a few weeks ago and was asked about the ink that I have for my ex.A tattoo related publication so there you have it,not totally random. They inquired to if I would keep them or get them removed .”I am cool with mine,I guess ’cause I ment it” I replied “But I’m pretty sure his girl must get burned up over his.” The interviewer laughed and we moved on.I wonder if he will keep his or if his charming high strung piece of  primo high class ass (cough!) will nag him to cover it. Who can say?

The longer I watch the world do its thing the surer I become of certain behaviors .Mine and other peoples.Tiger ain’t never gonna change their stripes…

One hundred and fifty three. Seven songs. Sunday.

I pull myself up and slowly exhale as the Cadillac rolls out of the narrow lane and gets swallowed by the night.Pulling my .45 from the small of my back I flick the safety back on and re-holster it securely under my arm.I crack my neck and head home anxious to begin again.I whistle “That’s Amore.” and the dark swallows me whole…

Virgo.

Jezebel was a Virgo and a heart-breaker of the first and finest order. A g-string clad tattooed enigma.She was fucking spectacular as only a true California hybrid babe can be.

Once witnessed? Never forgotten.

Under the veil thrown by the tacky pink lights that drained the scant health out of all and sundry mixed with Hollywood Camel light scented fug I thought that it was a September sent sign.That it meant something mighty and all encompassing,you know,that I could share a star-sign with a goddess.(you tool…) I would sit ,snake eyes cut narrow,seeing all,ensconced in one of the booths and watch her royal late arrival that would split the room full of scumbags and perverts slack jawed in her presence like the red sea ,all the while scrawling endlessly in the note books that I had liberated from Von’s in my voluminous patched army pants.

I thought she was divine.She,they were all high.I hung with the muses and money makers.High above the dirt and married to the danger.

Mean with pills she would take hours in front of the temper cracked tinselled mirror in the crowded change-room to first find and then retrieve herself.Pulling herself back from the brink,coaxing herself forth with a slow,surprisingly gentle steady hand and an arsenal of stolen make up.Talismans and photos of the famous and felonious that she had caroused and consorted with adorned the chipped narrow bench before her,staked her claim and marked her turf.I would eavesdrop as she told tales of daily drugstore shoplifting for cans of airbrush tan,spray on glitter and other miscellany to gild the lilly,to pander to her perfection .Fagin,swooning with a hard-on, would have put her on a pedestal and laid obscene bouquets of hybrid roses at her tattooed toes.

Her  perpetual slow motion was hypnotic as the miles of mirror onyx hair that  ran down her tattooed back like oil to pool at the top of her perfect ass.I made notes on her limitless style and swore that I would appropriate it once these tumors were lanced from my head,once I was thin,once I knew who I was again.Me,the elephant girl surrounded by endless,seemingly effortless stoned beauty .I felt like I was paying penance for a sin that I could not remember committing.The girls smoked fragrant medicinal joints in the alleyway,the glowing cherries blinking bright on the drawback and mean low laughter the only sign of habitation in the dark.

I tried to look enigmatic and flirted myopically with the exit sigh above the door.I prayed for inclusion,for crumbs dropped from the table of  give-a-shit-hip.

She favored tiny kilts,hot with pins and studs and self customized tee shirts stretched to the limit over flawless implants.Endlessly re-tanning already dark limbs her nasty patient leather thigh high boots anchored the whole breathtaking package to podiums and sticky threadbare carpets, swaying in a pharmaceutical wind that only she could feel,smiling at something just over your head,( just beyond you),smelling of molten vanilla and vague promise.She was nice to me when she could remember who I was and why I was in her pill dotted periphery.

I didn’t know who I was or why the hell I was there but I couldn’t have imagined being anywhere else.

Her perfect porcelain teeth would flash like a camera of cool momentarily blinding me and off she would strut to the bar, better late than never to hold high court with Kat von D and the rest of the gang.I tied and knotted my ten tones of dreadlocks back away from my Polish bones into a high Mohawk secured with five thousand bobby pins and long lethal black lacquer and gaudy gold chopsticks.I pulled my shoulders back for even greater height despite  the extra weight clinging to my bitter bones .I dared people to look at the rotting deformities growing from my skull.I powdered my face to matte white like a Thai temple dancer and carved my cheeks and eyes hot pink.Sin nodded her subtle approval at my tentative transformations fresh from the frozen Calgary tundras into full fledged Hollywood trash.I began to starve.I took voluminous pages of notes with a pen and photographs with my mind.I started gleaming smarts and courage from the tender tough girls surrounding me .I hardly said a word and soaked up the scum like a human sponge,distilled it at my leisure taking only what could be of use and poured the rest down the rust spotted drain.We all took aliases and rewrote our stories that culminated in the cunt tinging defeat of our unsatisfactory small town selves.

By the aquarium green light in the pit and the good graces of the night I survived.Thriving would come much much later and even then be taken away at a moments notice. But by then I had hidden reserves.By then I was cunning.By then I had mastered the game.

She came from money like so many of them did,more that I would have believed really,she didn’t need to hustle and hated herself on deep,unreachable levels as we all did.But they all made it look so damn good in tiny scraps of lycra and nosebleed heels .I was a novice.They were the gold standard .Xanax made her confide in me and I treasured being her willingly captive audience.She told me of her beloved horses and plastic surgery.Showed me photographs of hanging in Las Vegas with Marshall Mathers.(“This is when I was doing porn,this one is me and Mr Cartoon doing my back,this is my stallion,this is…”) Her tattooed hands gave me visual aspirations and larcenous dreams.I wanted to be that cool,I would have traded a digit for the privilege and the pleasure to breathe the same rarefied air forever.One slow night as the local Loco’s played a bored game of endless pool on the crooked table and Lyric strode the main stage,leggy and mock stern in horn rimmed glasses to “Hot for teacher” a voice called  from the front desk by the velvet hooded door.

“Michelle!” It barked. We both looked up at the same time,shocked and laughed ,our mutual cover blown.

I liked her.

Virgo girl.

A few lifetimes later I am in Memphis with the love of my life.The snow is heavy and the tour hard.He sleeps backstage,angry with me,angry with the world .Paranoia,frustration and a ragged sense of entitlement fighting it out for top place within him.I long to soothe him but only end up annoying with my affection. We will shatter before long but that is another story.I sit by the merch stand and wait for customers or death.Death comes first by way of Miss Bliss,the sad courier.A message from our past she tells me.My beloved now awake , loving me again,coming back to life and mixing with his fans on the floor, comes over and kisses me distractedly as I open the message.Distressed and blank I leave my post without a word,the email open on my i-phone and walk out into the snow without my jacket or a sane thought in my raven haired head.

The flakes swarm an ice nimbus around the sickly yellow street light in the parking lot and I hear the door creak open behind me as I shiver with shock and cold.His strong arms wrap around me from behind and it is moments like this that I know why I love him through it all. “I’m so sorry Bunny” he breathes into the side of my neck warming the skin.I cry and cry in the Tennessee night and sink back gratefully into his fleeting and fickle embrace.

I had kept in touch,kept tabs and watched the world that I had existed in in 2004,that was to shape so much of what I was yet to become, drift away.Sin Fisted still ruled and ran every club that she landed in feet first,contorting her limber way around poles and hearts all over the world.Nadja hung up her hot pink heels and left the Stargarden ,promptly holed up with a has been rock-star,his royalty checks and a massive meth habit that raped her once formidable looks and took her teeth in the bargain ,Three went on to drum and tattoo another day clad in his Clash jacket ,his panting pug dog at his side.Sweet petite Kat Von D got famous,Lemmy was still Lemmy and would outlast us all.Trixie who had danced nightly to “Gimme Shelter” and therefore staked a claim in my hard heart, left the game and became the artist she had dreamt of being,Anna Marie who had so kindly taken me to AA meetings and coffee shops locked,orange and shag carpet chocolate brown in the 1970’s ,kept writing and healing herself by the letter,Jezebel retired from the stage ,went to work for Kat and had a baby girl who I have no doubt will grow up as beautiful as the mama that she will never know.

One pill too many after a life time of much the same I thought. Miss Bliss telling me that she was gone.She never woke up.A montage of pictures of her so vital and alive flicking though my shocked mind kept me awake that night.Sin sent me a picture of the funeral.A massive bouquet by her solemn casket studded with tiny Hello Kitty’s.All of us hard assed hustler broads with knives down our boots and hand guns under our pillows to protect our hot-pink-forever-pre-teen hearts.More front than Macy’s.Fast mouths to match fast escapes.Three card monte and card tricks .All tight scars and scrubbed clean of the layers of warpaint from the night before,sleeping fitfully in anonymous Hollywood apartments, air conditioners doing overtime,inked arms clinging tightly to plush tear tarnished Hello Kitty toys through the desert hot dreary days and hunted in our dreams by demons.

Recharging to do it all over again at sundown.

Bueno tough exteriors to house bubble gum blowing corazons.

Go figure.

The most beautiful girls who have it all and bring it to break it on the Sunset Strip.Who polarize a room upon entry.The granite girls,the hell raising heroines that I emulated slavishly.Who inspired me to claim myself and throw it down on life like a winning hand.Who are never far from my thoughts nor from my gratitude.The trail blazers. Some survivors, thank god but undoubtedly some of the most damaged amalgamations of female flesh I have even known.The deliverers of dreams.The true gold dust women.They explode so briefly in the night sky inspiring sighs,songs,theft,boners and air brushed art on black velvet.The forever fearless.The broken butterflies.

Who live on in my music and my dreams.Ladies,I salute you.

Gone.

Memphis is three years past.Long bitter nights behind closed doors for an hours perfection on stage, the man I was going to marry now with another who shares little but his interest in total self annihilation.Two years since my exile and near death in the wake of.Eight years since Sin Fisted took me in and housed me on Romaine out of the kindness of her heart.Eight years since I sat at Crazy Girls in Hollywood night after night being the silent mascot and dogs body to the  girls who change the game.The rough diamonds set priceless in the wicked world.

And now? A lifetime later?

My cave,my bunker in the city at the end of time and meaning is jewel toned and tactile.Velvet,linen,fur.Alone and softy lit I barricade myself in with my memories and occasionally the weight of my failures,a punk rock Miss Havasham. And if I write no one ever really dies,so I do,I keep them alive on the page,brilliant and unforgotten.Unforgettable.Ah,Jezebel…I remember her heavy ink when it was still daring and shocking,her kindness rare and ever  treasured and I wonder where her body is interred.I need to take her pink roses on my return to the west ( is the best,get here and we’ll do the rest….).I need to tell the dust of her how much she affected and inspired a nobody from the wrong side of nowhere.

I told her you know,to her face.Mine red as a tomato as I did,grateful that she couldn’t tell in the dark,I mumbled and stuttered only to fade into static.Not my finest effort but I think she caught my drift..I could see that she didn’t believe me but she still smiled.Getting up slowly,finding perilous purchase on skyscraper heels she gripped my forearm and straightening up she playfully ruffled the top of my cockscomb of dreadlocks .I froze unaccustomed  to such kindness.Steve O lurched by and said hi. We both nodded in reply.She gave a small snapping yawn like a cat.Sin,filling the stage with her tiny lithe frame terrorized her faithful followers to Ministry as Miss Von D whooped like a cowboy with her cronies by the brass rail and made it rain.

“Mama,you are just too sweet” she said in that incongruous California girl drawl full of long lost orange groves,privilege,boredom and cigarettes smoked to the 3am filter and made her languid way to the main stage,her perfect body a toffee figure eight creating awe and havoc in its flawless wake.Truman sent me over a virgin bloody mary with a wave.I weakly raised my hand in return as the fat thighed waitress set it before me,the sad celery drooping over the edge of the glass like a hurricane hassled  palm tree.Something undefinable had just befallen me.As  I fiercely blinked back the tears shimmering across my bright Caribbean green contact lenses the world raised its weary glass to the night and rolled on and away.

I toasted it back,took a bite out of my beverage and sneezed as the Tabasco sauce found my sinus’s.

She paused by the dj booth as if collecting herself.I held my breath.She turned her feline head back to me and smiling dropped a fat lashed wink.

I grinned in reply.

Cool girls will change the game and shine a light every time.