_ VIII. SUDDENLY FIRE, NUDITY, BLOOD, AND ELECTROCUTING YOUR BALLS WITH A CAR BATTERY ARE ILLEGAL-- NOW I HAVE NO SHOW
Monday, November 30, 2009
11:49am
1 Old Milwaukee Tall Boy (Thank you, Ani Collier)
No smokes, no fire.
Maude’s Café
Rent due tomorrow-- have none.
r INTRUDES
You are reaching the truth, r says. It’s right on the tip of your tongue.
WHERE ARE THE FLIES? WHERE ARE THE FLIES? A cool breeze on a sunny day. I remember something my brother-in-law used to threaten me with. He would say, “I’ll dunk you under three times and only pull you up once.”
I don’t know who my mother is.
You are reaching the truth, r says. It’s right on the tip of your tongue.
Shut the fuck up. Will you SHUT THE FUCK UP?
I had a show once. I used to be somebody. It was called, The Tom Miller Show. The legendary Hardback Café-- untold years ago-- Gainesville, Florida’s only true-to-the-school punk club. If you went in there, something would bleed. At my show, ‘Danarchy’ would blow plumes of fire from his mouth directly into the crowd. It’s a wonder we didn’t burn the place down.
Once, I dosed the whole audience on mushroom tea and we watched, The Wizard of Oz to the music of Pink Floyd to see if the rumors were true; a bizarre synchronization, a cosmic melding revealing a number of startling coincidences between the music of Pink Floyd and the visuals of, The Wizard of Oz. The rumors were true. Well, at least they seemed so at the time on mushroom tea.
Then there was, ‘Treetop’, the yodeling man. He would shriek out these one-minute yodels that would split your skull. Sometimes, he brought with him his singing dog, a reasonably large yellow mutt of some kind who could hold notes and occasionally sing in pitch to whatever music annoyed him enough to sing in the first place. ‘Treetop’ sometimes brought a young boy to the show, a relative, who would relate his story of a brush with death during an alligator attack, and show off his scars. He wore a hemp necklace with a single giant alligator tooth strung on the end. The alligator, we were told, wasn’t man enough to win it. I think this kid was also on Oprah, or Jerry Springer.
I may have been the first performing artist in Gainesville to introduce drag queens into the punk rock community. In a way, drag queens are their own kind of punk; against the grain, sideshow freaks, rebels, men who are women in trouble, you know what I’m talking about... people.
Most of the punks were intimidated by the queens. There’s really nothing more dangerous than an angry drag queen.
I once held a naked press conference, Gainesville’s first, and so far, only. I also have the distinction of running up the largest bar tab in Gainesville’s history, $3,500 or something like that. I once painted pictures of the Chief of Police; Wayland Clifton dressed as his hero, Elvis Presley. I invited the Chief to attend a show for the unveiling. The press arrived. I had the painting guarded by two punks who had fairly notable arrest records for arson, resisting arrest with violence, and the like. They protected the painting from the crowd and kept the Chief at bay until the big reveal. It was a sold out house. Chief Clifton bought it for quite a good deal of money. Some say, he bought it to keep it from being seen. But I happen to know for a fact that he still has it hanging in his office.
At the Tom Miller Show, we featured poetry of all kinds. The Reverend Angeldust would host the poetry part and preach:
“All hail Jamba, the Great Dumpster Goddess. Praise be to Jamba! All good things cometh from the dumpster! Maybe if we were all naked, there wouldn’t be any wars.”
Sometimes, I would feature an odd bearded man wearing a snot mask and an adult diaper. Frog - The Amazing Mr. SLuG!”
4TH OF JULY AT THE HARDBACK CAFÉ
WARNING: Stay 10 or more feet away, do not hold in hand, point away from face. At the Hardback, they lit roman candles and aimed directly at your face. They threw M-80s at your feet. Multiple-stage pipe bombs indoors, crashing through the windows. I remember running through the crowd covering my eyes as explosions blew holes in my jeans. Oh say can you see - bombs bursting in air - it was our America - terror, laughing, and a lot of blood. 150 drunk punk rockers at playtime. It wasn’t a war and nobody died.
And I would read my dirty stories and poems, and play songs about sleeping with sheep, pets that die, a girl’s powerful vagina biting off a man’s ‘schlong’, 666 the number of the beast - fuck me with a nun, fuck me with a priest - love kitten:
be my love kitten
purr for me all night
be my love kitten pretty mama
purr for me all night
and if you’ll be my love kitten
I’ll be your pussy loving wife
And, one or two serious songs about love, life, and the nature of truth. But what is the nature of truth? Did any of this happen the way I wrote it? Or did it happen the way it was? Did it ever even happen? Maybe I made it all up.
r advised me just now not to write the next part. Sometimes, I don’t believe what r says. Sometimes, I think r uses reverse psychology. So I do the other thing instead.
I had a very good friend once who fell in love with a beautiful much younger girl. Coincidentally, she resembled his mother at the same age; almost a spitting image. He wined and dined her, wrote her the most beautiful poetry-- would sometimes shed tears when describing his love of her to me. I somehow didn’t believe there was an honest truth going on in this affair, but it was his life, not mine.
She never gave him any pussy, not a drop.
“This is a pure thing,” he would tell me. “Sex would just ruin it.”
He forgot about work, money, sometimes friends, it was just her. Just the pursuit of that magical soul-clenching wonderfully horrible powerful thing: love.
Somehow, it came to be that they were going to go to England for a one week romp at his expense. He bought the round-trip tickets. In England, he took her to the finest restaurants; they stayed in the finest hotel, shopped in the finest stores, he treated her like a queen. When it came time to finally end the journey and return, she told him the truth:
“I won’t be coming back with you. I am staying in England with my boyfriend.”
My friend came back home on the plane, alone.
She had known this boy for months, long before the journey to England. My friend hadn’t seen it coming because love is not blind, it blinds. She stayed in England for quite some time, teaching beginner’s Chess of all things. Eventually, she and her boyfriend broke up.
Meanwhile, my friend broke down, shattered, and wrote some of the best poetry he had ever written before his life came to a surprise end. I think, in hindsight, he would be amused how it happened. He was out on a bender and came home to relax in his favorite easy chair, a recliner he had sat in for many years, and the chair threw him into the wall and killed him.
He could have never, in his wildest imagination, not in scientific analysis or the unbounded field of poetry, imagined that he would die in this way: Murder!
The chair was in love with the girl. It was jealousy. That was the motive.
My friend, Kurt Lang once said, “Never play chess with Tic Tac Toe players.”
Anyway, it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It just happened the way it did.
Project r calls, “BULLSHIT! People make choices.”
I refer Project r to my friend, Don Traub, EHP (Explorer of Human Potential). Don Traub says this: Everyone should always be forgiven. You should unconditionally love everyone. The worst thing you can ever feel for anyone is pity. The reason why is because at any given moment, everyone is always doing the best that they possibly can. I believe this because the two things that are directly responsible for every decision anyone makes are completely out of their control:
1. The genetics they’re born with.
2. The environment they’re raised in.
That’s basically it.
Tom Miller: I forgive the chair.
Meanwhile, back at the Tom Miller Show, Lord and Master Krullen prepares to have his balls electrocuted with a car battery. “Jesus Christ! Is he really going to do it?” Lord Krullen is an S&M Master and my audience sits watching; partly wanting to leave and partly wishing to see what happens. Everybody slows down for a car accident.
His slave taps the jumper cables together and sparks fly violently away with sizzles and pops. The audience gasps. A few shout, “Go for it!” This mortifies the many.
“This is very dangerous,” Lord Krullen announces. “If I go into cardiac arrest, there is a trained EMT in the audience that will hopefully revive me!” Lord Krullen says this very theatrically. He is dressed in a black leather trench coat. The short version of his description is that he looks exactly what you might expect of Satan if Satan was real: Tall, imposing, wild-eyed, crafty, comic, seductive, and dangerous.
“Stand back!” Lord Krullen shouts. “Give me the juice!” He pulls out his rather ample balls and the slave puts both clamps to the sack. Lord Krullen writhes and flails in brutal spasms. “AGAIN!” he shouts. The slave obliges, but this time Lord Krullen suddenly slumps limp and drops to the floor.
“Holy shit! Call the EMT!”
A man runs forward and begins a robust CPR.
A hush falls on the crowd. The EMT pumps away, mouth-to-mouth, concerned slaves and mistresses surround the scene. Slowly, he comes to. Lord Krullen is alive. There are sighs of relief, then thunderous applause from the audience. “What a rush!” Lord Krullen says. Everyone buys a drink.
THE SECRET REVEALED:
One of the slaves pulls the clamp off one side of the battery while all eyes are on Lord Krullen; which, by the way, is not his real name. There is no electrical current running through the cables. It’s all an act. Staged. An Elmyr de Hory painting with a forged Picasso signature hanging in the Lourve. “Look at that grand Picasso!”
“Don’t paint an apple. Paint what the apple is thinking. That is art!” -- Picasso
It may not be an exact quote.
Thank you, Orson Welles.
I saw what you did, in my own way, and then I made it, mine.
But here’s the rub. My friend, Kent Brush (a.k.a. Lord Krullen,) really can, and does on occasion, electrocute his balls with a car battery. Why? He says, it’s fun for him. He is, after all, an S&M Master with his own slaves, mistresses, and even a dungeon. But how will you ever know the difference between when he’s really doing it and when he’s faking? Unless I’m lying. I am. Am I? Did he really? Do you know what love is? Love is electrocuting your balls with a car battery.
Project r: You’re getting it. You’re coming to an answer. Don’t stop. It’s right there on the tip of your tongue. Spit it out! Spit it out!
Maude’s Café
1 Old Milwaukee, another in waiting
Camel cigarette in mouth, burning
Another between fingers, burning
Dust in the ashtray
The wind takes it onward
2:17pm
Wacky Macky sits at an adjoining table, drinking Steel Reserve. Aren’t you dead? There is no one at the table.
Monday, November 30, 2009
11:49am
1 Old Milwaukee Tall Boy (Thank you, Ani Collier)
No smokes, no fire.
Maude’s Café
Rent due tomorrow-- have none.
r INTRUDES
You are reaching the truth, r says. It’s right on the tip of your tongue.
WHERE ARE THE FLIES? WHERE ARE THE FLIES? A cool breeze on a sunny day. I remember something my brother-in-law used to threaten me with. He would say, “I’ll dunk you under three times and only pull you up once.”
I don’t know who my mother is.
You are reaching the truth, r says. It’s right on the tip of your tongue.
Shut the fuck up. Will you SHUT THE FUCK UP?
I had a show once. I used to be somebody. It was called, The Tom Miller Show. The legendary Hardback Café-- untold years ago-- Gainesville, Florida’s only true-to-the-school punk club. If you went in there, something would bleed. At my show, ‘Danarchy’ would blow plumes of fire from his mouth directly into the crowd. It’s a wonder we didn’t burn the place down.
Once, I dosed the whole audience on mushroom tea and we watched, The Wizard of Oz to the music of Pink Floyd to see if the rumors were true; a bizarre synchronization, a cosmic melding revealing a number of startling coincidences between the music of Pink Floyd and the visuals of, The Wizard of Oz. The rumors were true. Well, at least they seemed so at the time on mushroom tea.
Then there was, ‘Treetop’, the yodeling man. He would shriek out these one-minute yodels that would split your skull. Sometimes, he brought with him his singing dog, a reasonably large yellow mutt of some kind who could hold notes and occasionally sing in pitch to whatever music annoyed him enough to sing in the first place. ‘Treetop’ sometimes brought a young boy to the show, a relative, who would relate his story of a brush with death during an alligator attack, and show off his scars. He wore a hemp necklace with a single giant alligator tooth strung on the end. The alligator, we were told, wasn’t man enough to win it. I think this kid was also on Oprah, or Jerry Springer.
I may have been the first performing artist in Gainesville to introduce drag queens into the punk rock community. In a way, drag queens are their own kind of punk; against the grain, sideshow freaks, rebels, men who are women in trouble, you know what I’m talking about... people.
Most of the punks were intimidated by the queens. There’s really nothing more dangerous than an angry drag queen.
I once held a naked press conference, Gainesville’s first, and so far, only. I also have the distinction of running up the largest bar tab in Gainesville’s history, $3,500 or something like that. I once painted pictures of the Chief of Police; Wayland Clifton dressed as his hero, Elvis Presley. I invited the Chief to attend a show for the unveiling. The press arrived. I had the painting guarded by two punks who had fairly notable arrest records for arson, resisting arrest with violence, and the like. They protected the painting from the crowd and kept the Chief at bay until the big reveal. It was a sold out house. Chief Clifton bought it for quite a good deal of money. Some say, he bought it to keep it from being seen. But I happen to know for a fact that he still has it hanging in his office.
At the Tom Miller Show, we featured poetry of all kinds. The Reverend Angeldust would host the poetry part and preach:
“All hail Jamba, the Great Dumpster Goddess. Praise be to Jamba! All good things cometh from the dumpster! Maybe if we were all naked, there wouldn’t be any wars.”
Sometimes, I would feature an odd bearded man wearing a snot mask and an adult diaper. Frog - The Amazing Mr. SLuG!”
4TH OF JULY AT THE HARDBACK CAFÉ
WARNING: Stay 10 or more feet away, do not hold in hand, point away from face. At the Hardback, they lit roman candles and aimed directly at your face. They threw M-80s at your feet. Multiple-stage pipe bombs indoors, crashing through the windows. I remember running through the crowd covering my eyes as explosions blew holes in my jeans. Oh say can you see - bombs bursting in air - it was our America - terror, laughing, and a lot of blood. 150 drunk punk rockers at playtime. It wasn’t a war and nobody died.
And I would read my dirty stories and poems, and play songs about sleeping with sheep, pets that die, a girl’s powerful vagina biting off a man’s ‘schlong’, 666 the number of the beast - fuck me with a nun, fuck me with a priest - love kitten:
be my love kitten
purr for me all night
be my love kitten pretty mama
purr for me all night
and if you’ll be my love kitten
I’ll be your pussy loving wife
And, one or two serious songs about love, life, and the nature of truth. But what is the nature of truth? Did any of this happen the way I wrote it? Or did it happen the way it was? Did it ever even happen? Maybe I made it all up.
r advised me just now not to write the next part. Sometimes, I don’t believe what r says. Sometimes, I think r uses reverse psychology. So I do the other thing instead.
I had a very good friend once who fell in love with a beautiful much younger girl. Coincidentally, she resembled his mother at the same age; almost a spitting image. He wined and dined her, wrote her the most beautiful poetry-- would sometimes shed tears when describing his love of her to me. I somehow didn’t believe there was an honest truth going on in this affair, but it was his life, not mine.
She never gave him any pussy, not a drop.
“This is a pure thing,” he would tell me. “Sex would just ruin it.”
He forgot about work, money, sometimes friends, it was just her. Just the pursuit of that magical soul-clenching wonderfully horrible powerful thing: love.
Somehow, it came to be that they were going to go to England for a one week romp at his expense. He bought the round-trip tickets. In England, he took her to the finest restaurants; they stayed in the finest hotel, shopped in the finest stores, he treated her like a queen. When it came time to finally end the journey and return, she told him the truth:
“I won’t be coming back with you. I am staying in England with my boyfriend.”
My friend came back home on the plane, alone.
She had known this boy for months, long before the journey to England. My friend hadn’t seen it coming because love is not blind, it blinds. She stayed in England for quite some time, teaching beginner’s Chess of all things. Eventually, she and her boyfriend broke up.
Meanwhile, my friend broke down, shattered, and wrote some of the best poetry he had ever written before his life came to a surprise end. I think, in hindsight, he would be amused how it happened. He was out on a bender and came home to relax in his favorite easy chair, a recliner he had sat in for many years, and the chair threw him into the wall and killed him.
He could have never, in his wildest imagination, not in scientific analysis or the unbounded field of poetry, imagined that he would die in this way: Murder!
The chair was in love with the girl. It was jealousy. That was the motive.
My friend, Kurt Lang once said, “Never play chess with Tic Tac Toe players.”
Anyway, it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It just happened the way it did.
Project r calls, “BULLSHIT! People make choices.”
I refer Project r to my friend, Don Traub, EHP (Explorer of Human Potential). Don Traub says this: Everyone should always be forgiven. You should unconditionally love everyone. The worst thing you can ever feel for anyone is pity. The reason why is because at any given moment, everyone is always doing the best that they possibly can. I believe this because the two things that are directly responsible for every decision anyone makes are completely out of their control:
1. The genetics they’re born with.
2. The environment they’re raised in.
That’s basically it.
Tom Miller: I forgive the chair.
Meanwhile, back at the Tom Miller Show, Lord and Master Krullen prepares to have his balls electrocuted with a car battery. “Jesus Christ! Is he really going to do it?” Lord Krullen is an S&M Master and my audience sits watching; partly wanting to leave and partly wishing to see what happens. Everybody slows down for a car accident.
His slave taps the jumper cables together and sparks fly violently away with sizzles and pops. The audience gasps. A few shout, “Go for it!” This mortifies the many.
“This is very dangerous,” Lord Krullen announces. “If I go into cardiac arrest, there is a trained EMT in the audience that will hopefully revive me!” Lord Krullen says this very theatrically. He is dressed in a black leather trench coat. The short version of his description is that he looks exactly what you might expect of Satan if Satan was real: Tall, imposing, wild-eyed, crafty, comic, seductive, and dangerous.
“Stand back!” Lord Krullen shouts. “Give me the juice!” He pulls out his rather ample balls and the slave puts both clamps to the sack. Lord Krullen writhes and flails in brutal spasms. “AGAIN!” he shouts. The slave obliges, but this time Lord Krullen suddenly slumps limp and drops to the floor.
“Holy shit! Call the EMT!”
A man runs forward and begins a robust CPR.
A hush falls on the crowd. The EMT pumps away, mouth-to-mouth, concerned slaves and mistresses surround the scene. Slowly, he comes to. Lord Krullen is alive. There are sighs of relief, then thunderous applause from the audience. “What a rush!” Lord Krullen says. Everyone buys a drink.
THE SECRET REVEALED:
One of the slaves pulls the clamp off one side of the battery while all eyes are on Lord Krullen; which, by the way, is not his real name. There is no electrical current running through the cables. It’s all an act. Staged. An Elmyr de Hory painting with a forged Picasso signature hanging in the Lourve. “Look at that grand Picasso!”
“Don’t paint an apple. Paint what the apple is thinking. That is art!” -- Picasso
It may not be an exact quote.
Thank you, Orson Welles.
I saw what you did, in my own way, and then I made it, mine.
But here’s the rub. My friend, Kent Brush (a.k.a. Lord Krullen,) really can, and does on occasion, electrocute his balls with a car battery. Why? He says, it’s fun for him. He is, after all, an S&M Master with his own slaves, mistresses, and even a dungeon. But how will you ever know the difference between when he’s really doing it and when he’s faking? Unless I’m lying. I am. Am I? Did he really? Do you know what love is? Love is electrocuting your balls with a car battery.
Project r: You’re getting it. You’re coming to an answer. Don’t stop. It’s right there on the tip of your tongue. Spit it out! Spit it out!
Maude’s Café
1 Old Milwaukee, another in waiting
Camel cigarette in mouth, burning
Another between fingers, burning
Dust in the ashtray
The wind takes it onward
2:17pm
Wacky Macky sits at an adjoining table, drinking Steel Reserve. Aren’t you dead? There is no one at the table.