Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

Fall and the cold is creeping in. The yellow nic stained walls of the place reminds me of the colour damaged photo's from the 70's with my father with his afro and beer in hand. I'm drawing in a ciggarette I'm smoking, whiskey throat is painful this morning.

I leave pulling on my plaid dickies work jacket. Putting a quarter down that an old Asian woman picks up with a tooth blackened smile--she shoots rays of ill wishes towards me, I'm sure it's do to large wound on my cheek. It makes it hard to smile mentally and physically. when I'm out I watch the train go by with a detached blank stare that scares me and the next thing I remember I'm walking the long bridge home. Finally thinking again after some black out for months into monotony. I touch me face and the cut is gone. I smile.

I stop at the end of the bridge and look out at the river. tHE WIND PICKS UP and i LOSE MY BREATH. I rap my jacket tighter. I curse myself for being where I am. I cough and phlegm falls to the ground I've not spoken to a soul I care about in years. My best conversations' are with cab drivers coming home from the strip club on 7th ave.

The strip club makes me sick. people throw loonies in to these poor girl's cunts. but I want to save them. I do not look down on them like they say, some of them at least. I do lines with them in the champagne room. I tell them my secrets. I've made them cry from the surges of feelings that a laconic analyst of ones life can do. I've been worn by micky the hairy loser that owns the places and gets laid cause he has money to stop talking to his girls. I agreed not to to not to make a scene.

Home is a carpeted room with beer cans along the sides of a childs bed. Clothing in a bag and a laptop on the dresser. bottles of jack deneils are stuck to the desk. Numerous notes stating "stop it there is no point" that I have written myself in delirium of morning afters. I drink a pint of jack daniels and wander. in the cold night down to the beer store and buy some beer. Then I go to an internet cafe'.People online are hassling me about my short stories again. I call them gay and stupid knowing that that will only spark more out rage and detailed rebuts outlining why I am an unacceptable person, let alone writer, but in reality they are jealous of my immaculate skill at shovelling dirt over the shit in the ground figuratively speaking...

The internet cafe' is owned by a family and they are weary of me with their ugly family features that are gag reflex inducing in their wretchedness. I am red nosed and crazy eyed and wild haired. I'm dripping snot form my nostrils.

"we close now sir." says the timid girl.

"sure... Er... sorry?"

"It's okay, just go." I take the beer that I was sneaking in the internet cafe' and the rest of the 8 pack . walk back home. On the way I remember visually some uncomfortable faces saying to me. "calm down. Just go..." I think it's the calm place near where I live, I've always wanted to cause a scene there...

I dream of my first love and the kiss by the chain link fence in a rock heap in falling gray dream lands barren of time. I feel that this time she won't leave and I'll convince her to stay and that I'm worth it. But she walks away and I wake up again in the void feeling cheated by my own mind. I have a splitting head ach. I feel sick.

Tom picks me up on his black 5100 truck with the tacky rubber material formed cab.

"looks like you had a ruff one." he says. his magnetic smile stacking my unwanted good old' boys personablities.

"that's right Tomy." I say glancing at myself in the review. "don't act like your surprised"

Tom looks at me concerned and then smiles "that a cum stain, bud?" Tom points his hairy Neanderthal finger at my crotch area, and sure enough there is a cum shot stain. I start to pick at it with my thumb nail--reminded of a scene from a movie about a famous writer--

"must me tazeeki sauce." Tom looks into the purple morning light.

"well she's gone did it again." I can never tell if he is really pissed.. "she asks me for sex at 3 in the morning..." this is aparnetly a hassel for tom.

"next time that happens tell her to come over to my place."

Tom looks at me. He is pissed. I'm his aprentance and he thinks this means that I have to have respect for every aspect of his life. "It's not right for you to say that." thank god we're ariving at the work site. I go to the dirt pile that I had started to transfer to another spot closer where tom wants the pile to be.

I sweat the booze out and tom brings me a coffe and a ciggaret a little later. He gets a call on his cell phone from his girl friend. he acts as if its a great chore.

Does he know how lucky he is?

Her eyes grab me and the music is provocative. as she dances for me, her hips, but my minds on her eyes they'ved sucked out my soul, they've completed my thoughts and made my life worth the failing.

I have a pint by my side. A mind thats heavy and yet used little and worth the same, I yearn for fame but afriad of failure, too scared to try. she does the splits and smiles, her neon bra and panties barely hold her in. I in a trance but feel more. Not Just Lust. It's in her eyes. In the eyes there are no lies. Scarface said that I think. Just as I feel that her eyes have seen my mine and believe in the same thing. right when I see she knows the music stops and is time to talk.

Her eyes are sad altough she smiles.

Editor's note wrote:try and keep your streams to your self

Dude, welcome home. As always, I enjoyed the read--in some ways related to it, in other ways departed from it. Drop the editors' notes. Share the streams. Where've you been? Good to have you back write where you belong.

And thanks for paragraphs and grammar/spelling checks. It enhances a lot.

hey geoff!

(woh, this computer is slower than a snail's ass, but it's worth the 3 minute wait after i press reply to say hi)

i'm with joel. So good to see you and your stuff, it's bukowski side of life, only geoff-ed. This english teacher is very happy to see how much the mechanics of your work has been addressed. ! Yay!

there's still a few here and theres that could be re-spelled, but they're only polishings to a majorly well written piece.

lots to love here - the flavour, the tone, the colour of grey and beer, the drawers of the desk, the cut that disappears. Excellent.

now i'll press submit and wait another 3 minutes to see if my computer understood - gotta get a new machine, here. ciao.

Damn and hell yeah!
This was a great read.

H

thank you--posted stuff on facebook--this is one, think I kind of freaked some friends out, I think. I wrote it in Jail. I was in jail for...

well, i was not there long, a month, scared the fuck out of me. Bukowski's always a compliment to be said I write like. HA ha how you like that phrase?

thanks for reading...

whats up with that anthology?

jail?
possession?
answer in any form, encrypted, or otherwise.

anthology is being worked on. Doreen is and has been searching for the totally right publisher. Check out "Announcements" for her thread about the book.

hope you're well.

And I second Judih: hope you're well and, again, awesome writing.

I was not drinking like that for a while. I just wrote about it was a while ago.

edited and reposted because of my vanity

I like the voice in this one Geoff

sounds kind of like me
except titty bars scare the hell out of me
I would never go there myself
and self destruction is so much easier for geezers
all I need is a couple of donuts.


remember if you meet buddha or kerouac on the road
kill him
Buk too while you are at it.



I edited this one because I wanted to explain what I meant about the voice. I hope I have not offended you.

a typo here I think

I've been worn by micky

I am sure that Tom's conversations with his girl friend are for your benefit to envy.
Something that dawned on me when I was in high school
some guys would not take pleasure in making love to a woman if the they could not brag about it later in the locker room.


Thanks for writing
I can relate to this story big time
I hope you never have the problems of a midlist author

keep on writing.
take care
not so bad being old
but I wish I was young too
sorry about the ramble
please take care and keep on writing.

unrelated ramble
I saw a wreck on the highway
the driver was killed
a computer came flying out of the car as it went end over end and smashed to pieces. I pulled over to try and help the driverbut nothing could be done
As I walked back to my truck I saw the hard drive from the computer laying in the road. . I picked it up and took it home.

I pluged it in and started reading the documents on it. It belonged to a writer. He was making big bucks. I read his letters and emails. The guy was miserable. He had just recieved two hundred and fifty thousand dollars advance on a screen play of his novel. But it was not enough. He had a NYC literary agent, but she was not doing a good job for him. He had a wife, but she was working at a menial job in a nursery because she enjoyed the work, he was not happy about that. He had a brother who was doing some work on the writer's vacation home but he was not doing a good enough job of it. Everything in the guys life was making him unhappy. But by god he was a famous writer.

I think "I would rather be thin than famous." (paraphrase of jk)
best wishes for succcess Geoff
I hope you become as famous as you want to be
I hope your writing brings you love and happiness
I am just a fan

I am crazy Geoff you know that
I don't know how much of your story was fact or fiction
I take it all to heart
I think you hear yourself pretty good
which I think is what it takes to be a writer.

I am done