Words: Disheveled Daily Prose:
Bakersfield blog by a Bakersfield writerThursday, February 24, 2005
Lords: Part One
I don't know how long this excerpt of chapter one in its entirety will be online. I've decided to defy the powers that be and upload a sneak peek so that you can see for yourselves before the book hits the shelves. We'll all see what my lawyer has to say about this!
Lords: Part One consists of thirty-seven chapters. It's fiction, based on research, interviews, newspaper articles, and so forth of a story that Robert Price of the Bakersfield Californian brought to our attention. He's the man who gets the true recognition for a job well done. My story is just a fictitious rendering of what is perhaps a much darker past. It's a benefit that I have history degrees and spent so much time in the history grad department at CSUB under good folks like John Arthur Maynard and Oliver Rink. They didn't teach me so much about novels, but about the past and how to constructand dig for it (even if I did twist such ideas to help fabricate narratives). Such skill helps me to construct a past that may seem real, but really, is it?And not to forget the ghost of Colonel Jack. One cannot forget his input into this manuscript. He is the mentor who will never be forgotten. I apologize beforeheand for the horrid formatting...
LORDS:PART ONE
By N.L. Belardes
The Coming of The Remittance Men—1889
In the rugged farmlands of the Southern San Joaquin Valley, the name Rosedale arises as a suitable town name to attract British colonizers. There are no roses in this area a few miles west of Bakersfield. It is a name meant only to glorify the supposed culture of a British Eden.
In response to colorful advertising efforts of the Kern County Land Company, England sends a colony of noble scions. It was to be a utopian paradise of water-filled, lush landscapes tended by fruit growers and jam-makers, with hopes of peaches, plums, grapes, apricots and jams and jellies aplenty.
Among the colonizers are a group of young noble-standing men harboring alternate lifestyles. They are the first Lords of the Southern Valley. Paid to leave England and stay away for fear of disgracing their own family names, they become known locally as ‘The Remittance Men’. They are the flamboyant, the scoundrels, the queers, the secret lovers of Rosedale and Bakersfield society. They have queer meetings, queer minstrel shows at jam factories where they sing ‘Little Tin Geegee’, and they entertain in extravagant fashion at the old Southern Hotel. They have queer birthday parties, and they drink and drink champagne and even pour their bubbly drinks down horses’ throats.
One young man arrives in Rosedale at age 17. He is frail and hopeless, but works as a vine planter, an irrigation-ditch digger, a cowpuncher and a California homesteader. He becomes an intellectual, a writer. He later wins the Nobel Peace Prize. He becomes a prominent white man of culture and wit, but never marries.
Rosedale has a distaste for farming. The jam factories close. There are floods and drought. The colony fails as the minstrels continue to sing. It was to be a Garden of Eden…
The White Orchid Society—1930s-1960s
Though the Remittance Men have faded away, the Lords of the Southern Valley have not. An area rich in agriculture and oil, Bakersfield has also become the ivy covered secret of Hollywood’s backyard. The flamboyant come to film dozens of movies in the nearby deserts and river valleys; they also come to hide, and to live in decadence along with some of the wealthy and prominent of California’s Southern heartland. In this society some have forged a secret, and in doing so, blossom in forbidden lusts and longings for young men. Now, instead of the young men being Lords by title, the young become the pawns of the White Orchids: a group of local businessmen, academics, journalists, and flamboyant Hollywoodsters, who in their lordly dance for decadence, terrorize the hearts of young boys.
The Lords of the Southern Valley—1977
The White Orchids of the Depression and War Years have gone. But new Lords have arisen…
1. As the movie twinkled towards its starry end, Karvac giggled. That spaceship for a moment hovered beneath its mother—her lights blinking—and the cacophonous booming of her extraterrestrial horns cast echoes across the constellations; and then it flew in an arc and straight up into her gargantuan Lite Brite cosmic underside. “Right up her ass!” Karvac snickered as he watched her straddle Devil’s Tower. He wondered how she could possibly rumble so surely over the American wastelands with all those little ships lit like fireflies and buzzing in semi-circles, zigzags, and spirals in her cavernous loins. Her unknown zoomship machinery had come home to Earth’s eroded man-filled lands only to blast away almost as soon as she arrived: to take home some of what was hers, along with the aliens who infested her. Those naked little children of the stars had exposed themselves only long enough to take a victim. And that lonesome parasite wasn’t even an astronaut, cosmonaut, or juggernaut with the bones of Krishna soaring into her guts. It wasn’t ‘meant to be’, or so it seemed, or was it? This astro-guy was some Joe who had just climbed his own perverted mountain. And now as a consequence of his alien-ship-burned skin, his face fragile and baby-like, and his passion for encounters of a certain kind—he had done it for humanity, he the lone star at the pinnacle of the UFO-obsessed, staring now at a sea of technology and broken hearts, because that damn alien mother wasn’t going to stay for supper at all, and then poof! her and that nearly-swarming egg sack all disappeared into the unknown, leaving the government to masturbate and ponder over immense cargo ships filled with data-tapes of the whole dreaded encounter.
Just afterwards Karvac pushed his own Joe, Joey Minstrel, to wish upon his own star. Minstrel thought about it, but was quiet as they made their way into another area of Hollywood where stars don’t glitter in the heavens, but are flattened suns, having fallen like crunchy maple leafs, dropped onto the Boulevard from a great tree of withered stars. Although neither one of them was over the age of thirteen, they both stooped like old men, bent over the five points of Cary Grant. “Who the hell is he?” Minstrel yelped.
“Don’t worry about that. These are the forgotten actors of Hollywood. That’s why they have stars on this street, so the bums, misfits and rejects can piss on ‘em.”
Minstrel thought about the movie they’d just seen. It had been playing in theatres for a few months now. He watched Karvac put his cigarette out on the name ‘Grant’ as if Karvac were right: that’s what those stars were for because stars fell out of the sky, or out of the Studios, never to make pictures again, but could have their names on sidewalk stars for people to wipe their feet on. “Have your own close encounter,” Karvac laughed. He guffawed the way he always did with his eyes squint nearly shut and his teeth bare. “Go sing to them the way the mothership does. You won’t even have to go find them. They’ll come to you.” They had walked out of the theatre, and now sauntered down the Boulevard arm-in-arm, eager for the long night ahead. It had already been a long day. They survived the movie only because of the steady supply of uppers Karvac always seemed to carry. They had popped them just as Dreyfus put his finishing touches on that monstrous sculpture jutting from his living room carpet, an enlightened moment for Karvac and Minstrel, a sculptured moment worthy of such young visionaries.
That was six hours ago. The only reason they actually sat watching the movie in the first place was for the score that never showed. The score, Karvac said, was a producer “so packed full of cash, you could see the rolled up tip of a dollar bill coming out his ass.” They both were gonna take him on. “Sometimes it’s better in pairs. You get more of a cash flow that way. We never get tired. And he keeps forking over cash like he’s got a big fat bottomless wallet. And then we got cash for whatever we want. And what I want is nothing really, because I can get what I want from anyone anyways. I can take a shower. I can take a shirt, a nice shirt even. I can eat some grub. I can sit and listen to the stereo. There’s always a few minutes afterwards for some of that. You know what I mean? Except when you’re somewhere that ain’t home.”
“Oh I know what you mean,” Minstrel said. He knew he was just learning the ropes. There was a lot more Karvac wanted to teach the young manhunter. He still had some popcorn left. It was in a bag shoved in his Jean’s pocket. He took the bag out and dumped the remains, the equivalent of about one fat handful into his mouth. “I can’t wait til I’m old enough to drive and get a license. Then I’ll be getting cars off these fuckers, and not just cash.”
“You think you need a license? You better wake up. You just have to look a little older and drive the speed limit. But look at you, you look like a goddam baby, and that’s what they like. Hey, Minstrel, you don’t even have to do that if you end up in the right town. They will take care of you. They can take care of anything you do. It’s a free world. Anything is free for you when you’re with the right ones.”
“Except the score.”
“There’s a price.”
“That’s fucked up.”
“Yeah?”
“It should all be free whether you wanna score or not.”
“You want too much.”
“I do not.”
“Yeah, you expect too much. This is only Hollywood. This ain’t the sheik palace of Arabia, you piece of shit.”
Out in the big blue Hollywood sky, this was the place where Karvac said Minstrel could meet everyone: Hollywood Blvd. and Sunset and Melrose; these are the streets on fire; streets killing everyone on them; streets picking boys like Karvac up and body slamming them in gutters as if they have arms to do that, as if they’re the ones that wrap you in quick alley fits to pump you full of their money, their junk and everything else running straight into your veins. Those streets with the scores on them. Minstrel had already met three between the hours of eight and ten. He thought he was getting better with every one. They’ll get you back behind the clubs—those hunched over buildings stuck on the rolling streets near Tower Records, in the limos passing along Vine, bisecting the great Hollywood vein; in the producer’s office overlooking the Studios; in his house, in his daughter’s bed; in front of his closest friends—all of them pouring wine over their ecstasy moment; even his friends over the big hill, where Minstrel didn’t really know he was about to take his next car ride into the fog-filled valley that has no Sunset Strips, no Santa Monica Boulevards, just a few parks where he can score, or a bus station where every heavenly one of Karvac’s Central Valley Bakersfield buddies light it up, hoping for the big man to come rolling in to a near empty room, just them sitting in it, and the big man cutting loose and whispering with his soft lusty gloom-filled tongue dripping in their ears, “Boys I don’t want no trouble. I just want you.” Over in the bus station downtown, it was often Karvac and the rest of the boys, all cozy and pretending they don’t know each other at any time of the day: at lunch hour, at 2am, at eight o’clock bus hour I-gotta-get-to-El Paso blues, “‘Cause we all want that same wad, that same stash,” Karvac says. So they all go. But not tonight. Tonight it’s Minstrel’s night in Hollywood.
The big palms stretch over these Hollywood huts in the star speckled night. The huts of the Metropolis all shoved together in their little dark towns full of a million different languages, with little Tokyos, Israeli Zones, Oaxacans, Ethiopians, and punks of every type, all angry at the Southland, at America, at nothing in general but the big Hollywood sky. There line the Spanish-tiled huts, lonely tribesmen near the Arclight, they wander in to see a movie, and in the theatre, feel the decrepit hands of midnight, those same hands Minstrel felt at the Rialto the night before—he scored again, all soft around the pudgy fingers, the hard nails on those hands digging in during the flick, this time Star Wars: Chewbacca humping that cowboy Han amongst the tumbleweed stars against the reality of Minstrel’s soft flesh. It’s all theatre business, right? It happens everywhere, especially for Minstrel, because he’s all over Hollywood now, just like Karvac told him to be, and is everywhere because he doesn’t have his own pad, just the pads under his feet, just the pads his feet take him to, just the pads under the feet that buy him, though it’s never enough, and there’s never enough time to sleep all day, but just enough for a quick nap, or not even that, because sometimes you have to run just to catch yourself and tell yourself you’re awake. Those Hollywoodsters—they don’t want anything but for a fleeting moment; that’s what bugs Karvac and Minstrel. They’re not like those Bakersfield hipsters, the Lords who would take Minstrel all night. Those Lords of the Southern Valley. They knew just where to look. Karvac was right. Stand out by the burger joint where the smell of fries billows into your nostrils, just enough to make you want to puke. Then again, who needs food when you have Coke waiting for you in the Bakersfield Bigtown cars. Maybe he would even be flying over the mountains right there in one of those cars. It was supposed to be his Hollywood night.
Minstrel had second thoughts. The thought of it made him shake, but he stopped himself because Karvac left him munching on his popcorn to wander somewhere else, and because as Minstrel stood there, waiting, just how he was told to wait, he saw a big fat caddie like the kind the Central California farmers’ wives drive that are so white and steely rimmed with white-walls that spin endlessly like a Chicano novella belting out to the TV masses of Mexico and Europe: “ay ay ay!” about some forever love affair gone haywire.
Minstrel didn’t want bodies pushing up against him as much as he wanted things: anything, material things really, but anything material that he could get his hands on and sell. That’s what life was all about: Getting a hold of someone’s back pocket so he could pick it, flip open a big fat wallet and take a little extra dough, just so he could pack his own mostly empty wallet. And not just that. He would take anything that he could sneak into his pockets: jewelry, watches, trinkets of every color and shape imaginable, keys, knives, forks, spoons, shoes, pets, stones, books—it didn’t matter. He once took a copy of Tolkien: Book One, read half of it, and cursed because he realized he was just Frodo being used by everyone, getting junked up on someone’s poison and staring at that big eye of Sauron who he knew was always watching over him, waiting to eat him up, he, Minstrel of the City Blues, buttfucker on fire, boy wonder always ready to sing the circle ring jerk to no one in particular, and ready now to skip Hollywood for a big town over the mountains that he knew was shrouded in clouds, with churches on every street corner, and justly covered over its sacred heart by the fog-shroud of Turin.
Lords: Part One consists of thirty-seven chapters. It's fiction, based on research, interviews, newspaper articles, and so forth of a story that Robert Price of the Bakersfield Californian brought to our attention. He's the man who gets the true recognition for a job well done. My story is just a fictitious rendering of what is perhaps a much darker past. It's a benefit that I have history degrees and spent so much time in the history grad department at CSUB under good folks like John Arthur Maynard and Oliver Rink. They didn't teach me so much about novels, but about the past and how to constructand dig for it (even if I did twist such ideas to help fabricate narratives). Such skill helps me to construct a past that may seem real, but really, is it?And not to forget the ghost of Colonel Jack. One cannot forget his input into this manuscript. He is the mentor who will never be forgotten. I apologize beforeheand for the horrid formatting...
LORDS:PART ONE
By N.L. Belardes
The Coming of The Remittance Men—1889
In the rugged farmlands of the Southern San Joaquin Valley, the name Rosedale arises as a suitable town name to attract British colonizers. There are no roses in this area a few miles west of Bakersfield. It is a name meant only to glorify the supposed culture of a British Eden.
In response to colorful advertising efforts of the Kern County Land Company, England sends a colony of noble scions. It was to be a utopian paradise of water-filled, lush landscapes tended by fruit growers and jam-makers, with hopes of peaches, plums, grapes, apricots and jams and jellies aplenty.
Among the colonizers are a group of young noble-standing men harboring alternate lifestyles. They are the first Lords of the Southern Valley. Paid to leave England and stay away for fear of disgracing their own family names, they become known locally as ‘The Remittance Men’. They are the flamboyant, the scoundrels, the queers, the secret lovers of Rosedale and Bakersfield society. They have queer meetings, queer minstrel shows at jam factories where they sing ‘Little Tin Geegee’, and they entertain in extravagant fashion at the old Southern Hotel. They have queer birthday parties, and they drink and drink champagne and even pour their bubbly drinks down horses’ throats.
One young man arrives in Rosedale at age 17. He is frail and hopeless, but works as a vine planter, an irrigation-ditch digger, a cowpuncher and a California homesteader. He becomes an intellectual, a writer. He later wins the Nobel Peace Prize. He becomes a prominent white man of culture and wit, but never marries.
Rosedale has a distaste for farming. The jam factories close. There are floods and drought. The colony fails as the minstrels continue to sing. It was to be a Garden of Eden…
The White Orchid Society—1930s-1960s
Though the Remittance Men have faded away, the Lords of the Southern Valley have not. An area rich in agriculture and oil, Bakersfield has also become the ivy covered secret of Hollywood’s backyard. The flamboyant come to film dozens of movies in the nearby deserts and river valleys; they also come to hide, and to live in decadence along with some of the wealthy and prominent of California’s Southern heartland. In this society some have forged a secret, and in doing so, blossom in forbidden lusts and longings for young men. Now, instead of the young men being Lords by title, the young become the pawns of the White Orchids: a group of local businessmen, academics, journalists, and flamboyant Hollywoodsters, who in their lordly dance for decadence, terrorize the hearts of young boys.
The Lords of the Southern Valley—1977
The White Orchids of the Depression and War Years have gone. But new Lords have arisen…
1. As the movie twinkled towards its starry end, Karvac giggled. That spaceship for a moment hovered beneath its mother—her lights blinking—and the cacophonous booming of her extraterrestrial horns cast echoes across the constellations; and then it flew in an arc and straight up into her gargantuan Lite Brite cosmic underside. “Right up her ass!” Karvac snickered as he watched her straddle Devil’s Tower. He wondered how she could possibly rumble so surely over the American wastelands with all those little ships lit like fireflies and buzzing in semi-circles, zigzags, and spirals in her cavernous loins. Her unknown zoomship machinery had come home to Earth’s eroded man-filled lands only to blast away almost as soon as she arrived: to take home some of what was hers, along with the aliens who infested her. Those naked little children of the stars had exposed themselves only long enough to take a victim. And that lonesome parasite wasn’t even an astronaut, cosmonaut, or juggernaut with the bones of Krishna soaring into her guts. It wasn’t ‘meant to be’, or so it seemed, or was it? This astro-guy was some Joe who had just climbed his own perverted mountain. And now as a consequence of his alien-ship-burned skin, his face fragile and baby-like, and his passion for encounters of a certain kind—he had done it for humanity, he the lone star at the pinnacle of the UFO-obsessed, staring now at a sea of technology and broken hearts, because that damn alien mother wasn’t going to stay for supper at all, and then poof! her and that nearly-swarming egg sack all disappeared into the unknown, leaving the government to masturbate and ponder over immense cargo ships filled with data-tapes of the whole dreaded encounter.
Just afterwards Karvac pushed his own Joe, Joey Minstrel, to wish upon his own star. Minstrel thought about it, but was quiet as they made their way into another area of Hollywood where stars don’t glitter in the heavens, but are flattened suns, having fallen like crunchy maple leafs, dropped onto the Boulevard from a great tree of withered stars. Although neither one of them was over the age of thirteen, they both stooped like old men, bent over the five points of Cary Grant. “Who the hell is he?” Minstrel yelped.
“Don’t worry about that. These are the forgotten actors of Hollywood. That’s why they have stars on this street, so the bums, misfits and rejects can piss on ‘em.”
Minstrel thought about the movie they’d just seen. It had been playing in theatres for a few months now. He watched Karvac put his cigarette out on the name ‘Grant’ as if Karvac were right: that’s what those stars were for because stars fell out of the sky, or out of the Studios, never to make pictures again, but could have their names on sidewalk stars for people to wipe their feet on. “Have your own close encounter,” Karvac laughed. He guffawed the way he always did with his eyes squint nearly shut and his teeth bare. “Go sing to them the way the mothership does. You won’t even have to go find them. They’ll come to you.” They had walked out of the theatre, and now sauntered down the Boulevard arm-in-arm, eager for the long night ahead. It had already been a long day. They survived the movie only because of the steady supply of uppers Karvac always seemed to carry. They had popped them just as Dreyfus put his finishing touches on that monstrous sculpture jutting from his living room carpet, an enlightened moment for Karvac and Minstrel, a sculptured moment worthy of such young visionaries.
That was six hours ago. The only reason they actually sat watching the movie in the first place was for the score that never showed. The score, Karvac said, was a producer “so packed full of cash, you could see the rolled up tip of a dollar bill coming out his ass.” They both were gonna take him on. “Sometimes it’s better in pairs. You get more of a cash flow that way. We never get tired. And he keeps forking over cash like he’s got a big fat bottomless wallet. And then we got cash for whatever we want. And what I want is nothing really, because I can get what I want from anyone anyways. I can take a shower. I can take a shirt, a nice shirt even. I can eat some grub. I can sit and listen to the stereo. There’s always a few minutes afterwards for some of that. You know what I mean? Except when you’re somewhere that ain’t home.”
“Oh I know what you mean,” Minstrel said. He knew he was just learning the ropes. There was a lot more Karvac wanted to teach the young manhunter. He still had some popcorn left. It was in a bag shoved in his Jean’s pocket. He took the bag out and dumped the remains, the equivalent of about one fat handful into his mouth. “I can’t wait til I’m old enough to drive and get a license. Then I’ll be getting cars off these fuckers, and not just cash.”
“You think you need a license? You better wake up. You just have to look a little older and drive the speed limit. But look at you, you look like a goddam baby, and that’s what they like. Hey, Minstrel, you don’t even have to do that if you end up in the right town. They will take care of you. They can take care of anything you do. It’s a free world. Anything is free for you when you’re with the right ones.”
“Except the score.”
“There’s a price.”
“That’s fucked up.”
“Yeah?”
“It should all be free whether you wanna score or not.”
“You want too much.”
“I do not.”
“Yeah, you expect too much. This is only Hollywood. This ain’t the sheik palace of Arabia, you piece of shit.”
Out in the big blue Hollywood sky, this was the place where Karvac said Minstrel could meet everyone: Hollywood Blvd. and Sunset and Melrose; these are the streets on fire; streets killing everyone on them; streets picking boys like Karvac up and body slamming them in gutters as if they have arms to do that, as if they’re the ones that wrap you in quick alley fits to pump you full of their money, their junk and everything else running straight into your veins. Those streets with the scores on them. Minstrel had already met three between the hours of eight and ten. He thought he was getting better with every one. They’ll get you back behind the clubs—those hunched over buildings stuck on the rolling streets near Tower Records, in the limos passing along Vine, bisecting the great Hollywood vein; in the producer’s office overlooking the Studios; in his house, in his daughter’s bed; in front of his closest friends—all of them pouring wine over their ecstasy moment; even his friends over the big hill, where Minstrel didn’t really know he was about to take his next car ride into the fog-filled valley that has no Sunset Strips, no Santa Monica Boulevards, just a few parks where he can score, or a bus station where every heavenly one of Karvac’s Central Valley Bakersfield buddies light it up, hoping for the big man to come rolling in to a near empty room, just them sitting in it, and the big man cutting loose and whispering with his soft lusty gloom-filled tongue dripping in their ears, “Boys I don’t want no trouble. I just want you.” Over in the bus station downtown, it was often Karvac and the rest of the boys, all cozy and pretending they don’t know each other at any time of the day: at lunch hour, at 2am, at eight o’clock bus hour I-gotta-get-to-El Paso blues, “‘Cause we all want that same wad, that same stash,” Karvac says. So they all go. But not tonight. Tonight it’s Minstrel’s night in Hollywood.
The big palms stretch over these Hollywood huts in the star speckled night. The huts of the Metropolis all shoved together in their little dark towns full of a million different languages, with little Tokyos, Israeli Zones, Oaxacans, Ethiopians, and punks of every type, all angry at the Southland, at America, at nothing in general but the big Hollywood sky. There line the Spanish-tiled huts, lonely tribesmen near the Arclight, they wander in to see a movie, and in the theatre, feel the decrepit hands of midnight, those same hands Minstrel felt at the Rialto the night before—he scored again, all soft around the pudgy fingers, the hard nails on those hands digging in during the flick, this time Star Wars: Chewbacca humping that cowboy Han amongst the tumbleweed stars against the reality of Minstrel’s soft flesh. It’s all theatre business, right? It happens everywhere, especially for Minstrel, because he’s all over Hollywood now, just like Karvac told him to be, and is everywhere because he doesn’t have his own pad, just the pads under his feet, just the pads his feet take him to, just the pads under the feet that buy him, though it’s never enough, and there’s never enough time to sleep all day, but just enough for a quick nap, or not even that, because sometimes you have to run just to catch yourself and tell yourself you’re awake. Those Hollywoodsters—they don’t want anything but for a fleeting moment; that’s what bugs Karvac and Minstrel. They’re not like those Bakersfield hipsters, the Lords who would take Minstrel all night. Those Lords of the Southern Valley. They knew just where to look. Karvac was right. Stand out by the burger joint where the smell of fries billows into your nostrils, just enough to make you want to puke. Then again, who needs food when you have Coke waiting for you in the Bakersfield Bigtown cars. Maybe he would even be flying over the mountains right there in one of those cars. It was supposed to be his Hollywood night.
Minstrel had second thoughts. The thought of it made him shake, but he stopped himself because Karvac left him munching on his popcorn to wander somewhere else, and because as Minstrel stood there, waiting, just how he was told to wait, he saw a big fat caddie like the kind the Central California farmers’ wives drive that are so white and steely rimmed with white-walls that spin endlessly like a Chicano novella belting out to the TV masses of Mexico and Europe: “ay ay ay!” about some forever love affair gone haywire.
Minstrel didn’t want bodies pushing up against him as much as he wanted things: anything, material things really, but anything material that he could get his hands on and sell. That’s what life was all about: Getting a hold of someone’s back pocket so he could pick it, flip open a big fat wallet and take a little extra dough, just so he could pack his own mostly empty wallet. And not just that. He would take anything that he could sneak into his pockets: jewelry, watches, trinkets of every color and shape imaginable, keys, knives, forks, spoons, shoes, pets, stones, books—it didn’t matter. He once took a copy of Tolkien: Book One, read half of it, and cursed because he realized he was just Frodo being used by everyone, getting junked up on someone’s poison and staring at that big eye of Sauron who he knew was always watching over him, waiting to eat him up, he, Minstrel of the City Blues, buttfucker on fire, boy wonder always ready to sing the circle ring jerk to no one in particular, and ready now to skip Hollywood for a big town over the mountains that he knew was shrouded in clouds, with churches on every street corner, and justly covered over its sacred heart by the fog-shroud of Turin.
posted by N.L. Belardes # 6:10 AM 
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
The Ghost of Colonel Jack
A man spiraled out of control near Christmas-time. Like a star fallen off the top of the tree he crashed in a flash of light and broke into a million pieces, never to be seen again. No, it wasn't me, or some writer-persona of me, but someone I knew, someone I trusted with a large portion of my life.
Driving to Pahrump, he had too many drinks with the photographer wife of a cheesy Las Vegas designer who was in talks with him of food photos for a cookbook they were working on. Heavy set, she had dark hair and wore too large of a smile on her plump face. I met her husband, the designer, at the funeral. Short, bald and annoying, he could only talk about himself, his great cookbook, and how wonderful Las Vegas had been to him and how "Everyone needs to come visit such a great city." Because he said this at the funeral I wanted to take that statement and shove it up his ass sideways. Having lived in Las Vegas for a few years I don't need anyone, especially some dumb self-aggrandizing man with bug eyes to sell me on the idea that materialism runs rampant in Thomas Merton's wilderness--especially at a funeral.
It always gets me how some Las Vegans get so worked up about their city that they can't contain their egos that they live in the mad city of lights and the rest of us don't. I've been to Disneyland. I don't care about cartoon rip-offs of Paris, New York and Venice skylines, or slot machine towers in the desert that shoot waterfalls of Colorado River water murk.
The night he died, my friend had been talking about a cookbook with the designer's wife. Something high and mighty about Vegas-style gourmet meets Euro flash-in-the-pan big-time Paris chef recipes and a tribute to Julia Childs. Something like that anyways. He left their brief gathering and headed home. I suppose she had some guilt built up inside her too-big-to-say-sorry bones since that terrible evening she never did anything to prevent the liquor-induced car wreck. I didn't know her but she approached me and started talking incessantly, "I didn't know he had so much to drink. What could have happened? I can't believe it...blahblahblahblah," there went the self-justification for not offering him a ride home. She was there with him. She saw what he drank. Or maybe she was just as drunk as him?
He left the restaurant at around 10 pm and headed up the highway from god-knows-where in the desert and headed further into the desert mountains. I don't know about you, but Pahrump is a tired town of tired people who all look like they stay up too late at night gambling at the local 7-11 slots. It's a haggard and hard-working muscle town reminiscent to Oildale, California, which I know was a thorn from his youth to latter years because it was a town reeking of conservatism, Okie-mentality and redneck NASCAR heroes--those were the stereotypes he insisted infiltrated Americana on the most political levels--and he hated them. Tire marks at the scene suggest he drifted off the road, rolled his old Mercedes, was ejected, and the car crashed on top of him. The wreck scene discovered at sunrise simply left a question mark in minds that knew him--why? This happens, you know. People get out of control with their lifestyles; it catches up to them, and they pay a price that ultimately leads to the same destination we're all headed towards: being crushed by the world around us.
He was one of those great writers, a debonair leader of artistic style and prose that you could really siphon from. Hell, he inspired me to finish a book idea I had shelved. You rarely meet people like that here in the Southern San Joaquin Valley, though there are a few writers here and there, and professors who are really great writers who would befriend you, if you were in their class, if you were their friend, if you could penetrate their ivory towers and peel them away from administration, their pompous courses and academia babble. There are exceptions to the rule of course...
Born in Bakersfield, he grew up playing Taft-style football, made his way to Cal Berkeley, and never looked back. He worked for Time Life books for a time, helped published works that are too numerous to talk about here, and was an art expert. He spoke on a level I rarely understood. He was that intelligent.
My writing lives on, even though he is no longer here. And it will continue to grow. Writing is a force of art that teaches the person who wields it as a medium. But only if that person is open-minded to the complexities of creative expressionistic growth. Closed minds and simple minds only breed wants that can't be realized. Such minds dramatize the here and now and fall into stasis by not inquiring of the masters of writing, both living and dead. One must study the written word, and constantly ask questions of those who are way smarter than themselves; and that's because there are methods that take years to ponder and contemplate and grasp. There is an understanding to writing that doesn't come from a book, but from the long-winded teaching of a master of such art. And when they are gone, they are missed. But you have to move on... Goodbye Colonel Jack.
Driving to Pahrump, he had too many drinks with the photographer wife of a cheesy Las Vegas designer who was in talks with him of food photos for a cookbook they were working on. Heavy set, she had dark hair and wore too large of a smile on her plump face. I met her husband, the designer, at the funeral. Short, bald and annoying, he could only talk about himself, his great cookbook, and how wonderful Las Vegas had been to him and how "Everyone needs to come visit such a great city." Because he said this at the funeral I wanted to take that statement and shove it up his ass sideways. Having lived in Las Vegas for a few years I don't need anyone, especially some dumb self-aggrandizing man with bug eyes to sell me on the idea that materialism runs rampant in Thomas Merton's wilderness--especially at a funeral.
It always gets me how some Las Vegans get so worked up about their city that they can't contain their egos that they live in the mad city of lights and the rest of us don't. I've been to Disneyland. I don't care about cartoon rip-offs of Paris, New York and Venice skylines, or slot machine towers in the desert that shoot waterfalls of Colorado River water murk.
The night he died, my friend had been talking about a cookbook with the designer's wife. Something high and mighty about Vegas-style gourmet meets Euro flash-in-the-pan big-time Paris chef recipes and a tribute to Julia Childs. Something like that anyways. He left their brief gathering and headed home. I suppose she had some guilt built up inside her too-big-to-say-sorry bones since that terrible evening she never did anything to prevent the liquor-induced car wreck. I didn't know her but she approached me and started talking incessantly, "I didn't know he had so much to drink. What could have happened? I can't believe it...blahblahblahblah," there went the self-justification for not offering him a ride home. She was there with him. She saw what he drank. Or maybe she was just as drunk as him?
He left the restaurant at around 10 pm and headed up the highway from god-knows-where in the desert and headed further into the desert mountains. I don't know about you, but Pahrump is a tired town of tired people who all look like they stay up too late at night gambling at the local 7-11 slots. It's a haggard and hard-working muscle town reminiscent to Oildale, California, which I know was a thorn from his youth to latter years because it was a town reeking of conservatism, Okie-mentality and redneck NASCAR heroes--those were the stereotypes he insisted infiltrated Americana on the most political levels--and he hated them. Tire marks at the scene suggest he drifted off the road, rolled his old Mercedes, was ejected, and the car crashed on top of him. The wreck scene discovered at sunrise simply left a question mark in minds that knew him--why? This happens, you know. People get out of control with their lifestyles; it catches up to them, and they pay a price that ultimately leads to the same destination we're all headed towards: being crushed by the world around us.
He was one of those great writers, a debonair leader of artistic style and prose that you could really siphon from. Hell, he inspired me to finish a book idea I had shelved. You rarely meet people like that here in the Southern San Joaquin Valley, though there are a few writers here and there, and professors who are really great writers who would befriend you, if you were in their class, if you were their friend, if you could penetrate their ivory towers and peel them away from administration, their pompous courses and academia babble. There are exceptions to the rule of course...
Born in Bakersfield, he grew up playing Taft-style football, made his way to Cal Berkeley, and never looked back. He worked for Time Life books for a time, helped published works that are too numerous to talk about here, and was an art expert. He spoke on a level I rarely understood. He was that intelligent.
My writing lives on, even though he is no longer here. And it will continue to grow. Writing is a force of art that teaches the person who wields it as a medium. But only if that person is open-minded to the complexities of creative expressionistic growth. Closed minds and simple minds only breed wants that can't be realized. Such minds dramatize the here and now and fall into stasis by not inquiring of the masters of writing, both living and dead. One must study the written word, and constantly ask questions of those who are way smarter than themselves; and that's because there are methods that take years to ponder and contemplate and grasp. There is an understanding to writing that doesn't come from a book, but from the long-winded teaching of a master of such art. And when they are gone, they are missed. But you have to move on... Goodbye Colonel Jack.
posted by N.L. Belardes # 5:04 PM
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
In Confidence...
I'm expecting the lawyer will call and scream at me again today if I post all of chapter one; so he has succeeded only in delaying me for another 24-hours....maybe. My good people of Bakersfield want more than the excerpt already online, and so I want to give it to them, free of charge. Is that a bad thing? It doesn't mean I'm giving the whole book away. Heck, chapter one only takes you from Hollywood to the edge of Bakersfield shrouded in fog. It's a dark dismal portrayal of Bakersfield, complete with fog and the biggest dust storm of all time. Of course, The Citrus Girl is a rosy romantic view of Bakersfield, so its all good in the balancing act. Thick White Crust portrays Bakersfield as a place people can escape to, while my poetry in Country Songs to Live By uplifts the area as a rural meets city dreamscape.Without breaking confidence, the lawyer did say:
"Your book is a rich story, too rich and complex to just fire one chapter blankly into cyberspace."
"I don't shoot blanks."
"That's not what I'm saying."
"Sounds like you're questioning my literature and my manhood."
"Everything is funny to you isn't it?"
"Look, I'm going to post, and namby pamby lawyer threats aren't going to keep me from spreading this story like cult gospel to the people."
"You're asking for trouble from me, and I don't want to have to give you any trouble."
"See, there you go questioning my manhood all over again..."
"Goddammit..."
Stay tuned...
"Your book is a rich story, too rich and complex to just fire one chapter blankly into cyberspace."
"I don't shoot blanks."
"That's not what I'm saying."
"Sounds like you're questioning my literature and my manhood."
"Everything is funny to you isn't it?"
"Look, I'm going to post, and namby pamby lawyer threats aren't going to keep me from spreading this story like cult gospel to the people."
"You're asking for trouble from me, and I don't want to have to give you any trouble."
"See, there you go questioning my manhood all over again..."
"Goddammit..."
Stay tuned...
posted by N.L. Belardes # 6:23 AM
Monday, February 14, 2005
Valentine's Day excerpt from The Citrus Girl
The Citrus Girl is a massive novel I wrote back in 1998 that is about counterculture in Bakersfield 1996-1998. I have been sitting on like a hen, careful to warm it like an egg for the perfect moment to hatch. Maybe by saying that you might think I'm strangely in touch with my feminine side. But it's true! As an artist, I have to wait... But today is Valentine's day, so here's a teaser for you from Chapter 11. Don't get all mushy...
from Chapter Eleven
February 1996 wrapped itself around Bakersfield with warmer days, sometimes seventy-degree days, and people realized “It’s February!” only because of America’s mad preparation for Valentine’s Day. People began to take notice of the nation’s one-and-only consumer gloom holiday in early January—that’s when pinks and reds and whites are dumped upon America as if from a sudden storm of cards and little boxes of convenience store hearts. Those are the times you can hear people say, “February’s among us!” Because that’s when every store window in town puts up a painted heart, and many people, once melancholy with winter life and afterthoughts of Christmas, suddenly walk in misery and pace and frown, then grow hateful for the next few weeks from the terribleness of being alone. “I’m gonna rip somebody’s head off,” Ska T had said before one February hockey game. During the game he brooded and fumed then didn’t hurt anyone. He sat quietly at a burger joint afterwards while Tommy and I laughed.
“Whatsa matter? I thought you were gonna get rough!” I said.
“Nah, next game. I don’t know what came over me.”
Lately the weather had turned from warm February days to hang cold over the city. The weather would change like that from day to day. February had its own mind to never make up. Some days a little rain nudged the dryness from the ground. Some days it could be hot, or the next change to a cool atmosphere, or cold. You never knew what front of air was pushing upon the valley. It was sometimes windy enough to bring a chill through the cold when it was of the bone-chilling temperatures. That you could be sure of. Whatever the temperature or condition, most days Gordon and Tad would put on their best faces and beg to go to the park. I enjoyed going, so I often took them. At the park they pretended the twists and tangles of chain ladders, bridges, and towers of plastic in sand lots were pirate ships, or spaceships that had just landed and were about to take over the city.
The three of us walked a lot. We would go on walks, and walk and walk. Some days it was to the park, but most of our ventures on-foot were to the University. One grey day it was on the verge of freezing. It took a brisk walk to heat us up. On the way we looked for squirrel homes and burrowing owl holes for Tad and Gordon to peer down. We got to the University and marched through a path under cherry trees where Tad yelled, “I’m taking the daddy path!”
We then made our way along an asphalt road, and then up into the library where I studied and they played with toys next to me. Friends stopped in. “Cool room. Nice kids,” they said. Tad hid behind me, his big blue eyes peeped nervously over my shoulder while Gordon mumbled, “hello,” and soon enough, I finished studying, and was ready to make the long march home.
One day Tad yelled, “Let’s play Indians and Palefaces,” then ran and hid in the small groves of cherry trees and pine trees lining the exit from the University to Camino Media Road. He jumped out at me and suddenly we became swashbucklers with sticks, and fought and swung our great weapons in a furious battle. We walked further, threw rocks in the canal, and made up wild stories about the field monster who lives beneath the ground in the long fields of foxtails that line the canal fence. “He makes horrible sounds,” I said, then began to hop around like an ape. “And he rips the heads off squirrels and throws them at groups of young girls!”
“At Girls?” Tad smiled, stopped, then listened for the monster by putting an ear against one of the many squirrel holes along the way. “I hear him dad. He’s eating squirrels. Does he come out at night?”
“Of course,” I said. “He jumps from roof to roof and looks for stray cats to eat.”
“What about people?”
“No, just animals. Ever notice how some pets just disappear?” We neared home just as the sun vanished. Colors lit up a fine dusk of oranges and pinks that nipped above us beneath a fuzzy grey cloud belly. Purple clouds hovered along a bright blue horizon line below them, farther toward the coastal range.
“They’re like spaceships,” Tad stared into the sky.
After dinner the boys were off to bed and Tommy and I were off downtown, leaving my sister in charge of the kids. Tommy’s excitement pulled her to the alley cat alley where she entered the bar under the flickering tail of the neon cat. Inside stood Steve Delani. He looked haggard, terrible, and was dressed in black. He had put on a few pounds since I last saw him, and his shiny head wasn’t so thin; but now there was a sinister look about him as he ate up everything in the bar with his eyes, including Tommy. He wore a goatee and I slapped him on the shoulder to tell him he looked a bit dreadful, like Satan. “I guess that’s the man to be,” he said and laughed. Dave, Cholera and Pedro sat with him at a few tables that had been pushed together as they all downed beers...
More Vakentines moments from chapter 11:
...On Valentine’s Day Tommy soaked in the shower. While she relaxed and washed herself I ran into the garage and dusted off an old wicker picnic basket my mother had kept on a dirty shelf. I remembered it from when I was a kid. She would take my brother, sister and I to the park and lug this huge green-and-tan woven wicker beast at her side. I always thought my mother was a giant, never only five feet tall, pale and fragile. The basket had looked so big then too, like I could fit inside. It had hidden compartments for food and surprises that I hoped would bring something chocolate and wonderful into my life. Those were good times when she packed it full of sandwiches, cold sodas, and a whole box of Ding Dongs. We ate our meat and bread back then and tore into the aluminum wrappers and into the chocolate like we never had such tasty treats in our short lives.
I cleaned the basket, polished it up, threw in a blanket, candles, matches, wine glasses, some plates and napkins, and then set it back inside the garage. I called Liam, told him to call me right back.
“Yeah, Rick, you want me to do what?” he asked.
“Just call me back,” I said. “And pretend like you’re going to be late in picking me up.”
“Picking you up for what? Was I supposed to be there?”
“No. I can’t talk right now. She’ll be out any second. Just call, Ok?!”
I hung up just as Tommy entered the room. “Are you really leaving?” she asked.
“Yeah, but I’ll be back. I really don’t like these commercial holidays, but I promise we’ll go have a late dinner and get romantic and all snuggly-wuggly.” The phone rang and I picked it up, “Hello?” Tommy walked over to the door and sat on the couch and began to watch a Disney movie my sister Rose had put on for her kids. She smiled, looked up, and in her best Arabian accent, said:
“Di-a-mond in zeeee rough…”
Liam was nervous on the phone: “Yeah. This is Liam. I’m afraid I’m going to be late this evening? Now what the heck are you doing?!”
“Can’t talk. See you in a bit.” I hung up and stared at Tommy who sat dejected and stared at the gargantuan blue djinni dancing on the television screen. “He’s going to be late,” I said.
“I heard.”
I sat on the couch next to Tommy and pretended to peek out the window blinds. A half an hour went by and I peeked again. “He’s real late,” I said, trying to act disgusted and impatient. Outside the sun threw its last faint breath onto our city. Inside, Tommy sat quietly, her knees drawn up to her chest, as if she felt hopeless about the evening she had anticipated. Cars passed on nearby busy Gosford Road and headlights flipped on as I sighed, got up, and walked into the garage. Suddenly I came running in. “Tommy!” I yelled. She smiled crazily. Her eyes grew wide and green as I continued: “Let’s go to the store, get some food, and go for a picnic!”
She laughed and bounced and jumped up and skipped around the room. Then she looked at me and said, “Are we walking?”
“Yep.”
“Down Gosford Road?”
“To the store!”
“With that?” She looked down at the green and tan wicker beast in my arms.
“Down the street, to the store we go! If we don’t take this, we don’t go!”
“Ok! Ok!” She threw on a sweater. “What about Liam?”
“I guess we’ll go without ‘em!”
“You tricked me, you jerk! Actually, I knew you were up to something. You’re a horrible liar.”
“A liar?” I said. “Let’s go.” We took the basket and walked down Gosford Road, a wide multi-lane city street. The sun had already spent its last remaining rays of daylight. Sharp points of stars made their first nightly stabs through patches of broken sky, and the edge of the pale-lit moon hung above dark grey silhouettes of clouds. Tommy put her arm around me as we walked and while cars honked and passed. She felt warm and smiled to me in the cold air, and soon we got to the grocery store and walked in with me carrying our basket. Inside, people turned and stared, some smiled. I smiled back, wondering what they were thinking. We grabbed sparkling cider, strawberries, whipped cream, grapes, cheese and crackers, then hurried through the check-out and made our way back into the dim evening light. “Where’s the sun?” Tommy asked. “It’s disappeared too fast. And now I see the edge of a blue moon.”
I didn’t answer. We walked back down Gosford Road and took a left on Laurelglen Street and within five minutes reached two parks separated by a road. We chose the park side on the left where there were no toys, only grass and tall electrical towers. Then we buried ourselves deep in the darkness of it, far from streetlights and near a wooden fence. I spread the blanket out with the old basket on it, and then set out the food and lit the few candles we brought. They flickered and glowed in the wind. Tommy looked at the light and took a strawberry, pulled off its leafy stem and sprayed whipped cream onto it. Her long hair jostled in the wind and her eyes flickered with sparks from the candlelight. She looked at me before putting the strawberry in her mouth, then said, “This is the best Valentine’s Day I ever had.” We ate some food and popped open our green bottle of cider and I made a toast:
“To you and me and us going and going ‘til we drop!”
“Forever!” she said. We bumped our glasses together and tipped them to our lips. Soon our bottle was half-empty and the candles blew out from the wind. Darkness surrounded us and I moved to her. I could see her outline under the glowing cloud light. We stayed there for hours and moved on the blanket as Tommy whimpered then arched in movement with the arc of starry heavens slowly moving across the sky.
from Chapter Eleven
February 1996 wrapped itself around Bakersfield with warmer days, sometimes seventy-degree days, and people realized “It’s February!” only because of America’s mad preparation for Valentine’s Day. People began to take notice of the nation’s one-and-only consumer gloom holiday in early January—that’s when pinks and reds and whites are dumped upon America as if from a sudden storm of cards and little boxes of convenience store hearts. Those are the times you can hear people say, “February’s among us!” Because that’s when every store window in town puts up a painted heart, and many people, once melancholy with winter life and afterthoughts of Christmas, suddenly walk in misery and pace and frown, then grow hateful for the next few weeks from the terribleness of being alone. “I’m gonna rip somebody’s head off,” Ska T had said before one February hockey game. During the game he brooded and fumed then didn’t hurt anyone. He sat quietly at a burger joint afterwards while Tommy and I laughed.
“Whatsa matter? I thought you were gonna get rough!” I said.
“Nah, next game. I don’t know what came over me.”
Lately the weather had turned from warm February days to hang cold over the city. The weather would change like that from day to day. February had its own mind to never make up. Some days a little rain nudged the dryness from the ground. Some days it could be hot, or the next change to a cool atmosphere, or cold. You never knew what front of air was pushing upon the valley. It was sometimes windy enough to bring a chill through the cold when it was of the bone-chilling temperatures. That you could be sure of. Whatever the temperature or condition, most days Gordon and Tad would put on their best faces and beg to go to the park. I enjoyed going, so I often took them. At the park they pretended the twists and tangles of chain ladders, bridges, and towers of plastic in sand lots were pirate ships, or spaceships that had just landed and were about to take over the city.
The three of us walked a lot. We would go on walks, and walk and walk. Some days it was to the park, but most of our ventures on-foot were to the University. One grey day it was on the verge of freezing. It took a brisk walk to heat us up. On the way we looked for squirrel homes and burrowing owl holes for Tad and Gordon to peer down. We got to the University and marched through a path under cherry trees where Tad yelled, “I’m taking the daddy path!”
We then made our way along an asphalt road, and then up into the library where I studied and they played with toys next to me. Friends stopped in. “Cool room. Nice kids,” they said. Tad hid behind me, his big blue eyes peeped nervously over my shoulder while Gordon mumbled, “hello,” and soon enough, I finished studying, and was ready to make the long march home.
One day Tad yelled, “Let’s play Indians and Palefaces,” then ran and hid in the small groves of cherry trees and pine trees lining the exit from the University to Camino Media Road. He jumped out at me and suddenly we became swashbucklers with sticks, and fought and swung our great weapons in a furious battle. We walked further, threw rocks in the canal, and made up wild stories about the field monster who lives beneath the ground in the long fields of foxtails that line the canal fence. “He makes horrible sounds,” I said, then began to hop around like an ape. “And he rips the heads off squirrels and throws them at groups of young girls!”
“At Girls?” Tad smiled, stopped, then listened for the monster by putting an ear against one of the many squirrel holes along the way. “I hear him dad. He’s eating squirrels. Does he come out at night?”
“Of course,” I said. “He jumps from roof to roof and looks for stray cats to eat.”
“What about people?”
“No, just animals. Ever notice how some pets just disappear?” We neared home just as the sun vanished. Colors lit up a fine dusk of oranges and pinks that nipped above us beneath a fuzzy grey cloud belly. Purple clouds hovered along a bright blue horizon line below them, farther toward the coastal range.
“They’re like spaceships,” Tad stared into the sky.
After dinner the boys were off to bed and Tommy and I were off downtown, leaving my sister in charge of the kids. Tommy’s excitement pulled her to the alley cat alley where she entered the bar under the flickering tail of the neon cat. Inside stood Steve Delani. He looked haggard, terrible, and was dressed in black. He had put on a few pounds since I last saw him, and his shiny head wasn’t so thin; but now there was a sinister look about him as he ate up everything in the bar with his eyes, including Tommy. He wore a goatee and I slapped him on the shoulder to tell him he looked a bit dreadful, like Satan. “I guess that’s the man to be,” he said and laughed. Dave, Cholera and Pedro sat with him at a few tables that had been pushed together as they all downed beers...
More Vakentines moments from chapter 11:
...On Valentine’s Day Tommy soaked in the shower. While she relaxed and washed herself I ran into the garage and dusted off an old wicker picnic basket my mother had kept on a dirty shelf. I remembered it from when I was a kid. She would take my brother, sister and I to the park and lug this huge green-and-tan woven wicker beast at her side. I always thought my mother was a giant, never only five feet tall, pale and fragile. The basket had looked so big then too, like I could fit inside. It had hidden compartments for food and surprises that I hoped would bring something chocolate and wonderful into my life. Those were good times when she packed it full of sandwiches, cold sodas, and a whole box of Ding Dongs. We ate our meat and bread back then and tore into the aluminum wrappers and into the chocolate like we never had such tasty treats in our short lives.
I cleaned the basket, polished it up, threw in a blanket, candles, matches, wine glasses, some plates and napkins, and then set it back inside the garage. I called Liam, told him to call me right back.
“Yeah, Rick, you want me to do what?” he asked.
“Just call me back,” I said. “And pretend like you’re going to be late in picking me up.”
“Picking you up for what? Was I supposed to be there?”
“No. I can’t talk right now. She’ll be out any second. Just call, Ok?!”
I hung up just as Tommy entered the room. “Are you really leaving?” she asked.
“Yeah, but I’ll be back. I really don’t like these commercial holidays, but I promise we’ll go have a late dinner and get romantic and all snuggly-wuggly.” The phone rang and I picked it up, “Hello?” Tommy walked over to the door and sat on the couch and began to watch a Disney movie my sister Rose had put on for her kids. She smiled, looked up, and in her best Arabian accent, said:
“Di-a-mond in zeeee rough…”
Liam was nervous on the phone: “Yeah. This is Liam. I’m afraid I’m going to be late this evening? Now what the heck are you doing?!”
“Can’t talk. See you in a bit.” I hung up and stared at Tommy who sat dejected and stared at the gargantuan blue djinni dancing on the television screen. “He’s going to be late,” I said.
“I heard.”
I sat on the couch next to Tommy and pretended to peek out the window blinds. A half an hour went by and I peeked again. “He’s real late,” I said, trying to act disgusted and impatient. Outside the sun threw its last faint breath onto our city. Inside, Tommy sat quietly, her knees drawn up to her chest, as if she felt hopeless about the evening she had anticipated. Cars passed on nearby busy Gosford Road and headlights flipped on as I sighed, got up, and walked into the garage. Suddenly I came running in. “Tommy!” I yelled. She smiled crazily. Her eyes grew wide and green as I continued: “Let’s go to the store, get some food, and go for a picnic!”
She laughed and bounced and jumped up and skipped around the room. Then she looked at me and said, “Are we walking?”
“Yep.”
“Down Gosford Road?”
“To the store!”
“With that?” She looked down at the green and tan wicker beast in my arms.
“Down the street, to the store we go! If we don’t take this, we don’t go!”
“Ok! Ok!” She threw on a sweater. “What about Liam?”
“I guess we’ll go without ‘em!”
“You tricked me, you jerk! Actually, I knew you were up to something. You’re a horrible liar.”
“A liar?” I said. “Let’s go.” We took the basket and walked down Gosford Road, a wide multi-lane city street. The sun had already spent its last remaining rays of daylight. Sharp points of stars made their first nightly stabs through patches of broken sky, and the edge of the pale-lit moon hung above dark grey silhouettes of clouds. Tommy put her arm around me as we walked and while cars honked and passed. She felt warm and smiled to me in the cold air, and soon we got to the grocery store and walked in with me carrying our basket. Inside, people turned and stared, some smiled. I smiled back, wondering what they were thinking. We grabbed sparkling cider, strawberries, whipped cream, grapes, cheese and crackers, then hurried through the check-out and made our way back into the dim evening light. “Where’s the sun?” Tommy asked. “It’s disappeared too fast. And now I see the edge of a blue moon.”
I didn’t answer. We walked back down Gosford Road and took a left on Laurelglen Street and within five minutes reached two parks separated by a road. We chose the park side on the left where there were no toys, only grass and tall electrical towers. Then we buried ourselves deep in the darkness of it, far from streetlights and near a wooden fence. I spread the blanket out with the old basket on it, and then set out the food and lit the few candles we brought. They flickered and glowed in the wind. Tommy looked at the light and took a strawberry, pulled off its leafy stem and sprayed whipped cream onto it. Her long hair jostled in the wind and her eyes flickered with sparks from the candlelight. She looked at me before putting the strawberry in her mouth, then said, “This is the best Valentine’s Day I ever had.” We ate some food and popped open our green bottle of cider and I made a toast:
“To you and me and us going and going ‘til we drop!”
“Forever!” she said. We bumped our glasses together and tipped them to our lips. Soon our bottle was half-empty and the candles blew out from the wind. Darkness surrounded us and I moved to her. I could see her outline under the glowing cloud light. We stayed there for hours and moved on the blanket as Tommy whimpered then arched in movement with the arc of starry heavens slowly moving across the sky.
posted by N.L. Belardes # 7:30 AM
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Chaos Coffee Revisited
Do you remember the counterculture days of Bakersfield in the mid-1990s? Here's a nice letter I recieved and replied to today:
Yo..
>
> I was reading something from your blog and you
> mentioned us and Chaos Coffee. My girlfriend used to
> own Chaos, and we always reminiscceeeeeee..Goodtimes
> mang!
>
> Peace!
>
Hi M***,
I believe I mention Chaos Coffee again in an unpublished novel titled The Citrus Girl. I am going to release a few books first, then stir in some controversy by releasing TCG, which is a book that in part deals with Bakersfield counterculture in the mid 1990s: hanging out in Bakersfield as a generation of rebellious MTV-sucked youth in college, in places like chaos coffee... I appreciate your words, and appreciated Chaos Coffee back in the day and whoever that nice gal was who always served me the Earl grey Tea...
Yo..
>
> I was reading something from your blog and you
> mentioned us and Chaos Coffee. My girlfriend used to
> own Chaos, and we always reminiscceeeeeee..Goodtimes
> mang!
>
> Peace!
>
Hi M***,
I believe I mention Chaos Coffee again in an unpublished novel titled The Citrus Girl. I am going to release a few books first, then stir in some controversy by releasing TCG, which is a book that in part deals with Bakersfield counterculture in the mid 1990s: hanging out in Bakersfield as a generation of rebellious MTV-sucked youth in college, in places like chaos coffee... I appreciate your words, and appreciated Chaos Coffee back in the day and whoever that nice gal was who always served me the Earl grey Tea...
posted by N.L. Belardes # 5:20 PM
Hockey Woes
I had several people tell me last night, "Hey you're not playing up to your game. You look tired out there." OK, they got me. They're right! I was tired. Low energy in hockey is like low energy in writing. Paragraphs don't come easy. A sentence takes longer to form. The editing process becomes something like a late-in-the-third-period jelly-legs moment where you can't get back in time to defend your goal. You want to quit. You want to give up. But do you let your team down? The me, myself, and Irene of your personality is telling you you're a no-good writer who won't amount to anything. Sounds like a coach trying to light a fire under your twinkle-toes. It often works. You get a second wind. The rally comes. There's a flurry of skating, a flurry of writing, a flurry of ideas; goals get scored...on both sides. In the end, you're a tired mess. You want to sleep. You want to throw off your skates. You peel off the layers as if you really did champion the arena ala Maximus gladiator supreme. Mentally in writing it's done the same. Layers are peeled away after a strong stint of writing. It's not boxing. There's no knock-out that can cometh in round uno. You had to finish the game no matter what. And you did, and now you sleep, and tomorrow, if you're lucky, it all happens again and again.
posted by N.L. Belardes # 6:01 AM
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
SKUNK QUEEN AND BOURGEOIS FAT CAT
Inching closer to book releases for Lords: Part One and The Freaky Fish Show, I'm still not able to give out dates when these books will be available to those who have been inquiring. We are getting closer. Final touches have been put on Lords: Part One for a creepier ending, something that may stick a little harder in the minds of the readers--in most gruesome fashion... On the lighter end of books, finishing touches are also being put into The Freaky Fish Show.
On a funny side note, one of my old creative co-workers in crime presented me with a really fun story based on our mutual experience at a local advertising dive.
From a letter earlier today:
Still think you should write it but as a cartoon series. Keep the backdrop of an advertising agency with two little mice as the main characters that are forced to work in a tiny dungeon like office (with no windows) and slave away designing and writing subject to daily ridiculed and tortured by their evil skunk of a boss & her bourgeois socialite, enormously fat cat partner.
Sounded good, so I threw some words back in an email, some dialogue between such overworked mice and their evilbosses:
"Gosh the boss stinks. I can smell her skunky perfume a mile away. Even through these boarded up windows."
"You know she smells worst when ads are due. Shhh-here she comes. Act like you're working. Ew, she has that purse that matches her claws and hair, and it stinks too!"
Suddenly there appeared in front of them the sickliest skunk they had ever seen. Skinny and tall, she had a multi-colored hairdo that stood out like a crown of broken guitar strings, metallic almost, which matched the cold glimmer of a smile on her face. She grimaced hard at the mice who really hadn't been working at all. They had just taken a break to remind each other that skunks did indeed stink, and that fat cats, just as bothersome, were always on the verge of eating such artistically inclined mice.
"You little mice are such sickly vermin," the skunk yelled. "You make my stripes crawl. Did you do such nicey nice drawings for the skunky queen to behold and scoff at just like you were ordered? Let me see those! Well these are not suitable! I demand artwork with pizzazz! These lack creativity and zoomy zimmy zammy!! And you sniveling cheese-eaters are thinking inside those little box brains of yours again. That will never do! Oh goodness, why here comes kitty mama to work. Oh ! Oh! Oh! She's stuck in the elevator door again! Oh I declare, kitty mama, you're dashing in that beautiful blonde wig. Oo la la! Hellouuu?!"
The mice couldn't help but snicker at the fat cat whose fluffy side fur stretched and tugged on the doorframe like a great carpeted balloon."You lunkheaded skunk! Help me get through this door! Someone shrunk it. Those filthy mice you hired as artists no less! Get me out of here!!!"
On a funny side note, one of my old creative co-workers in crime presented me with a really fun story based on our mutual experience at a local advertising dive.
From a letter earlier today:
Still think you should write it but as a cartoon series. Keep the backdrop of an advertising agency with two little mice as the main characters that are forced to work in a tiny dungeon like office (with no windows) and slave away designing and writing subject to daily ridiculed and tortured by their evil skunk of a boss & her bourgeois socialite, enormously fat cat partner.
Sounded good, so I threw some words back in an email, some dialogue between such overworked mice and their evilbosses:
"Gosh the boss stinks. I can smell her skunky perfume a mile away. Even through these boarded up windows."
"You know she smells worst when ads are due. Shhh-here she comes. Act like you're working. Ew, she has that purse that matches her claws and hair, and it stinks too!"
Suddenly there appeared in front of them the sickliest skunk they had ever seen. Skinny and tall, she had a multi-colored hairdo that stood out like a crown of broken guitar strings, metallic almost, which matched the cold glimmer of a smile on her face. She grimaced hard at the mice who really hadn't been working at all. They had just taken a break to remind each other that skunks did indeed stink, and that fat cats, just as bothersome, were always on the verge of eating such artistically inclined mice.
"You little mice are such sickly vermin," the skunk yelled. "You make my stripes crawl. Did you do such nicey nice drawings for the skunky queen to behold and scoff at just like you were ordered? Let me see those! Well these are not suitable! I demand artwork with pizzazz! These lack creativity and zoomy zimmy zammy!! And you sniveling cheese-eaters are thinking inside those little box brains of yours again. That will never do! Oh goodness, why here comes kitty mama to work. Oh ! Oh! Oh! She's stuck in the elevator door again! Oh I declare, kitty mama, you're dashing in that beautiful blonde wig. Oo la la! Hellouuu?!"
The mice couldn't help but snicker at the fat cat whose fluffy side fur stretched and tugged on the doorframe like a great carpeted balloon."You lunkheaded skunk! Help me get through this door! Someone shrunk it. Those filthy mice you hired as artists no less! Get me out of here!!!"
posted by N.L. Belardes # 7:59 AM
Groundhog Hide-out
I'm thinking today should be another excerpt day. Thick White Crust, my most specifically Chicano novel by yours truly, a Chicano artist, once confused youth, of duel personas and with an identity crisis--to grow up thinking, "I'm white, I'm not white, I'm white, I might be white, what is white? what is Chicano?" Such childhood confusion in a house with a Mexican cowboy who perhaps had his own identity questions at one time. He certainly did for his children--as he was so angry himself at the Chicano movement. I will never know why... Perhaps I hide out in my feelings about such things, only to spring out once in a while with a few thoughts like the groundhog seeing his shadow, and then poof! disappearing for the rest of winter...Perhaps this excerpt simply reminds me of us groundhog people:
SEPTEMBER The next morning was September 11th. I was about to take a Greyhound bus from the Plaza Hotel in downtown Las Vegas to Bakersfield. A Canadian friend of mine with visions of her own drove me to the bus station. A line of people stretched far onto the sidewalk along Main Street. It was windy. I heard and saw several beer bottles roll into gutters; glass smashed from the sudden strong winds and lay piled like bone fragments. The woman had been a student of mine. She was from Rochester, New York and cried because she hadn’t heard from her friend who may have been at ground zero during the plane attack. “Dia de los rascacielos,” I mumbled over and over. “These lines are two days long. Take me to the outskirts of town, where the 215 meets with the 15. I will hitchhike to California.”
She was short, Irish, had reddish pale skin and sometimes laughed with a frowning smile, especially now, because she was so full of tears. She wiped her eyes. She had a strong accent, one that you would expect from a New Yorker: “No, you can’t hitchhike. That’s dangerous. There are killers out there.” She had fought off rapists in New York City, and slummed in buildings where men and women moved like shadows. To her, skeletons lurked everywhere. She held tightly to a can of pepper spray, even in the Las Vegas daylight.
“I’m not worried,” I said. I carried two bags and had left my guitar at the apartment where I lived in downtown Las Vegas in the Huntridge District. That house was a big white two-story home, just like the kind you would see in Hollywood, with a curved and stuccoed outdoor staircase, and turret-like curves that rose high into the sky beneath a Spanish tiled roof. It was art deco, with a hard wooden floor painted black and a deep red border around it. We had polyurethaned over the top of that. It shone with blue reflections in the morning light and was blacker than the dark Vegas nights when it turned evening. There I would sit with my guitar and play for a border collie, cockroaches, black widows and wolf spiders. The music echoed outside and down the stairs into the ears of the crutch-using bums that limped past on their way to the bright Las Vegas Strip.
I wanted to hitchhike. I wanted to take the risk. I yearned for it, for the taste of uncertainty, for the kindness of strangers, for the unknown entrance one can take to a faraway place, and for the strangeness of exiting the desert for the familiar taste of Bakersfield, where home had been for so many years. “I need to go home,” I said. “And I will walk tonight if I have to.”
“I’ll drive you,” she said.
“In this car?” It was a beat-up old Mazda named Mr. Meeka. She had driven it from New York all the way to Las Vegas just a few months before. But I was terrified, more so than hitchhiking—as it would die just driving it on the freeways surrounding Las Vegas. I don’t know how she ever made it, and I would have rather walked. But I didn’t tell her. We ended up driving very late that night to Bakersfield. She cried a good portion of the way. She cried for the ciudadanos de los rascacielos. She cried for an hour and I thought we were sure to die in a car wreck. I asked her not to cry, but she continued to sob, even as we headed into Baker, just before Barstow where fiery demons dance at the gate of Death Valley. A few hours later she let me out at a coffee shop in downtown Bakersfield, not far from the Padre Hotel. I figured I would sit in a restaurant near the bus station. It was a holy place. I sat up the rest of the night and wondered where the next day would lead me. I wondered about my family that didn’t exist anymore.
As I sat there staring at the coffee shop window reflections, I had another vision: I sat on a bed at my grandmother’s house in San Jose, California. I was nine years old. Grandma Bonita often wore imitation leopard skin jumpsuits. She wore wigs too—many different wigs. Often they were orange, yellow, black, or blood red—and in many different styles. I never saw her real hair. I think I would have been terrified if I had. I imagined her outside of the room and in the kitchen preparing menudo. She poured her soul into it, filling it with chunks of cow stomach lining and hominy.
I had been hiding in the bedroom; I think it was her room. I don’t even know why we were in San Jose. I didn’t want to visit my relatives. I was afraid of them, afraid of their skin that was darker than mine. Father had raised me to be white, to never speak Spanish, and to hate the word “Chicano” because it meant some kind of liberation. I feared their loud voices, their tight hugs and their slang Spanglish that was different than my own ghetto-talk. I was afraid of grandmother even when she simply said, “How are you, mi hijo?” And so I imagined myself as I sat on the bed with mother on one side of me, while the circus elephant sat on the other. They both changed their shirts at the same time, and sat on the edge of the bed in their bras. I was shocked—mother had always been so modest. She would always keep the bathroom door locked. She never spoke of sex, or in any sexual manner, nor of innuendoes around the family. For many years she had kept her innocence with me. And here I saw these two women nearly nude. Suddenly I was filled with hate for the both of them. I despised sitting there but was petrified and couldn’t move. The women didn’t even speak to one another. I could see that mother, tight-lipped, embarrassed, was filled with hate for father and his machismo, and for the woman. Yet I hated mother that day; and I hated that moment because I wanted to melt away but couldn’t, especially when I realized I was a part of it all; because I suddenly realized father had been boasting to his own family about his women.
Mother had looked so terrified. I sat and drank coffee in Bakersfield and could see her scared face, her angry face in the very cream-filled coffee cup where my lips sipped—it was the vision of what led up to her not removing the stains from father’s work shirts. I remembered as I if had sat there in grandmother’s house angry with mother. I suddenly wanted to grab a knife and kill the circus elephant beast and penetrate to her very laughing skull. As a young boy I lay awake each night filled with loathing and anger, as I was filled with a murderous wanting to smash the elephant’s head with a baseball bat. It was pure hatred for the beast that could cause so much destruction in a family. What could Bonifacio have known about my pain?
MOTHER She had grown defiant not long after that incident and would purposely forget to wash father’s clothes. She would sit and watch television in her constant bouts of unhappiness. That went on for hours on end, days on end, from early in the morning until very late at night. She didn’t sleep much. I know she feared to be in bed with father. His machismo reeked from the very door of his bedroom. I would walk past, and he would be inside playing with himself under the covers. I knew what he was doing. But what can a boy do when anything related to family life is supposed to be normal? It was all normal—father playing with himself, toying with his own manhood; or mother and father in their room arguing, mother crying, father slamming the door, opening it, slamming it again. Mother groaning. Mother was honorable. She had a sense of family. I think she had been arguing for a new beginning for all of us. I’ll never know. He was probably in there raping her. That’s what my mind sees now, and what I saw that night in the coffee cup: mother held against her will. He with the mad red look in his eyes, face red too, heaving and panting, and moving as she cried and whimpered beneath his machismo, only to rebel once again and not wash his shirts.
SEPTEMBER The next morning was September 11th. I was about to take a Greyhound bus from the Plaza Hotel in downtown Las Vegas to Bakersfield. A Canadian friend of mine with visions of her own drove me to the bus station. A line of people stretched far onto the sidewalk along Main Street. It was windy. I heard and saw several beer bottles roll into gutters; glass smashed from the sudden strong winds and lay piled like bone fragments. The woman had been a student of mine. She was from Rochester, New York and cried because she hadn’t heard from her friend who may have been at ground zero during the plane attack. “Dia de los rascacielos,” I mumbled over and over. “These lines are two days long. Take me to the outskirts of town, where the 215 meets with the 15. I will hitchhike to California.”
She was short, Irish, had reddish pale skin and sometimes laughed with a frowning smile, especially now, because she was so full of tears. She wiped her eyes. She had a strong accent, one that you would expect from a New Yorker: “No, you can’t hitchhike. That’s dangerous. There are killers out there.” She had fought off rapists in New York City, and slummed in buildings where men and women moved like shadows. To her, skeletons lurked everywhere. She held tightly to a can of pepper spray, even in the Las Vegas daylight.
“I’m not worried,” I said. I carried two bags and had left my guitar at the apartment where I lived in downtown Las Vegas in the Huntridge District. That house was a big white two-story home, just like the kind you would see in Hollywood, with a curved and stuccoed outdoor staircase, and turret-like curves that rose high into the sky beneath a Spanish tiled roof. It was art deco, with a hard wooden floor painted black and a deep red border around it. We had polyurethaned over the top of that. It shone with blue reflections in the morning light and was blacker than the dark Vegas nights when it turned evening. There I would sit with my guitar and play for a border collie, cockroaches, black widows and wolf spiders. The music echoed outside and down the stairs into the ears of the crutch-using bums that limped past on their way to the bright Las Vegas Strip.
I wanted to hitchhike. I wanted to take the risk. I yearned for it, for the taste of uncertainty, for the kindness of strangers, for the unknown entrance one can take to a faraway place, and for the strangeness of exiting the desert for the familiar taste of Bakersfield, where home had been for so many years. “I need to go home,” I said. “And I will walk tonight if I have to.”
“I’ll drive you,” she said.
“In this car?” It was a beat-up old Mazda named Mr. Meeka. She had driven it from New York all the way to Las Vegas just a few months before. But I was terrified, more so than hitchhiking—as it would die just driving it on the freeways surrounding Las Vegas. I don’t know how she ever made it, and I would have rather walked. But I didn’t tell her. We ended up driving very late that night to Bakersfield. She cried a good portion of the way. She cried for the ciudadanos de los rascacielos. She cried for an hour and I thought we were sure to die in a car wreck. I asked her not to cry, but she continued to sob, even as we headed into Baker, just before Barstow where fiery demons dance at the gate of Death Valley. A few hours later she let me out at a coffee shop in downtown Bakersfield, not far from the Padre Hotel. I figured I would sit in a restaurant near the bus station. It was a holy place. I sat up the rest of the night and wondered where the next day would lead me. I wondered about my family that didn’t exist anymore.
As I sat there staring at the coffee shop window reflections, I had another vision: I sat on a bed at my grandmother’s house in San Jose, California. I was nine years old. Grandma Bonita often wore imitation leopard skin jumpsuits. She wore wigs too—many different wigs. Often they were orange, yellow, black, or blood red—and in many different styles. I never saw her real hair. I think I would have been terrified if I had. I imagined her outside of the room and in the kitchen preparing menudo. She poured her soul into it, filling it with chunks of cow stomach lining and hominy.
I had been hiding in the bedroom; I think it was her room. I don’t even know why we were in San Jose. I didn’t want to visit my relatives. I was afraid of them, afraid of their skin that was darker than mine. Father had raised me to be white, to never speak Spanish, and to hate the word “Chicano” because it meant some kind of liberation. I feared their loud voices, their tight hugs and their slang Spanglish that was different than my own ghetto-talk. I was afraid of grandmother even when she simply said, “How are you, mi hijo?” And so I imagined myself as I sat on the bed with mother on one side of me, while the circus elephant sat on the other. They both changed their shirts at the same time, and sat on the edge of the bed in their bras. I was shocked—mother had always been so modest. She would always keep the bathroom door locked. She never spoke of sex, or in any sexual manner, nor of innuendoes around the family. For many years she had kept her innocence with me. And here I saw these two women nearly nude. Suddenly I was filled with hate for the both of them. I despised sitting there but was petrified and couldn’t move. The women didn’t even speak to one another. I could see that mother, tight-lipped, embarrassed, was filled with hate for father and his machismo, and for the woman. Yet I hated mother that day; and I hated that moment because I wanted to melt away but couldn’t, especially when I realized I was a part of it all; because I suddenly realized father had been boasting to his own family about his women.
Mother had looked so terrified. I sat and drank coffee in Bakersfield and could see her scared face, her angry face in the very cream-filled coffee cup where my lips sipped—it was the vision of what led up to her not removing the stains from father’s work shirts. I remembered as I if had sat there in grandmother’s house angry with mother. I suddenly wanted to grab a knife and kill the circus elephant beast and penetrate to her very laughing skull. As a young boy I lay awake each night filled with loathing and anger, as I was filled with a murderous wanting to smash the elephant’s head with a baseball bat. It was pure hatred for the beast that could cause so much destruction in a family. What could Bonifacio have known about my pain?
MOTHER She had grown defiant not long after that incident and would purposely forget to wash father’s clothes. She would sit and watch television in her constant bouts of unhappiness. That went on for hours on end, days on end, from early in the morning until very late at night. She didn’t sleep much. I know she feared to be in bed with father. His machismo reeked from the very door of his bedroom. I would walk past, and he would be inside playing with himself under the covers. I knew what he was doing. But what can a boy do when anything related to family life is supposed to be normal? It was all normal—father playing with himself, toying with his own manhood; or mother and father in their room arguing, mother crying, father slamming the door, opening it, slamming it again. Mother groaning. Mother was honorable. She had a sense of family. I think she had been arguing for a new beginning for all of us. I’ll never know. He was probably in there raping her. That’s what my mind sees now, and what I saw that night in the coffee cup: mother held against her will. He with the mad red look in his eyes, face red too, heaving and panting, and moving as she cried and whimpered beneath his machismo, only to rebel once again and not wash his shirts.
posted by N.L. Belardes # 7:05 AM
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