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revamp. don’t want the story to suck. reread the spring ’07 version. this is my attempt to make it better. I also was off the continent for two months. Took a writing course at University. maybe, I’m learning something. so, if you’ve already read this, I invite to reread the edited version. should be able to pick up more, if you already have some sense of it.
and go watch Velvet Goldmine. it’s far-out.
A Lesson in Angelology
Chapter One: Baby’s On Fire
necessary warnings: strong language, drug use,
explicit hetero- and homo- sexuality, ultra-violence, and disturbing images
The angels also, he reminds himself, Also the angels.” Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood
My name is Paul Mason. This is the story of how my life was destroyed and reconstructed. I was very delusional while this occurred. I thought I understood cruelty and compassion. I thought I had been well-exposed to the world. I was ignorant and naïve. Do not let my mistakes justify yours.
So here—the morning after it began—
“Paul is dying, you motherfucker! You can’t evict us now!”
Our landlord rolled his impassive shoulders, cigarette, unlit and limp, between his lips.
“He’s just hung over. Besides, you owe me two months’ rent, Mitchell,” Tucker said, never giving me a glance, “I need to let this out to someone who will actually pay me.”
“You told me we were golden! You said—”
“I need the money. You got one hour. The new tenants are coming—”
Mitch and Tucker disappeared from my crumbled position on the bathroom floor. Their punches and curses and howls ricocheted in the rather bare apartment. Just a disintegrating double bed, a battered wardrobe and a rusted ironing board piled with jeans and band shirts. Money had been scarce since I convinced Mitch to stop dealing coke.
A few minutes passed, and, for the first time all afternoon, I felt able to stand up without collapsing. Tucker was probably right. Just an extremely bad hangover. Last night, Mitch and I had gone down to this warehouse concert near the pier. I didn’t remember drinking an excessive amount, but I must have, because I hadn’t been this wasted since early high school.
The throbbing in my head had mellowed down to a low hum, and I steadied myself on the chipped and brown-stained sink. I regarded the glaze-eyed boy in the scratched mirror. Swimmer’s build. Smoldering brown eyes. A mass of uncooperative dirty blond hair. I wasn’t repulsive looking. However, intensified and blatant in my reflection was something new: a blue smear of a bruise, bold on the crook of my tan arm. It was a mammoth. I touched it curiously and winced at the contact.
Must have come from the mosh pit.
Seconds later, Mitch emerged from his fight in the hallway, lip bleeding, face battered.
“We are getting the fuck out of here!” He screamed, “I am so sick of all his motherfucking bullshit!”
He was throwing our things into some spare hefty bags, muttering out indignant curses. For a moment I said nothing, partly from still feeling wiped from a day’s worth of nausea, partly because I figured this was my fault. Obviously, crashing out in Seattle with Mitch Sanders for a summer was a synonym for poverty. I’d known this. He’d known this. But somehow, despite all my good intentions of returning home after my freshman year, Mitch had convinced me that a summer in suburbia would be hell.
And here we were. Stumbling out of a crumbling apartment building, all of our worldly possessions in garbage bags.
“Bastard! Fucking betraying little—”
“Mitch!”
I had to wretch him out of the front door, ignoring the sporadic darts of pain course through my stomach. Tripping, I tugged my friend along, trying to suppress the bile that threatened again to come out my mouth. In the blurry corners of my eyes, I saw Tucker standing outside his lobby office. He caught my glance and winked, cold smile on his lips.
Asshole. But at the moment my main concern was getting Mitch across the street without passing out. We managed, though immediately afterwards I collapsed on the sidewalk by the streetlight. Mitch stopped his tirade of damnation to stare at me, hunched over and coughing up air.
“Baby, you sure you’re alright? You still look pretty trashed.”
I nodded, feeling the pain in my abdomen subsiding.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m getting better. But fuck Mitch! What the hell are we supposed to do now?”
He crouched down beside me. Just two vagrants. Homeless. Broke. Stuck in downtown Seattle.
“Like hell if I know…”
The look on my face indicated this was the wrong answer. Mitch broke into a sheepish grin.
“Danny boy’s?” He suggested, a compromise, an apology.
I consented. It was well into twilight. We needed a place to regroup. So, twenty minutes later, Mitch and I had Coronas in a corner-crap leather booth at Danny’s. We never came here. The bar was decrepit, wooden paneled and known to us only because our good friend, Jesse, crashed his ass up in this very booth every time the word “exam” popped up at University. I avoided my drink, watching Mitch turn rosy from bad beer and worse excuses.
“Look, baby,” he said, whirling his arms around, “Tucker fucked us over. He told me goddamnit, that I was golden. Fucking golden. I tell you, tomorrow morning, I hammering that bitch. It’s all gonna work out, I guarantee.”
“Mitch, he’s already got some new tenants moving in. You must have pissed him off about something.”
“Well, maybe.”
“Like you promised him crack you didn’t have?”
“…ah…”
“Mitch, I told you to lay off the cocaine. What are we gonna do now? Like hell if I’m trotting home to my parents after all this.”
“We’re not going home.”
“Then what?”
That question smothered the rest of the evening. Mitch had developed a nice stack of Corona labels, while I still nursed my first bottle. The clock on the wall said three o’clock.
Just two bums, comatose and homeless. I had twenty bucks left from last week’s paycheck and a stuffed Hefty trash bag. Mitch closed his eyes, murmuring the occasional injustice. No one else had camped out tonight, and Danny, the owner, sloshed his way through the mirth of the deep drinker bar to our corner booth retreat.
“Final call,” he whispered, in a learned way that drunks mistook as compassion. Mitch flicked open his orbs and told him to piss off. We slumped out of the cracked leather and alcohol laced dump. Two sullen-eyed boys from the nowhere village of Wellington prowling the streets.
Down on the water, the early morning mist drizzled in. The late night vision glossed itself over in silver. Mitch slid his free arm around my neck and dragged me headlong into a retro-trashed hole called “The Regency”. We got a room for fifteen bucks and crashed out upon arrival.
//\
The first dream that night.
The desert expanded all around me. Endless golden sand dunes.
Above me the voices glittered like the Northern Lights.
“What have I done?”
Soothing words rushed to comfort this distressed soul.
I searched for the source.
//\
When I awoke, I found Mitch sitting upright on the bed, chugging a Starbucks cappuccino. The purple smears under his eyes told me he hadn’t slept.
“I’ve been thinking, Paul,” he said, not looking at me but sensing my movement, “We should go back and—”
“No.”
“But you didn’t—”
“No.”
“We need—”
“No.”
“I want—”
“No!” I pushed myself up, ripping the cup out of his hands.
“Tucker is a sadist,” I continued, “Who enjoys taking kids’ last dollars for shitty, mold-infested apartments. We are not going back.”
And I downed the rest of his cappuccino, getting off the stained and fraying bed.
“He’s not all that bad…”Mitch mumbled, but stopped arguing.
I stretched and did a quick survey of the room. The last shreds of wallpaper clung to the crumbling plaster walls. The wooden floor planks creaked up at harsh, splintering angles. This dump was the last place I wanted to spend my day.
“Let’s crash at Michelle’s,” I said.
“Ah no.”
“C’mon.”
“She hates me.”
“Come off it. She doesn’t hate you.”
Total bullshit. Michelle despised Mitch. Of course, this had only really been an issue when we were still dating. Now there were no more triangular dorm room tangos (Mitch and I had been roommates at Seattle International).
Mitch still looked uneasy, but there we were, an hour later, in front of the three-room downtown studio Michelle and her five closest friends rented out. We put our trash bags of possessions besides us, and I combed a nervous hand through my hair, hoping I didn’t look obviously destitute. I was never really comfortable with her seeing me down. I was never really comfortable with anyone seeing me down.
One of Michelle’s blonde girlfriends answered the door. She locked eyes on Mitch but called back, “Paul is here!”
Mitch rolled his eyes as we were ushered into the loft. Michelle came out of the kitchen and attacked me in the living room, snaking flour coated arms over me. I coughed as the starch flecked onto me and I noted the mellow taste of marinara sauce as her lips pecked mine. Michelle and I were both Culinary Arts majors at Seattle International.
“Hi sweetie. I didn’t know you were coming over. What’s up?”
“Absolutely everything.”
Thirty minutes later, me, Michelle and Mitch were cushioned into leather couches, eating freshly cooked pizza, and ranting about the terrible state of our lives. Michelle sat under my arm, buttering me with sympathetic eyes and stabbing Mitch with accusations. Our relationship had started around last Halloween and ended on New Years. We’d both realized we fit better as friends with occasional benefits, than the cheating lovers we both had ended up to be. No hard feelings. I loved her.
“Well Paul,” Michelle said, finishing off another pepperoni, “You know I would love to let you stay here but we’re kind of operating over maximum capacity. Cynthia, you know Cynthia, well last week she moved in and we’re out of bed and couch space. Sorry love.”
“Oh, it’s alright. Don’t worry about it.”
“Yeah, really,” Mitch echoed, “Do not worry about it. We will find another place.”
“Oh shut up, Mitch Sanders.”
“Excuse me but it’s obvious I am not welcome here.”
“I wonder why, you little crack dealing whore.”
“Woman, you better—”
“Hey, come on, come on,” I soothed, pulling Michelle back against me, and gesturing to Mitch to knock it off, “Let’s all play nice here. We’re cool. We’re chill.”
“We’re not chill,” Mitch muttered, but Michelle ignored it. Moments disappeared and the evening crept on. Restlessness pestered again.
“Let’s go out tonight,” I said, eyeing Mitch brooding in the armchair across the room. He snaked a hand through brown hair and nodded. Michelle looked up at me with bright eyes, glimmer of a smile emerging through her irritation towards Mitch.
“Okay,” she said.
I knew we’d be hooking up later.
Yesterday had been disgusting.
Inside rocked around in a rainstorm of strobing pinks, blues and greens. Though early, Soul was packed, supple flesh crashing into supple flesh everywhere. Michelle tangled me up on the dance floor, while Mitch slide away from us with a wink and smirk, whose origin I did not want to know.
The combination of Michelle’s body rubbing against mine and the bombardment of irresistible beats swallowed me whole for at least an hour. Probably would have stayed out in that web of sweat, perfume and skin much longer too, had I not noticed Mitch reemerged on couch nearby, wrapped about in some conversation with a strange guy. But I knew Mitch’s expression.
“I’ll be back,” I shouted into Michelle’s ear, kissing her cheek and wading out of the springing bodies. Once off the dance floor, I recognized the guy Mitch was in avid conversation with.
Dreamer. I’d only seen him around before, lurking on balconies and in backrooms of clubs, usually with a crew of ten or more. Mitch had mentioned him a few times. They’d worked together after Mitch had moved out here after his graduation. Probably involved in some not-so legal activity. They smiled when I sat down.
“Hey baby,” Mitch said, beaming, “This is Dreamer. Dreamer this is my best friend, Paul Mason. He’s real clear.”
“Pleasure to meet you.” Dreamer shook my hand. He was decked out in all black, had a couple silver studs in his ears and had spiked up in his blonde hair, dotting the tips in neon blue. But his smile was warm and sincere, and his body lean and confident. First impression: charm and class. Textbook Mytarri. Of course, this was before I knew what Mytarri were.
“Dreamer’s got this place over in Evergreen Heights. He said we could crash with him for awhile.”
Alleluia. But, I didn’t know this guy at all. He was older than me, probably mid-twenties…but anything was better than the Regency. Or the streets. Or Tucker’s.
“Oh for real? Man, thanks so much. I really appreciate it.”
Dreamer waved his hand and rolled his eyes.
“It’s nothing. We’ve got plenty of room. You’re both more than welcome to stay as long as you want.”
“See baby,” Mitch said, wrapping an arm across my shoulder, “I told you everything would work out. And you wanted to go home.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“If you both want,” Dreamer said, standing up, “I could take you over now.”
“Sure, sure,” Mitch agreed, pulling me up, “Now Paul, go tell Michelle to stop fucking her ex-boyfriends and let’s get out of here.”
I glared, but headed off to find Michelle. Had I been smart, I would have seen through Dreamer’s savior-bullshit and fled the club with her. But I wasn’t smart.
