Rafe Dubious: He left his amp at the loading dock and careened off in that white Nova of his. I didn't feel it was my responsibility.



Going backwards, he'd just staged a regular freakout on my couch. Well. Said he'd seen all this going down in a dream before. Well now.



All that last part, from the girl, even still he can't get it right. He attributes it to RachelWhere, but he's confused. That girl from the Higlands was KateyRed. Get it straight, Crombosis!



He rearranged everything in my studio

He drew on the walls

and I responded. in small writing, up in a corner

by the ceiling, I wrote "You are not so much"



KateyRed. she'd come by. to talk to me. about something he'd said. and it didn't matter what. I told her it was a lie. It wasn't my responsibility



I don't know how I got in here. I'm no friend of his. Fuck this

****************************************************

KateyRed: A few days after the fucked up night that began in the Highlands, he called me. He sounded scared. He asked if I would like to go out for a drink. If I would be interested. I was flattered. I said yes.



I met him at Rafe's studio. He was by himself. He met me in the parking lot and walked me in. This was in early November. The air was cold and sweet. It was just getting dark. The sky was turning purple.



He was a character. He was wearing a dark green dress shirt untucked, and jeans. And beat up dusty black leather harness boots. His hair - you can tell it'd been long and he'd chopped it back with scissors himself. He looked like a vagabond. Not a hipster. A vagabond.



I sat on the couch in the studio again. We talked. When he talked it was always something of the confessional. It warranted some friendliness. I smiled. He talked and talked. Then he played me a song he said he'd written that day. This was the whole reason for us sitting here, I could see. It was a ballad in G. His guitar playing was crude yet evocative. I told him I liked his song. I told him his voice sounded very...warm. I said let's get out of here.



We went to the bar with the wood floors and ship knick-knackery on the walls. We drank any number of Bass Ales. We smoked cigarettes. There were some friends of my ex-boyfriend at the bar. This I alluded to in my sidelong way. We were both buzzed. He got up and sat down again next to me on the bench on my side. It was a silly and awkward thing to do. I said let's get out of here. I said let's go to my place. I was driving, and I drove us back there.



Once inside we had glasses of wine. I gave him the tour. Even up the spiral staircase. He looked unsure in my bedroom. We went back downstairs. We listened to an old record by the Police. He sat very close to me and spoke quietly by my ear. I could feel his breath on my hair. I sat very still. He moved back and apologized. I said do you want to go out on the roof.



He stopped me in the doorway and looked very intense. He said some things I did not understand, could not have understood. Too much interior monologue leaking out. I got scared. I did not like it.



We went out on the roof though. It was very chilly. We talked some more and laughed at silly harmless things, goofs. I don't think he knew my heart wasn't in it.



I knew of course at the bottom of things he wanted what all guys want. I'd given that too many times before I felt.



Later in the car he told me that's all Rafe wanted, anyway. From me. I said well he's not going to. he can't have it.



But then later I confronted Rafe and he told me Cromby was not well in the head, and maybe dangerous. My source information seemed to corroborate this



I was very distraught when I left the studio after speaking to Rafe. As I was leaving I saw Cromby coming in. I stopped him and said, "You lied to me." He said, "No." And covered his face and went backwards.



Rafe was right there. He escorted Cromby in through the loading dock. What the fuck. Again I was scared, but more than that angry. I sped away. I just wanted to get out of there.



A few days later Cromby called my just before Thanksgiving. I wanted it to stop. I was tired of their bullshit. I wanted him to go away. And that is what I told him

shit haven't lifted weights it's edging up to a month now and think I might be losing it, strength seeping out of me. man, if I was only ripped up like my dog and as fast as he who is a 68 lb. black German Shepherd they'd shower me with money honey and I'd be intimate with your saliva



reeling this out from my cubichell because idiots are on vacation this week and as such me here now considering staging a diveout around noon. just got a call from my old fieldbrother lettin me know fishin could indeed have been on the agenda today but it was an elusive plan have to wait till tomorrow I hope



(the diveout however is a nascent plan devoutly held)



have been having precious little fun lately. my neighbor hates my dog. i live right on top of the fucker. he stands on his deck and glares at my girlfriend. mind you, we are considerate as can be with the pooch and barking ie not letting the occurrence obtrude or prolong. never mind, the issue is that the dude is a type A anal retentive fucker and those people well they're out there and they are your enemy.



the canine hating and the glaring is becoming oppressive. i hate to admit it. it is really a small thing. it's brought out the old me: last night I muttered "cocksucker" just beneath the audible, lit a butt like throwing down my muddy glove and gave that fucker a hard look. bitch was watering his lawn. what a picayune nightmare. i don't suppose he heard me not necessary just wanted to give him the diorama: the hate is mutual, you douchebag. you want brotherly love you got the wrong drone, Chad



troubles at home last night half-drunk and not in fact yelling I told her I was pretty much sick of the constant tension whining complaining. leave it to me to lather up a passive aggressive. I'm like nutrition for unhappiness. she wants to move. we've been looking. met with the realtor. what a pain in the ass. i could in fact move. our house ain't that great. wonder what i'd be doing if I was single. never had much luck single either. i'm sure I'd be in bars? maybe not. maybe not now.



anyway, all 4 of you, now you can see why I don't usually do the regular thing here. Que pinchi pene. Now back to our irregularly scheduled mania.

RachelWhere: rejoice in poverty? he sure did.



let's see I met him in a bar in Virginia Highlands. I was there with my sister for the dancing. he

was sitting in a booth with this boy who I knew from around the Five Points named Rafe Dubious.

Rafe was an artist and had his work hanging in this one place off Ponce they were formal works with figures and they were quite quite good but he'd that summer gone abstract



I didn't care for that I was a vetrinary technician with long dark red hair. I was the type to make allusions to all the fucked up things I'd done in my past but I was a clean girl now or trying to be. my rooms had a gothic thing going with black wrought iron skull candles and witch pictures but they were clean quarters indeed. there was a spiral staircase. my bedspread was floral and bright. I live there with my sister. she was a blonde girl short and compact while I was tall and thin and had hips like a mantis. she wasn't my sister at all but that's what I told Cromby to give you an idea how I valued him. that night in the Highlands I had gone there for the dancing. Rafe D. and Cromby were holed up in a booth over pitcher of beer and arguing. About their band. Rafe wanted a saxophone in there. Cromby wanted to be Chris Cornell. It was Rafe who brought us in to sit down. Both of them were a couple of glib characters. Rafe was oilslick sexy and Cromby was sloppy and surly in a sweet way. Guess who I was attracted to. Rafe said Cromby's kind of a light drunk and Cromby said No I'm not in a way that told you he so was. Well, maybe not that bad. I don't know what happened to my not sister but it was late real late finally and we were all shit drunk and carefree in the way that you really can get to be in summer in Atlanta and we dumped ourselves into Cromby's white Nova and Cromby drove us back to the studio. The studio of Rafe in this semirenowned band practice space a big white washed brick old warehouse space where you weren't supposed to live just play music but it was shady and Rafe lived there anyway for painting studio purposes first and also the band stuff. Cromby had a key and had been sleeping on the couch occasionally with the understanding that is was to be Stealth. and what I noticed about Cromby driving and here is where I gained a certain respect for him was that even though he was completely loaded he was indeed a very very careful and inscrutably cautious drunk driver. so there was something. well the boys took me back to the studio and plugged in their guitars and proceeded to play me a song they had written together, worked up out of an old song of each of theirs. it was no better or worse than a million songs of its kind written by a million dudes of their precise ilk. i appeared flattered in the way girls such as I can but we were still drinking beer and smoking Camels. it was the kind of good time you can have at 3:30 in the morning. then we were all drunk and lying on the couch cushions Rafe had put on the floor. both of them started then to give me a backrub. Rafe put his hand in my shirt. I stopped things there. We all slept drunk on the floor. at least that is what Cromby thought happened



hey what do you know there is more to this anecdote. I will be back but I better let MercyGraft chiaroscuro you in on some ancillaries

DickDanger: he angry he got a angry face people think he angry when he ain't even angry I seen him in this all night coffeehouse on 9th avenue in Chelsea in 1998 summer of he came in about 11:30 pm and got on the list to play. it was a open mike where they basically gave you a gig right there. small stage. what was clear about cromb was he didn't have no marketing plan. he had one of those soundhole pickups for the acoustic and that was it. he come on in and set down at the small curve of bar in the side and back and order a amber beer and another and three and it was clear he didn't have no qualms on playin drunk because he'd take 4 up to the stage with him when he go to play. white boy blues. but he sing his own words and put his own C Am F G etc. twist on things. this one night there was these two minxy small dyehead girls there no I mean one was chinese the other octaroon perhaps they were from NYU they gave him their regard and he gave them some song about coming up like a scarecrow across the crisscross bottle glass. nah, that's some lie. he never had no song that good. this was a good night there though because it came down to a blues jam with this dude ted and it went on and on and ended in a vestibule with this micmac girl and ted and some others on the smoke out then it was shamble into the morning spend the last dollars on a egg plate and then shamble back down into the train it was a dry glory and a arid one dry as wallboard dust - why you think he drink so much?



MercyGraft: he knows that indeed you do go around only once and that's why his conscience has been dealing him some blows. the summer sunlight should never shine so hard. catch him smoking an American Spirit by the truck. planning to dive out to somewhere remote where he can smoke some more and try to think himself back into who he used to want to be. harsh too is the reflection too back on what and how it he used to be. it was never so good. maybe one summer. 95. that was a good one. hi it's me Cromby here see I've hijacked MG he's supposed to be my better half but you know how that goes

yeah yeah can you hear the voice can you hear the talking well her voice is prettier than mine you can have that if you want to but the real crux is her mind is prettier than mine too and it is a mind like that that reminds a mind like mine to focus on the voice of vincent. vincent. raw. raw like that other vincent reckon but not so nice as that broken blue and yellow skybird schizophrenia of his mine is gray dun like the smoke when it comes out the lungs yours the lungs mine wine I need wine well how about a light beer say maybe a Coors seems apropos



I need a career path I need a bath I need some blow I need a blow job I need the knob replete with the jism of when you back away from schism of herenow rightexactlynow all you know all you see have seen have said said said right now I said right now I'll leave you in a beat. and not one from my heart. no. one from my sensibilities my sense of dramatic task my past but subtle way beyond yelling so you can't feel it no you can't but someone can others can have nope fuck what's the value of interior monologue it's that you just say. I read one blog today.



i say now call this one two fish one I'll never see one I've seen too much

DickDanger:



Well I like to kick it alone. With my girlfriend and my parrot. And fuck that drunk kid. You call him Cromby. I call him crap. haha no. I have forgotten him is he a asshole. You reach a stage in life where you start wondering what a true asshole is. I got $987.04 in my savngs. and that is why i aint talk to cromb all he ever wanted to do was find a drunk micmac chick and fuck her 4 times tops till it came out she was nancyzen all along and also a fat black girl who chafed his dick and also some filipina one no all 3 the same no some 2 he met in a bar in Newmarket one fine one one fat one fuck the fat one suck the fine one's teat later some one sucks you off you come can't say who probably the fat one well still pretty hot



all things considered

NancyZen:



We drove up to Portsmouth and Old Man Mile Beach. I was up on a visit from the land of the south. I lived in a house with a boyfriend down there who had long black Turkish hair he was a blacksmith. I had to tell Cromby all about him. Cromby didn't say much. We went to a bar and he drank numerous Tecates. I was drinking vodka. We both got drunk. Cromby leaned across the real small small table and whispered in my ear he wanted to go get a room somewhere and fuck me. I said I had a boyfriend. Cromby ordered tequila shots. We had 2 apiece. We both got too drunk to drive. Cromby became belligerent and started spouting bitter bitter attitudes about why he always a eunuch never the dude why couldn't it have ever been him. I said it wasn't him it was timing. We left the bar to go smoke out. We smoked out far down on the beach saying nothing just watching the surf. We then walked back up the boardwalk all sparchy like the salt air. Cromby stopped at one of those pitch the baseball guess your speed things. Cromby put down 4 bucks for six balls and told the barker he didn't want to guess he just wanted to throw. Cromby looked me right in the eye and said in high school he had a 90 mile an hour fastball. He threw all six then and never broke 40. He said I'm a fucking liar, all right, but I still got a 8 inch dick. I became somewhat uncomfortable because he was obviously drunk and getting loud. People were looking at him. I didn't need this shit. It was a buzzkill. We went to another bar. He went off to piss and I left. I went to another bar down the way. There I met another boy right off the bat. He had a bowl haircut and muscles and except for the bowl haircut seemed altogether hairless. He took me to his apartment back about 15 miles down the highway in this other town where people lived and we fucked while his roommate took pictures. I didn't really care about the blacksmith at that moment. It wasn't the first time hanging with Cromby had brought this type of behavior out of me. The other boy and his friend were morons but man could they fuck. What turned me on too was the idea of ditching Cromby that way and what I would do next.



The next morning I emailed Cromby the pictures from the one boy's computer. That night I got on a plane and went back to the south where I was from. And that was it for me and Cromby. Unless he should call me again and I am bored but I had heard that he had disappeared at sea

read this but if you read this and you have been reading this read the other couple that follow and these are reverse chronological for now starting from here which they always are anyway but you know what I mean I am not dead but I am dead too oh if only we could drink and talk but this will be as good as it gets for you unless you are skullbolt in which case I might see ya dog in which whether or not eventuality you are forever exempt



we got new forms here and we can say new things in these new forms and still have them be Lit. who is to say what is?????????? Is Literature alive and well? You better come on in my kitchen



it's going to be raining outdoors yeh I used to sing that one still can just did I bet



I beg



I guess I should just go to bed

because I am laboring under the burden

of getting anything anything at all out on the page

and I am drinking beer as usual and while it's not exactly clouding my head

I am not a ball of holy fire yet.



But it is only really my third night of you know here I am

after I said I am going to write no matter what and so here I am doing it. Yeah

this is a poem. but one with no line breaks. and no regard for anything beyond words,

any words, whatever words you can find, dog, whatever words

you can muster. it just feels so much better



just to type along than to sit silent and bound and beholden

to too many ideas. all day at work today in my hole I was trying to muster

some kind of referendum on the process of writing and I couldn't do it. and I'm not doing it now.



and what a bore this is here you'd think if I was letting it flow and letting it fly

and flaying it out I really would just flay it and tell some of the good stuff. so much of the good stuff is from

the so distant past to me yet not so much in years no more certainly than ten years ago and who cares? what is the good stuff?

but if I start writing it what will I have? what will it be? well



this is part of the referendum. I think I could write some short stories that are just mildly disguised versions of things that've happened to me and maybe I should as a form of catharsis. tell it straight, add some shit, tweak something, but in the right

way, call it fiction. i know this is what many writers do

and I guess I will do it because making stuff out of purer imagination, making from out of the dream, is harder.

or is it. no, it shouldn't be. but what I'm saying



what I'm saying to you right now is I need some stories I can tell fast as I can tell them. fast. fast. I need production. I need work. I need backlog. I need ore. I need stumps to cut off and to hew out of them my sick little wood sculptures. if I face it I bet I could write a whole volume of short stories just shit that's happened to me. based on that shit. I know something of the fiction will enter into it but I

do think I need to codify somehow as a start

my own personal details. I keep finding ways to peel

off out of the main thing I am supposed to be workin on but that is

THE DEATH OF MOTT CROMBY



MercyGraft:



He bought it early. He was four years old. He had a croup.



Now a couple weeks before the onset of the cough he'd fallen out of his crib reaching for mosquitos. It was late July. It was the back front room of a medium ranch where he slept and Mom was vigilant but it was darning hours and he happened to reach too long and fell out of his crib. Onto a slat wood floor where he hit his head and cried and then slept for some time.



Mott:



Lies. Not accurate. Not even any fun in the lack of accuracy. Let's end this thing here.



rachelwhere:



none of this shit I can tell is going to be even anywhere near as fun as just the Internet the one you can have if you can only pay for it



mercygraft:



give him a break he hasn't written for months and months again. I have some dream story I would like to tell that could be illuminating I have some fantasy



Mott:



it's all breaking up



MercyGraft & RachelWhere



You're doing it again. You're not giving it a chance



Mott:



I could be drinking I could be drinking again Oh wait I am

Now I got new things to telll you; now I got new ways to tell you these things

Who cares, but one.ahhhhhhh



MercyGraft:



He breaks it down for over like the last past ten years and the answers are all equal in the head and the answer is no result or yes it is and it answers nothing oh but yes it does some piquant existential pain and yeh caring I care I care I care for this dog too much no just enough you know this whole observation is going to in spite of itself become one. single. blog . entry. yeh. and.



why not



because the whole matter will stick here's the ugly beersoaked entrails of the idea but now the idea is true.



drunk summer another drunk summer another another how many this one one more and one more I can see having them till 35 36 37 38



if I can keep my body in shape. god and my potency is such a waste. I could fuck you now bitch hard for a hour. I said that to the sky. trees and rocks. I am none of these. i am the ether of lost friends. I am still out of control. I am writing again as a means of escape. good writer. bitch. fuck . shit . piss. this'll all get on the Internet because I don't want Mott Cromby to die. He's already dead. He's died so many times. So many times. This is The Death Of Mott Cromby. Fuck the whip I'm the whip the whip already hurts

Mott:



___________________________________________________________________________________________

RachelWhere:



I can tell you a story a story about Cromby. He rocked one fifth of my world in the summer of 95.



He could kiss. We were both real dumb. didn't know motherfuckers would be making fortunes while we laid around. that is his voice creeping in there not mine. his voice crept into my. head.



he sang to me on tapes. and sent them to me. I would listen to them in my red car and smoke cigarettes and think of him and me and the world. and me. and the world.



he could kiss and he was smart and funny. and he was very emotional and then later he did dumb things like jerk off instead of fuck me and then I called him on it and said some thing to embarrass him and then I sat smugly in a thin chair and he flipped out and bashed with his fist the doors of this third hand dresser cheap cheap and his violence was cheap and expensive and disturbing. and then he cried right after and fell at my feet. and his drama was a cheap something. and he was a good fuck for me why would I lie about something like that he had good hands he had guitar player hands and he had a good tongue he ate me deep like the sweet confection I was and won't be again



MercyGraft:



He died on a ten speed bike. They were riding to the mall; him and Dick Danger. They were like Fourteen. Riding bikes onto the bridge; turning on and in the breakdown lane on the side there June sun yeh in it and in in that turning lane.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cromby is back

I have a backlog of posts

both literal and figurative

but this one is right now

so let it fly



glad Detroit won

frankly not surprised that they did

Sox whipped in Denver

Didn't have to be that way

this is ephemeral

and for my girl Bunnie



tonight did a foreign thing

which was going before this town's planning board

to ask for variance

to construct a shed



I need another blog to honestly explain

these mundane details of my life

which are only as mundane as I view them

you can't quantify experience; only qualify it



there are some things about my life separate from

Cromby's that I'd like to tell but I can't do it here



Cromby is the dreamer

Cromby lives in the dreamworld

which is our world. your world. the world

seen through Cromby's eyes



felt through Cromby's heart



(and this is a note to bunnie:

it is not his heart that is complacent -

it's his will



sometimes)



it's probably not cool to call out bunnie

I regard the other 3 - 5 of you and close confidants as well

or you if you are reading new

or you



tough night

tough life

I think you if you've read this far



can get down with that

assertion



say?