Billy, the Kid

I was twelve minutes early for Human Biology class. I had come to the Academic Building to get a coffee at the Jazzman's Cafe before lecture and there hadn't been a line. After navigating the empty back hallways of late afternoon, I arrived at the classroom to find a kid who lived in my Hall, Billy, already sitting in class, looking very pleased. I didn't know Billy well, but we were clearly aware of each other's existance due to the proximity of our living arrangements and accursed mutual friends. This made the awkward gesture of sitting far away from him and scrolling absent mindedly through my cell phone unacceptable and so I was forced instead to sit down near him and exchange at least the casual pleasantries.

He had chosen a seat in the dead center of the classroom. If the room had windows this would have bothered me, but it did not. As a matter of fact, this was one of the only rooms I ever came across at Newport that didn't have a view of something pleasant, like the ocean or a grove of pine trees. All it had was four off white walls, a white board, a model skeleton and grey plastic desks. As I eased down into one of the clean grey desks, I gave Billy a half smile and a half nod, hoping it would appease his need for forced social interaction.

"How's it goin' man?" he asked happily. My double half-gesture clearly hadn't satisfied him.

"Oh you know," I replied, "Same old."

"Nope!" he exclaimed excitedly with a dogshit smile on his face.

Thrown off by his volume and unusual response, I stammered for a second before letting out a semi-timid "What?" and taking a giant pull of my coffee.

"No," he answered, "I don't know how it's going for you. I don't see you half as much as you see yourself, so I don't know. That's why I asked. And you didn't even think to ask me back, because you don't give a shit. You gave a shitty answer and showed no courtesy."

As he watched my facial expressions contort with shock and sudden discomfort, he looked even more pleased than before. Finally, he broke eye contact when it was clear that I had no solid response to his lecture on the art of pleasantries and small talk. He reached into his backpack and took out a wooden ruler. I watched him intently as he began measuring every edge of the desk. Once, twice, three times he measured it; making observations under his breath that seemed to be of the utmost importance.

"Is... is it changing?" I asked.

"Well, it's a desk." He replied matter-of-factly.

"Oh."

With that, I forced my expression back to one of casual contentment, turned to face the front of the classroom, and took out my notebook. I flipped it open to the middle, turned it upside down, and wrote "Chapter 777" in my best cursive. I stared straight ahead and began furiously jotting down notes off the whiteboard at the front of the room. There was nothing written on the whiteboard.

"Hey," Billy said, taking a break from his measurements to inquire about my sudden dilligence. "What are you doing?"

"Shhh, if you keep making noise like that I won't be able to concentrate, and then we'll both fail this course, and they'll bury us in the marsh with the soccer team."

"Settle down chief," he said in the most civil and normal tone he had used yet. "Class doesn't start for another six minutes, and I don't think they even send people to the marsh. Just sports teams who can't play anymore... right?"

"Hm," I pondered as I continued my work, squinting at the empty board to read the small print that didn't exist. Billy looked uneasy and out of ideas. People were filing into the classroom and taking seats around the room, meaning the professor would seen be here to put an end to our cruel games. Then suddenly I saw a smile smear across his face slowly like a cancer spreading right before your eyes.

"Say," he said slyly, leaning towards me, "any chance I could borrow your notes? I blew off the reading last night. It's been tough to focus since the gerbils died."

My notes were mostly full of Caddyshack quotes, along with a detailed drawing of Goofy and Donald Duck curbstomping Buggs Bunny. However to explain this to my nemesis would only prove that I was more sane than he was, and that was precisely how one would go about losing the battle in which we were entwined.

I smiled back politely and said "Sure." I ripped the page out of my note book and handed it to him, and he took it and laid it on his desk so he could examine it. Billy snickered and I became nervous: was he planning on showing everyone the evidence of my insanity which he had provoked? I would be finished. Where was his goddamn ruler now? I couldn't find it, nor could I find his stupid dead gerbils that were probably hidden somewhere under his desk. All evidence of his Socialist views and sure Satanism had disspeared, and there he sat, holding the one document that could put me away for 10 to Life. Billy's laugh began to grow as if it could sense my fear, sending me into a maddening state of anxiety. He pounded his fist several times on the desk for emphasis on the humor of the situation.

Billy rose to his feet still laughing while looking down at my notes on his desk. The growing audience in the room now included our professor, standing in the doorway.

"You won't believe what this idiot did!" Billy said to no one in particular. I was sweating now, I could feel the heat overtaking my body and could hear the asylum doctors making small talk in the hallway as they waited to take me away.

"I'm not even IN this class, and this poor sucker gave me his precious notes!" Billy announced before breaking out in an extreme fit of laughter. Confusion hit me like a folding chair in a wrestling ring.

"Now," my sinister opponent said while looking right at me, "this is mine." With that, Billy stood up, balled my paper up, shoved it into his mouth and began chewing on it. He then collected his own notebook from under his desk (which was clearly marked "Human Biology") and began to walk towards the exit of the room. Just before he reached the door, Billy flipped open his notebook and began to write something. As soon as he finished he turned around to face me and held it up:

"I POISONED THE FUCKING COFFEE"
it said.

I immediately spat out a mouthful of coffee all over my open notebook and formerly clean grey desk. With that, Billy laughed, his mouth still full of paper, and he turned and walked out of the room.

He was the victor that day.

The Willow Tree

There is a certain time of year in New England when all of a sudden the trees are all on fire, which you notice while you’re walking between two destinations that probably don’t mean much to you. The trees are just on fire and so is your soul, and the weather is getting colder and trying to put all the fire out with it’s damp chill. It’s the best time of year to take a walk for no reason, but no one has the time. There is always too much to do and denail about the onset of winter and a girl in your life that you should be paying more attention to you. This part of the year, deep autumn if you will, is so fleeting and fragile that there are some years when you won’t notice at all, and many more when you will almost miss it. The fire can’t be held on to, but it can be admired and felt and used while it’s still there.

It was exactly this time of year when we sat under the willow tree in front of our dormitory on a Thursday afternoon and smoked a joint while we talked about life. It was warm out for deep autumn, but the wind blew a steady breeze that felt amazing in your hair and made it okay to wear a sweatshirt. The leaves of the willow were turning red and orange all around us, and the smoke drifted up through them towards the sky and it looked mezmerizing.

“Voting for McCain makes no fucking sense,” I said to no one in particular while staring up into the tree.

“Ya, no shit,” Nicole answered. “Anyone’s better than Bush though, at least we know that.” Dan was busy climbing up into the tree while Mike chased him and Sully looked on laughing. I thought about how much I hated the President, and how there probably wouldn’t ever really be a good President given the way things were going now. Everything was a mess, and we were all stoned and Dan was up in the tree again.

I flipped my hood up and enjoyed that it was still light out. The light was catching the leaves and made us look like we were all on fire inside the tree. The willow tree would lose all its leaves a few weeks later, and we wouldn’t really smoke there or sit there much anymore because then anyone could see you and it wasn’t just a secret place where you talked about how awful the world was. We liked it like that, or at least I did. I think Dan just liked to climb, and Mike liked to try and be better at things than Dan. Sully probably liked just about anything and was always happy, and Nicole just wanted to be with Sully and get stoned. Those might be the real reasons, but it really felt like we loved that tree when it started losing its leaves in November.

I wanted to bring up the Red Sox, but I realized that no one would have cared really because Fitzy wasn’t there. This meant that I had run out of things to talk about that weren’t either about sports or completely depressing and disturbing (like religion or television). Dan decided right then that it was time to jump out of the tree and say the smartest thing anyone has ever said.

“We should go grab dinner from Wakehurst, they usually have good food on Thursdays.”

“I’m in,” Sully responded.

“Let’s go,” gasped Mike as he struggled down from the tree.

Off the Clock

Donyell was a well groomed twenty two year old store clerk at the Friendly Mini Market. He was always on time and his clean cut appearance made him a favorite among the assortment of misfits who worked at the store, both with customers and management. He had started working there at sixteen because it was easy and in his neighborhood, but after his failed attempts at higher education it seemed he was now working his way towards the position of Assistant Manager.

All of that was pretty irrelevant at the moment, however, because it was ten fifty-five on a Monday night and his shift was about to end. All he was waiting for was Barry, the scruffy over night clerk who always reeked of Lucky Strikes. A middle aged woman walked up to the counter and stared up at Donyell from under her frazzled orange hair. Donyell knew this lady as “Loony Liz”, and he had seen her riding around town on her ancient bicycle with a milk crate on the front that was usually full of empty redeemable cans and bottles or one of the scraggly looking stray cats that populated the Beachfront neighborhood. Loony Liz pulled a stack of scratch tickets out from her huge black fur coat (which would have undoubtedly cost a fortune had she actually purchased it) and plopped them down on the counter. Donyell stared at the stack for a minute; they looked damp. Her crackly voice started up: “I think there are some winners in there.” Donyell picked through the tickets, some of which were as much as three years old. All in all, out of eighteen tickets, Loony Liz had five winners. They paid out a total of eleven dollars. She walked out of the store singing, hopped on her bicycle and rode over to the nearest trash can, which was in the center of the parking lot. She began to dig for aluminum and glass; Donyell figured she didn’t plan on making the eleven dollars last too long if she was already back to work.

Barry then emerged from the back room with a paranoid look on his face as usual and smelling worse than normal. He had his uniform vest slung over his shoulders and his glasses were nearly falling off his unkempt face. “Shows over boss, you can head out,” he said, trying too hard to seem “chill” and “cool”. Donyell nodded and said “Have a good one, bud. The crazies are out tonight.” He picked up his messenger bag and walked out the front door, past Loony Liz and her bicycle full of recyclables, down the dark street and towards the peer and the ancient amusement park that defined Salisbury Beach.

He slunk into the beachfront public bathroom, which was empty at this time of night most times. Occasionally a man in a business suit, inevitably on a cocaine binge, would be using the urinal, but otherwise Donyell was always left in peace. Once in the stall with the door locked, Donyell began his transformation. The mild mannered store clerk became a glamorous drag version of the Tooth Fairy within minutes. His tiara fit over his short mulatto hair, and his dark muscular legs sprang out from his tutu. He held a wand with pink translucent streamers, and prepared to walk down the strip in his high heels like he owned the whole beach.

Donyell emerged from the bathroom, lit up a Virginia Slim cigarette and began to strut down to the pier. He walked through the broken gate of the amusement park that had closer two hours before and past the two alcoholic homeless men who sat against the fence and next to the merry-go-round. He danced to the music in his head under the neon lights as he approached the group of fishermen who sat on the pier every night and waited for the best drag queen meth dealer in town. He walked through the group of Portuguese immigrants, old local sailors and former high school football stars and collected money for his grown up version of rock candy. One old salt named Doug McLaughlin would give him fresh fish every week for his girlfriend Cindy to make for dinner on Tuesdays. Donyell just told her he got them from a friend at work, which was as close to the truth as he could get with her. “Much better than last week,” grunted Doug as Donyell dolled over his fifteen dollar rock of heaven. “Atlantic Cod. No more herring for you and your girl.” Donyell smiled coyly and simply replied “Thank you, Mr. Doug. Have a good night now.”

He continued on his sales route, dispensing drugs to off duty cops and out of work bartenders, until three forty five A.M. His last call was spent with his back against The Pavilion while he whistled a cheery melody for the dark and grungy world around him. A little music made everything about his own life seem less fucked up; the women’s clothing, the crystal meth he distributed for his parents, the girlfriend with an eating disorder and the dead end job at a convenience store that he dreamed of one day blowing up with a fertilizer bomb he’d build with his younger brother in their basement.

After the last of the junkies had approached him at his regular closing spot, Donyell stomped back towards the pier bathroom on sore feet, hoping that he didn’t walk in on one of his customers overdosing or soliciting prostitution for another hit. These weren’t common occurrences, but they could never be ruled out and Donyell dreaded those moments above all others…except for the moment when he walked in the door at Friendly Mini Market everyday.

The Tarantula Hawk

On Thursday Chris Whynock’s boss, Dan Smolinsky, told him he was doing a great job. Chris drove home, hit a Bar & Grille on the way, and told the bartender what a good week he was having. “Great fuckin’ week,” he said. After a few beers and a nice steak, he drove home and went to bed with a smile on his face, excited for his early morning bike ride and the weekend he had earned by doing a “great job” at work.

On Friday, Chris got the letter at lunch time, dressed up with Horizon Technologies letterhead, and full of words like “regret” and “apologize”. He read it over seven times in ten minutes, but it didn’t change. A financial death sentence; so much for doing a great job. This is fucked up, Chris thought. Nothing could be more fucked up than this.

That afternoon he cleaned out his desk and removed his inspirational images from the side of his cubicle, most of which were clippings from Cycling magazine. He was escorted out of the building at 2:30 with everyone watching. At least Fridays were short days.

On the way home in his dark blue, way-too-expensive Nissan Altima, he untied his tie and threw it out of the car on the interstate; a gift for Silicon Valley.

A car followed him to the bar that night, an old beat up Buick with one missing hubcap.

As Chris sat at the bar that night, he told the bartender about his day. “That’s fucked up,” Chris said, “name one thing more fucked up than that.” Listening from across the bar was a man that Chris had never spoken too. Jesse had worked with Chris at Horizon Technologies for months, and on that Friday evening, Jesse still had his job. He was a quiet, intelligent man who was easily fascinated by anything pecuilar, from people to insects. He ordered a soda water with lime and garden salad. He listened to every word of Chris’ story.

That night, Chris called his friends and told them about what had happened while drinking and watching the Padres play the Dodgers on his flatscreen television. Jesse tried to forget about Chris’ story and researched political uprisings in East Africa on the internet.

On Saturday, Chris sulked. Around two he went for a twenty minute bike ride. Jesse cooked himself a healthy dinner and ate it while watching the Discovery Channel. There was a nature show on. The tarantula hawk, a wasp who paralyzes tarantulas by laying eggs inside it, was spotlighted. When the eggs hatch, the larvae eat the tarantula from the inside. That, Jesse thought, is fucked up. I don’t know what could be more fucked up than that.

On Sunday, Chris went for a long ride along the coast, and then drank. Jesse went to Borders to read more about the tarantula hawk. While flipping through an issue of National Geographic, he briefly recalled Chris’s story from the bar on Friday night.

On Monday, Chris scoured the internet for job openings and went for a bike ride, the best ride he’d had in months. Jesse went to work.

By Wednesday, Chris had two interviews lined up for Thursday, and went to bed early that night. Jesse checked out two reference books from the library that had articles about the tarantula hawk and stayed up reading as usual.

At noon on Thursday, Chris finished the second interview of that day. He had done great in both, and was excited to see where this new career path would take him. He went for an especially tough bike ride and drank a glass of wine instead of several beers that night.

At around 1:30 that day, Dan Smolinsky spoke to Jesse for only the third time in two years. Smolinsky told Jesse that he "was doing a great job”. Jesse lay awake that night, thinking about the tarantula hawk.

On Friday, Chris was hired as a software engineer at a progressive San Francisco technology firm. He wasn’t required to shave the goatee he loved so much, which he had been forced to do at Horizon. Short sleeve polo shirts were acceptable attire at this new job.

Jesse went to work at Horizon Technologies, and was half an hour early as always. At around 10:00am, the dynamite strapped to his body began to make him uncomfortable under his long sleeve button up.

At 11:28, Jesse thought of the tarantula hawk.

At 11:32, he walked into Smolinsky’s office.

The Truth About Nostalgia

Sometimes the dilemma and the therapy are the same thing. Sometimes the problem is that you just want to lie in bed, listening to songs that remind you of past times. Not necessarily better times, just times that you won’t ever get back again; things you are no longer capable of seeing or feeling or living because they are now the past. Ironically, you spend this time reminiscing about the very path that you got you to where you are now, and these memories you dwell on were accomplished by living in the moment. Rarely do we remember a night laying in bed with Broken Social Scene and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! playing, but often do we spend nights like this thinking about the first time we heard “Cause=Time” in the backroom of Mike Morrissey’s house in high school after getting stoned for one of the first times. The only cure is to ride the wave, so to speak. Go with the memories for as long as you need to and once you’re nostalgia has passed, you’ll be more than ready to live your life again. That’s not to say that you should ever forget about listening to “Tidal Wave” while driving on the first perfect day of summer with three of your best friends on the way to Mill Pond to jump off the ropeswing…you just shouldn’t spend all your time thinking about how that ropeswings cut down now and the three of you haven’t been in a car together for years.

Everyone dwells on some memories; this comes from having experienced any events that were more important to you than you realized at the time. You never realize in the moment how important those small memories will become to you, and even when they’ve become so important there is no “why”. They just are, and you spend little time questioning it. They are there, in part, to remind you of the beauty of life and the moments when you felt the most “alive”. Never again will I be able to feel so purely 16 as I did during the moments I lived at age 16, but listening to the songs again can make me feel close. Is that something to aspire to? No. Something to be ashamed of? Even more certainly no.

The Radio Show

Everyone has secrets. Some construction workers lock themselves in a room with no windows or doors on the weekends and write romantic poetry while listening to opera. There are body builders out there who prefer to spend their alone time wearing a leotard and dancing to the soundtrack of Grease in their living room by the light of the fireplace. For Toph, it was the radio station. On Wednesday nights at around ten o’clock he would sneak out of his dorm; shortly after the nightly pot smoking walk ended and just before the discussion about political conspiracy theories and religious propaganda in Hollywood started. Every week he had a different excuse: seeing a girl across campus, going out for late night food with an old friend he hadn’t seen lately, etc. The whole experience was exilerhating to him, partly because he was terrified of his friends and roommates finding out what he was really doing. Luckily, none of them even were aware the college had a radio station, so his secret was safe.

The ornate building that was the Wakehurst Student Center stood in a beautiful grove of trees set back from the heart of campus. Although it was a hub for activity during the day, by ten o’clock at night it was always deserted. This added to the thrill of Toph’s escapades down the old, wide wooden staircase and into the basement of the Newport mansion turned college building, his heart racing as he readied to broadcast his thoughts and feelings in the form of other people’s music over the digital airwaves of this New Frontier.

The inside of the radio station broadcast room was the best place Toph had ever been in his life. Top of the line audio equipment was everywhere, from speakers to mixers to Macintosh computers with libraries of over 60,000 songs. They even had those badass headphones that were made for planes and canceled out all other noises. The best part was the fact that down here, you could play whatever the hell you wanted however loud you wanted, and no one could complain or judge you. The building was virtually empty, the studio was basically soundproof and if anyone caught you playing Cyndi Lauper or a bad KISS record, you could blame it on the request line.
The radio shows Toph ran for two hours consisted of very little talking. He preferred to play long, unorthodox tracks that regular radio simply wouldn’t ever imagine putting on the air; stuff like B-sides off of Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma album.

On one particular Wednesday night he decided to start off his show with the Bob Dylan epic “Desolation Row”, only to lead directly into “Spirit of the Radio” by Rush, his favorite song to hear on the $600 speakers he was surrounded by. The absurd transition from Dylan’s soft acoustic to Rush’s hard progressive rock made the power of the song that much better. That night he had logged four listeners so far, most of which were probably other DJ’s from the station who tuned in just to hear what everyone else liked to play during their show. There was a late night hip-hop show put on by a kid from Chicago, a smooth jazz show that played Monday nights and most lunch hours, and the Party Boy Power Hour, the most popular show at the station. That particular show ran Thursday nights at eight, and played whatever was on the charts that week. As unfortunate as their taste in music was, the DJ’s were pretty cool guys and usually logged into Toph’s show to see what he would throw on the air.

All the music DJ’s felt a kind of brotherhood; the feeling of being able to control what was being sent out on the airwaves was an addictive one that could only be understood by those who were as passionate about their music as these students were. The talk radio DJ’s had their own uniting force: the love of their own voice. There was no doubt the Political Talk Show host and the host of Dorm Drama had much in common. The only person from the station who didn’t fall into either camp was the station director, Matt. He was a portly kid with a thick brown beard and short messy hair. His messenger bag and navy blue Chuck Taylor’s were like staples of his personality, and might have even had more personality than he had himself, or at least let on to others. Undoubtedly Matt stood for everything the other DJ’s hated: station regulations, cheesy station identification breaks, and hipster indie music that every god damn college radio station was playing constantly. God Speed You! Black Emperor and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club seemed to magically appear on other DJ’s playlists, and Elliot Smith was always playing when Toph walked into the studio on Wednesday night, even though Matt supposedly put the station on shuffle after his five o’clock show.

Needless to say, when Matt showed up to Toph’s show as “Spirit of the Radio” faded into “Breathe” (the Easy Star All Star version, off of Dub Side of the Moon of course) and waltzed into the studio, dropping his messenger bag at his feet, Toph was none too pleased. Sometimes he simply liked to show up during other people’s shows, which was most likely for lack of anything better to do rather than out of interest in the station itself. This forced someone to interact with him not only socially but in an environment that involved music. This was almost like shooting fish in a barrel, but far crueller. This was like putting innocent fish with good taste in a small bowl and playing Damien Rice records for hours on end out of audio equipment meant to blare Zeppelin or The Stones. Toph was done for.
“Hey buddy,” sang Matt as he hunkered down into the second DJ chair that looked so much better to Toph when it was vacant. “What’s on your playlist for tonight? Anything I’ll like?” All Toph could do was sigh on the inside and think to himself that the next two hours were no longer going to be the most relaxing of his week as Matt rifled through the playlist Toph had prepared earlier that day in Psychology class.

An hour later, they were listening to Radiohead’s “Palo Alto”, one of their newly discovered mutual likes, while enjoying a flask of scotch together. They hadn’t stopped laughing or raving about teriffic albums for at least forty minutes, leaving the microphones off and letting the tracks play right into each other. “I still just can’t say that they’ve made a better album than The Bends,” confessed Toph, “I know OK Computer is great, and it’s certainly genius, but I don’t think it’s better music. Better rock music.” Matt responded with his favorite retort: “Bullshit! OK Computer is a rock album! Airbag! Electioneering! Lucky! Great fuckin’ rock tracks!” “I don’t know,” Toph replied, “it just isn’t as raw and true as The Bends for me. Want to smoke another joint?” “Jesus Christ,” Matt said, “I thought you’d never ask.”

As they continued their downward spiral towards utter insanity they put on The Strokes’ “Barely Legal” and sat back, letting the studio fill with smoke while they listened to the raw garage sounding rock. “Do you ever feel like they’re out to get you?” Matt asked casually, out of the blue.

“All the time,” Toph replied with certainty. “Wait, who do you mean?”

“Everyone who tells you what’s right and what you’re supposed to do,” Matt answered. “They just tell you what they were told when they were your age by the people that they despised and rebelled against, don’t they? They don’t have any original advice, and they know how much the advice they were given fucked up their own lives, but they still regurgitate it. They’re trying to kill us, and pretty consciously.”

“Well ya, I guess, but I think they at least sincerely believe it all now…you know, all the bullshit. I don’t really think they’re trying to crush my spirit or ruin my youth, most of the time at least. I just think they were told all that shit enough to finally actually buy into it.” Toph paused and thought about it for a minute, “I think it would kill them to realize that they’re doing to us what all the parents, professors and jackasses did to them when they were young.”

“I think they just hate me,” Matt said. Toph remembered how he felt about Matt when he wasn’t stoned with him in the radio station. In Matt’s case, maybe they did just hate him.

“Someday we might be like them,” Toph said. Matt turned red with anger, looking as if he couldn’t be more offended ever in his life. “Bullshit!” Matt replied, as usual. Toph thought this struck such a chord with Matt because, in truth, he had already begun to buy into the idea of authority and blend into the vast canvas of those who ran other people’s lives. His job as the station manager proved that, and he probably realized that. The thought clearly terrified him…he was becoming a part of the very organization that he claimed was trying to kill him. To him, accepting the life they had pushed him towards was death, and he was well on the way to the grave if that was indeed the case.

After shifting the topic of conversation to baseball, something Matt surprisingly knew a decent amount about, the two traded a few more song choices. It was The Shins and City and Colour that set the backdrop of the conversation about the lack of quality catchers and second basemen in the league these days. Morose songs by sad bands that acted as a casual reminder of the conclusion of their previous conversation: Everyone dies, but most people die twice. Once in spirit, somewhere between the age of 15 and 50, and once in body, a true death that is probably far more painless to the one it actually occurs to.

Once the reel had run out on “California One” by The Decemberists, Matt grumbled his way to his feet and thanked Toph for his company in the studio. Without commenting on how the show had gone, he grabbed his messenger bag and sauntered off, reminding Toph to lock up the studio before he left: A clear sign of the terminal illness of the spirit that Matt was suffering from yet denied so vigorously.

Toph sighed, scrolled up for a few seconds and decided on a Dave Matthews cover of “All Along the Watchtower” to close out the night. The radio station that usually calmed him down so well had filled his head with unsettling thoughts that night; thoughts embraced far too readily by his paranoid mind. He would be back next Wednesday, and would play a very unique radio show that featured Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” and The Flaming Lips “Fight Test”. That particular playlist might have been the most open to interpretation as any he would ever make, even to himself.

Her

Free form experimental poem...have fun:

One day in a bad neighborhood in a decent town, this girl walked down the street. It was hot out, I mean real hot out, but she was cool the whole time. I guess that’s just the way she was, it made it real easy to talk to her and real easy to kick it with her and real real easy to let her get the best of you. All in all, maybe it made her dangerous, but maybe it just made her.