<\/p>\n
“What the fuck are we listening to you crazy cunt?” I screamed into the ear of my old friend, James.<\/p>\n
“Tori Amos!” He shouted back. “Home on the Range. Cherokee Edition!” He
\nleaned close, which means his car swerved dangerously onto the
\nshoulder, “I’ve turned it up louder than the Human ability to process
\nsound. I’ve turned it up to…” He paused, I gripped the dashboard and
\nground my teeth, “…eleven!”<\/p>\n
Actually, the stereo’s face unit said 29. But I got the point.<\/p>\n
James was crazy enough. Driving at 100 miles per hour on Interstate 270
\nwas worse. Listening to Tori Amos at a volume that I could feel deep in
\nmy fillings was a little bit across the line. James weaved madly,
\nsinging along, punching his stereo to change tracks. He had some
\nknock-off B side collection that he had bought in Milan a few years
\nago. I knew it well, because it appeared every once in a while when
\nJames wanted to cause trouble. Tonight, it seemed, we were about to
\ncause trouble. Though, the further north we went into the distant
\nsuburbs, I began to wonder what sort of trouble we could possibly
\ncause.<\/p>\n
The windows were down, sucking greedily on the tit of Washington’s late
\nspring, and I was staring hard at any other car on the road and,
\noccasionally, jumping and screaming.<\/p>\n
It was an election summer and I was already feeling out of sorts. The
\nyellowjackets had nested, the wasps were introducing their young to the
\nworld, and madness would reign no matter how the chips fell. We were
\nburning through the weeks and the same games were playing out.<\/p>\n
I turned the volume up to 30 when we hit Sweet Dreams<\/em><\/p>\n Lie, lie, lies everywhere, said the father to the son. Your government breath gonna choke them to death.<\/em><\/p>\n James and I ended up in Germantown, where we kicked our way into my old As a rule, Eileen is not fond of my friends. She tolerates me for “Land, land of liberty!” He screamed, “We’re run by constipated men!”<\/p>\n Eileen smiled graciously, “Is Tori back in style?”<\/p>\n “She died in the 90’s!” I shouted, slamming the B-side collection into “You can so not do that!” she screamed against the music.<\/p>\n James pulled her aside, “Come on, Nacho’s ex-girlfriend, we came all “I’m going to sell when it appreciates.”<\/p>\n “Fuck you and your money!” He grabbed her and started shaking her, I pulled him off and, briefly, we struggled on Eileen’s shag carpet Many people, especially in this modern era, one hundred years after Plus, Tori got me laid several times. She has my undying loyalty Sex with Eileen was no good, either, but she stayed in touch because Once James was under control, the CD had reached Smells Like Teen Spirit<\/em> “What the fuck is this?” James asked after his first sip.<\/p>\n “Cunt vodka.”<\/p>\n “Jesus Christ, Nacho.” Eileen protested, but she still drank the vodka.<\/p>\n “How about some normal man flavored vodka?”<\/p>\n “Stiff, thick, bitter? A certain aromatic, weedy aftertaste?”<\/p>\n “Um…” James put his glass down.<\/p>\n “No, no,” I pressed his shoulder, “This is still cunt flavored.”<\/p>\n “Cherry and vanilla?” Eileen asked.<\/p>\n I stared blankly at her for a minute, “Well, yes.”<\/p>\n She smiled. “See, that’s why we stuck together as long as we did.” She looked at James, “This boy’s mouth is golden.”<\/p>\n “I’m going to shit in your lungs in a minute,” James replied. “Both of you!”<\/p>\n Eileen shot back her vagina mix, banged the glass down, crossed to the James took to the floor instantly, moshing with furniture, while Eileen “Suburbia, suburbia!” he screamed, his voice becoming shredded and Eileen was on her feet, panicked, “Bathroom! Bathroom!” She screamed,
\ngirlfriend Eileen’s house. She’d recently sold her gentrification
\ntownhouse in Northeast DC and, loaded to the gills with money from a
\nrefurbished slimepit, she had moved closer to her soulless fuck-head
\njob and bought a townhome in Germantown…which, in the space of eight
\nmonths, was already worth more than she had bought it for.<\/p>\n
\nreasons unknown, but James was not a welcome site. Especially when he
\ncame in, shirtless, wearing hob-nailed boots, purple-reflective
\nsunglasses and armed with a bottle of gin. James on gin was bad news.<\/p>\n
\nEileen’s stereo and cranking it up to 15. It went to 20, but she hit me
\nonce when I turned it up all the way and I still had an indentation in
\nmy skull.<\/p>\n
\nthe way out here to charm up your Friday night. You’re a suburban girl
\nnow. You’ll die alone out here, collapsed in the bathroom, the cats
\neating your hands for days before the mailman finally complains about a
\nfull mailbox.”<\/p>\n
\n“Fuck you and this endless stream of easy money that follows you around
\nlike a motherfucking virus<\/em>!”<\/p>\n
\nwhile, cursing and spitting, she delivered several well-placed kicks to
\nboth of us.<\/p>\n
\nClinton was president, have left Tori Amos behind. She represents a
\nweepy past and failed to age past the Big Bang in ought-one.
\nNevertheless, she’s always held a special place in my head. And not
\njust because I want to fuck tiny, troubled fake redheads for eleven
\nhours and twenty-seven minutes every night and\/or until my heart
\nexplodes. I always secretly felt she had this sort of talent that
\nfilled a certain void. Coating herself in a veneer of Joni Mitchell and
\nKate Bush, she managed to round out the strange world of 90’s music.
\nHer wavering, tense, emotional homage to Smells like Teen Spirit<\/em>
\nhaunted my world, and, above all, she was a local girl. Well,
\nBaltimore. But DC claims Baltimore whenever something famous comes out
\nof it, and she played in DC clubs as a child because Baltimore is a
\nvicious sleaze-pit and a tiny teenaged girl can’t play in the clubs up
\nthere. Hell, Lisa Suckdog had a hard time playing in Baltimore’s indie
\nclubs.<\/p>\n
\nbecause there’s nothing like recovering-Catholic, self-mutilation,
\npre-medicated depression sex. Seriously. I may sound facetious but, let
\nme tell you, sex just isn’t the same now that all the troubled girls
\nare on drugs.<\/p>\n
\nshe was self-destructive, and I always respected that in her.<\/p>\n
\nand the trouble was in the air. I had fucked off to Eileen’s kitchen to
\nraid her liquor cabinet, which was marred by cherry vodka, vanilla
\nvodka, and other vagina flavored vodkas. James and Eileen had reached a
\ntenuous truce and were sitting at opposite ends of the living room. I
\ndecided we all needed to bring it down a notch, so I made a special
\nvagina mix with Eileen’s vodkas and one of her not very diet drinks and
\nbrought each of them a glass.<\/p>\n
\nstereo and slammed in Atari Teenage Riot. The mood changed.<\/p>\n
\nand I spun around until we almost threw up cunt vodka. We fell to the
\nfloor together and I briefly considered punching her in the face before
\nshe kneed me in the balls but, instead, James threw himself on top of
\nus with a scream.<\/p>\n
\nbroken as he rolled on the carpet. Then, suddenly, he stopped.
\n“Motherfucker, I’m gonna throw up a whole vagina!”<\/p>\n
\n“No cunts on the carpet! Not here! Not now! Not like this!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[352],"tags":[353,179],"class_list":["post-2457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gsarchive","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008","tag-james"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2457"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2878,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2457\/revisions\/2878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}