This was quite possibly...
Thursday, July 14, 2005 at 12:15AM |
...the creepiest question I have ever been asked. And you know where I've been. It takes hard work to make me unsettled. First, let me tell you things have been severe and weird and changes have been painfully swift. Bisbee is a quiet town, but the noisiest times of your life happen within the confines of your own four walls - if not simply inside your awful head. Things have been noisy here as of late.
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Bisbee, Arizona.
One of the lesser problems - the only one I will speak of at this time - has been Mother. Seems that shortly after we made our pilgrimage out of The City of Angels, The City of Angles where we left Mother holding the bag, she started to come apart. The details of her unraveling are Her Business and it isn't necessary to go into. People fall down.
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So a month after our arrival, the red phone rings and Father Luke and I begin a suicide drive through the night to evacuate her once and for all from her squalor in LA. Her apartment is a nest of filth and 99 Cent Store run-off. Post-Its and papers and cat vomit and shelves stacked on drawers full of batteries and rolls of tape and anything that she bought at a thrift store because it was only 3 dollars. Just take what you need. Grab the last two cats and a toothbrush and we turn right back around to AZ. This is the last you'll see of this place. We'd intended to find Mother a place in Bisbee once we got settled, but we are far from settled at this moment. Shit is swirling about like Poltergeist and Mother is sitting right in the middle of it. Literally. She sits in the very center of this small house and rebuilds her nest. |
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Mother's back hurts, I might have mentioned. She has tried the self-help books, yes indeed. Right now she's ripping thru "Natural Cures They Don't Want You To Know About" by some blue-suited carnival jobber. I don't think it's working. Just like the other 400-some self-help, self-deluding books she's read over the years during her ceaseless and unwavering decline.
Her back hurts so bad and there is nothing that she can do to ease the pain but drink Nyquil and watch Dr Phil and The View and the like. She can't seem to dial a phone to find out how broke people get assistance or even walk the eight steps outside to smoke. She can only sit in the center of the house and wheeze and cough and listen to all of your conversations as the ashtray fills and piles of tissues spread over remote controls and she slowly tries to recreate the nest we have just rescued her from.
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A few days ago, I went past Mother at her post in the center of the small house, turned right into the bathroom and filled the tub. And a few moments after I sat down in it, Mother called out from The Nest possibly the most disturbing thing I have ever heard. "Do you want me to come in and wash your back?" Mother seemed confused when, after a long pause of absolute horror, I responded with "You have to leave my house right now." Mother doesn't understand why it would be anything but normal for a woman to wash her near-40 year old son in the tub on a lovely afternoon. |
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Moments before the horror. |
We are currently looking for a rental unit in Bisbee with a dedication unseen in any other task I've ever undertaken.
Montreal was a treat as always. Here's Jim Jeffries and Otto with of the many age-raped whores we met in the back alley of Club Soda.
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The Unbookables is still in the works as soon as the shitstorm at home settles down. Again, get on the mailing list. Yes, I'm working on a new CD as well as some other shit. Buy the others here. You know the drill. If you want some more good comedy I'd strongly suggest picking up Jim Norton's new CD"Trinkets I Own Made From Gorrila Hands". Incredibly funny shit. And James Inman put out a book version of Greyhound Diaries. You can get it here.
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