History, Coming Around

It’s only been seven months. Fuck you. Magic of print, you know, is that some poor bastard somewhere takes six months five days two hours and seven minutes to write a sentence, and you read through it in ten seconds. Ungrateful. Eric told me that you can read this shit even faster, if I let him put it up, so you can wait. Got that? You can fucking wait.

Seven months or two minutes ago I told you about how the Claw came to be. During Tattoos, Jack’s tour de force. Damned if I know if Pete is in there anywhere. He must be, poor kid, but I couldn’t tell you where. Dripping down Jack’s sweat-soaked head like hot wax on a cold hooker – there’s plenty that he wants to remember. Not much that he can. The song is just Jack telling him it’s alright, no big thing, it happens. So your girls run together into a string of thighs and song – what of it? Maybe you can’t remember all those stories your mom tells about you being one Devil of a Child. Just the natural order. Damn. Actually, I do know that Pete wrote – nah. Later, maybe.

Every time Pete starts Tats, Jack finishes it. Guaranteed. It ends up being one hell of a show alright, but Jack has limits. He wouldn’t tell you that, but that’s why I am. You remember the Philly shows? The Peter Lorre story. I was in the balcony both nights, leaning back when the bouncers looked up the find where ashes were coming from. I saw Pete quite a bit that night: Jack can’t do a young Lorre, can’t do the emotion without the morphine, gets stuck when he has to recite his twisted Brecht and don a bright white suit. Jack can’t endorse Camel even when he’s shitfaced.

But then, they didn’t start with Tats those nights, did they? Jack started the show as a shadow, spraying about Klimt and squeezing Semra’s ass, but it was Pete who ran those shows. Until the encore, at least, but encores are different shit altogether.

I told you I was a music teacher. Forgot it over the months? Or did you forget it over the minutes. Either way, I taught him what a tattoo was. Which “him” I can’t say. I only knew him as Petey in those days. I think he mostly was.

Point being: I type with rythym. I type with goddamn soul. Class was over, kids were filing out, I got myself a nice little idea that needed to be down on paper. Couldn’t just write it, though. Real authors used typewriters. I decided that for myself a little bit before I got that school gig. So I sat myself down, hunkered under the desk for a fast swig, and started. I got that paper somewhere…

Damnit. Can’t fucking find it. Deal with the suspense. Whatever it was, I was going at it doubletime, to make up for class. Think of it, if you will, as morse code. In code, I was typing “eh” over and over again. Inspiring, right? Well, fuck you and eat the horse you came in on. I learned to type with a bottle of beer in my left hand, so I make due with the right. Slam down the thumb, then pointer middle ring pinky, as quick as I can. Used to be a lot quicker, before the joints gave out. Still, only way I can type.

Anyway, this kid Petey, he’s the first one into the room. Might have been because he was Pete, might have been because Jack had my class the period before. He walks right up to me, there at my desk, and looks for a second. “’Tchatyping, Mr. D?”

“A tattoo, kid.”

Blank look for a second. Then her goes ahead and picks up the dictionary on my desk and starts thumbing through it. It must have been Pete. When Jack doesn’t know a word he makes a new one. “Tattoo. An evening drum or bugle signal recalling troops.” TAP taptaptaptap “No. An entertainment consisting of music, marching, and the performance of displays and exercises…” TAP taptaptaptap “No. A rhythmic tapping or drumming.” TAP taptap tap tap “That’s it, right?” TAP tap tap tap tap.

I can’t help myself. I slow down, think a second. TAP tap tap tap tap“Yeah, kid. That’s it.” By now the kids are piling in, the scene is written. My fingers are slick from the bits of machine oil on the keys. I slam in the final letters TAP tap tap tap tap. “And my tattoos fade. Get to your seat.”

So fuck you, short chick with the chest piece. And fuck all of you with my words on your goddamn wrists. You should have a typewriter there, if you want to remember what it’s really about.

Oh, and just to burst your bubbles a bit more – the reason Jack doesn’t sing the third verse is because PETE wrote it, and Jack can never remember the damn thing.

(He had put the paper in a folder marked “faded”. It reads as follows: Princess of Coins. Eight, shiny silver dollar, face filled with winder. Shadow is elongated, stretched thin. Suggestions of a stole, disheveled hair, long cigarette smoking, purse in her other hand. Left calf, front. – Eric)