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)

Please my favorite.

So. That was little Ventacloth. See what I did there? Clever. Right. Damn straight I was the first one to do that. No respect these days.

I was thinking about doing something chronological. Give you a little bio of how Pete and Jack grew up, how we met, what he did after that. I changed my mind. You don’t like it? Well, tough shit. You’re going to read this anyway, you bastards. Be grateful.

Most of the songs you hear him do are cowritten. It’s pretty impressive, really. A little Jack, a little Pete, a little red wine, and some other random shit. I’ve always admired that. Bastard doesn’t even know they’re separate. Still. It always been that way, though. Sometimes its one or the other.

That little ditty “Please My Favorite Don’t Be Sad” was one of the first. It didn’t actually start out as a song. True story. A little bit after they came up with idea for World/Inferno, Jack and Pete got together some songs and some friends and did a little show. Damned if I remember who was on stage with him. I was in the back somewhere. Can’t stand the front. Even then, it was the kids crushing each other. Hurts me too damn much.

Tangent: The first real Inferno show - real meaning twelve people on a tiny damn stage - I went up front. Give them some support, you know? But the fuckers kept elbowing me in the back, pushing me against the stage, that crap. No respect for their elders. So I reached up to Pete for some help. Only problem was, it wasn’t Pete up there, it was Jack, and he was shitfaced. So there I was, this older guy, reaching up at Jack from the front. And I’ve been writing all my life, you know, and maybe I hadn’t been taking such good care of myself. My fingers can’t really go fully straight anymore. They get a bit bent, especially when I’m stressed, like I was then.

Starting to sound familiar? Yeah, that’s right. The fucker was playing Tattoos Fade, and there I was reaching up at him, fingers crooked. Right when the chorus started. All these kids, they thought I was doing some kind of gesture. They did it too. Right then, right there, the first group of drunk bastards did “The Claw” and surged forward. And all because I was being crushed in the pit.

Think about that next time.

But that’s not for now. What was I… got it. Right after that first show, the prenatal formed Inferno gets an encore. And Pete gets up there and you can see him hesitate for a second, and then Jack takes over. Bastard looks like he’s been doing this for years. He grabs the mic, sways about, and says his little schtick. Next week he put it to music, and there ya go. He had a brand new 30 second song.

Good to know, huh? Damn straight it is.

(He’s writing in spurts again. But what Jack said (supposedly) was: “After all those years of living in fear I stopped worrying about the bomb or the other shoe dropping. After all those years fearing for my life I started to enjoy myself. I started to enjoy myself and the only people who have suffered from it have been the landlords and the creditors and you know what? Fuck them. If they want an apology they can have it, for any inconvenience I might have caused
But the butterflies in my stomache have flown up through my throat and learned to love the open air, open air. Sorry guys sit down and have a drink but i'm not sorry.” Just in case you weren’t sure. –Eric)

The beginning.

I have a lot to say and a short time to say it.

That's a lie. I have until my fingers blister and bleed and I stop coughing and I stop typing. Typing for real. This is written on my typewriter. My son is the one who decided it should go on the internet, so he takes care of that part. I'm just writing. Just writing.

(That was his introduction. He really can't take computers. Doesn't get them at all. I'll be transcribing his manuscripts and putting them up here. I apologize in advance about the sporadic updates. He spends most of his time sleeping and ranting now. But I'll do what I can to keep the old man writing. Below is the first paragraph of his that I found on the floor. It's what made me search for Terricloth. It is why I am making him write. Below that is the first thing he wrote for this "Journal" (he doesn't know what a blog is). I hope you all learn from this. -Eric)

---

You know how he got his name? He was in a rut that night, reevaluating his life and all that shit, and Pete asked me "Dante, my friend, what is the least punk thing you can wrap your mind around?"

"Damn," I said, takin a drag "That's easy. Terrycloth."

He just looked at me and his eyes lit up and Pete said "That's it," and Jack stood up and said "My name is Jack Terricloth." He looked down at me, sitting there. "We need some wine and a guitar."

And that’s how they began.

---

At this tender moment almost sixty-three years into my life, it seems almost suicidical to think of all the wonders I have experienced. Marilyn Monroe gave me a backrub, once. Fuck you if you don’t believe me. The point here is that I don’t think about it but my fingers do. They take the bourbon and the nicotine and the caffeine and music and they find my old Remington Noiseless Portable in the locked box in the closet upstairs and here I am, my left hand holding a cigarette and my right tapping away.

If there are two men that have shaped my life X If there was one man who shaped my life, it was Jack Terricloth and Pete Ventantonio. Ever heard of Superman? That idea was based off of him. Completely true. Not the mild-manner reporter of the 50s, of course. The one they published in 1972, mere years after the Pete/Jack dichotomy began. The short-run series about an infant that slept by day and single-handedly saved beautiful women from cheap white wine by night.

Don’t remember that, eh? You should. It was the beginning. Of course, his parents found out pretty quick, once they noticed that little Pete’s crib smelt like a sleazy bar. They barred the window, locked the doors, and bought little babycloth some pastel jumpers. That settled him down for a while. Pete started showing signs of being a normal little baby.

You know, someone should invent a screen, so you can’t get cigarette ash in your coffee. Or your liquor. Or both at the same time.

The point is that little babycloth became little Petey, who grew into an older Petey. Jack popped by from time to time. He’d kiss the girls on the playground, stomp on the kids who stole lunch money, and get kicked out of restaurants for stealing quarters off of tables. But that was just kid stuff. Everyone thought it was still Pete. Hell, Jack himself probably thought it was Pete. Little kids never know enough about themselves. Too much candy, not enough alcohol. Gene wilder said something about that, once. Damned if the man wasn’t crazy.

But listen, young Petey was normal, mostly First time I saw him, I was teaching middle school chorus. This kid - this goddamn kid - isn't singing with everyone else. He's singing some other song. So I take him aside after and I ask him, "What the hell, kid. What were you singing in there?" And this kid just looks at me for a second and then he says "Old Devil Moon. Frank Sinatra" and he just walks away.

The hell kind of sixth grade kid sings Frank Sinatra? To this day, I can't even tell if it was Pete or Jack. Goddamn kid.

I need more coffee.