4.12 / December 2009

Drugs, Rock and Roll and Sex or Three Things That Go Together Like Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll

Sheldon Lee Compton

Shifted into high gear about three hours in.   I played off-beat most of the time until then.   Forced Calvin to restart the mixing board, shot me dirty looks with droopy eyes.   He slurred me into compliance and then tossed up into the carpet, mostly Haven Hill, $4.25 at Bill C’s, but a few bits and pieces of food stuff scattered here and there.   Like something Pollock might have painted in a windstorm if Pollock painted with $4.25 vodka and french onion dip.

After that the instruments became smoothed out carbuncles shaped like women, all curves and slick lacquer hanging off our bellies, humming and vibrating growths, added weight.   Calvin and Jeff were the first ones to call off.   I was left with my guitar rocking me to sleep, catching beer-thick throat drool, me alone missing out on whatever action took place in the living room before I made it down the hallway one crawl at a time.

If you crush pills in a ringed kitchen plate there is less waste.

If you crush pills by candlelight it seems mysterious and you can almost forget that you can’t sing anymore, forget that this probably has something to do with your septum.

By candlelight it doesn’t matter if the fucking isn’t fucking anymore.   When I first met Deanna, everything else in the world interrupted fucking.   We made it during sessions, during breaks, while swimming, while visiting friends for Thanksgiving dinner.   We had no shame.   Shame was darkness, silence, void, simply not there.   We lived in the moments before the fruit was clipped, when my music might have been Morningstar’s pre-fall symphony.

If you crush yourself into someone else for long enough there’s nothing left to waste.

From a rat nest of carpet I lift myself beneath her and see the blur of jutting hip bones like a laser show.   I wonder if she feels cold.   I wonder if I moved to touch her my fingertips would become raw from sliding across the strings again and over again, searching for the notes until she smiles her toothless smile.