Stickles

Zip ties, bandannas, patches and tape held Stickles together, a true traveler frayed by the miles and shaken loose by the bumpy marathons in his old brown van, going to every place he ever wanted to visit. He was winterized and ready, always wearing his heavy coat, skinny because he never stopped to eat. Stickles was always moving, chasing down the rumors of little scenes and excited kids in cities you'd never think twice about. He'd put on his coat in his Northern home and speed away in urgent pursuit, and when he stepped out in the warm South everyone looked at him funny because he had never thought to take the time to take off the fur lined jacket, it seemed like a waste of time and Stickles was too eager to get where he was going. The hood and fingerless gloves were the perfect hobo extension of his thick beard and shaggy hair, which he cut himself. His silhouette was a blocky lego man, featureless from the layers of hair and clothes, tackytern utility he could take on the rails.

Stickles had an encyclopedic knowledge of the small forgotten towns he had stopped in. He would ask the people there what they liked the most, and try to see things through their eyes. Cultural tourists too often tried to colonize these unassuming places, projecting their own standards so they could congratulate the residents for elevating themselves but still feel superior. Stickles approached every place like he had never been anywhere before, and he tried to hold what he found with reverence.

He sang the praises of Birmingham, New Brunswick, Gainesville, Minneapolis and Omaha. When people looked skeptical he didn't argue, if they wanted to listen he would tell them but he would not turn it into a contest over where was better than where. He loved the neglected places the most for the gems they hid, the basement shows and record stores, the living scenes that didn't care about Brooklyn or Silver Lake. Stickles beat down the parched highways preaching his gospel, always taking time to listen to the stories of unexpected places and making mental notes for the future. When some years down the line the gentrifiers started moving into one of his old haunts he didn't mind, it just meant it was time to find another.

Patti

Patti had dry leather muscles, tight rawhide ropes twisted into mean cables and spread with the waxy mud of skin. Her eyes balanced on her cheekbones, her face a narrow African mask, lips snarling and cavernous hollows remembering the starving drought times, never lured into the mischievous reassurance of a good harvest. She came to be in the most dangerous part of the 70's and her body showed the abuse in her junky teeth and brittle nails, and the shapeless unisex clothes that hung off of her. That she had survived these decades was a testament to ruin, like the scouring, sandy wind that hasn't quite won its' battle against the withering rocks. And a blogger wrote about her, wondering if she was finally softening her image and selling out, wearing a silly pirate hat with her friend the actor, in an ad for Disney shot by her long time colleague.

Her first priority was to challenge. Her songs were abrasive and chaotic, mixing genres and spilling the boundaries of music by interjecting flailing wild woman poetry and dissonant, tribal interludes. Yelping, stamping, gnashing rabid ecstasies of spirit, sensualism, spells and invocations. She offered herself as a sacrifice to destruction like her romantic heroes and one by one she lost her friends to overdose, AIDS and cancer. His story questioned her survivorship and authenticity.

Would the Patti of 1975 pose for a good natured photograph, next to a movie star, on the bow of a fake wooden ship? The repulsively seductive, yellow toothed smile replaced with a likable and innocent grin, and the relentless pestilent limbs covered in blue and buff. Probably not, but that was before the ones closest to her dwindled in number. She had written her unapproachable anthems that guaranteed she was unmarketable. Even if there was any cache to be gained for Disney through her fame it would be quickly extinguished when google related what she was most known for. If anything she was a liability to the casual observer, ugly and controversial. He was judging Patti in her 60's by Patti in her 20's, ignoring 40 years of iconoclasm and declaring that she needs to be revolutionary only within the parameters he can imagine. He refuses to accept the depth of a person, the self confidence and motive developed over a lifetime because he demands ownership of the personas he is not able to create. So he publishes his article that passively accuses Patti of failing to fill obligations she never agreed to, sidesteps the burden put on him as author and insinuates judgment to gestate in the minds of his readers, then starts on his peice remembering Poly Styrine, whom he had never thought to write about before.

Denis

Denis was a slightly plump modern dandy, just generous enough in proportion to jovially tighten his clothes and suggest a love of good food and any wine. He had a weakness for flashy suits, camel colored with a large check or velvet jackets. He wore beautiful, wide ties with knots as big as his hammy fist, always just loosened so you could see he did not button all the way up to his strong, thick neck. His beard was charmingly cropped, his hair messily gelled, and his small squinty eyes twinkled behind his stylish frames. Denis had an actor's laugh, reserved and withholding, playing it cool, a touch of magnanimity. It was a laugh that accepted you, you felt grateful for it.

He was an actor but only because of his easy and uncomplicated relationship with money, a thing he never tried to hold onto or put much effort into obtaining. He was a reporter, a bar tender, and a cyclist. He rode his bicycle in a collar and loafers, a light linen suit for the spring. He lived in all the poor neighbors of exciting cities. He was named after Saint-Denis France, his middle name was Dagobert.

Denis met his wife in a dive bar in Oakland. She could not ignore him, he stood out with his barrel chest and great huge dogs, his green and brown suit gladhanding all the strangers. He drank Belgian beer and talked about moving to Bruges to curate sleepy museums. They played poker all night with a pinochle deck, and were amazed at their run of luck.

Jolie

I looked out the window from the corner of the room, and in the narrowed frame of the street I saw her in a purple prom dress picking along the grit of the sidewalk, the toes of her ballet slippers popping in and out like the heads of violet frogs. I stood up but didn't move any closer, taking a curious vantage in a shadow of the room. She held her arms out away from her and weaved slightly, letting her gown billow, the enjoyment of the air on her legs written on her face, framed by the curls tumbling all around her smiling mouth. I was drawn forward, she bobbed to the fuzzy bass playing on the next block, and if she had a wand I think she'd bestow fairy godmother blessings on the mailboxes and newspaper dispensers she was passing. I watched her, mysterious and wonderful, twinkling and oblivious to the purple discord she brought. I hoped she'd turn and see me, wave for me to come and join her. Pressing my nose to the window I waited, but she only did a pirouette in the fading firefly light of a streetlamp and disappeared into a snatch of midnight.

Ernie

Ernie was sinew strung drum tight on the frame of his bones, the levers and pulleys of his body popped through his lean forearms and were thick through the blocks of his joints. His white shell tops gave him cartoon rabbit feet which made his twiggy ankles seem that much thinner. The sticks of his legs swam in the loose holes of his low hanging cargo shorts, in beige or camouflage. They were BDU's that he bought at the army navy store, one of the two places he did all of his clothes shopping. Ernie's legs swiveled when he walked, his knees making loping revolutions through his herky jerky gait. He swung his arms wide and kinetic, his head snapping from side to side like a snake winding its' way along. His walk was confident and demonstrative, he took up as much of the street as he felt he owned, he wasted energy because it was impossible to use up all that he had. He went to sleep every night tapping his feet on the bedpost, impatiently waiting out the few short hours until the sun came up again.

The other place Ernie bought his clothes was at merch tables. $15 t shirts and $30 hoodies. He didn't own a coat or pants, just a Yankees cap he never bent the brim on and when there was rain or snow he just pulled the hood up and buried his hands deep into his kangaroo pocket. Ernie had to fly his colors; Warzone, Madball, H20, Token Entry, Sick of it All, Straight Ahead, Gorilla Biscuits, Agnostic Front. He walked around his neighborhood all summer long, running into people or sitting on vacant stoops, or picking up his cell phone just to say "The fucking bodega doesn't sell fucking cigarettes or some shit. I dont know, maybe they got fucking busted selling to little kids and shit."

Abe

Abe woke early with a crackling restlessness, and the bright morning was pregnant with omen. A chorus of birds were insistent heralds of the aggressive Eastern sun, persistent beyond the blinds and pillows and eyelids, chasing him out of his barrow set uninhabitable and brilliantly golden as Lucifer. The house was empty of distraction and warm under the beating sun, the TV babbled and Abe had no attention span. He cleaned, he exercised, he showered and still had the whole stretch of day laid out before him. The charged air shook the trees, the new leaves rattled angrily, and Abe decided to take a walk.

The high noon streets were eerily empty. The sound of a chugging diesel bus stopping on a distant corner washed over the neighborhood, and the talkative morning birds had flitted away to their daily chores. There was a green Jaguar parked around the corner from his house, Abe wouldn't have remarked on it but walking passed the Vermont plates caught his eye. It was an older model, the inside littered with plastic bottles and the detritus of a road trip, it made him think about Vermont and New Hampshire and the people he left there, the ominous dealings he knew from remote safety, the reputations.

Abe cut through a parking lot and then turned down a brick alley that sloped bumpily toward High St, where cars passed and people were walking. The alley was planted on either side with Dogwoods, their delicate white petals giving way to heartier green and falling like snow all around him, the wintry cling lining the deep red of the walk and walls. The singular stillness of that moment crystallized for Abe and something in him tingled, the proximity of forgotten things set him on edge, the touch of a breeze and the gentle kiss of falling blossoms on his eyelids were no longer satisfied to be ignored.

He carried his lunch in a brown bag and set home to eat, some more time passed in the strange, sinister day. He crossed the busy street and ducked back up the tranquil, shogun alley to emerge in the otherworldly stillness of his block. Two men were talking in the parking lot now, one of them leaning on his truck giving directions. Abe didn't look up until they looked at him. Planting his feet and looking over he knew who this was, a man of reputation and mutual acquaintance who had not stayed in his own place as respectfully as Abe had stayed in his. The other man was taller than Abe expected, but about as lean. He had a hard recognition in his eyes, a troubled understanding that the moment was now. "You Abe?" he called in warning.

"Absalom."

"I wanna talk to you."

Abe dropped his bag and took meaningful steps, clenching his hands into ready fists.

Larry Sunday

Larry Sunday went easy, his 3 a.m. streets bare and untroubled, opening up to quiet bike rides through the glossy halls of fresh smelling rain, glowing Christmas tree colors from the mute vigil of trafficless stoplights evenly switching like the persistent tide when they could sit idle. Larry Sunday was the king of the no account morning, when even the wolves slept in their prides, and he who asked for nothing rejoiced in exactly that.