Read Online The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Grace Krilanovich
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and I are not even at the same show right now. He has no clue. I want to grab him and point and yell, “Look at what’s happening all around you!” Look at her eyes bugging out of her head as she gazes upon the moistened god of war onstage, in full attack mode! (no jangly bullshit) She’s begging him with her eyes! She’s perving out on him with the dead face of the preacher afraid of looking possessed, or of the con man who can’t give it all away…
A couple girls with college accents are doing a research project about local gangs of bloodsucking delinquents. The next day they came out to our camp and talked to Knowles and Josh, then seduced them. Ahh they’re a dying breed. Not many girls out there anymore who wear big shirts with stretchy skirts, boots and a bob, barrettes; eyes crossed like a Burmese cat. Their politics are evaporating faster now that the wind is blowing so much, and the day will come soon when they’ll end up mere rockabilly chicks, their obsessions waning into topics of mall shoplifting, puberty, teen cliques, high school, guns, male criminals, whores, and ’60s French pop. But they remain very resourceful, and like us, will create what they want if it’s not already there. They have their organized shit together, unlike us. We’re just DIY perverts. DIY dirt, DIY death. We do it ourselves oh yes. Seth put my shoes back together with tape. We make do with slipping into unlocked cars, motel stationary, and eating off open plates at the mall foodcourt. We circle around the fire perched on abandoned furniture, or other objects found on the street. Scrounged is better than bought. Sponging is better than working. Our hands are frozen in scooping gestures and our pockets are just big flaps, permanently stretched out by being filled and emptied so many times. Most nights our campfires looked like a crap convention. It’s dumb but it’s true. A huge cardboard cutout of a beer cheer-leader in a cowboy hat had been creased and “seated” in the Best Comfort Chair by either Knowles or Josh. I said, I’m throwing her into the fuckin fire! and sat down.
“You see,” Josh settled into a bag of pumpkin seeds, “the East doesn’t really exist. Austin is almost already as far as it goes for us. San Luis is pushing it to the South. All those awkward jackassholes in New Jersey just seem so fuckin corny. I don’t know how else to put it. Theirs is the land of dorks.” The Other Washington was the only Eastern place they were willing to acknowledge. DC was okay . The scene there set off a firestorm of humorless, stageless hardcore acts that popped up across the country, where sometimes the stage was just the patch of floor where a band played, surrounded by all kinds of kids freaking politically. In these cases, instead of feeling like I was on their level, I always felt like I was looking down over the proceedings, watching the events unfold and therefore sanctifying it like witnessing a birth or a live sex act. Always overlooking. Always occurring underneath my gaze.
Josh and Knowles sat and debated the proper direction of the lucky horseshoe. One said it went like a U so that all the good luck would collect inside.
“But if it were the other way, luck would still collect in it,” the other one said.
“What do you mean?”
“Luck could come from below…”
He scoffed. “Good luck comes from Hell — ”
At the Black Bear Evangele had set up shop in the corner booth. He parked his cart in the aisle and the restaurant went down eight notches on the classiness scale. He laughed wildly to punctuate every casual remark but nothing was actually funny. He opened the small nondescript paperback book he had with him to reveal intense numerological calculations filling the margins, often obscuring the very words his figures were meant to expound upon. I heaved a giant sigh of relief: he was just a crazy fucker, a manic jackass and it wasn’t just me … Across his table were
A couple girls with college accents are doing a research project about local gangs of bloodsucking delinquents. The next day they came out to our camp and talked to Knowles and Josh, then seduced them. Ahh they’re a dying breed. Not many girls out there anymore who wear big shirts with stretchy skirts, boots and a bob, barrettes; eyes crossed like a Burmese cat. Their politics are evaporating faster now that the wind is blowing so much, and the day will come soon when they’ll end up mere rockabilly chicks, their obsessions waning into topics of mall shoplifting, puberty, teen cliques, high school, guns, male criminals, whores, and ’60s French pop. But they remain very resourceful, and like us, will create what they want if it’s not already there. They have their organized shit together, unlike us. We’re just DIY perverts. DIY dirt, DIY death. We do it ourselves oh yes. Seth put my shoes back together with tape. We make do with slipping into unlocked cars, motel stationary, and eating off open plates at the mall foodcourt. We circle around the fire perched on abandoned furniture, or other objects found on the street. Scrounged is better than bought. Sponging is better than working. Our hands are frozen in scooping gestures and our pockets are just big flaps, permanently stretched out by being filled and emptied so many times. Most nights our campfires looked like a crap convention. It’s dumb but it’s true. A huge cardboard cutout of a beer cheer-leader in a cowboy hat had been creased and “seated” in the Best Comfort Chair by either Knowles or Josh. I said, I’m throwing her into the fuckin fire! and sat down.
“You see,” Josh settled into a bag of pumpkin seeds, “the East doesn’t really exist. Austin is almost already as far as it goes for us. San Luis is pushing it to the South. All those awkward jackassholes in New Jersey just seem so fuckin corny. I don’t know how else to put it. Theirs is the land of dorks.” The Other Washington was the only Eastern place they were willing to acknowledge. DC was okay . The scene there set off a firestorm of humorless, stageless hardcore acts that popped up across the country, where sometimes the stage was just the patch of floor where a band played, surrounded by all kinds of kids freaking politically. In these cases, instead of feeling like I was on their level, I always felt like I was looking down over the proceedings, watching the events unfold and therefore sanctifying it like witnessing a birth or a live sex act. Always overlooking. Always occurring underneath my gaze.
Josh and Knowles sat and debated the proper direction of the lucky horseshoe. One said it went like a U so that all the good luck would collect inside.
“But if it were the other way, luck would still collect in it,” the other one said.
“What do you mean?”
“Luck could come from below…”
He scoffed. “Good luck comes from Hell — ”
At the Black Bear Evangele had set up shop in the corner booth. He parked his cart in the aisle and the restaurant went down eight notches on the classiness scale. He laughed wildly to punctuate every casual remark but nothing was actually funny. He opened the small nondescript paperback book he had with him to reveal intense numerological calculations filling the margins, often obscuring the very words his figures were meant to expound upon. I heaved a giant sigh of relief: he was just a crazy fucker, a manic jackass and it wasn’t just me … Across his table were
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