brother R

[cutthroat]

[ <u>some renton-heavy posts are also here</u>. ]

<center>Come little daughter, I will carry the lanterns
We'll go out tonight, we'll go to the caverns
We'll go out tonight, we'll go to the caves
Kiss your mother goodnight and remember that God saves

A led her to a hole, a deep black well.
I said make a wish, make sure and not tell and
close you're eyes dear, and count to seven
You know your papa loves you, good children go to heaven
</center>
<DIV style="text-align:justify;">
Smoke rose from the gutters, sleepless and forever pinwheeling, weaving a dreary low grey morning mist for the maggot city.

On an occasional table flecked with tomato seeds, a red light blinked.

The late night had bled into early morning, moody oranges and yellows of sunrise seeping from the corners of the horizon and banding the shuddering slab of his chest through venetian blinds as he pressed a button, freeing the electronic songbird that twittered soullessly into his ear.

"You have one unheard message. . . First message, Sent today, at 4:31, AM."

"Who're you trying to kid, Renton?" Immediately, the words worked around him in a crackling, electronic beat as a crude blackened throat split in a moan. Too junked, too twisted, too far down the snakehole for a reprimand from halfway across the globe, where his heart rested without him in the pale white fist of his woman.

She would call in the early hours, to avoid his labored, liquor-thick breath clotting up the wires. It would always plummet straight through the airwaves and into her bloodstream, plucking goosepimples up and down the chainlink of her spine. Even with her eyes open, pointed out her window to the breezy Grecian villa below, she could see him hunched in a familiar dark, a sleazy corner with a cold bottle between his thighs and a cigarette between his lips, paranoia-gashed eyes blood-trimmed and barely open, laced over in wet eyelash bows. So instead, she called when she knew he'd be out, licking young necks and meathooking himself with obsession.

"Where do you think these girls will take you? Far away from this place that makes your veins itch and bones ache with memories? Far enough away that you could erase what you've done to me, to your daughter, with the grit from the road and a holy roll of blue sky above?" Was she drunk? His ear bent to the ninety proof bite (Would she be sipping vodka? Or gin? He tried to categorize the sloppiness of her tongue.) in her rhythm, admiring her poetic shrieks of indigence that frolicked up and down the maligned brick road of his spine.. "Could you even run that far, boy? Would your withered body even get you to Cincinnati?"

"You're the killer, Renton. You. Stop blaming those girls, like they're the ones that carved this ravine between us." Some were fleeting, painting him in cursory, razor-brushed strokes of mania. Emilia. Erin. Jinx. Others dug deep, into bone and brain, mangling sensibilities. Star. Jaq. Norma. He could tally these earth-movers without flinching, their names coming to his tongue like bile.

"You say you can't help it, that they pull you in with those soft, plying arms and your heart's too weary, too sad, too wounded! to push them away. But you're the one leaving their milky young bodies in your wake when their hair's not red enough, when they start to question those nights where you're just a lingering scent and tangle of linen in bed, when they start unraveling your history, asking about the baby pictures on your bedside table, you're just recklessly chucking hearts and two-stepping over emotion--you asshole! -- you don't even know what you need! You just want those girls around because your heart can't beat without their dewy, doe-eyed admiration. You need those fools to put you on your pedestal."

In a pause, he thought the machine whined to a stop, but he was interrupted by more words peeling off the tape, pinned in the kitchen doorway by the lull of her voice. If he squinted his eyes and sapped the last narcotic strains of shit from his blood, he could almost see her, silhouetted in caliginous halos of night and shadow and fire-kissed curls, matronly eyes weeping rosewater tears as her palms lay open at her chest.

"It doesn't matter how high they hold you, boy. It's useless. Dead. Don't even bother."

"End of messages."
</div>

<font color="#ffffff" size="1">[ July 20, 2007 02:25 PM: Message edited by: black cats and cunnilingus ]</font>

[cutthroat]

<center>



Tar-heel boy sings a song
'Bout a girl who ain't comin' home </center>

[cutthroat]

"Ok, yeah, you're my desert. Hot and ... " He was blushing frantically, trying to cram his erection down his leg, shrinking into the dirt between the snowbird's thighs.. "Barren. Andfullofcactus..."



<font color="#757575" size="1">[ September 07, 2006 12:03 PM: Message edited by: black cats and cunnilingus ]</font>

[cutthroat]

<DIV style="text-align:justify;">
"So, Renton," Through delicate, rimless spectacles, the doctor recited his name mechanically from his files. "Tell me about your first wife."

"Ownly."

"Excuse me?"

"Me ownly wife. Sh's tha owlny one." He had already trained his head to the expensively draped window, heaving a sigh as a bloodless corpse color painted his cheeks and creases folded his brow.

This, this pouring out a soul as sour as whiskey shots to a complete stranger, it had seemed far more liberating a few nights ago when he decided that his miseries could be unraveled and healed by a trained professional, frenzied brain whipped into self-help hysteria by a few hits of meth and one of Jeuls' bucket-sized margaritas. Now, he felt pinned to the couch, the Doc's scalpel at his chest, ready to slice open his ribs and expose his funeral heart, supported only by the lies he couldn't stop telling.

Jeuls and Renton had staked out over a dozen therapists, searching for something cheap. Forget revolutionary tactics, high education and plush couches with white noise machines -- the tackier the waiting room reception, the louder Jeuls would squeal, gasping that "This could be the one!" as if they were interviewing potential lovers. When she spotted the lifelike statue of a sleeping bulldog tucked in the corner of an office decorated by paintings of suspiciously vaginal blooms, she clutched her brother's wrist with flutter-hearted abandon. She had signed him up for three months of treatment on the spot with a plastic silver AMEX she'd fucked out of the wallet of a aging CEO.

The Doctor resigned effortlessly. "Your only wife, then. When did you meet?"

He fidgeted, sighed and cleared his throat with a rattle, revving up a dialect that jetset from Scotland to New York, pit-stopping in the deep mountains of Georgia.

"Ay 'ad jis' come ovr from Glasgow. We were jis kids, like. Babies. Sh'..sh' was a fucken vision, man. Ays met 'er in front o'a jewelers on th' Avenue" Blood-clot green eyes softened dreamily as he felt himself erasing the years sprawled from then to now, stirring recollections of lust to the top of a wasted memory.

She didn't speak when he paused, and he skipped his eyes from her folded knee to her face. He'd become too familiar with all women leaping into his silences, uninvited and shrieking, spooked by her serene expression and open ears.

"Ay broke int' th'store an' stole 'er this necklace, likes. An' sh'was all mine. Wis like fate, er destiny, er some shite romantic movie. We's were meant ta' be, ays could tell th' first time sh' touched me. Tara wis one inna fucken million. Sharp, sophisticated, fucken witty, bird could fucken 'old 'er own." Once he started, he could not stop, like a steel-hearted freight.

"We wir fucken barry at th'start, likes, ril 'appy, in love. Honeymoonin'. Sh' dinnay mind th'smack, er m' fucken lunatic mates. We stole cars an' drank an' swam in th' fucken ocean! We nevur slept, w' jis ate up th'fucken day an' night like a pack o'fucken wild dogs." Hands made themselves into wistful fists in his lap, pointing his monologue at a dull brass Buddha instead of the doctor. He was starting to sweat, ultra-aware of the pinpricks of anxiety fringing his hairline.

"W'were ownly t'gether awhile, mebbe a year an'a 'alf, befer' th' babe came. M'fucken baby. Ays guess ay coulda been mohr .." Clumsy tongue cut from the crudest cloth fondled his throat for the right words. "Respectful o' 'er pregnancy, likes. Ay mean, whot kinda cunt dopes off ta Scotland ferra haircut an' whiskey 'en their wife's at eight months? An' ay guess it wouldnna' killed m'ta keep me fucken dick in m'jeans, right? Fi-del-ity," He spelled it out like he was still learning to wrap his crumbling mouth around the strange, uncomforting word. "An alla thats, y'nno, gittin' 'er pickles an' chocolate 'stead o' fucken 'er roommate."

"Bu' sh' made it so fucken 'ard when th' babe came!" He was starting to crack into erratic tones, betrayal cropping his tongue. "Like, I wis suddenly sapposed t' turn int' this soft spoken diaper-changer. I wis jis' a kid. We were fucken kids! Sh' didnay 'ave t'keep th'fucken thing!" Lips gashed into a wounded snarl, something strange and bitter that had never seen daylight masking his face, anger rising in a hot flood of resentment up the gully of his spine. "Sh' didnay 'ave t'turn inta mother o' th'whole fucken world, did she?! Whot wis ays sapposed ta' fucken do!? Buy us a 'ouse, cut m'air an' gitta nice bank job?!" He couldn't help but collapse back into the rough, pale salmon couch with a gravel-ground laugh, throwing his hands up between bony knees.

"Ays didnay know. Ays thought 'at's whot ay wanted, th' wife n' kid. Fucken 'omelife, somefin besides th'fucken streets an' drugs an' fucken haywire women. Bu' ay could'nt be a fucken father! 'Ave y'ever seen 'ow helpeless a bairn is? Can ya' fucken imagine?! Whot a fucken joke."</DIV>

<font color="#757575" size="1">[ September 12, 2006 04:44 PM: Message edited by: black cats and cunnilingus ]</font>

[cutthroat]

<center>

It takes a whole lot of liquor to like her
That's why I drink all the time
It takes a whole lot of liquor to like her
But when I'm liquored up I like her just fine

Every time I get sober
she drives me out of my mind
It takes a whole lot of liquor to like her
But when I'm liquored up I like her just fine</center>
<DIV style="text-align:justify;">
If you ran into Renton on the streets, under a broad blue sky on a late summer afternoon and innocently asked about women, his eyes would bulge from their sockets, the blood would drain from his heart and he would immediately peg them all as selfish-hearted, intrusive cunts, working himself into a flush-faced frenzy over their conniving plans to make all men into mice. Bring them into the home and tame gypsy souls, hammer itchy feet to the hearth and crucify them, bathing the filth from their hearts, over humble mantelpieces. Crudely pasting them into an estrogen-soaked portrait of Americana.

He would pontificate peacockishly, with fists beating his chest and spit flying from a blistered mouth -- warning against their soft warm bodies, gentle smell and big wet eyes -- with his pockets turned inside out, throat crammed full of lies and redwet heart throbbing on his shoulders to illustrate the high cost of love. "They want to fix everything," he would crow, grabbing for shoulders in desperation. "They want to be the mothers of the world, they want to stitch up the tatters of your sad little heart and lick clean the dirt from your soul. Purify your blood, shield your eyes from the bright electric fishbelly glow of the late nights, turn you into fathers and money makers! Run, boys, run!"

But girls like Jeuls. He didn't have much to say about them, about the way they seemed to feel through in the shadows, waiting for weakness then lurching with gore-splashed mouths and wanting fists swollen temptation. Girls that would offer a scummy fleet of vehicles to a slow demise with badblood campaigning their sloppy smiles, Girls that would lovingly strum out a plump vein, Girls that were happy to have the company of a kindred wounded soul on their one hundred mile per hour joyride down a slippery, debauched highway to hell.


"Hey, finally." When he staggered from the dawn, fresh from the embankment of his own muddy river of booze, random, forgettable mouths and neon, she was ready for him. With four lukewarm stacks of pancakes and a few dozen strips of congealing bacon split between two paper plates and a silver-gilded pair of tweezers that she held out expectantly. "How'd it go?"

"Whot?" He didn't bother to shake the stained blazer from his shoulders as he waltzed across the sun-dappled front room, draped in the sleazy smell of smoke and liquor and the laundry detergent they used at the local Motel Six.

"How'd it go!" Like an aging transvestite, Jeuls clung to her extravagant wigs, bad lighting and veils of smoke, spilling ash and a little vodka from a plastic tumbler as she sat up. Carefully eschewing a wash of sunlight that pried through a crack between a nailed sheet and paint-chipped window frame. "The head shrinking!" She kept trying to cram the tweezers into his fist as he collapsed next to her, baby deer-like legs flung carelessly over his lap, ruffling the greasy pages of an aging wank mag she had been perusing in search of a perfect vulva or exceptional armpit. Recently, she'd crowed for days over the inverted nipples she'd found on page 16 of Renton's July issue of Lesbian Lust.

"Well? Was it glamorous?! Where have you been? Your appointment was like, two days ago!"

He did not flinch at questions flung like arrows, instead he sickled his spine over her calf and began plucking out fine black hairs. Jeuls had read about a long-dead Italian Princess hand-plucking the hairs from her legs in a glossy vintage starfucker magazine and had immediately crammed the act into her itinerary. Now that Renton was there to work her legs, she reclined into the clutch of the antique fainting couch she replaced the tomato-stained loveseat with ("Fifteen hundred dollars!!!" She'd shrieked at him, lambasting his La Tomatina celebration) and focused her attentions into a handmirror as she jabbed and yanked at her brows.

"She wis very quiet."

Her eyes swelled up jealously.

"I bet she was terrified."

Renton frowned and continued ripping hair out by the roots.</div>

<font color="#757575" size="1">[ September 17, 2006 10:50 AM: Message edited by: black cats and cunnilingus ]</font>

[cutthroat]

<center>

Woke up hung like a ton of bricks
Don't know where the hell I am
Who's this naked next to me
What did I do, I gotta pee

Can't work or go to school today
Can't remember if I do that anyways
Got some money, got no clue
The world's a mess, what can I do

I hate my life, I hate my life

Crashed the car, lost the job
I'm dirty smelly total slob
Lot's of sex, little love
Stimulation no satisfaction

Life is hard, life is stress
Life is such a pain in the ass
Saturday nite, I'm not dressed
How can i go on?

I hate my life, I hate my life</center>

<font color="#757575" size="1">[ September 13, 2006 01:55 PM: Message edited by: black cats and cunnilingus ]</font>

<font color="#757575" size="1">[ September 22, 2006 01:39 AM: Message edited by: black cats and cunnilingus ]</font>

[cutthroat]

<DIV style="text-align:justify;">"Aw fuck, not again."

It was his rooster crow for these mornings, mornings when vodka still swam in his throat and his head throbbed like a spinning disco ball, when he would snap awake to the peculiar feeling of sun warming hollow cheeks (because that never happened in the blacked-out cave of his own bedroom), waking up genuinely unsettled with his fistfuls of skin and hair. Mornings when he had to groggily paw at the dainty, even stranger pair of hips flung over his waist and creep from scene undetected.

(An innocent little boy trapped inside a beartrap of bone and skin of a withered junkie pined for normality, a stable support to build a life around -- but the dopefiend continued to muscle his way through the dark, seedy nighttime in search of something to send the blood pulsing through his heart, struggling with call girls, fellow junkies and true blue lunatics. So, the boy was more than well-versed in cliche -- he lived it, with the tracks at his elbow and cocky swagger of his gait, leather jackets and chirping string of girls around his finger.)

Wailing "Shit, shit, shit!" into the new day's sun as he searched his skin for evidence -- bruises, new wounds, sores cracked open by struggle. Clots of lipstick tattooing bonework, or the deep sting of claws raked down his back. Early morning tumbling in a still-drunken ballet from one gritty corner to the next darkest and then back, eschewing the sunshine and turning his weary feet towards home. . .

</div>

[cutthroat]

<center>"of course, of course, of course,"</center>
<DIV style="text-align:justify;">
It was a whisper of bad faith that burnt up his mouth, turning tongue to ash and breathing cinders down her throat (the tired, dirty, methsour taste of his pleading devotion would curdle her tongue for weeks). Trying deserately to save his soul one last time, giving it one more chance under a sickle curve of a new white moon, surrendering it to the clutch of a steelboned trainyard goddess who could help him rebuild a body from the lovesick tremors of a withered funeral heart.
</div>

<font color="#757575" size="1">[ September 17, 2006 10:50 AM: Message edited by: black cats and cunnilingus ]</font>

[cutthroat]

<DIV style="text-align:justify;">"Good afternoon, Renton. How are you?"

"Um," He pulled at tabs of skin peeling up from his fingernails, wiping blood on a pair of crisp grey slacks. The good suit. The one they'd worn to Sid Eli's funeral. He was convinced he could still smell the misery of a baby dying in it's crib on the lapels. "Okey, ay guess." I'm ruining another life, I should've told her to run instead of kissing her, I can't stop this cycle of infatuation. "I can'nt stey fer th'whole session t'day. 've gotta plane t'catch."

"Oh?"

"'s m' daughter's birthday. Sh' lives in Thes'aloniki. 's like a ten 'our flight."

The doc's face seemed like cheap pink plastic melted into a mask of concern. He was still unnerved by her silence. He wondered how many appointments it would take for him to get used to it, to feel comfortable yapping at this overeducated mannequin.

"Sh's ternin' six. Guess that's a big deal." He stood, eager to get out of that place, that suit, that city. "Anywey. I jis' came t'tell ya' ay might nawt be at m'next appointment, either. 'm nawt sure 'ow long ay'll be gone."

"Well, be sure to call when you get back."

"Aye." He was breaking for the door in slow-motion desperation, trying to keep his coupon casual.

"And you have my number, in case you need anything?"

"Yuh."

"Don't be afraid to call, Renton."
</div>

<font color="#757575" size="1">[ September 17, 2006 10:50 AM: Message edited by: black cats and cunnilingus ]</font>

[cutthroat]

<DIV style="text-align:justify;">Six in the morning with their plane taking off in two hours and she couldn't find the savage junkie king anywhere, screeching through the house in a hurricane of candy pink suitcases and the natural tangle of her coal black hair. She kicked open doors and even ravenged the closets, spare rooms and crawlspace, eyes starting to swell in hysterics.

But eventually, time steadily ticking down to take off, the phone rang.

"Hello?!"

"Jeuly." His voice was sober, quiet and crooning, making her shriek even louder.

"RENTON. We have to go now! Where are you?! We've got, like, two hours! The fuck!?"

"'m atta apartment on Jefferson. Ay think it's on twelf' street. Big fucken stucco buildin', ay'll fucken be wayten' outside. C'min git me. Th'keys're on th'kitchen table."

"What?!"

"An' bring us a change o' clathes!"

"What?!?"


Toughskinned flamboyantly colored suitcases clattered noisily in the rusted-out truckbed of his junked Ford Ranger (half primer gray, half oxidized orange) as she threw the tranny into gear and roared down streets still empty, most people still tucked in bed and unaware of the halfblind maniac steering the broad chromepitted nose of a smog belching truck through red lights and crosswalks. Cruising up and down Jefferson, it wasn't long before she was sticking her head out of the window and screaming his name like a sourbellied tomcat towards the sunless sky, midnight blues fading into less desperate purples and baby blues. But soon she was able to seal her throat, grunting a laugh at the sight of a shirtless Renton tumbling from the doorway of a rather nice looking building with a ill-fitting pair of plaid pajama highwaters flapping in the wind, along with his leather jacket, pants and shirt that spilled damply from his arms.

Of course, he hadn't just disappeared from under the crush of girl without a trace (his usual calling card--just a smear of grease and filth left behind on linen sheets), he had been cognizant enough in the dim grey morning hours to scribble a messy note, left on the stool in front of her easels.</div>


<center>
"Shy,
Thanks. I'll bring the pants back soon,
We'll work on the world
when I get back.
- Renton"
</center>


<DIV style="text-align:justify;">
"Oh, Renton!" She tried to sound scathing as he wrenched the stubborn truckdoor open and poured himself into the seat, but her lips were cut up by an overzealous grin that splashed clumsily across her face, nicked-up arms patterned in bruises and tattooing crossing the oversized steering wheel sloppily. "Poor rabbits! You just can't fucking stop, can you?!"

"Aye," His shoulders jumped in halfhearted remorse, pulling his skull through a mangled Guns and Roses tee balled up on the truck's bench seat. "Ev'ryday's a fucken struggle. Let's roll."

And with the sun lurching over the horizon in a toxic spill of familiar fire-fueled colors, she pointed the drooping snout of the truck towards the airport and gunned the wheezing engine with a triumphant shriek.</div>

<font color="#757575" size="1">[ September 18, 2006 02:50 PM: Message edited by: black cats and cunnilingus ]</font>