Headful of ghosts.

[greedy fly]

Solomon Stills.

Journal 1/6/04.

Things have calmed down dramatically. Life has flatlined to nothing but normalcy again. Alice is fine, but Jude is contemplating on moving, and she seems to have no qualms about it. Of course, this upsets me---two of my best friends moving away to another city that could be hours away would sincerely break my heart. But, right now I'm trying not to think of those things.

Sometimes, I sit down and realize that fuck, isn't my life a little bizzare? I mean, just last week Alice was kidnapped because of some dirty money Jude owed some fuckers years ago, and all we can do is thank God she's safe. I don't know this Valencio guy or Valentine Bates, but I swear to God, if I ever meet them---armed or not...

I saw Kate the other night, and it was actually a fond experience. We talked, and we shared some memories over a few drinks and it was completely casual and fun. I hadn't laughed so hard in a long time---that's one of the reasons she's such a special girl, she's so funny. Whenever you get pissed off at her, you have to laugh because she has such a way of mocking you that you feel ridiculous. I walked her home, and we hugged. I told her that we should all have dinner sometime, Alice and Jude and all, and she went inside. I didn't mention Christian, and neither did she. It's best that way. I feel guilty for what happened to her, even if it wasn't my fault.

On the otherhand, not only is Ginger playing my muse, but I'm playing someone else's! Giorgio Sanremo is an aging art poseur, but he's rich as fuck, and everyone knows him. I've met him at a few gallery parties, and he's taken a liking to me. So what should I do for the wonderful homo? Oh, pose for him. Five-hundred dollars for four sittings, or so he estimates. The twist is that I'd do anything for money. Journal, you know this. Oh, sweet journal you know this. Five-hundred dollars is gonna do more than put a dent in the rent this month. So the twist is I got to pose with another man. I have no problem with this, if he wants to see me as this -- as an artist, I don't care. It was just the fact that he went: "Solomon, since you're the more feminine one, why don't you put your face in his neck?" What the fuck is that!

Anyway, the other model is named London, I think, and he seems pretty nice and alright about it. This is just one of the many things I never ever want to tell Jude about, because I know he'll never let me see the end of it!

I also heard that Loki found her adonis, which is sweet. I can't wait to give her her tattoo.

[greedy fly]

When I was sixteen, that's when Mum died. The swapping of foster homes only thrived for two more years until I was eighteen, when I received more hours at my lousy music store job. I rented myself a flat in West Hampstead; it was modest, and for the most part, I kept to myself. Everyday was like clockwork, I'd stand behind a counter for eight or nine hours and then I'd trudge my battered, teal Converses (they'd seen better days) down Cricklewood Broadway, past all of the Indian food supply stores and order myself something small to eat. Sometimes, it was just tea and cake, sometimes; I actually opted for a meal. Either way, it was dinner time and my budget depended on a constricted jean pocket (which never seemed to be big enough for a lot of money, ironically).

There was a girl that worked there everyday, she had dark skin and frazzled curly hair. Her eyes were just as sweet as her skin, darker, but still as honeyed, and her cheeks used to lamp with flush every time she waited on me. I was older than she was, I figured that it was a simple after school job for her--this Marie, whose nametag used to sit lopsided, pinned nearly to her collarbone, rather than the swell of her breast like the other string of waitresses. She'd smile at me when I tipped her, and rush off, gnawing at the ragged half-moon of her pinky nail, and I'd go on my merry little way, grinning like a fox.

But towards Valentine's Day, I felt this ache pulling at my heart strings. The pastel-gray, overcast streets seemed ashy and empty to me. The snow flurries weren't just melting in my copper curls anymore, they were sticking stubbornly to them. Winter was making me weary, and it robbed me of an appetite. So when I watched her from across the room, paving a path to me in her sea foam uniform, I dented my lower lip, and finally saw her for the first time in a different light --this girl was a blossom.

I asked her out on a date, and she coyly asked 'why?' and I hadn't an answer for her. I shrugged my shoulders and fluttered my lashes until she concurred. After work, I'd take her to the cinema. I picked her up--well, without a car, and we both skittered several blocks. I stole a couple of wild flowers from a street vendor, and as he thrashed clumsy footsteps, tailgating us as we rounded a thousand corners, I noticed her laugh, and it was brilliant.

"Solomon," she lilted to me about one block before we reached her house just near Primrose Hill---her father was a man of money, obviously. "I can't kiss yew oan th'first date."

The next day I pummeled my fist at her door, beaming like a fool, before she whipped it open and stared at me wide-eyed. She told me that I couldn't just come by like that--her parents didn't want her dating any men ..especially white boys, and she was an honor student and hat to watch her grades! But, as soon as I feigned my best melancholy expression, she raked her twig-like fingers through my hair and concurred to go out with me.

I discovered a thousand things about Marie Larsons, she had lived in Primrose Hill for half of her life until her father had been laid off from his job, and they instead, migrated just outside of it. She was planning to go to Cambridge University to study Psychology. I asked her if she was insane to want to attend such an ugly, crumbling place. Then, she listed all of the famous poets that had gone there during the nineteenth century, and I was impressed. Her father was overprotective of her, and her mother was an accountant that poured prescription drugs in her palm a little too often, and found herself to be more distant from father and daughter. I brought her to see my band plug in and play sloppy punk music at a local pub, and from behind the lead singer---a crazy bloke who put egg-whites in his bleached hair named David, I watched her feel dreadfully out of place, and at the same time, so animated and in love with the way I jumped from fret to fret.

For months, we had been seeing each other in secret, I?d convince her to phone her parents and tell her that she was staying over her girlfriend, Samantha?s house when she was with me, tangled up in beige sheets on my floor-stapled mattress, talking politics or our future life together. One night, though, she snuck me into her room, and being the boy that I was, I introduced her to her first joint, and she grew so giddy with every drag that I?d have to cup her mouth to muffle her laughter. I remember it quite distinctly, I was sprawled out shirtless across from her on her twin bed, her cheek was buried against her pillowcase, and our conversation had been quite pointless ---revolving around whether or not horseshoes were really good luck. That was when her father boomed behind the door, and I darted into her closet after crippling the marijuana cigarette against an amber-tinctured ashtray I had brought along. I took it with me, cupped against my abdomen, haloed by a motley off her clothes. He asked her who she was talking to ---oh, it was just the television, what was that smell? Incense she had burned. She had always been quick on her feet and witty. But that was when I accidentally snickered.

He flung my skinny body against the wall and told me not to see his daughter. After I was squinting through a swell of burgundy-blue with pixels of red just below my skin, I could see her rushing to clasp his shoulder and drag him away. Time blurred from there. Her mother watched me stoically as I was flung onto the front lawn, without a shirt (thank God for May) and her father ignored her tears. I straightened myself up haughtily as best as I could, as her father warned me to never go near her again. After jabbing my finger to her over his broad shoulder, I spanned my arms like wings, and told her that if she didn?t come with me she was blind, and she didn?t love me!

The next morning we were on a rattling flight to America, I had saved up an obnoxious amount of money for the past few months just so she could someday see the Statue of Liberty erected in the smog-pale New York skyline. Of course, we had planned to do this after she graduated, but now her Cambridge plans were completely obliterated, and I sat with my chest swollen with pride, because I had her. I won her over?as selfish as it sounded. Her eyes were glazed like ceramic with salt during the entirety of the ride, and I coaxed her with throat-nuzzles and earlobe-mingling whispers; promising a fresh start and a love that could never be marred.

Somehow, we wound up in Philadelphia, and not Center City, but rather, the more rugged outskirts where the playgrounds were blighted, lime weeds swallowed the basketball courts, and where police sirens were monotonously droning all day and all night. I was used to it. It was just like home to me! Even through her stages of smiles and happiness when I made her dinner and switched our roles (I was now a waiter at a restaurant on South Street) I knew she was secretly miserable. I had her name branded into my skin with a rubber band-vibrating tattoo gun in Middle English lettering, controversially low on my abdomen, and the whole time she flinched for me, and kept telling me that it was alright to cry! It didn?t hurt that much.

Our meals were meager, our walls bare, and I had a thousand odd jobs. One day I was walking through the Gallery, and a man hooked me by the jut of my elbow and talked me into a modeling portfolio. I had always been an avid painter, so I found myself an agent to help me with selling them. Marie, worked at the art supply store on South Street (I swore she charmed them with her accent) and I had a discount on the oil paints. After three months, summertime buzzed and melted sweat like wax on our skin. She was pleading for an air-conditioner, wallowing in a cold tub, and I was reading by the light of a dim lamp. She had just turned seventeen, and we celebrated it with a few of our American friends (who to say the least were wild, and drug-induced).

One Sunday when she was scheduled to work until five, I was unloading groceries on a counter, when our phone rattled shrill. I thought it was the girl upstairs, a tattoo artist with the most vivid blue eyes in the world, Quinn, but instead, it was Marie?s mother. How she got the number, I?ll never know. Maybe Marie had tried calling her and hung up, and the number caught on the caller I.D. ? or just maybe?

Our conversation was an emotionless thrust of words, before she slaughtered the small-talk and laid it on me. The anchor weighted my chest, and instead of being tangled with seaweed, it was spun with barbed wire, and it pricked me bloody and guilty.

?Solomon,? it was the identical scolding tone Marie took with me. ?Yew need tae stop this nonsense. This is nonsense. Yew are destroying that poor gurl?s life. She?s younger than yew, and unlike yew, she has a chance. She dropped out of school, Solomon. Because of yew. Because she is blind. I?m sure she loves yew, but if yew really love her, yew should stop and think about wot you?re daein?. She has a thousand chances, and I?m sure that after she finishes school and gets into Cambridge, yew two can run amuck again. Ever since she was a little gurl, Solomon, ever since she was a little gurl, she wanted this?don?t yew spoil this for her.?

After I hung up, I submerged in my couch, with my hands folded in mock-prayer, silently I argued with myself, gritting my jaw, and struggling not to be selfish. When she came home, animated, because she saw a man dressed as a clown honking his bicycle horn at her on Locust, I asked her to sit, but she didn?t for very long. The argument was intense, she was screaming bloody murder, her voice penetrating all sound barriers?becoming the nasal screech I naturally loathe in English women. Her tears wouldn?t stop, and she threw her flimsy, feeble fists at my unbudging chest a few times.

?Yew don?t love me, anymore?!?
?No ..?
It was the hardest thing to say, and the bass of my voice could hardly croak out such a lie. ? ?I don?t.?

It was the day she returned to England that I couldn?t bear to look at myself in the mirror. My pillow was frigid and empty; there was just ghastly skin haunting it, and her perfume mists were still lingering everywhere; my stomach kept churning. So I called. I called her home, and her father said she wasn?t there. I called an hour later, his pitch was grating and annoyed, but I refused to give up. The next day, he hung up on me. Later that evening, he threatened to call the cops, which I laughed at. Then, my number was blocked. It wasn?t until I was at the restaurant the next day that I could punch in her number again, and listen with my Adam?s apple bobbing in anticipation to the throb of rings. Her mother?s voice was low-key and somber, crackling behind silken Kleenexes.

?Sol ..last night, Marie, she had ?she..?
And she didn?t need to finish, I was already cradling myself behind drawbridged kneecaps on the dirty floor. Her note read:

It?s hard to breathe when
Solomon Stills falls out of love with you.

It was an overdose by her mother?s prescription pills; draped like a lily pad over the plane of her mattress. I wanted to call to tell her I was just lying, I wanted to call to tell her that I really did love her and that her mother had manipulated my feelings. I wanted to tell her that she was everything to me, that if Romeo and Juliet were star-crossed, we were bound by a thousand galaxies. But in the end, it was a modern day tragedy. In the end, we were Romeo and Juliet, because the day she died, was the day I died, too. Inside.

(re-written 2/04.)

<font color="#EA2539" size="1">[ November 20, 2004 06:37 AM: Message edited by: citizen erased ]</font>

[greedy fly]

<center>with your feet on your air
and your head on the ground
try this trick and spin it, yeah
your head will collapse
and there's nothing in it
and you ask yourself
"where is my mind?"

way in the water..
see it swimming.
-- the pixies.</center>

And what a horrible thing it is. Sitting in this bed like it's a grave. Wishing that someone would come over and visit me so I could talk to someone. But, no. They're all busy, and it's rare that I'm off work, so why should they expect that I'm laying here alone? With my cat propped upon my kneecaps, tilting her head at me.

"Dont yew wonder wot London's like, Quinn?"

Of course, she didn't respond, but her tail shook out in shiver. She wanted to know what it was like, I know it.

"Sometimes, I feel like I should go back, 'aye?"

And leave all of the sick lovers behind I have met here. The girls with the poison tongues, the men that are always just fucking confused. Alice told Judas about her and I, she said that he was upset. What can I do? I heard that Kate got married overnight, and I have to laugh like a lunatic. I feel sorry for the girl. She thinks she knows what she wants out of life, but she really doesn't. If she thinks that means instant-love---getting married, having kids? She should think again. But, who am I to talk? I have been very flimsy about keeping relationships lately. But, if any bird uses me for that I'm just going to tell her to fuck off. I loved Kate. It makes me slightly angry now that that is why she left me. Just give me room to breathe. Marriage is for wankers. Next subject. It felt strange to be with anyone when I had a thousand other people on my mind; the fragrance of Ginger, and the mismatched eyes of Loki. Even Warren, holding his camera like a puppy dog, waiting for me to stop punching holes in the wall so he could take the perfect picture of me in my quintessential Scorpio-bound state.

Jude hasn't made any efforts to talk to me. To tell you the truth, I don't really care. There's nothing I can do about it. I ditched him at one point because I couldn't handle the fact that he's killing himself, and he's ditching me not only because I'm killing myself slowly, but because he loves his wife and family.

I've considered phoning Christian. Even after what he did to Kate. But I'd have better luck and I'd be happier to just phone Ginger, or Loki. Maybe I should call Lucy and tell her that despite the way I acted, she's not really a horrible person, she's just about as emotionally-fucked as I am. And that night, as physically-fucked. Or if I called Paiva and apologised for not being her friend after all of that.

Don't even get me started on Paiva.

Or Jane. I'll call Jane and make sure she's alright, and that her mother still isn't out there, ruling her life. Or ---

No. No.

I started doing exactly what I did how many years ago? Four? Five? I just packed a few things, and I bought my ticket. The cat? I dropped her off at Quinn's. They'd keep her isolated for six months to make sure she didn't bring any foreign diseases over there to England. So I left. At least for a little bit, maybe a few days, maybe a week. Maybe it was to explore where I used to live.

The next step was pummeling on Shock's door. The poor bastard was like my twin. He had no one, he sat alone and probably made beautiful music that no one would ever hear. It was a long trip to the outskirts of Centre City.

He poked his head out, half-asleep at me from his lopsided condo window (ambushed in tall weeds.)

"Ehhh, Sol---" The fucker had just woken up, and he already had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

"We're going to London."

"Eh?"

"London."

"Okay."

Approximately twelve minutes later, Shock's hair was strung in a lousy ponytail, and he was in his leather jacket, carrying his suitcase of bare necessities beside me. He didn't even ask questions. I knew that he too, was out looking for a fucking meaning to this life. We weren't going to find it in Philadelphia.

We took a trip to the bank, and I was surprised at how loaded that fucker was. Probably from the days when he sold out with that tart, Jason Stride. I fucking hated that cunt. Always had, always will.

Once we were on the plane, I watched him distantly from my window seat, flirting with some disgustingly older businessman (that probably had a wife and two kids--and I'll stress that again--ladies, you're never getting that from me!) putting his hand on his thigh, leading him to the bathroom. I had to snicker, because it was so fucking sick and hilarious. 's why I love that guy. I'm kind of happy that I took someone with me, or else I'd be dreadfully alone.

The first night we spent in a very posh upper-class hotel in London. I was fucking running around, jumping on the beds, because I felt like a child--unleashed into freedom. Gin just sat there, smiling discreetly behind his cigarette. That night he tried to crawl into bed with me, and I swatted him away.

The next day when we were traveling down the nostalgic streets of Shepardsbush, he was clenching my hand so tight, I swear it was going to fall off. It was because he was simply petrified of running into that Jason twat. I walked past a doorstep where I used to live when I was seventeen or so, with some elder, rich couple named Samantha and Stephen. They weren't so bad. They just bored me to tears. I remember sitting on that doorstep and watching Gin Shock walk by----fucking stunned---with his fanbase of lipstick-wearing ponces. I couldn't even talk to him.

Now here we are, like best fucking friends, scared of what London may or may not bring us. Contentment or not.

I laughed at my memory of breaking my Rats albums when Gin sold out with that Stride bloke.

Life was going to start again. -- No, it was ready to ignite.

<font color="#5C4F2A" size="1">[ February 18, 2004 07:00 PM: Message edited by: cherries ]</font>

[greedy fly]

"So--I went to electroshock therap--"

"That is the biggest bunch of bullshit I've ever heard. How could they fucking do that --I just don't fucking get it."

"I don't know. It's like, 'hey ma, hey dad, that's not gonna make me straight, it's just gonna fruit me up even more to spite ya'asses.' "

"Wot about your brother, didn't they figure that he was...gay?"

"He's not gay. That's the thing. 'Brought back a thousand girlfriends, fucked 'em in the bed right next to me. They thought I was manipulating my older brother."

"That's such shite, Gin."

"I know. Now, I just kinda look back an' laugh. When my dad died? Guess what I did?"

Solomon churned curiously onto the plateau of his stomach, half-naked, nursing Jack Daniels raw, exchanging the bottle with the platinum-haired lush. They were stretched out and scrawled in their hotel room (which already looked as though a rock star-peppered tornado had infested it; clothing strewn, bottles, ashtrays, cigarette cellophane.) In the past few days they had become good friends. He knew Gin pretty well, but he wouldn't divulge much to his friend.

"Pissed on his grave," American-barbaric and boasting.

Wiring a dimple-incising smile, Stills couldn't help but laugh so hard he flushed.

"What about you, Sol? Tell me 'bout your folks."

That was when the laughter abruptly subsided, and all he could do was needle gangly elbows into the white-buttered bedspread and softly quirk his curly scalp in a shake.

"...There's nothing to tell. Nothing's ever happened to me, I'm boring."

"Oh, well."

[greedy fly]

He promised her a call from London.

Tuesday night he cramped himself next to the complimentary hotel phone, spiraling the butterscotch coil around his wrist as he unfolded a slitted, crinkled receipt. Loki's phone number was jotted in sloppy italics on the reverse. Gin was nursing a beer in the corner of the room, writing in his notebook, half-undressed, glancing up at his friend, his deep voice rumbling in a haggard husk.

"Who 'ya callin'?"

"My friend," answered Solomon as he punched in the numbers, quirking his sawed-down nail to scratch at the bridge of his prominent nose. "I promised her I'd call from London."

"Ahhh."

<font color="#060101" size="1">[ May 04, 2004 03:19 PM: Message edited by: electroshock ]</font>

[greedy fly]

It was a swanky, underground club; walls lined in red velvet that burned beneath the posh interrogation of burgundy bulbs. The perimeter was bunched-up booths, side to side in their leather-seated semi circles. And in all of this blood-and-black scheme there was a splash of color. Loud, gaudy blue. Pressed to the ledge of a benchseat, dyed-to-match shoes smeared themselves all over the floor while elbows mimicked their soles, bent against the slant of his thighs. One fist was gift-wrapped by fingers, knuckles overlapping as a perch for the rounded roll of a boyish chin. Razor-slit hair was barely there and blending in with all the suits, blacker than black is black. Tongue knocked itself into the inside of his cheek, swelling from the side in a moon's crescent curve. Knee bounced in up-down pentameter against his arm, thudding from the ankle on up. A lazy martini glass sat pressed against the table, olive staring back at him.

Crashing through nocturnal tunnels of London cove society was the ponytail bandit --Gin Shock--(that should've been dead) leather-jacket studded and wearing that crazy, cocksucker grin. Swaggering right towards the producer's booth, he stamped his hands on the ledge of it, seemingly void of company. "Ehhhh!" Barbaric and rough-edged, the venus boy dusted his cheek in a wink, and stole his martini to wash it down, but he kept the olive intact. "Long time no see Bentley--" It rhymed, so he sang it out for him. "I got a proposition for 'ya." Prodding a hand at him in a tacit stop-sign, he tumbled back. "And this time it's clean."

It was a cockeyed grin, tilted to the side and aiding his tongue back into the sweet Louisiana bayou of his mouth (all heat and fireflies with nothing tangible leaving the lips). "Oh?" The stretch of his brow tilted from the center, strung by the marionette strings of black-brown hair, nudging the swerve of his lip up with the motion. The olive stared, still. Elbows were knocked from their foundations, bulldozed to leave his spine straightening and his arms sloshing low over the inward slope of his legs. The blue suit was all jacket and ankle-cropped pants, leaving yellow socks and yellower tie grinning right back at all the red. He eyed the boy in an easy lounge of lid, lash, and glare--running races over the walking-dead.

"Yeh, okay. Right, so--" The hyperactive ex-rocker (who seemed to really have something here, judging by his vivid hand movements, cutting the air in a thousand butchered pieces). "I got this kid, named Solomon. Solomon Stills." Collapsing in the seat across from him, he nudged a finger in the direction of his tie. "Your tie's fashionable man---well, anyway. This kid, Sol, right? He's fucking like --- rock star times a thousand. This kid could fucking bring a Backstreet Boys fan-following. Tattoos, the uh--uh--piercings, and he's beautiful. I mean fucking beautiful. Hard to look at, good with the ladies. He has sex appeal, but the thing is..he has this amazingly gruff voice, and he can play the guitar really well and his lyrics are really deep, and." He kept shooting quick bullets from his tongue before he paused. "So, anyway. I said: 'hey man, les'get you a demo done.' He goes: 'alright then, sounds good enough.' I said I'd co-produce him, I need him signed. I need you to help me here. 'Need the cash, need ..something fun.. something interesting. We could sell this kid."

The cigar was bias, sideways against the ashtray, spitting its smoke in the eyes of all the burgundy bulbs. Hitching an elbow from his lap, it strung itself up, perching on the back of the booth so that he could half-diagonal himself in Gin's direction. The club buzzed around them like low satellite, smearing whispers and throat all over the walls (who had big, gaping holes for ears). Loose-limbed arm spread up over the ledge of the table, pressing two fingers into the dry moistness of the martini glass, plucking the toothpick with its plump, green tip. Twirling it between fingers, he watched the boy across from him with some lazy countenance through all the wild, quick-ongued rambling. Lethargically, he stuck the olive in his mouth, biting down around the wooden spear. "Mm, oh yeah thanks." Speaking around the toothpick, he smeared his chin to his collar bones to take a look at the tie. When Gin finally finished, he nodded, simply. "All right."

[greedy fly]

Dear Judas,

If you care to know. I'm fine. Actually, more than fine. I'm doing brilliant. It's great to finally be away from all the sulking drama Philadelphia enveloped me in; it seems that everyone there has a complex with commitment. I've given my phone number to Quinn to pass to you but you haven't called, and I have enough faith in her to have supplied it with you. But, that's alright. I'll probably be back in a month to collect my things, and as much as I want to bring my cat, I'm not cruel enough to lock her in a cage for six months, because the English system is really moronic.

I don't have much to say other than I love you, hate you, and envy you all at once. I shouldn't have broken your heart when you came back to me from your dark age in Los Angeles, but I did. I should've realised that Kate wasn't the one for me, that she could merely leech 2.5 kids, a white picket fence and a surburban household from any poor old fuck. I know she loved me, but only enough to break my heart twice. And you, well, you've been doing it for so many years.

Being around you started to make me sick. My stomach would churn and inside I was so fucking depressed, because nothing was working out in America in terms of love. I missed you, I wanted to be with you, I wanted you to lay your head in my lap like you used to, and I wanted to wake up beside you when I had that same fucking nightmare about you dying on the tile floor. But, I couldn't have that. Because you chose the path that Kate did. And I'm never, ever going to criticise that path that you both took. But, it's not the path for me. Besides, you could've never had that path with me.

Philly was starting to reek of stale air. The same old thing was happening over and over again. I'd run into a girl, she'd be beautiful, I'd want her inside and out, and that girl, could never, ever give me the inside of her like Marie did. Like you gave me your insides, and let me clench your heart. Everyone sees me for what I am on the outside: this 'handsome' thing that you can show off to your parents and your friends and feel their jealousy. But they never want the baggage. The Razorblade Suitcase---they only want the suitcase.

I let myself go bland and drug-free. I can hear you preaching like a reborn Christian about the dangers of drugs and alcoholism and all that shit, but you know what? I always knew I was going to die before I was thirty. Either because I was so fucking sick from all of the people that have left me, or because I was going to have an overdose or something like that. Being back on drugs is bringing me to life. Gin's coming back to stay with me again next week after he gathers his belongings, and I can't wait. I need to taste the world again; the cultures, the people, the women (womenwomen.) I need them. I'm not even ashamed to say I sold my sex out to a beautiful woman the other night for one grand that her boyfriend paid me. This life is like fireworks. Like explosives. It just keeps exploding every twist and turn I make. In Philadelphia the fireworks were dead.

No, I don't feel sorry for you and the life you lead. You're older than me, so you always had those few years of partying before you. Now, I'm just living. Since I can't live with you, I have to live without you. Farther away than far. Seperated by a vast fucking ocean. Do you miss my scent? No. You have Alice. There's a reason I'm not leaving a return address. I know you, you'll write me a letter, or let Kate read and the emotion will get the best of her and she'll write me an angry letter. I won't be having none of that.

But, sincerely, Jude. To a man who used to be my lover and best friend:

Have a nice life.

Sincerely,
Solomon Stills.

P.S.: Kiss Mia and Emily's cheeks for me.

[greedy fly]

"Sol, I miss how it used to be. You, me, Kate, Jude, all just hangin' out at bars and going to your shows--'member? When we went to your show and that girl said mean stuff to Kate and I punched in the face? Or our Thanksgivings looking at baby-pictures of you an' Jude? Or ..."

As Alice rambled on, he just stalled inside the phone booth, cradling it to the multi-punctured shell of his ear.

"I miss those times, Alice. But things have changed, and people have stopped caring. Yew still have Jude in the end, but Kate's run off, and I've run off, and it's just going to be yew and him."

"Well, I want it to be the way it used to be. I can't see why Kate and you can't be friends."

"It can't be the way it used to be. Everyone's lost interest in the way it used to be."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means Kate has a new life, Jude has a new life. They've moved on, and wotever love there is is eventually going to dissolve over time."

"Sol, that's not true. Jude has London over there looking for you..he has..."

"Wot? He sent --fuckin'--that's ridiculous."

"He is! He's there!"

"But, London's not part of it! You're sitting here talking about old times, and London's part of the new, the fucking new--and I fucking hate all this change."

"Then come back to Philly, Sol. You just have to come back, I mean, I love Jude and all, but I just need you around for simple conversation, the girls miss you. Everyone misses you. Even Quinn came by asking if anyone got word, she looks so sad. Jill keeps calling. Sol, people miss you."

"I'm not doing this for my ego, Alice. I don't care. I'm doing this for me."

"What is it exactly that you're doing?"

"Living."

"And what's the definition of living?"

"Living is being away from Jude and Kate, who have only dragged me down, who cared for me once a lot, and now just recycled me and threw me to the dogs, and I'm sorry, Alice. But Jude's replacement for me is yew, and Kate's is that bloke she married, and they never had genuine feelings to begin with. I'm not like that. Yew aren't. I'm sure of it..."

[greedy fly]

Summertime crawled over Kilburn, stunning the public with a swamping, smoggy heat wave, one that loomed behind cotton-gray clouds and made the nights unbearable. Usually the weather was neutral and mild in the warmer seasons, but now it launched a campaign of dusty, mechanically-ticking dispersed over the flat, trying to propitiate the sullen gloss of perspiration haunting his tiny, lanky body--his blanket kicked away. From the twin-sized mattress in the incommodious cubby hole that was dubbed the living room, he bolted an unrelenting stare on the cracked ceiling, praying for the screen door to lather him in a breeze or the air to finally shatter it's facade and cry rain.

The old television with the lopsided, aluminum-encrusted alien antennaes lashed blue shadows over his sallow face. Back then it was white and whisker-less, his hair cut short, but rebelling in ridiculously nondescript paper-bag brown curls against his matted forehead. Seriously, the nine-year-old, chubby-cheeked boy found 'Waiting for God' to be the most daft sitcom to ever hover over BBC broadcasting waves, but there was nothing else on. He killed the volume just so he wouldn't haven't to listen to the wobbly, nasal-pitched gargle of elderly people rambling about nothing in a retirement home, infested with that fake laughter that always seemed to answer droll jokes and headachey punchlines.

Even the Ninja Turtles had a place in the UK, his shorts were crinkled and his scrawny chest bare, teeth raging to bite his fingernails while he listened to the change of events in the other room behind parchment-thin walls.

The masculine bellowing provoked a brow arch, but the explicit words (he knew what was vulgar, and what was not) recited like a God to his mother made him bolt up to a half-mast viewpoint. Clawing at the sheetless mattress, he pivoted to stare at the wall plaster, as though it had the formulas and answers scribbled out upon it. He could hear his mother whining like she sometimes did; this grotesque, sob-rocketing drowning pitch that always seemed to permeate through him and pique sympathy, but it never phased the men that she was 'with.'

Solomon knew that they weren't new daddies. There were some that stuck around longer than others. Some of them were there for a night, sometimes his mother went out to go find some, and sometimes they were around for weeks and months at a time, and they always told her what to do and what to wear, and where to stand at midnight.

This one in particular was Danny; a flush-faced, red-headed joke of a man, that sported a receding hairline that always made him chuckle behind his back, and he wasn't nice at all. He was cock-eyed and his accent was spat out violently. Since day one he had been intimidating, and a threat to the little boy. He was the worst so far. He treated his mother the worst.

Slurred battle verses were slung back and forth, resonating into more vehement crescendos until the whipcrack of a sound slaughtered it completely, and everything fell silent. She was submitting and surrendering in he unkempt void of the bedroom. This was the second time this week that he hit his Mum.

Even with his pulse tripthudding percussion and nervous bass in his earlobes, he scurried and dove down the hall, both fists devouring the door knob to fling it open, springing across the carpet to confront Danny, who was standing over the bed, leering at his naked mother that hurredly scrunched sheets to her chest at the sight of her son.

"Sol, get out--" Her mascara was streaking funeral bruise trails down her cheeks, her copper-dyed hair frayed and carwrecked in shoulder-lapping tangles. "Sol, get OUT!"

But since day one he'd always been obstinate and persistant--- built up by this imaginary secret fortress of an ego that drove him, and made him thrash towards Danny, half-his-size and angered by the fact that the man was laughing at him.

The launched attack was infirm and pathetic, he hammered his fists into the man's stomach and was instead shoveled roughly back with a guiding, grubby palm.

"Fuck off, y'lil cunt."

"Danny, just leave him alone---Christ.."

Solomon refused to relent like his mother often did, and stood his ground, territorial and acid-welling hatred in his narrowed eyes.

"Nao, yew fuck off. Don't touch 'er, ye'cunt!" In a way he just rephrased the words and bulleted it right back at him.

His mother weakly brushed aside the needles and spoons littering the night stand, as Danny indented blaeching fingerprints on the kid's gelatin bicep and muttered that it was time to learn respect. Mike Nichols told him that he needed to learn respect last time too, and before that that gadge Robert said the same thing.

He took his beating like a mini-man, chagrinned by his mothers pleads and shrieks and threats to call the cops. In the end, she never followed through. She crawled in bed with Danny soon after, fingers curling his t-shirt in tufts to both bait and beg, and Solomon left the room; scabs reopened, and his eye swollen.

Spearing legs through his school uniform trousers, t-shirt and unlaced shoes, he sought exodus from the apartment, and wandered the six blocks to Pierce's town-home, where he chucked pebbles at his window only to climb upstairs and sleep on his floor.

Pierce's Mum never asked questions, either, or any that he ever knew of.

A week later when he came back home, his mother scorned him for hours and beat him until he understood that he wasn't allowed to leave that long, and that she was worried sick, before cradling him to her heaving, junkie chest. He found himself smiling through his saline tears. Danny was gone, she reassured him of that, and he wouldn't be re-emerging anytime soon. His Mum loved him again.

And the heat wave vanished from lurking in the skies.

[greedy fly]

The rigid lady chorused frostbitten, brusque words at the young, butterscotch-haired boy, who slumped like a mute on the piano bench, staring over the ivory teeth. She was heavy, and her nostrils flared when she spoke, her hair tied in a sloppy ash-gray bun, nose carved out like a hunting vulture.

"We will start with Bach," she sliced through the pages of a crumpled sheet music book, that had been rotting over years of lessons and wear-and-tear.

"Ave Maria, please."

Tediously, he began to pound out the music, trying not to derrail his attention span on the other boy that was sneaking up on the side of the piano.

Mischief was scrawled all over Solomon's face, his hand slithering through the grooves at the side of the piano to delicately unlace Mrs. Parimetti's patent leather shoe. Splicing a crooked grin, he listened to the unenthuisiastic, mechanical ripple of sound, bobbing his head, before he started to creep across the carpet on his stomach. Like a soldier in a trench, he transported via the jaunty jabs of his elbows, his legs slack, biting down a boyish cackle.

Pierce caught him in the corner of his eye and grinned something exuberant. Suddenly, the Bach dissipated and he began to fluctuate his fingers in his own melody, lamping the whole entire foyer, and only earning disdain from the teacher.