Headful of ghosts.

<center>chemicals will hit you
chemicals will knock you down
is it over cos you feel no pain
throwing me around
you attack my head with numbers
you tack my room with things of glass
you attack my neighbours
'til you've found someone
who's cleaning up the mess
you are no good
cos i know you can't sleep
'til you know your overbearance makes me creep

-- the notwist.</center>

<center>http://www.unc.edu/~ageorge/Gavin4.jpg</center>.

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ July 11, 2005 12:21 PM: Message edited by: bulletproof cupid ]</font>

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v9...ontagious5.jpg

we're of the hollow men:
we are the naked ones.
we never meant you harm--
never meant you wrong.
and I'd like to thank
all of my lovers, lovers, lovers, lovers.

Solomon Stills :
Journal.

September 10th.

It feels good to relax. Reminiscing on past lovers. Smoking her. Smoking Mary Jane. She always tastes so sweet. Maybe I'll tell you about them. From least to greatest maybe? That sounds bloody classic... I guess I'll start with Miss Camilla.

I was literally wandering around the park one day last March...I think...and I slam into this jogging woman. Instant libido. Before I know it, (she's thirty-six, I'm twenty-two) she's taking me home via limo to her millionaire husband's lavish mansion (he didn't give her enough attention--he was always 'busy'.) To say the least I fucked the youth back in her. I told her she was beautiful, and she told me nobody had told her that for such a long, long time. I thought she was going to cry. Afterwards, we had a Mrs. Robinson-type affair..except much more risque. She had bodyguards to ditch and deceive, and we met eachother at unlikely places: cafes/grocery stores/bars all so I would take her home for a few hours, we'd indulge, she'd listen to my poetry and weep, and she'd leave to go home to misery. She'd sneak and call me almost every night, and we'd set up a new date every week. I almost anticipated it. But, after a month of fooling around I began to feel guilty--guilty for her husband. I don't like anyone being unfaithful to me (I'm quite hypocritical...) so I felt sorry for him. So I stopped showing up, and I'm sure she waited. I didn't return her calls. I don't think it was cruel of me, I thought it was a good deed to vanquish my need for her for her own good and her marriage's. Before her I think I slept with a handful of random, unsatisfied married women--but I haven't since then. I've grown up, and my infatuation with older women has for the most part, deterioated.

Raven O'Hail. I was going insane cos Kate left me (I'll mention her later) like visibly tearing out my hair, threatening suicide to my fucking walls, calling her nonstop. So Quinn suggests I go to a therapist--bruising my pride. Of course, I refused. But after a little persuasion, I finally went. Raven was the therapist, and she didn't help me one bit. She couldn't get in my head. I don't let me people I love, let alone mere strangers know about my past--so why her? She had more problems than I did. I became her therapist, I began to appease her. After awhile, I just stopped showing up at my appointments. She used me for my cock. I know it feels good, Baby, but don't fuck with "crazy" people.

Norma Jean. I was filling in for Quinn at her shop and taking appointments. This bouncy little girl wanders in and demands that I give her a tattoo! Now, I was reluctant, considering she actually admitted she was seventeen...but somehow she persuaded me (she was very, very persuasive.) Not only did I give her a tattoo--and for the life of me I can't remember what I was on--but she told me to write my NAME across her back! For some reason I concurred to that too, and surely enough, she still has "SOLOMON" written across her shoulderblades in cryptic lettering. I wonder if she ever just stares at it and kicks herself. We became friends soon after. We would talk about our petty problems. Exchange advice. Bought ice cream. I don't know. One day I said something along the lines of: "When you're eighteen, I'll have sex with you" because she was so curious (even though she had done it before) she was practically begging me. Fate would have it that a WEEK later, when I'm laying on my couch, half-passed out, drunk and watching Jenny Jones or something to pollute my mind--she just impinges in my apartment, and starts to bounce in my lap. Now, I'm a man. I gave into my impetuses only when she started to fist it. Before I knew it I was crazy over her. You know, crazy in the way she would try and cook me breakfast and would destroy my whole entire kitchen...crazy in the way she'd peek under my sheets when I was sleeping just to see if I had something going on under there. We did silly things together like get baths, go skating, aimlessly walk the streets. But we never had any depth or actual love. She was my only girlfriend that I actually broke up with. I wasn't upset when I did it, really. I just told her that she didn't understand me (and she really didn't) and it wasn't working out. She seemed alright with it. I still wonder if she kicks herself over that tattoo, though. Oh well.

Jane. I must've been a villain when I dated Jane. I worked at the same diner with her then that I work at today. Here was this girl--this mouse with ratty hair, that stared at her shoelaces, was afraid of the other waitresses--the customers, everyone...because she was so very mute and shy. The other waitresses teased her to death. I couldn't figure out why. She had this crazy little crush over me...I thought it was the sweetest thing. I found this napkin where she wrote "Solomon" in cursive letters with a heart right beside it. She would stare at me at the end of my shift, and she'd apologize profusely everytime she'd accidently slam into me cos she was busy staring at her shoelaces. One day--now, I don't know why--but I was pumping with testosterone, maybe I was having dirty Courtney Love fantasies while wiping the tables again--it was the end of my shift, and she was putting change in the register. So I cornered her. I had such confidence (I've always had immense confidence when it comes to women) and I whispered dirty things to her. I don't remember what I said, but I bet I'd cringe now. Either way, I brought her home. Without guilt I took her. I knew she was prude, I knew she was a virgin...so I took her slow, and I made sure she liked it. We started to see eachother, and she started to come out of her shell. I'd scold the other waitresses for picking on her. Quinn would do her hair and makeup sometimes. I helped her move out of her mom's house (her mother was an inane psycho tale on her own) and she moved with me. We'd spend days of indulging. Sharing drugs, sharing out bodies. It was so fun. The more she came out of her shell, the more she moved to a pedestal. She would make fun of me (not that I really took her seriously) and it was okay for her to hit me when she was jealous. A few times I'm sure I jutted my jaw at her and huffed my chest and she always backed down like a puppy with a tail between its' legs. But I loved her. I can honestly say I loved her. We broke up on and off. She dated some emo, scrawny bloke---and I beat him up. Won her back. Bought her a ring with a star because she was obsessed with astrology. She reminded me of my little Marie. I overdosed on sleeping pills...and it wasn't an accident, but I wasn't attempting suicide, either. It was my mum's anniversary. So she rushes me to the hospital, I had to get my stomach pumped. I felt like I was dead. When I woke up... heh....this is hilarious, you know? She was there, alright. But she was there making out with her fucking brother RIGHT NEXT TO MY BED!!! Not only making out with another man--but it was bloody incest! I couldn't talk, so I just croaked around and threw a shoe to get their attention. She walked over to me as though I didn't see anything, I reached up, and I smacked her as hard as I could. I don't hit women. But I was a little out of it, and I suppose anyone would agree that was a little fucked up, eh? After that, she begged for forgiveness. But she was selfish. Too selfish. That was just sick to me (incest: once again, I'm hypocritical...) so I never took her back. Wait, I guess that means I broke up with her too. Hmm.

Judas. My first male lover with a matching biblical name. He came after the death of Marie (who I'll mention later.) I was young, dumb, and nineteen, a completely new American citizen. Quinn introduced us, and at first we became buddies. Like jocks. We'd go to parties, and clubs, pick up girls together--fuck them senseless. Sometimes, we'd mindlessly fuck his dealer girls, and steal all their cocaine afterwards. Those were the days I regret the most. I remember the way he'd use those girls and say: "Come on, Sol." And they'd just be laying there, mind-dumb, and I'd sit there and apologize for what I'd done. They'd just nod and look right through me. I just wanted to fit in. I was that vulnerable little boy that just wanted to be cool. Jude was five years my elder. He was my father-figure. I wanted to be just like him, even if it meant demeaning women that way. He had no feelings for them at all. And if you ask me, I think he's been gay all of his life, and still is, but he won't admit it. Either way...we were at this girl Trish's house, and I snorted my line's a little too quick, and a little too harsh..like the amateaur I was. He was a heroin addict, so he was shooting up while I did the exact opposite. My nose was bleeding, and in his haze he wiped my blood away, but it wouldn't stop. Somehow, he ended up kissing me. He climbed in my lap and started to kiss me. I was so uncomfortable at first: I don't like men. Why is he kissing me?! But then I gave in, and then he abruptly stopped cos Trish strutted in and made a sardonic statement that I thankfully, can't remember. Then, I became a little boy. He didn't even remember the kiss because he was so strung-out, but I had it embedded in memory. I only had one serious relationship in my life, and she was gone now, so all I had left was my father-figure. The man I looked up to. The man I (regretfully) wanted to be. We were in his car, the middle of December, driving to God knows where..and I told him "please don't hit me--but I liked that..when you kissed me. I like you." Something along those lines. So he pulls over, and I swear to God I thought I was going to die! He was going to kill me for being a faggot. But instead, he kissed me again, and told me that he liked me too. And what are we going to do about it, blahblahblah. Why? Because we were both local gods: renowned amongst the street trash and we were both names (though I was newer so my reputation was just starting to blossom.) He was so ashamed to go out and public and really be with me..but that changed after awhile. Sometimes the sex was brilliant, sometimes he was so rough it was traumatizing. Sometimes, we literally fought for who was on top. He emasculated me. But I was this skinny little nineteen year old with a goatee and long black hair..he was my elder, it only made sense for him to be the more masculine one. Somehow, we worked out roles in there. We never moved in together officially, but he paid my bills. We loved eachother. I worshipped him, he worshipped me. But there was one thing that ruined it all. One thing that broke his promises. His addiction. Heroin. Heroin killed my mother, so I never went near it. He lived for that shit. He overdosed. And I went crazy. I sent him to rehab, and promised that when he got back, I'd be waiting for him. He was only supposed to go to California in rehab for six months. He was supposed to call me chronically. He never called me once. He came back two years later when I was dating Kate, demanding to have me back. Of course, I had gotten over him with time. So he found Alice and proposed to her. I was really jealous, but I let it go because Alice Veruca is an angel. Besides, I had Kate. The night of his bachelor party (I was his best man--his best friend, I threw it for him) he wasn't entertained at the strip bar. So he took me home and told me he wanted one last night with me. Then...he left Alice. He left me. I think he skipped town. Alice -- is still recovering. We've become such good friends. I love her to death.

(rewritten 2/04)

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.

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ September 19, 2004 03:34 PM: Message edited by: so pass? ]</font>

http://www.digitalpose.com/mbr/1/154...1071168_vl.jpg

THE SCOT AND THE BRIT:


"It looks like yew killed a real leopard for this thing."

"Sol, shut up," Jillian Monroe brashly clipped his words with the razor-homicide of her Scottish-oriented tongue; swathing her quilt with the fragile census of her elastic-wrung spine.

"I'm so tired."

"Why are yew tired? Yew didn't have to work last night, right?"

"Well, I was up all night.." ..A petite grin crept across a vampiric-bled pout- almost docile -- almost.

"Oh yew were, were yew?" The sardonic Brit passed her the remnants of a Mary-Jane threading gift, and she seized it between corpulent ruby sepals, sucking it down, fuming nothing-nothing breezes into her lungs and soul. It always took her from the edge. She was always on the edge.

"I was."

"Why?"

He shot her a saucy, alluding wink, and she shrugged. Solomon knew that he wasn't going to get an answer.

"Right ..well, pass me the notebook."

She did just that; slowly arrecting herself to half-mast.

"So, let's see what psycho-despondent lyrics we can extract from Mr. Solomon Panties Stills today!"

"Psycho-despondent? Not today, my luv! I wrote some down already. I have them memorized---like happy lyrics---happy."

"Happy?"

"Happy."

"As in: 'I don't want to kill anyone happy ..?"

"Yeh. Give me that pen."

"A'right."

"Now, I already know how I want the first verse to be sung. I don't have a chorus yet, Jill. So I still need to think about that."

With the BiC pen transferred between the pads of adept fingers, he started his scrawling session on a wing-split shard of spiral notebook paper. Capital, unkempt letters with these huge, unfilled dots above the 'i's'. you look so fine,i want to break your heartand give you mine. He reiterated it aloud for the frontwoman in a raspy lilt; melody incoporated, and vocal ambience dimly-lit.

"I need one more line to finish this.. hnnn.." ..Splattering the anxiety-gnawed cap of the pen against the empty line after 'and give you mine' he glanced up when Jill made her suggestion (and she never made suggestions unless she was intrigued.)

"You're taking me over," she pivoted herself upwards in a glib thrust, murdering a roach, and engraving the air with the stranded clouds of redolent grown-perfume.

"you're taking me over..." Mr. Stills whispered this aloud in a sewn concentration pattern, and then he did it again..this time with a sort of cadence swathing it.

"I-- ..yeh. I like that."

A beam augmented-- the kind that was half-prejudice of the left side, before he prodded off a surly nod and inscribed it officially on scribble paper.

"Now, a verse."

Jill was busy replicating the first verse to herself; cleansing her veins of last night's alcohol pollutants by girlish singing. Solomon thought her voice could be so gorgeous and angelic sometimes-- and sometimes, it was nothing but a teasing seethe for attention.

"I'm not like all the other girls.. I won't share it like the other girls..that you used to know."

This was when he catapulted that rubberband attention span the the inspired supervixen, and just ceased completely, wide-eyed and distraught.

"That's really --.. beautiful --Jill..."

"Yew think it sounds nice, Sol?"

"Yeh ... I do. I do."

"Jill, who is it?"

She ruptured into a few effeminate, deep-tunneled snickers, and boldly shook that carmine-haloed crown.

"Wot are yew talking about?"

"Jill! You're smiling. Yew never smile. Wot's going on? Did yew meet someone?"

"Oh, shut up yew British faggot!"

She batted at his shoulder, and he started the pogo around the bed like a hyperactive wildman, hovering over her. Bursting into a high-pitched fit of overdosing giddiness, she shoved repeatedly at him.. albeit, it didn't seem to budge him much.

"Shut up, Scottish wench! --Yew met someone?"

"Maybe..." She orbited feline, electric-ivy eyes, and proceeded to stay evasive from that cinnamon-sticky gaze.

"Yew did! Who!"

" 'Doesn't matter. Let's write this song."

<font color="#666666" size="1">[ July 20, 2003 02:49 PM: Message edited by: cigarillo ]</font>

ROCK SLA(N)G
By Solomon Stills.


Instead of my usual album review segment this week (I was going to dabble upon the Vines "Highly Evolved" but the concoction of Beatles fused with Nirvana-shriek still has my brain sloshing), I've opted to discuss a concert experience. At the Theatre of the Living Arts (ironic that it's a crumbling concert hall) I paired up with Jack Daniels to a Distillers gig. All in all, I thought that the show was reminiscent of a Sex Pistols gig that I never actually went to but sometimes I tell people I did so I look cool and this is a run-on sentence, my hair is curly! I'm not going to reiterate the usual figurative language to describe an exuberant rock show; (i.e. "dynamic performances" and whatnot) but the Distillers put on a wicked show. I'm not just talking out of my stalker'esque, intense crush on frontwoman Brody Armstrong (Rancid's Tim Armstrong's wife) but rather the choice of songs. At first, I felt a bit out of place. I mean, where's my mohawk, and my nose ring? However, I was standing next to some unbelievably pudgy asian kid named Wung, and I felt cool for a minute. Snickering, I told him I had a "wang" as a sort of drunken jest, but he gave me a left hook from five-foot-one on the ground and well...drunken Solomon watched himself get trampled by a dozen identical Chuck Taylors. Yeah, punk! Rebellion! Woo! Let's revolt against shoelaces! They opened up with their debut album's "Oh Serena" and I began to discern a few comparison's of my own. Armstrong's voice is a facsimile of Courtney Love's; deep-throated (no pun intended) and sneering female angst through amps. Also, Jack Daniels and I made an inebriated affinity between drummer Andy's resemblance to both Jason Lee and faded eighties rock star, Alvin (from the Chipmunks. Have you seen that Behind the Music yet? Absolutely moving.) Albeit, some people in the band...I refuse to mention any names (!!) looked extremely strung out on the plague of heroin, they still managed to rile teenage angst and arouse my interests. Out of five chicken nuggets, I'd definitely give the Distillers an ample four.--with some barbeque sauce on the side.

Corny rock joke of the day:

Q: Why did Creed cross the road?
A: Cos Pearl Jam did first. Haahaha. Haha. Ha. H--...


Disclaimer: Solomon Stills' opinions do not reflect the opinion of the editor or staff. In other words--the British dude is insane.

<font color="#ffccff" size="1">[ October 18, 2002 08:24 PM: Message edited by: greedy fly ]</font>

you've seen the crippled dance.
free your mind, baby, now's your chance..
your eyes like cyanide.

i am so dumb,
just beam me up.
i've had it all forever.
i've had enough.

remember you promised me,
i'm dying ..i'm dying please.
i need so--i want to be ..under your skin.

-- hole.

<font color="#666666" size="1">[ May 27, 2003 09:45 PM: Message edited by: cigarillo ]</font>

"Hi, this is Solomon ..leave a message after the beep."


The message was so dull, and monotonous- and over a thousand people had heard it replicate in their ear drum at least once. European-bred, thick in his maple-syrupy, muttering growl (boiling honey-aviaries in the tunnel of a nicotine-sullied voicebox.) His voice was one of the most sonorous (and raw-sexy) things for a person to experience. Envisage it pre or post orgasm. It was swollen dark.

Yet, as euphonic was that dim-candled message was, Solomon's forefinger extended to the gray button upon the cradle of the cordless and expunged it with one sullen dab. Promptly afterwards, he teetered diagnol to that button and opted to weigh sandpaper-callus upon the gadget properly dubbed 'record,' and proceeded to do so in a wrecked timbre. Morose and puddling pathetic, he made a silent plead to the only person in the world he'd epxloit his love to through a fucking answering machine.

"..if yew can hear this," Solomon hedged a triangular-peeking tongue across chopt, sallow lips and their wired upbringing. "Please come back, Baby. Please."

Beep.

The mangled luster of chalcedony-highlighted brown was shoveled back with a forking four-fingered frustration (from the kiss of widow's peak backwards to coiled conformity.) His leather couch witnessed his immersion inside of its' balmy stains and comforting embrace; he was a puppet sacrificing himself in a prone lay against cushions and the sight of the spiderweb-cracked ceiling. It dribbled grey on dreary days. The reverse of a wrist highlighted the toasty composition of his forehead, in some sort of distressed symbolism.

Now all he could do was wait.

It had been four days, and he was a madman lip-synching cocaine jitters.

<font color="#ff99ff" size="1">[ October 27, 2002 07:49 PM: Message edited by: greedy fly ]</font>

Solomon Stills :

Journal.

October 26th.

Words get tangled on your tongue,
and you stumble on your feet when you miss somebody.

That's what I got so far, the first verse. I'm sitting here with one of my acoustics; contemplating on how to perfect this poem or at least make it the least bit melodious when I reiterate it aloud to my lamb.

I wonder stupid things. Does she hate me? Does she still want revenge? Is she seeing someone else--and if so ..does he have more money than me? Is he better looking? (yeah....right.) Lately, ever since I received her letter boasting of fucking closure (I see it as an invitation) I've been thinking about her nonstop. If we're going to be honest, and I want to be honest, I need to tell her about my 'therapist.' But, besides that, I've been pretty cleansed right? She doesn't need to know too many details about the ... hospital, I'm sure Alice told her the things she needs to know. Nor does she need to know about that empathetic girl that my heart beat so hard for.

One thing I do know is that I'm leaving tomorrow at about six pm. Why do I have everything planned already? I don't know. It's a Sunday, traffic on the highways won't reek so fucking bad like it does on the weekdays or Saturday or whatever. I don't really know how I'm supposed to get there or what her exact address is, but Alice is supposed to tell that to me. That's what she's there for. The middle person giving all the top secret information. She's precious. But not as precious as my lamb.

I've been drinking a lot of coffee just so I won't have the craving for what's under my sink. But the addiction--it's starving, but I want to suit myself in sobriety when I see her. I want to look perfect, and smell like wine, and I want to act in such ways to charm her. Fucking chivalrous. I know I need to work everything I have to bait her back in. If I need her as bad and as desperately as I do...she must need me too, right?

It should be righteously reciprocated. I'll wear her favorite button-up and maybe some nice shoes? God, I don't know. Perhaps, I should go to sleep. Perhaps, I should wash my sheets of their sin from her last visit. This way, when she comes back with me she can lay on a fresh slate. And I can't even imagine the love we're going to make.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v9...tled-2copy.jpg

<font color="#EE0000" size="1">[ March 25, 2005 01:29 AM: Message edited by: softcore jukebox ]</font>

all the bridges in the
world won't save you.
if there is no..
other side to cross to.

Hydroplaning a bleared line across the horizon of the effeminate font inscribed upon a beige envelope, his quaking fingers traced her name in the upper left hand corner. He even peeled her stamp like velcro, just so he could leer upon the other paper-shredded side where her tongue had grazed for adhesives. Lotus-designed limbs embroidered in camoflauge kept the letter hatched in the proximity of an insulated boy-lap. 'Baby was situated on the centre face of his usually burning bed and six month linen; surburbian suicide haunting his memories as he tripped his index finger across to deftly unfasten the triangular fold. Our London trash removed the letter, and shakily unraveled it. He was so reluctant. What was Kate Pierce sending to Solomon Stills?

His stomach knotted into a thousand boyscout-nimble knots, and he fluttered hummingbird-lashes and pistol-whipped a gaze towards his doorway. The door was hinged shut. This was private. Nobody was going to impinge on his letter reading. Shadowed, and thrusting the candle of his gaze to skim line-by-line; gorgeous cursive and italicized freedom. Scribble-free, and probably mused about again and again. Crumpled and filling the trashcan with an author's self-criticism. (He envisaged her doing just this in a pair of plaid pajamas, and the tidal waves of brunette hair pegged in disarray.) She was so beautiful. His charcoal-daubed sketches would prove that theory, and he'd vocalize it through subliminal messages for the world to hear one day through his songs on radio heavy rotation (or so he wished.)


To--well, you know who you are:

(What happened to puppy? The warren of his mind burnt; doused in silent-shrieking sanguine flames.)

I can't count the number of times I have written this letter and burned it. Or lost it, hidden it, trashed it, finished it, sealed it up, gotten ready to send it and then just ended up tearing it to pieces and throwing it in the garbage. Maybe this time it'll get done. And maybe this time it'll get somewhere. Even if it's only into my purse and never into the mailbox.

I just wanted to thank you. For everything you said and everything you didn't. I know it's hard to hold your tongue, I know I provoked you. I know that everything you did, I pushed you to do. Everything that was wrong between us wasn't your fault. Not entirely. And for everything that I didn't do for you, I hope you have found someone else to do it.

As cliche as it sounds, you taught me more than anyone else has even attempted to. You were wonderful to me, you showed me things I never thought possible, and things that things I thought possible were actually so improbable. You taught me that love is not life, and life is not love, and love is not a fairy tale. I remember sitting in that restaurant and telling you all about fairy tales. And then in the backseat of your car and you telling me everything. And I remember that in those moments I felt like a queen, and I thank you for that. From the bottom of my heart.

There were silly trivial things that at first seemed like inconsistencies: you telling my brother that you intended to marry me (remember that fiasco at the wedding? And the aftermath in the hotel room?), you telling me about Jude, and then...just everything. I remember the first show I saw you play, the first time I watched you paint, and all the baths we took, and in retrospect, I have to say I am very happy with our time. It was well spent. It was consistent, and I understand why you did what you did. It was just..too consistent. You need variety, you always have. You couldn't keep still for more than five minutes, how was I to ever imagine that you would be able to stay with me forever?

The point of this letter is for closure. For you and for me. Although, you probably have already found it, I don't think a woman truly sees something as done with until she can convey herself to the remaining parties and have some sort of positive outcome from it. So here's all I have to say in closing. What you did was a mistake. But what I did was a fatal error. And if I could go back and change it, I want you to know that I would. Even if you wouldn't. Which I don't blame you for.

I don't know if this letter will ever get to you, but in case it does, you should know that I hope you are deliriously happy in whatever endeavors you pursue, and I hope you find success around every corner, because really, that is all you have ever deserved. And this, Solomon, is what I call closure. For me. And hopefully you have already found it.

Sincerely,
Katherine


To say the least, he was overwhelmed--overwhelmed was an understatement; there were tremors wracking chaos through Solomon's vivid portrait of bones, and the mesa of his ribcage began to immerse with sullen breezes of petrified inhales. ...This to him was an invitation. This was telling him to come and get her- to bandage her in his arms, and interlock her in that balmy embrace interminably.

And he would.


miles away,
there's hopeless smiles brighter than mine.
and i need for you to come and go,
without the truth falling out.

Dusk was beginning to rouse itself and bat dismissal at the tangerine protest of the sun. On autumn days the sun was so lazy. It excused itself so fast due to the moon's pestering. But, Solomon was in favor of his English sun--because it was a gemstone and a rare artifact to stumble across (and it was the warmest hearth there was.) Flinging the opacity of his sunglasses unto the void passenger's seat, he triggered the tattered car to proclaim its' husky orchestral purr with a flinch of his wrists. Merging unto the city street, he accelerated and floored it to a faraway illusion of Sunday night downtown Philadelphia.

old incisions...
refusing to stay.

At a red-light, his blade-scarred wrists and their healing, etiolated presence dangled absently over twelve-o'clock on the steering wheel. (He cut them for Kate. I cut them for you, Baby. My knees were scraped with carpet burn from begging you.) Instead of flickering straight unto the highway, he opted to tiptap his turn signal and parallel-park betwixt two more lavish vehicles. Plodding unto the bustling strip, he burrowed shoulderblades inwards to maintain his heat through that barely-buttoned white-riveled dress shirt.

like the sun through the trees
on a cloudy day.

Mr. Stills bought a single-stemmed rose, emerald and Valentine's Day bloody, prick-free and stinging of redolence. He tucked it between the isles of his teeth, and continued to pace on the margin of the sidewalk. What else was he going to buy? God, what else, Solomon? Rewinding into a brick-walled niche, he scoured through his wallet---and the aggregation was fifteen dollars. Well, fuck it. Nevermind, then. Back to the payphone. 'Baby knew his poem was enough to make her falter and plunge deep, deep, deep- and if she was seeing any other man..she'd forget about him because Solomon was there now.

telephone..
socially scared and impaired.

Cradling a phone unctuous from random civilian's hair along the pinnacle of his shoulder and stifling the loop-punctured shell of his ear; he punched in Alice's number after the insertion of two quarters.

"..'ey."

"..Hi."

"Hi, yeh...ah..I forgot wot exit I was supposed to take?" he stumbled through his pocket and unraveled the origami-folded slab of directions.

The girl on the other end rustled a winsome sigh into the phone, transiently swathing them in a silent-lullabye cloud.

"Are you sure you want to do this, Solly? Because---"

"Look," he slithered an enlistment of cursory blinks in frustration, and hedged his tongue across a chopt mouth. "Please. Just tell me."

"Sixteen."

"Thank yew, love. I'll call yew if anything goes wrong."

"Even if 'ya have a flat?"

"Yeh."

"Be careful, Solomon. Don't let yourself get hurt."

"Thanks, Mum," sardonic banter chimed through, and he hung up the phone. Back to the car.


if the trees will bloom
the wind can blow..
without the fruit falling out.

With an isolated rose feathering its' creamy sepals upon his dormant sunglasses, and the autumn-burnt trees pervading the highway blurring by, he stared through the dark windshield..and concentrated on tail-lights and his reverie. The way he knew he could bury his face in her chest as soon as he got there. Then, he could whimper and weep; and she'd knead his hair and still love him for it. Windows were eclipsed in miniscule crevices, enough to filter out the insipid chemistry of his cigarettes, and provide him with some frigid air in the cramped vehicle. His hair became unkempt, ribboning around in anarchy--these caramel-mottled corkscrews that were untamable under the reign of a comb, and even more untamable under the shovel of fingertips. Wind-flushed, hollow cheekbones and starving, salmon-wiry petals. Everything he breathed in his soul was love, love, love.

you brighten my life like a polysterene hat
but it melts in the sun like a life without love.
but i've waited for you, so i'll keep crying out
"without you."

The four hours to New York (and the banal wind of the New Jersey turnpike) was spent reminiscing. Kate Pierce's puppy remembered their first unofficial date; beach flirtations, and their every fight and flaw. She'd always take him back, and in turn, he'd do the same. Parties, and stripclubs, the most wild sex, and the most passionate dinners spent in their own little world. Tripping on acid, and handcuffing her to the bedpost. Frivolous baths and arguments with white-trash neighbors. Weddings and funerals alike; lipstick and bruises. They were fire, and holy water at the same time. ...And still, he sped twenty-five miles over the ideal speed limit, in some stomach-twining bout of inspiration and anticipation.

feels like the wind blows,
holding you with us.
she takes no other,
false light and ashes.
blooming like winter.

After triple-checking the address, and lolling the symmetry of an adonis chin towards the New York place of residual (the 'x' --or rather fat, lopsided heart marking the treasure upon his map) the wounded and nervosa-swallowed bloke shouldered from the car, clutching a rose and the chamber of his triphammering chest. He ascended the stairwell to his euphoric perception of heaven. The reversal boulders of his silver-gaudy knuckles rapped indolently upon the door, reverberating a sacred melody. But, she didn't answer. Solomon shifted his weight from foot to foot, until he couldn't stand it anymore-- he twitched the knob and the door flung unopen without a blemish. Unlocked. Dilemma.

dry eyes and cracked lips
under the stone wall.
withdrawn and wishless.
i love you.


The promising prose of his elastic tongue knived through one thing and one thing only: "here goes." And he stepped inside.

<font color="#00ccff" size="1">[ January 26, 2003 06:38 PM: Message edited by: greedy fly ]</font>

alice and solomon.
mid-august.


driving faster in my car..
falling farther from just what we are.
smoke a cigarette, and lie some more..
these conversations kill..
driving faster in my car.

time to take her home,
her dizzy head is conscious-laden.
time to take a ride,
it leaves today--no conversation.
time to wait too long--to wait too long.

"..just. .. i need to drink. drink with me."
____________________________________________


Freshly emancipated from his cursory journey in the mental ward, Alice --his only comrade besides Quinn that actually knew where he was--accompanied him on a drinking binge. He knew she was lightweight, but the calloused tough girl facade was divinely construed, and whimsical enough to make him snicker at her. She was such a little girl at heart. Staking crucified poses against the spraypainted wall plaster in his living room, adjacent to the incommodious kitchen route were two despondent, lurking souls. Both were decomposing in the dilapidated love-gutter; ivory and crushed by Judas Eden and the stiletto of Kate Pierce. Albeit, mainly it was the former that really stung and meddled to the core. It was his fucking up that brought them both down, and murdered dual euphoric relationships with his usurping reign. In the end ..they were left with eachother. And eachother wasn't enough when one was twitchy and haggardly-distraught, and the other was so naive and deserved the world in her palm--not upon her anchored shoulders.

Judging by the shards of filtering lurid, pale light streaming from his still-weeping balcony blinds - night time had set in. The humid stifle of summer wasn't overdosing on its' usual rays of happiness and good humor, but instead it was frigid like winter.. equipped with similiar cicled emotions. Two sets of kneecaps were propped and jaunty-jabbing towards a spiderweb-cracked ceiling. One pair was choked in paint-stained navy denim, and the other pink bondage straps and plaid-zipper sketches. Whiskey haunted them until their features had morphed from milk to agitated dispersals of flushes. Stain-glassed and quietly-trimmed, Jack Daniels was dismissed and they were left conversing in a hushed susurration amongst themselves (as though his walls were absorbing every crocheting whisper.)

"...so..were they really weird in there, Solly?" She swept at a feathered tuft of bubblegum pink and secured it behind the shell of an unadorned ear. Our sweetheart was somewhat slurred and inarticulate, whilst her counterpart was completely antonymous--just barely marred.

"...yeah," grave and leaden like a slate headstone. The Brit's tone was just as cryptic as his poetry.

"..oh."

"So why didn't Kate come, again, Alice?"

"Because I couldn't get a hold of her...."

"Do yew think she would've came if she knew?"

She sipped in the longest hesitation; tropical radiance and baited breath.

"..maybe."

But, the pessimism told him that her replication was more negative than positive. Thus, he sulked and pitied himself (and her too) all over again.

"Would Jude?"

This time, Alice didn't hesitate. "No." Brusque and sound.

"Oh."

For the longest time they dwelled on these inebriated thoughts, mused over myriads of abstract scenarios and even had reveries that adhesively glued lives back together.

"I just----" her tears welled, and suddenly her voice cracked. Their urbane sailing of silence was slaughtered. "I just...I haven't even told my mom yet! I don't know what my parents are going to think! I wanted to prove to them that this would work! Solomon, they thought I was too young and he was too old and I wanted them to fucking know!!" Hysterics erupted like the common influence of scalding lava, and all he could do was shift in his positioning, and bait her into his chest. She was moistening his shirt, but he reveled in just stroking the eccentric flare of pink through the quivering staff of tenuous fingers.

"shh...no..don't worry about it," he coaxed. "Your mum and dad aren't gonna'respect yew any less because of this. Not at all."

"This isn't about my mom and dad, Solomon!"

"Ah----yeh, yeh. Sorrysorry. I know, he---he does this a lot. He'll come back around, Alice."

"He loves you more than he loves me."

"That's not true. Jude loves yew more than I've ever seen him love anything. More than smack for God sakes, and he fucking loved it more than me. And--and Kate will come back around to...she'll come back around.....she will...for me. Cos she loves me...and everything will be fine again."

"You live in a fantasy world, Solomon," guilt-tripping eyes rotated to glare waterworks and glisten up at him--her brows were mashed and she was accusing him. "You live in a fantasy world and that's why they put you away."

All at once he untangled from her--howling in such stentorian vocalization..the kind that made the docile lamb flinch. "FUCK ALICE!" A ranting gesture swerved with his hand--flailing at midair as he blossomed to his feet. "FUCK YEW! YEW DON'T KNOW WOT IT'S LIKE!"

"Stop yelling at me, Sol----" she was pleading now, withering into herself; a butterfly retreating into its' cocoon because it didn't want to face the real world again.

"No! Yew make stupid judgements!! This is so stupid! This is all so fucking stupid! Yew are all so fucking stupid!"

"Sol...please stop," governed by entreating puppet strings, she burrowed her face into the water-cusp of her palms, and heaved dry sobbing ruptures inside of them.

Then he calmed. He felt his rocketing chest begin to pacify.. his reverberating heartbeat jailed itself in respite. She broke him down. Any woman crying was such caustic attrition for his drunken anger. Sinking to a fallen angel kneel before her, he coerced her chin to loll towards him with the skitter of his hand.

"I'm sorry for yelling, Alice... I'm so sorry."

"Solomon. We're so wrong...we're so wrong...."

"Alice. ...it'll be okay. Cos if they don't come back---if they don't---we still got eachother."

Swallowing abruptly, she absently nodded, and he leaned into kiss her for the first time. It was spontaneous, but it wasn't brash--he lingered there because it was a foreign enclave; a puckered-carmine pout that he had never felt before. His lashes shuttered, and hers' rapidly batted in a curtaining downfall against his architectural cheeks. He kissed her. But she didn't reciprocate it. Alice Veruca tasted beautiful, but she didn't want to test the waters of his personal nectar. Therefore, he pried reluctantly, and she crashed her forehead to seek refuge in his shoulder. In unity, they ribboned off into their commonplace kingdom of tragic silence again.

She eventually fell asleep against him in her void, whiskey-mottled fog. And he drove her home without a regret. Carried her into her own frilly, effeminate bed.. and watched her drown in mangled covers.

In the morning she was utterly flustered and lynched from the sprain of her aftertasty hangover.

...but she knew. she knew. and she knew she was going to kiss him again. On her vacant pillow (where Jude's visage used to impression) there was a half-sheeted note, scribbled in Solomon Stills script.

don't tell.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v9...ontagious4.jpg

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ September 19, 2004 03:35 PM: Message edited by: so pass? ]</font>

Dear Kate,

And in reality, you are technically 'Dearest Kate,' like some sort of haunting eighteenth century love letter. But, that's hardly it right now. Alice keeps ringing me. Sometimes, my brain likes to play the cruelest tricks on me -- I envisage you on the other end calling me. Then, the answering machine plays... muffled from the living room, because I am in the kitchen, and it's a lamb-like voice but it's not my lamb. She's worried. I haven't even spoke to her since we broke (I'm not going to say since you left me, because I understand my mistake, Baby--and my mistake was the factor that drove you away-- a consequence for every action) I think I might have yesterday, and that's why she's been calling so much. I'm afraid I've been feeling really swollen and weathered since you left. I can't help but to wonder how you're fairing over there in NYC. New clothes? New job? More education? Less? I wonder if there's someone kissing you--and if so, I wonder what his name is. I'm not wondering out of vanity, or for the sake of my ego.. I'm just ...wondering. This has evulsed a lot of paintings from the very bottom of my soul. This. The chaos without you. And I think it's the best work I've ever done. I've written the best things I ever have. Or so, I'd like to think. So I would like you to keep them all. Every last piece that didn't make it to the gallery, and keep the Jude one buried in its' closet tomb because I don't want him to touch it. He was a member of my blackest years, I don't especially like to reminisce on them. Lately, I've been having a bit of a hard time deciphering reality from fantasy. Quinn thinks I've gone gonzo, and maybe I have ...but I swear to fucking God, and please don't make any hasty judgements--that I hear Marie. I don't know if I'm awake or sleeping. I don't know anymore. It's gotten too frustrating. I woke up the other night talking to you. I was in the middle of a sentence. I can't remember what I was saying.. but your name was included. For some reason that really hurt. It hurts more than this will. Missing someone is the worst possible thing in the world. I'm sitting here trying to illuminate the bad and bloodshed-- if I don't do this right now..perhaps you'll come back to me tomorrow? Maybe I should go to NYC and find you? Is it too early? Or is it rusted and too late? I swear to God you kept me bound together. Being lonely without a warm body next to you when you fall asleep leaves nothing but gnashed twigs behind. Nothing. I don't remember yesterday too much, or the day before that. I've been going to work, and I don't even remember to pick up my paycheck at the end of the week. Like a senile old man, you know? I'll tell you that when you and I were together, everything was brilliant. Because all along we both knew we were crazy and in love. Because you were fractions of Marie that I had missed, and that was so hard to discover in another woman, but you shined yourself. This probably doesn't make any sense to you, but these all seem to be the proper words. It's overused, overplayed, overexaggerated the metaphor---but I am empty inside without you. Hollowed out. Hollowed out to the point where I'm forgetting myself and I'm forgetting where I am. And everytime I wake up, it feels like I'm in a coffin but there's one word that always sticks to my tongue and it never lets go: Kate. And I can't live with this. Once you have Kate Pierce you can't have anything else, because nothing else is as sufficient. If you're with someone right now, he'll realize that too. Nobody's mead tastes the same, their mouth, their neck, the way they murmur their words. It's as cryptic as death, and love sticks to your ribs. You're so much stronger than I am, Kate. You claim you aren't.. because I'm a man, and you're a woman. I know you cry. You can't deny that you cry about what happened, and what could've been. But I know you're too beautiful not to get over it, and go on. What would we be without you? Everyone you've spoken to, or touched, you've blistered in the most divine of ways. The cat is even sad without you, or her playmate. I know you're young (and unfortunately, so am I) and this will be just a piece of me you won't forget. I'd love for you take everything, but does your apartment have much commodity? I don't know. All I know is that I don't want you to forget. I don't want you to forget the secrets I've told you that I would never tell anyone else. I don't want you to forget the quirky things you used to call me at our most intimate moments, or the way we'd lay in our glisten afterwards. When I had the flu, you'd take care of me. When I wanted my dosage of attention you gave it to me. That's why I burn for you so much..and that's why it's time to go. Because if I called you Kate, and you hung up, my heart would explode. So this is the best way.

I love you.

Solomon.

<font color="#666666" size="1">[ April 16, 2003 08:27 PM: Message edited by: greedy fly ]</font>

lord knows i try to be good
i'd keep my promises if only i could..

Solomon Stills :

Journal.

November 11th.

Dysfunction in a pure-bred world of serene love and kisses? Oh, I do believe it's possible. I was a skeptic to it at first, but then I realized something that I hadn't in our former six months of being bound and lip-synching. Kate Pierce (soon-to-be-a 'Stills' cos I can't save the family name...only she can) has a fucking temper beyond belief. I've never seen a woman gone so barmy in my life.

I was outside smoking with Sydney..nothing happened at all--the usual cack (this is the girl that has been asking me out for two years and still doesn't get the point) I think I reached in her pocket for a lighter and she was a bit coquettish. Anyway, guess who comes running over like hell froze over? Kate. Now, we're on a city sidewalk, tons of people are walking by, and she's already threatening Sydney within an inch of her life. To say the least I was quiet, as I was naturally baffled by her behaviour. (Specks of violence have been showing up in her demeanor lately--she slapped some girl at a club that wanted to dance with me while she was in the bathroom, and she slapped me repeatedly in foreplay the other night---I normally wouldn't complain...but it was the thing she said that worried me. i.e. "I bet you thought of me while you were fucking all those other girls while I was gone.") Before I knew it, she was turning on me, stridently calling me a cunt, or an asshole or something along those lines because she was so hacked off and before I knew it she slapped me. This wasn't for sex in the privacy of our own home. This was from unloading anger in front of people. A few people that knew me passed by and commented, even. I was embarrassed and I was mad.

So I told her to get in the car. Resistance, of course, but I kept it firm and she complied. As soon as we arrived home, she went crazy. I can't even remember it correctly, but I knew she was venting. She threw things, shoved me, and tried to batter the hell out of me (to which I left her in my tracks--strutting into the bedroom.) But then she did the most unthinkable, forbidden thing--threatened to leave and headed out the door. Not only did I chase her, but I felt myself getting more aggressive than I ever really felt before...and I dragged her into the room, slammed her on the bed, and read her my suicide note that she never heard from months back (months back when it really hurt...and God, it was coming back now that she threatened again.) She was bawling, she lost herself, and so did I. In this haze, I accused her of all my mistakes, I told her that I didn't like living, that I would've rather been dead than to live with her (it was in the most obscure way, and thank God she didn't catch it.) Just a bunch of psychotic, spur-of-the-moment things that I didn't mean. Such a tragedy. I ripped the pictures I drew of her off the wall, offered her a razorblade to "slit my throat with" (I'm such a dramatic asshole when I'm upset) and before I knew it she was cradling me in the corner of the room while I burrowed my face and cried in her lap. That's why you have to love women. They have so much empathy--you accuse them of killing you, and they hold you and vanquish your tears. They're so omnipotent, omniscient (not omnivores, but I really like that 'omni' prefix) and they're beautiful. I fell asleep in her lap, and I woke up around midnight and carried her to bed. We slept like we never did before.. like two children that had cried themselves to sleep.

I love her when I'm down.

<font color="#ff99ff" size="1">[ November 11, 2002 09:12 PM: Message edited by: greedy fly ]</font>

Four years ago today:


7:04 AM:

Like a ventriloquist dummy he reluctantly unhinged the taut structure of his blonde-littered mandible, stretching until everything resonantly clicked in place. There was something protruding in his side, ready to burrow and eat its' way inside the shroud of his chalky flesh. Swatting absently at the Bacardi bottle, he unraveled unto his spine, and stretched himself out like a basking panther. His hipbones protruded something disgusting and ill, dawning from beneath the hem of his alcohol-banal black long-sleeved shirt. The emaciated portrait of accordion skeleton ribs and nineteen year old waste-away wired his exterior wrist to smudge away at his eyeliner and lilac bruise. Ceramic-veneer retina, and its' marble core started a maddened pace around the room. It was then that he acknowledged just where he was..and why he was so very uncomfortable. Acclimating to the blur, and adjusting the lens in a photographic mind, Solomon arrected himself to half-mast, and used his heeled palms like a tent to keep the unsturdy midsection hoisted.

Unruly satin-spilled tassels of mangled black hair furnished his youthfully-cut features; defined brows, a prominent nose, and almost full ruby lips (like a lush.) One lid remained sticky in a half-mast snapshot, but he corrected that soon enough by promoting another finger smear. On one side of him was this kid named Syme --he just met him tonight, and he was drooling all over his twig-like arm. The other side (the Brit was a caved-in masterpiece of an island) was some girl he didn't recognize, because her magma-red mane was fiery and plastered to her face.


"...hn.." grunted unevenly as he groped around for something reliable to hold him up--nothing. He depended on himself.

The ache stung like fusillades of gunpowder, and as he started to crochet past at least two dozen floor-laden legs, he accidentally padded over a few calves. Someone even scowled at him, stirring once, twice, and mumbling something incoherent before returning to their post-drunken stupor. He couldn't remember much from the party--but judging by the fact that everyone was unconscious on the floor--it must've been fun.

Finally, he found the silhouette of his limp body, burrowed underneath the debris of a couch cushion. Solomon thought it was comical, but he didn't chuckle..- he was too wobbly to, anyway. Draining awkwardly to plop at his side (he slammed into a slumber-sleek girl like an intoxicated sailor) he laid along the cripple of her spine, and she never once inveighed because she was too far gone. Elevating the cushion from blindfolding the sleeping tyrant (his elder: his god: his father figure: his lover: his destiny) he worked himself up enough to jostle his shoulder. (Solomon was always afraid he was dead. Like his mother was when he stumbled upon her body.) But instead of being corpse-clammy and unresponsive, Judas Eden batted in scorn at Solomon, slurring a thick "no..." He didn't want to wake up. However, the puppy was breathing in his long, disheveled hair--thus, he had no choice.

"Come on, I want to go home.." whimpered the youth, grazing his neck with heat-flared nostrils, and balmy lips.

" ..morning. What time is it?"

"Seven o'clock," Solomon peered at his watch again, and rearranged it. "Seven-oh-four."

The Brit flitted his fingers over the concoction of pin-dotted bruises and telltale spots of death cursing his boyfriend's inner arms, right along the most prominent vine-like vein. "They're so ugly."

Heroin-lethal tracks. Solomon never watched Jude shoot up at parties (free drugs!) because it reminded him too much of what he witnessed as a kid. Therefore, Jude would swim in the smack in swarthy bedrooms with a few other choice loser characters, whilst his boy mingled in inebriation; snorting lines, kissing girls, being the life of the party ...and eventually passing out (Jude was just so much more antisocial.)

Jude whipped his arm away in a sort of brash fury. He didn't need anyone else telling him that his habit was ugly-- he knew it damn well full enough by now.

"Yeah well...they're a lot prettier than the rest of me," elicited the pessimistic elder.

Mr. Stills found that numb comment too dumb to even respond to. So after a moment of cradling one another and debating, Solomon won and they were both hiking up in the midst of these strung-out corpses (they were alive...somewhere in there) one scouring for his jacket, and the other trying to remember how to put things back in order while he descended. Soon enough, after Jude ribboned a battered shoelace, and Solomon shrouded himself in a brown, fluffy coat (lingering somewhere along his mid-thigh and denim-shredded kneecap) they were off.

The car ride was spent in silence. Solomon smoked a cigarette and shoveled quaking fingers through his untamable ebon-corked hair, and Jude ran every stop sign and red-light (due to the fact it was Sunday morning--and the streets were barren was anticipated.) Once they parked, the driver relied on the hood of the car to maneuver his way across, and the passenger stammered out of the semi-opulent vehicle; tripping on the hilt of the curb but recovering when he sliced the heel of his palm against the cement. Splattering footsteps to catch up to his elder, Solomon wrapped an arm around his waist to play a mortal crutch, and together they plodded into the alcove of a busy elevator (Jude's apartment, naturally.) There, he stinted Jude against the wall, and entombed his widow's peak-hedged forehead into his clavicle, a stowaway until their floor was reached.

And later on, when they were out of the shower, and Jude was struggling to get into bed before he threw up .. despite their problems, their bumpy roads, their sour, sour battles with addiction-- Solomon's webbed mind burnt this naive, and knowing line: We're going to be together forever.

Today.

IDLE IDOL.

3:21 AM:

There was a routine! There was a pattern! There was a certain way to do this without disrupting her angelic dove-winged canvas of sleep. Solomon had perfected it down to an art (he was an artiste--a virtuoso--he knew what he was doing.) His life had transmuted dramatically by now. He took the metamorphosis, now he was fully-blossomed-- no longer a young man, but at twenty-three he was a man. Shards of everyday had become predictable, translucent ..but fun in that daft.. being stupid in love sort of way. His intense relationship with Judas Eden prospered and then took a dramatic recession so the other could replenish himself in rehab, and over that break he met a lovely (remarkable) girl named Katherine Pierce.

This .. Kate Pierce loved to bundle him in her embrace every night and make him feel important as the slept united, and venting inside one another's marrow. So, when Solomon had to go to the bathroom suddenly at three AM, he had configured a way to writhe from that gangly girl-grippage without flaw. Resilient and like a feline, the astute boy braceleted her limp wrist, dangling it midair, and slowly he wriggled his shoulder from her niche. Skirting a nude, angular shoulderblade against the beige tussle of linen, he escaped and fled like a fugitive (without panic: he wasn't seized in incarceration--his fiance wasn't going to shoot him or banish him from the continent for bailing from her arms --she'd probably whimper and submerge back into her dreamscape) stapling narrow footprints to the carpet.

Mentally, he had changed, and physically too. He had an ounce more composure, he carried himself with testosterone-induced pride. Albeit, still much too lean on the ribs; his torso was gravel-chiseled artwork, his skin was honey-roasted, and his hair was a thousand different tidal-waved shades of complimentary gilt-highlights. Svelte musculature; embroidered with a feast of onyx tattoos, a prolific pelvic bone, and a silver-budded tongue that could articulate miracles on the female anatomy. Shuffling into a pair of clinging ripped faded denim jeans (probably identical to the ones from four years ago) he kept his belt jingling a pretty melody after his zipper lurched up, and he meandered into the threshold of the bathroom. Oh, two seconds later, he emerged, and bled Jesus footsteps into the hallway, shifting into the kitchen.

At night time, the apartment was deaf, and eerie. Riddled through the balcony by brittle streetlight incandescence and polishing police sirens, the adonis felt his feet instantly cooled by the kitchen flooring. Tugging open at the refrigerator, with ribboning locks flooding caramel to hedge his brow, he subtracted a Heineken, uncapped it, and blighted the parched cottonfield of his earthy throat by the rivulets of the beverage. Clearing his throat with a bubble of congestion, he ambled into the living room. His eyes had adjusted the tapering shadows by now, and so, the thin-lipped bloke surrendered himself to a seat at the margin of his coffee table.

There, he idly drank, listening to the heater and the cats' whimsical rumbling as they clashed and sparred with one another. Kate's cat was corpulent and fluffy white ..oddly enough dubbed 'Turtle' and his best friend was Solomon's contrasting black-lustered feline, 'Quinn' (named after a very good friend.) They were batting at one another, and as though they had seen a ghost, their fur would spontaneously rise, and they'd sprint around the room in frenzied disposition. But upon witnessing him encroaching on their playtime, they both meekly wandered over, nudging wet noses and olive eyes into his exposed kneecaps, entreating either for some beer (which he seriously doubted) attention (that too) or some wet food (they loathed the dry.)

"Wot 'yew want?" 'Mumbled the barely-coherent Kilburn native to the pair of (thankfully fixed) companions.

.. Nothing on the other end, obviously.

"Want some beer, Turtle?" Lolling the bottle to the side, he dabbled his finger against the emerald-tinctured rim until a bead paid homage to the sandpaper callus. Lowering his index finger he wafted it in front of the cat's mouth, but he never complied to lick it. Solomon prodded his shoulders in signature apathy. If Kate witnessed it, she'd both laugh and orally chastise him at the same time.

Those holy hipbones churned so he could relieve the beer and its' ringed perspiration on the effete coffee table and pivot arachnid-deft fingers to withdraw his wallet. Yielding to unfold the leather origami's width, he wanded and rifled through the bills, and counted out the money meticulously. Four-hundred-ninety-seven dollars. Recoiling two hundred, he gathered to his feet again, wandered into the kitchen, disposed of the now-empty slosh of alcohol and stuffed that plucked couple'hundred into an unmarked envelope. Replacing the bent envelope behind the microwave, he wired another lithe stretch before scraping back into the quiet bedroom.

There she was; sienna tidal waves, vanilla pores, and a figurine that Aphrodite envied. She hadn't budged at all since he left, and that was enough for him to sew a broad simper. 'Baby reworked his talent, and smeared himself inside the sequence of her arms again, taunting her dependent heartbeat with his. It was so peculiar how their heart rates slowed to harmonize with one another's cadence. It always happened. Every single night.

They burnt themselves on that bed. They made love. They ate ice cream in it. They fought in it. They lived in it. They painted in it. They wrote poetry in it.


But Solomon Stills knew now that when he came at the culmination of the day to lay naked--he'd always have an ovened body beside him for the rest of his life.

And that body was going to be the glistening goddess.

That body was going to forever be ...Kate Pierce.

"Youth really is all the rage. I remember when I first met Solomon Stills he was naive. Yes, naive. He was a little boy at heart. Nineteen years old.. but still a little boy in emotional development. He's the only man that I can't insult for being too driven by testosterone. He never really tries to prove his manhood. He knows he's soft. He know he's tamable. He knows that women are more brilliant beings, and he accepts it - and worships them because of it. I met him at a party. Another one of those drug-infested things that I was really interested in at the time. I remember so very distinctly. I came back from a show, I was a little sweaty, and I needed a beer. Amongst all these young people (I was twenty-four at the time) he looked by far the youngest, and I don't even know why. I'm sure there were half-a-dozen High School students there. He wasn't interacting with anyone, and he looked so shy. I think it was that Quinn slut that brought him there. But God knew where she was. I thought he was so sexy.. so of course I started talking to him! A few beers, and he came out of his shell. He wasn't a lightweight, but he was lighter than say--the tyrant of all pricks; Jude. It turns out that he had a thing for Quinn. She was Queen whore, let me tell you. People may not rever me cos I'm a stripper? I don't give it out to everyone I see after shooting up. She lives upstairs, blahblah, she helped him through hard times. I think I was staring at his crotch instead of listening (what a crotch that is, my friends.) I took him into a backroom, and I tried to fuck him. Come on, you would too! But he was too bothered over something. He asked me: "Do you know that Jude bloke?" Well, hell yeah I know that Jude bloke. I had known Jude for about six months. And I was starting to like him. There was no reason for it. It was because I could be a bitch to him and he'd play rough right back. It was because he had the prettiest face I had ever witnessed before Solomon came along. It was because he was just as lost as I was, and we shared the same problem. It was because he was fucking hot. I used to wish that maybe I could ask him to stay before he ran out the door, but I knew I'd lose my hard, tough veneer if I did that. So I never really did. I acted like I was in kindergarten with Jude. Pulling his hair and pissing him off was a sign of affection. He wanted to hear from me that Jude was no competition for some reason ...I could feel it in his voice. When I found out why though.. I developed a sudden abhorrence for Quinn. Why? Solomon thought that Quinn was 'his girl.' And he walked in on Quinn and Jude having it off, and he was a bit surprised to say the least. I can see him right now: pale as a ghost, mouth trembling, with Jude probably sneering at him. Afterall, when Jude fucks a girl, she's automatically his territory. Quinn was his territory, and Solomon was renting out that territory too. I bet the poor baby didn't know what to do with himself. He wanted Jude dead. And now, fuck, I wanted Quinn dead. We parted that night drunk and feeling sorry for ourselves. But two days later, he was at my door (and how that genius motherfucker found my apartment---I don't know) desperate and fleeting. He shoved me against the wall, and I swear I had one of the best fucks of my life. His size was surprising. His pith even moreso. I decided afterwards he was a better fuck than Jude (it could've been cos Solomon wasn't strung out at the time), but I didn't want to get ahead of myself. Jude was all about being on the top. Solomon could make compromises. They were both all macho. Competing against eachother. Who was more of a man? Jude called Solomon 'the boy' behind his back, and Solomon clenched his teeth and pretended not to hear it. I told Jude Solomon was a better fuck and the moronic bugger flipped out. It turned out that somehow or another---I wasn't there to witness it, Solomon confronted Jude, and they became instant friends. Like, what the fuck was that? This was when Solomon began to change. He didn't have as much empathy. He started to turn into his elder.. because he looked up to Jude. Looked up at him like a father. Looked up at him like a fucking puppy. Those two were always together, stealing drugs, fucking girls and leaving afterwards, watching eachother take girls and do horrible things like they were learning the ropes. I let them both have me once. But I can't say I can remember much of it besides Solomon petting my hair afterwards and saying he was sorry (albeit, I knew I consented--I never understood why he'd apologize.) I was starting to look for a new job, so I didn't have as much time to run myself into the ground with syringes. I found out that Jude and Solomon started dating. The two best shags in the neighborhood dating. Yeah, that's right. DATING. I said 'fuck it,' and stopped talking to everyone. I stopped talking to everyone in that crowd, from Jude to Solomon to Quinn to Trish to Kimmy to Johnny R. Everyone. I found out that without their influences I could go cold turkey. I could keep my legs shut. I could remember the day before yesterday. About a year later or something I vaguely remember being told they broke up and Jude was in rehab. I couldn't even believed they stayed together that long. I didn't know Jude was capable of feeling. But, I still stayed out of the limelight. Got married, matured a little bit. When I met Solomon again, it was four years later. He had changed dramatically. He had some more weight on his bones..... some honest-to-God musculature. He cut his hair a little. Highlighted it. His skin wasn't that disgusting pasty pale, anymore. It seemed almost tan. And his voice. It was sexy. It had always been sexy...but I think it was what I missed the most. His girlfriend left him--another sad tale in his life, so I was there to help him out. We started writing songs together. Him, me and his pink-haired friend named Alice (who was engaged to non-only than Jude. There was no envy from me. I was long over him--I even felt pity for her.) We rearranged his band. I got some equipment together with a few guys I know. He let me sing. And he started to play guitar. We did a few gigs before his girlfriend Kate came back. Now that we've become friends rather than fuck-buddies, we talk a lot more. He caught me up on Jude history, told me how he changed for the better...and then experienced another emotional recession: screwing Solomon and leaving the bride to be. He tore them both apart and it made me want to puke when I heard Alice took him back and Solomon befriended him again. That man is a disease. That man is a bloody disease. But when I think about it. He's me. And I'm him. All the hatred in the world can't change the fact that we thrive in two different bodies as the same person in this world. We're plagues. We're corrosive. We burn.


We're wise."


Jillian Monroe.

So this is love?


After 'Push It' Jillian Monroe was giggling, and throwing her thumb over her shoulder.

"Who wants to see if Solomon has a boner? I swear ...everytime we play that song he gets a fuckin' boner!"

He was cracking up, burrowing his face in a thick, masculine palm, and the crowd was avidly chanting.

"Comeeee heeerreee, Solomon!"

She proclaimed like a tortorous little girl, chasing the fidget around stage -- such a flawless feline. Their antics were funny to say the least, not only were the songs good, but they knew how to entertain the crowd and give one hell of a stage presence.

"Bah. I give up on yew. I'll get yew after the show, boner-boy."

The verdant-eyed Scot exaggerated wearied panting, and the smirking boy climbed into his corner niche again, while they tried out 'Temptation Waits' on the new audience. ("I'll tell you something, I am a wolf but ...I like to wear sheep's clothing. I am a bonfire, I am a vampire. I'm waiting for my moment. You come on like a drug--I just can't get enough. I'm like an addict coming at you for a little more.") Definitely what he wrote about Kate when they first got together. Then there was the ever graceful "I Think I'm Paranoid" and "Dumb" before Jill sadly announced they were on their last song.

"But I promise! After this, Solomon is going to sing yew all something... but this song is called... 'Yew Look So Fine.' And Solomon wrote this for his little bright-cheeked gurl right over there--" She protruded her index finger at Kate...as he set his guitar aside--he didn't need it for this either. "Miss Kate-Soon-To-Be-Stills Pierce over there."

Kate was giddy and jumping, lurching when the crowd told her to and laughing at how Jill teased Solomon over his probable erection.

"IT'S THE GUITAR!" Jude shouted out, cupping his hands to call out to the stage in that loud, distinguished bellow, and Kate laughed at him, elbowing him in the ribs, just to be nudged forward in retaliation.

And when Jill announced that the next song was written for Kate..her cheeks flushed red and she hid her face. Jude let out a chorusing "Awwwwwwwww!" and spun her around to face the stage once more, making sure her arms were stuck to her sides by his so she had to watch.

"If you cry, I'm going to make fun of you for the rest of your life." He teased.

Kate just beamed, love-swollen and utterly devoted, leaning forward and arching on her toes to watch Jill sing and Solomon just..wander the stage for the time being. The music began to brew, morose, sullen .. but something beautiful to sway to (a serenade.) This was when Solomon spontaneously faltered from the stage, cradling the ledge so he could land on his feet. Kate was stuck behind a bar.. (and Jude) but it didn't matter. He was just as brawn as any of the security guards, and by edging forward and baiting her by her hips, he elevated her out of the cramped capacity, and took the side stairs (holding her hand) unto the stage again. The lyrics began to echo ..via a pristine vocalist. "You look so fine.. I want to ...break your heart, and give you mine. You're taking me over."

"Come on, lamb," he whispered, trudging onstage a distance from Jill, but somewhere around the centre.

The girls in the audience were in jealous, romanticist awe (and poor Jude probably had more people crushing him by now.) Those meager petals quirked into a subtle smile, and he poised their folded hands to the side, and placed the other set on her hip. If they were going to dance- they were going to dance classically...there were no exceptions. He pressed the widow's peak-ornamented, sheened forehead to hers', as started wading in a little circle. "It's so insane.. you got me ..tethered and chained, I hear your name..and I'm falling over. I'm not like all the other girls...I can't take it like the other girls. I won't share it like the other girls that you used to know.. you look so fine."

And out of nowhere, there he was, tearing her from the confines of Jude's protective stance and letting him be crushed by the bar this time. She wobbled on love-faulty legs towards the stage, horribly thrilled, and horribly passioned..she ached for him at moments like these. And when he pulled her on that stage and took her hand..they were the epitome of true love. His hand on her hip, hers on his shoulder, both of them molded as close as they could be. Her head spun, and there was no one else. There was Solomon, the floor and the music being played. Not a huge crowd of people watching, not a band performing around them, just Kate getting lost in the moment. They danced in slow circles like classic movie stars and Kate was pressing a quick peck to his lips when they were parallel to the crowd, just so no one could see. Her fingers laced with his, her legs and hips swaying as they trodded in circles, it was a romantic's dream come true. It was all Kate had ever wanted, and it was right there in front of her, and a few hundred other people. And so they danced. The lyrics played on ..and he reiterated them all through honeysweet whisper beside the shell of his lover's earlobe after that petite kiss sampled. "Knocked down..cried out.. been down just to find out... I'm through..bleeding for you."

Jill kept glancing to them with this blithe (but it was so, so sad..she was twenty-eight years old, and she'd never have this) and Alice even peeked out from the backcurtain with Tony beside her chewing on an apple. She was squealing, because she knew he plotted something, but she didn't think he'd dance with her in front of everyone! "I'm open wide... I want to take you home, we'll waste sometime. You're the only one for me." He had to stay from her hip for a moment so he could stroke her cheek with the width of a silver-banded thumb, and tilt her chin for another tender kiss. The chorus repeated, and the song neared to an end.. but not without some fervent, needy lyrics. "You're taking me over.. over and over.. I'm falling over. Over and over. Drown in me one more time. Hide inside ..me tonight. Do what you ..want to do. Just pretend..happy end. Let me know, let it show..ending with...letting go..."

It was something you'd read about in a cute little novel written by a smitten female, not something you'd experience. This was meant to play out on a movie screen, not to Kate in the middle of a packed club. In a way, it seemed to her like Solomon was solidifying this. He was proclaiming it to everyone, to himself and to her. Just how very real this was. Kate spotted Alice over Solomon's shoulder and was already flushed pink and pretty much shaking with this cross between stomach-twisting nervousness and passion-fueled affection. He touched her cheek and she shook for him (crying was not the answer here, but fuckin' A, she wouldn't be Kate if she didn't leak a tear or two), lip trembled and she grinned to herself (she felt like an ass) and undid their foreheads after that kiss and smeared her face in his shoulder. She'd let herself rest there, hanging on until the song faded away into that melodic ending, her hand clinging to his and her fingers resting on his shoulderblade in an oh so sweet stance.

When the song finished, people cheered insanely - as though some revolution was surging underway. Things became suspicious when Jill didn't mutter in the microphone afterwards. A deafening blanket of silence ceremented them - so far from leaden, but rather sleek. He nudged away her desolate waterworks (tear duct sweat) with the sandpaper-notched crescent of his thumbnail, before he parted from her a little bit. Solomon Stills had promised her. He promised to sacrifice himself for her, for their love, for their long, long barbed-wire battle for the freedom they deserved together. Even though he had proposed, he still hadn't supplied her with that ring. ...And that ring? Well, that was what his paycheck envelope was for: investment.

The lull of disconcerting silence only seemed to bleed into the colors of opaque eyes, and slowly, he withered to the protrusion of a bent kneecap, and rifled through his pocket. And one could hear Alice practically shrieking from several yards away. Here it was: the artificial bind of their love (though they could interminably-engrave it through blood, sweat and tears) all ..sheltered in a velvet black-box refuge. So he gingerly unlatched it, and since he knew he didn't need to ask, he plucked out the immaculate gold ring (with the most modest diamond---so sweet and gorgeous) and slid it unto her ring finger, offering her a serene wink. "..now....we're gonna get married, Baby."

Once upon a time, more than four years ago, Solomon Stills and Judas Eden fell in love.


"I ....---these...---I'm scared, Jude. I don't like doing this. I don't like wh--when you and me ---we fuck all tt....these ...girls and we make them feel so cheap. It makes me so sa...sad to know... Because I w-- ..wouldn't do that to ..to Marie or...Quinn or Jill. Because...because they're women. We shouldn't do this. But I want to do it because I want to be your friend, and I want you to be able to trust me more than any other fucking man in this neighborhood...s...so...I do."

"I'm crying like a ...faggot. I'm crying like a faggot because around you ..I am."

It's about 2 AM now, and Kate just recently fell asleep tangled with me, sad and miserable because of her feeble stomach. Maybe she's catching unto the trend... haha.. that's not even funny, Solomon. Yeah, I have half a mind to read her diary---but I have more reverence for her than that. I wonder if she's ever read mine? I wonder what she says about me in there. You know, potential fake orgasms, how she probably hates my hair, maybe my legs are too hairy, toes are too crooked. Oh well. My hands are weary from holding her hair back for hours, but I know she's done the same for me when I went on a binge or got too drunk. Whether she likes it or not, I'm taking her to the doctors tomorrow, and I'm taking off work. Albeit, I use her working time as Christmas Shopping hours to get things done. I got Quinn (the cat) the cutest collar--oh fuck, she's not going to know it's Christmas. And just to rattle Kate's chain maybe I'll find cat diet pills or something for Turtle. Now, there's a thousand things one could buy Kate, or Alice, but what the fuck do you buy Jude? Seriously. Sunglasses? No. I forgot what I bought him back in the day when Christmas was really important to one another because it was all we had. Quinn's easy, Jill's easy. The girls are always so easy..then you have Syme, Jude and John to just...ruin it for you. Oh well, they're my family, you know?

Thanksgiving went surprisingly well considering the crowd we shoved together. Kate made a salad in the kitchen but butchered the baked bread so I had to literally chase her out of the kitchen as nice as possible. It was Quinn, her new girlfriend Miranda (too skinny for my tastes), Jude, Alice, Syme and of course, Kate and me. Somehow we wound up looking through the old photo albums I had recently shown Alice in the summertime and she kept chanting something along the lines of: "Show the chunky ones!" She's a big fan of that little stage of my life, apparently. Jude forged interest- some things are so lucid with him, but leave it to the women to be absolutely amazed by bathtub pictures, soccer, and of course, pictures of them that I've taken over the years. Isn't it funny how Quinn's hair has been in those dreadlocks for four years? Don't you think she gets tired of it? Maybe I'm just used to Alice changing her hair every week.

I'm perfectly content right now despite the fact my girl's sick. She'll be fine soon, as soon as I dig out the tinsel and track down a tree that will actually fit in our living room.

I love my family.

Christmas time with Solomon Stills:

- ornaments in your hair while you slept.

- quinn rosalin realizing: 'hey, your tits really aren't fake! solomon told me they weren't but i soooo didn't believe him!'

- one overly-vivacious naked boy with santa hats and garlands used as scarves around his neck.

- two very unhappy cats jingling with bows.

- no sleeping past nine am.

- everyday was christmas to solomon!

- dirty toys in the stockings.

- a lopsided tree.

- laced egg nog.

- getting your hair braided by this boy...that..........somehow......naturally knows how to braid a woman's hair. red bows!

- sex under the christmas tree.

- pretending you don't hear him praying to his first love - marie late at night, telling her that her name will bleed off his tongue on his deathbed under the mistletoe and london snowflakes.

Childhood living is easy to do
The things you wanted
I bought them for you
Graceless lady,
You know who I am
You know I can't let you slide through my hand

Wild horses
Couldn't drag me away
Wild, wild horses
Couldn't drag me away

I watched you suffer
A dull aching pain
Now you're decided
To show me the same
No sweeping exits
Or offstage lines
Could make me feel bitter
Or treat you unkind

I know I've dreamed you
A sin and a lie
I have my freedom
But I dont have much time
Faith has been broken
Tears must be cried
Let's do some living
After we die

Wild horses
Couldn't drag me away
Wild, wild horses
Couldn't drag me away

-- the rolling stones.

<font color="#666666" size="1">[ May 27, 2003 09:55 PM: Message edited by: cigarillo ]</font>

what do you love?

jesus, waking up in the morning. in the city. in the winter. sometimes, it's so bright ..sometimes ..it's not. cooking breakfast for kate. watching her wake up in the morning. the sound she makes when she yawns. the way she looks when we're making love--especially when she's on top of me. she's beautiful. her mouth, her eyes. my cat. my friends. my music. kate, kate, kate.

what is your favorite thing?

kate. especially when she loves me and laughs.

what is your favorite utensil?

chopsticks. they're fun to work.

best song of all time?
it's torn between 'suspicious minds' by elvis and 'wild horses' by the stones. both song intrigue me to no end.

favorite ex?

i don't know... marie was my first love. i still am in love with her. i've had plenty of girlfriends.. but i'd have to say jude, because he's still my best friend, and marie because..she was a goddess.

favorite movie?

deer hunter? deer hunter. i don't know. probably the deer hunter.

favorite actor?

something along the lines of...benicio del toro. robert deniro. brando. nicholson. the legends, and the new legends.

favorite actress?

does courtney love count? i really love chloe sevigny. i love.. julia roberts for obvious reasons. i love cameron diaz. i love blondes.

tip?

i need to get more---oh, um.. make sure you spend at least thirty seconds deciding on what pair of socks to wear in a day.

boxers or briefs?

fuck it all. liberty for the male anatomy. i don't wear underwear. and i prance around the house or outside, i'll probably wear boxers.

favorite food?

pasta. any kind of pasta.

place you want to be?

paris. it's so romantic. it's fit for kate and me.

favorite drink?

vodka and cranberry. red stripe. and i used to get my hands on absinthe.

favorite drug?

whatever makes me high.

favorite piercing?

probably my nipples. they're fun. and my tongue. it's productive.

favorite tattoo?

my spiderweb. it hurt so good. i had a wicked sadistic moment while getting it. i tried to shag the tattoo artists' leg. ...quinn's.

least favorite chore?

paying the bills. sorting them out. i have better things to do, like take my girlfriend out.

least favorite person?

probably kate's brother. jill's husband. my father, albeit i never really met him.

say the first thing that comes to mind.

sex

yes please, and make it hard.

wine

wish i could afford ch?teau margaux.

birthday

kate's.

london

home.

marriage

orgasm. rings.

love

kate.

guns

bad.

the brady bunch

say wot?

the american flag

4th of july.

best friend

jude. quinn. alice.

cigarette

marlboro. mary jane.

education

need some more.

life

to 30 at least.

<font color="#330000" size="1">[ January 23, 2003 07:03 AM: Message edited by: greedy fly ]</font>

4:11 AM-- it was beginning to develop into clockwork, and Kate Pierce knew how to handle these episodes. Every night, punctually, Solomon would stir and sleepwalk-- completely barren of emotion, stolid, and in some faraway, detached place. She thought that maybe it was the anti-depressants, the prescription medication, perhaps the load of drugs finally caught up with him.. but this had been going on for two weeks now and she failed to mention it in the morning. So she lived with a lunatic--so what? He was still so very sweet.

"Mnn.. Solomon..." she murmured as he rose from the bed, completely naked, silent. He couldn't hear her.

Like a responsible adult, she slid into her robe, and tailgated him, somnolent, and lazily sketching a girlish rub across her lids. The Brit meandered into the living room, feeling the walls as though he were reading braille, he paused for a moment, fondled his stomach, his hips, his thighs--no cigarettes, there. Then he noted that his pack of orange-butted Marlboros were reposing on the coffee table, so he thieved them and their lighter and stretched a bicep to hike open the sliding glass door.

From there, he stood on the balcony. It was about ...sixteen degrees outside, and he didn't seem to feel a chill. Kate grimaced and wandered close behind him, and watched curiously from her side viewpoint as he smoked, and stared at the star-lamped, inky heavens.

"Soloooomooonnnn." She lilted almost whimsically, and noticed the water vapor collecting like misty residue because of the plunged temperatures.

He didn't respond.

His jaw was set into a cinched rein, his eyes were narrowed and squinted, and his heart rate was at peace when he sucked on the cigarette. The fact that there wasn't one goosebump haunting the adobe of his body made it obvious that he wasn't feeling any of this.

When he ditched the cigarette--tumbling headfirst to kiss asphalt on the city street beneath, he pivoted on heel, and she gently took his wrist, and began to coax him back inside.

"Godamn Russians," came the Brit, fogged out and husky.

"I know, Baby."

Time to get him back to bed.

an entangled mess of limbs; caramel-tapered skin filmed in summer ceramics. in their lavish hotel suite they exchanged oxygen with somnolent rockets of their chest, engulfed in sweet---in the abstract (tragic) kingdom of morpheus. the worst thing about sleep to the piece of adonis eurotrash, solomon stills, was missing judas inside of it. sometimes, he didn't dream of him--he dreamt of warped moments of suicide and black-plagued hatred. he dreamt of burning his throat by drinking lava, and the moment where he almost lost the second love of his life to a needle on a clammy tile floor. he'd never forget the vivid imagery: the beads of perspiration sullying his forehead, his extinguishing gasps for carbon dioxide, the plead channeling through his pupils because his dead voicebox refused to cooperate. he dreamt of being widowed again, and judas suddenly acknowledging that his overdose really was a mistake and solomon really did care. there was this groggy-lidded bulge straining in bruise-blazen eyes. solomon would never forget how he almost died. and every night they slept together, he'd dawn lilac lidding to sweep a liquor-bloodshot gaze over him --just to make sure he was still breathing with animated peace. "..even if you do go, i'll go with you. you and me, baby."

Years ago.

Wading together in soap-amorphous tapwater, the pair were swimming in lucid water rivulets; ringlets matted, jagged-astray hair drenched, and the flourescent bulbs drained to a dim minimum. Judas was Solomon's stability, physically, and emotionally. The youth's wing-bladed shoulderblades were sacrificing mild juts to the other's chest plateau. Jude was upright, evading the silver-polishe faucet, and Solomon's legs elongated, with kneecaps praying towards the ornate hotel ceiling. Poised in his sandpaper-callused grip with wary precision was this thick book. Sometimes, the elder would refresh the bathtub with sporadic spouts of hotter water to keep their body temperatures complacent as they read together. It was just one of those things. Sometimes, they dwelled in the bathtub longer than they should have like children: games, raisin-shriveled fingertips, and eventually a euphoric film of relaxation. Afterall, Mr. Eden had quite a hectic week.

Solomon Stills reiterated words aloud in this earth-plummeted arias, always sonorous, always ticktocking on a cherrybomb of passion. Confessional poetry was already one of his favorites... and Judas always seemed to listen to so intently, brushstroking pores, keeping him cradled. The romanticist generation really wasn't antique and outdated.

"Somehow to find a still spot in the noise
Was the frayed inner want, the winding, the frayed hope
Whose tatters he kept hunting through the din.
A velvet peace somewhere.
A room of wily hush somewhere within.

So tipping down the scrambled halls he set
Vague hands on throbbing knobs. There were behind
Only spiraling, high human voices,
The scream of nervous affairs,
Wee griefs,
Grand griefs. And choices.

He feared most of all the choices, that cried to be taken.

There were no bourns.
There were no quiet rooms."

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v9...S/solomon4.jpg

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ October 30, 2004 02:20 AM: Message edited by: so pass? ]</font>

<center>http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v9...tled-5copy.jpg</center>

Hovering over a morass of diner beef stew, he shifted through the warmth via wafting silver-polished spoon, words barreling from his notorious tongue in a long, locquacious discourse. Waitresses passed in blurs, other table-tenants minded their own business, and Syme Caldwell was slung parallel to him --swathed in in the rapture of a glazen strawberry vinyl seat. He kept plucking at the fabric, with dandelion jagged hair scraping troubled brows (sewn in tender contemplation--inanely decomposing in the mist of Solomon's banter.)

"Well, I think that all we really need to is to add some more ah, ah---yew know. I don't know how to phrase it. I think we need more power behind those words. More backup, more backup. Do yew think we should do that?"

It seemed our gutter-slum Brit even paced in his ragged speech.

Syme absently nodded at the creature with the woven beanie and the boquet of gilt (jilt) corkscrews skimming his chainlinked throat beneath the discreet, black stretch of hem.

"I just need to get Jill over ..that's wot I need to do. But, she's---"

"Wot is that?!" All of a sudden, the skeletal portrait of a truly emaciated boy stirred menacingly in his seat and arrowed a finger accusingly at a spoon clouded with a piece of you guessed it--- beef.

"Wot?" Solomon skeptically glanced back down to his spoon and almost expected a roach or something of that sort dancing across it--- but instead it was merely inert meat, and this had him grooving a brow into the woolen alignment of his forehead.

"You're going to sit here and eat that shit in front of me?!" A maniacal eruption from the youth triggered a few irate stares, and piqued gossip-swollen mumbles.

Solomon became rigid and blank, pupils drowning something chaotically dead and shut-down on that very spoonful of broth and beef.

"First yew eat turkey in front of me on Thanksgiving! Now, this!? Do yew have ANY fucking respect for a vegan, man?! Wot is with yew? You're all FUCKING carnivores! I swear to God! That shit is bloody nasty! Tasteless! Say it! Tasteless!"

Warily, Mr. Stills let the spoon collapse unto the lip of his bowl, and he skidded as nonchalantly as possible from his seat, near tip-toeing like a robber's silhouette at the vesper and moonlight-sweetened veil of midnight.

"Where are yew going? Yew never want to listen to my opinion, Solomon! Yew sit back down yew little bugger!"

Solomon was already out the door, wild-eyed and actually tripping into a lopsided grin at his bandmate's angsty antics.

Crazy fucking vegans. Communists.

<font color="#EE0000" size="1">[ March 25, 2005 01:31 AM: Message edited by: softcore jukebox ]</font>

".. I'm Solomon Stills: a man punctured to the very marrow with the deviate disease. My heart is this tangled urban slum, with gutter tales and memories stashed in sacrilegious alleyways and street corners. I've never been one to claim I've had a troubled childhood. I enjoyed it for the most part. I didn't need a father figure because he might've stunted the growth of understanding I have for the opposite sex. My mother brought to life a higher understanding of what it was like to be a sexual martyr; to starve and to only be nourished by cheap sex from dirty men to feed her son. She was a scorched soul, and as a result, I was born with a singed smolder (igneous eyes and a magma-induced tongue.) She was a devout Catholic, yet betrayed their every moral. I distinctly remember crawling on hands-and-knees (I belong that way) under the pews in search for what was under the girl's Sunday School dresses.

I like cocaine, because someone once told me it was classy ..and I, my roots are classy, but the scene I am holding tyranny over is not. I love Mary Jane because she was my first lover, and she is my solace in white paper. I'm twenty-four and I've already been exploited to an emotional breakdown that triggered a long-term visit to the livid looney bin. If it weren't for natural charm (do you think I'm boasting?) and sweet lies I wouldn't have been "let out" as quickly as I had. I'm a waiter at a restaurant on the South Avenue strip. I get extra tips with phone numbers attached and sometimes I phone them when I'm restless with a headcase of insomnia. I have Marlboro-black lungs and I censor nothing. My opinions bullet from my mouth ninety-miles-per-hour in mellifluous prose and that seems to candy-coat (or rather liquor-coat) it. I keep memories of my lovers in an iron-wrought cell beside my bed. I don't have to turn on the light to see them. They constantly float on the back of my lids like images piqued from (the agony and the) ecstasy.

Sometimes, I have dreams about this man--this mirage--I've never met, in a room full of photographs and potent with this surreal soulmate haze. He blindfolds my vision with his innocence, with a devil's goatee and angel's eyes. I wake up and I still smell his sweat. He probably isn't even real or alive. I will never meet this man. He reminded me of Marie. I won't tell you about Marie. She's none of your bloody business- she's my keepsake.

Then, there's Kate, my girl, my favorite flavor. She's the most beautiful thing you'd ever see, and yes, I like to brush her hair, and yes, I beg to shave her legs. Through our many bathtub escapades I've learnt that shit is pure in mind and soul (her body is corroded with me now... everytime I lift my hand it draws forward.) I am a thorn in her side, and I keep spreading infection. But, I don't care. I'll never leave, or let her leave again for that matter.

My friends are a truly eccentric, varied bunch. My best friend is an older, patern ex-heroin addict that has a penchant for breaking promises. I've learnt my every bad habit from him--- he obliterated my youth and innocence. Heavy drugs, promiscuity, violence... all themes from Judas incarnate. He is a man who I don't talk to as chronically as I used to, because he is on the brink of marriage. There is no more deep conversations or vitrolic lullabyes (arguments) because everytime we talk alone we end up kissing and falling in love again. Bisexual tendencies? No. I took care of him, he took care of me. I didn't fall in love with a sex, I fell in love with his sex. Ther was a mutual threading of love in our love/hate relationship. His breath, his suffering, the sheer, nineteen-year-old excitement of being acquainted with such a volatile man. I'll always love him. Then there's his fiance: a pink-haired goddess pregnant with his twin babies, and tastes like sugar. There's Quinn, a dreadlocked lesbian who has saved me from myself many times, there's Syme, an angsty vegan who in reality starves himself, an alcoholic, misery-hammered drummer named John, and finally an insecure red-head that wears vinyl as her armor from the real world: Jillian Monroe.

I don't wash my bedsheets because I love their scent. I believe in God, because my lovers make me see him during climax. I get wild-eyed over bondage and would rather bleed on my pillow than salivate on it. I'm Solomon Stills. Never an enigma.. but just a time line of quirks, highs and lows. I'm the rust that sits on the nails that rip through Christ's palms. But, I'm vain."

Solomon Stills.

Journal.

April 29th.


Now that the reincarnation at dawn is over, I'm lost amongst a less exciting, more mundane life. I've become a good boy. It's a weird thing, but I have. I think Kate made me this way. She made me a good boy. I don't flirt with people I don't know. I keep my fake ADD under check and come home directly after work. I don't forget orders because I'm so stoned and get a lot more tips. I keep us pretty supported. Pretty stable.

There are things in my life however, right now, that I'm fascinated with. It's Alice's stomach. Seven months now and this girl is ready to explode. Twins. How the fuck did Jude manage that one? He never seemed like a twin kind of guy to me.

Judas has become a man. He's almost thirty but he's now a man. All of those times when we battled for testosterone - who could get more women, who could fuck eachother harder, who had more power in the sack are irrelevant now. I always thought he was such a powerful man. He was always the one that could hold me down when I was nineteen and he was twenty-four. The last time we had eachother I was the one holding him down - but maybe he was suppressing himself because he was choking on regret each and every grind. But, I was mistaken. He's a man now that he has Alice. He's a man now that he has children on the way. Judas and I could've never predicted it would turn out this way. Us apart. Him getting married, him having two little girls (probably blonde.) Four years ago I would've shook my head and called you crazy. That wasn't the Judas I knew. I'm not sure if I love the new version of him. But at least I know I love them all. And he's a man.

Alice is one of my best friends, and so she can read my curiosity well. Kate, my lover, Judas, my ex-lover cannot. She'll come over especially so I can fret over her and ask just how it feels. Sometimes, she reads my silence like literature, and puts my hand against it, and I can feel life throbbing beneath. This was how Marie must've felt.

I told Alice this once, a long time ago, before Judas ever came back that the autopsy showed that not only was it an overdose, but there was a child, and obviously, it was mine. There were a number of times when I could have been a father---there's endless possibilities, but that was the one time that really felt tangible.

And so, I wonder what he/she would've looked like. Curly hair is in our genes, and with our skin color the baby would've been truly something exotic. Sweet like his/her mother or completely bold like their father? Who knows. It'll never happen now.

I know someday Kate and I will get married, and we'll have children---but let me tell you, my friends, that day is way off cos there is no way I'm going to let her have twins! But sometimes, when I'm around Alice I think of the potential little girl or boy I could've had with someone I sent away so long ago. She knows it. So she puts my hand to her stomach.

<font color="#666666" size="1">[ May 02, 2003 07:04 AM: Message edited by: greedy fly ]</font>

Sucker love is heaven sent.
You pucker up, our passion's spent.
My heart's a tart, your body's rent.
My body's broken, yours is spent.

Carve your name into my arm.
Instead of stressed, I lie here charmed.
Cos there's nothing else to do,
Every me and every you.

Sucker love, a box I choose.
No other box I choose to use.
Another love I would abuse,
No circumstances could excuse.

In the shape of things to come.
Too much poison come undone.
Cos there's nothing else to do,
Every me and every you.

Sucker love is known to swing.
Prone to cling and waste these things.
Pucker up for heavens sake.
There's never been so much at stake.

I serve my head up on a plate.
It's only comfort, calling late.
Cos there's nothing else to do,
Every me and every you.

Like the naked leads the blind,
I know I'm selfish, I'm unkind.
Sucker love I always find,
Someone to bruise and leave behind.

All alone in space and time.
There's nothing here but what here's mine.
Something borrowed, something blue.
Every me and every you.

-- placebo.

<font color="#666666" size="1">[ May 25, 2003 11:40 AM: Message edited by: cigarillo ]</font>

he smells like rose oil and tastes like a shot of liquor.

his saliva is made up a thousand abstract chemicals;
sex, love, magic (bewitching)

his lips like wire;
thin, but oh-so efficient.

his eyes are concocted from the pits of hell;
and dark dirt from angel's wings.

his hands are shaky but calm;
suspended on a cliff of frayed nervosa.

his body hurts them sometimes;
he is a plasma sculpture,
crafted by the hands of hephaestus' vehemence.

his soul is a bruised, rattling ribcage;
it kisses me black and angst-blue.

and his love is heroin;
it injects straight into your veins,
devours you whole.
you need detox to spit it out.


sexsick and your path-thicket to heartbreak
solomon's bones keep me in a cage.

a cage that smells like rose oil and tastes like a shot of liquor.

<font color="#737371" size="1">[ February 18, 2005 06:48 AM: Message edited by: london's burning ]</font>

Esther and Edna -- the two E's as he called them, trickled up the strip wearing exuberantly-bannered smiles (mapped out in creased wrinkles and fragrant of moth balls) merging into the diner. A slight waitress named Kelly flounced over to them, cradling lamanated menus into her chest, retracting as they humidly exchanged soap opera gossip--ignoring her presence.

"Hello, ladies, smoking or non-smoking?" Cool, casual, confident. This was her second job this month, and waitressing was a lot different than bartending, surprisingly.

"No, honey," Edna tried to expound using a flail of her quaking hand. "Where's Solomon, dear? Only Solomon waits on us."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Solomon went to Los Angeles to visit his friend. He'll be back next week."

Kelly stared dejection as both ladies shot her a puncturing glare, mumbling to one another, incised in sneers. They promptly pivoted on heel, wondering about their favorite British bloke, and filtered back into the street.

Only one thing passed Kelly's mind--she hadn't quite met him yet, she only heard about him:

What the fuck?

<font color="#EE0000" size="1">[ March 25, 2005 01:50 AM: Message edited by: softcore jukebox ]</font>

from the mouth of warren corgan, the most eloquent christian in the world

Beep. "Hello? Solomon? Solo--Sol? Solomo--Are you there? It's Warren.
I'm sorry to call so.. so late. I know it's three a.m. but I really fig--figured
that you wouldn't be sleeping. You were always so restless that I jus--st
kinda' guessed that you'd be laying there, staring at the ceiling--ya'know,
with your feet still moving because even in sleep you couldn't stay sti--oh.
Okay. Anyw--I guess your not there. I just wanted--I guess I nee--" Beep.

Beep. "Sorry. It cut me off. Anyway. I guess I just needed to ask you, hm
--a question. See.. I was jus--just wondering if maybe.. If you thought that
it was okay for me to try and fall in love again. Beca--well, I met someone.
But everytime I go to touch him, Sol--I swear I feel your hands tugging me
back. So maybe.. I guess.. deep down I figured that some small piece of
you might still be holding on. If it was, I'd lock myself in my room and wait
for you. I would. ..but if you've truly given up on me.. let me know. Please?
I just need to know if this is okay. Nothing feels okay without you--" Beep.

Beep. "Sorry. I'm sorry. I -- just call me? I lov--Sweet drea--Bye. ..bye."

Five thirteen AM -- the sun hadn't jogged to spill across their living room carpet yet, but the shadows were no longer dancing in trickery. Solomon had heard the beep-beep-beep of the answering machine; quirking his studded ears in his sleep, but it took a good two hours to lure him out of it. After loosening from the swathe of his lover's antique, adobe-bronzed arms, printing a kiss to the canyon of his cheek, he lethargically plotted a path into the living room, immediately congesting the air with a pre-rolled shard of Mary Jane, something he had left taking respite on the coffee table next to a complimentary, blank hitch of matches. Skidding one across a horizon of sandpaper, hissing arson, he lit up, reclining into the couch ----completely naked.

Dripping a widow's peak-dipped forehead into the contour-woven stability of his hand, he sucked while listening to Warren's love-babble, contaminating everything around him with his saccharine toxins, nostrils flaring, body wracked with sighs. Indolent, and almost awake (dawned) he heard him tell him to have sweet dreams, and that was when he plucked the phone to hunch betwixt shoulder and ear, dialing upon the cradle with the vintage cord entangled.

An earthy accent chimed through; raspy, omnipotent.

"Love him, Warren."
"---And twine his hair like rosary beads in your fists. So yew can show him there is a God if he doesn't already believe it by now."

He stood there panting, his breath erratically ragged, rocketing the plating of his naked, silver-linked chest. His plump heart was derranged with turmoil, and he swore he could see it rattle against the adobe of his skin. Lost behind ribbons of ink-laced ringlets, twining against smoldering lip-corners, he waded in his own swarthy shadow .. casted over the candlewax-spilled floor of his bedroom. Ashamed. Filmed with perspiration and fragrant of suicide.

She looked at him with wild cobalt-pixeled irises and constellation pinpoint pupil, her body on edge, as she violently confiscated the makeshift, callused noose from him and bitterly threw it on the floor only to combat-slam the sole of her boot upon it like paper weight (and she really only was .. paper weight (and she really only was .. paper weight.) Finger-ravaging platinum dreadlocks, she reflected on the situation, whilst downturning her salt-lensed vision towards the floor.

They stood together; numb, petrified. He was nineteen years old then, and she was twenty-one. Finally, a diseased, wisp of whisper droned from her cigarette-strangled tongue, as she circled him like a lioness on the prowl -- or rather some occult, plasma-glittered satellite.

"Why did you try and do that, Sol?"

For a long time, he didn't move, he was under a comatose, the blunted eclipses of his nails clenching tufts in his denim-constricted thighs, shifting self-consciously from one foot to the other (as the wafer of moonlight grave/livid white on them.)

"Because I miss her," muttered in London trash decay.

"Come here."

And this was how his world blossomed, through a troubled girl that spawned from squalid trailers and pixie dust-- his best friend. Quinn.

Seven-year-old, lanky arms flailed like a human skelecopter overhead, as he pogoed from one step in the Caprice food market, to regain his youthful beam of balance on the linoleum landscape. His adorably-plump cheeks were adorned with twisted wisps of wavy hair that his busy mother hadn't taken the scissors to since last Christmas, ripe-pink and his mouth seemed to mimic explosions. He floated in his own little world, trying to jog up behind his mother to take her bony white hand.

"Mum!" Solomon made himself known with an exuberant exclamation, wriggling his future-aesthetic fingers in a gimme-gimme flex that she didn't respond to.

Barbara Stills was a tall, pretty woman (if one could even call her that); blonde-haired and blue-eyed, haggardly-distraught and only twenty-three. She ignored the abrasive glares spared to her by the other local customers sauntering through the store, because of her nylon skirt and her knee-straining boots. She was a street-walker, and that was no secret.

Batting at his outstretched hand until he retracted it with a buzzing throat-vibrato and a pout (he opted to think about the rumble of the trains outside, once more) , she paused with her welded blue shopping basket to throw in a box of tampons, and deodorant from the shelf.

"Mum! I got seven Valentines, tah-day," boasted the schoolboy in his starch shirt and loosened tie, and sewn gray shorts. "Because it was Valentine's Day, mum!"

"Yeh, Solomon, that's good," she replied through gritted teeth, comparing and contrasting prices between strawberry-scented shampoo.
Solomon unfurled seven fingers, before he ironed them over his trousers again, pointing to the shampoo.

"That one's bigger, Mum."
For a moment, Barbara seemed flustered, mashing her brows, before glimpsing at him. "How did yew kna'?"

"It says so on the bottom! Guess wot, tae? Missus Mindy says --- Missus Mindy says-- she says I don't haveta do second next year. She says ye' have to sign a piece of paper."

"Mmmhm ..."

"So will yew!"

"Solomon, could yew do Mum a favor and please be quiet while I'm trying to shop?"

".. yes, Mum."

By the time she reached the register, heavily-lined eyes flitting down to the items she was unloading, she felt him literally twine his arms around her leg, gnawing dependently at the side of her exiguous skirt, staring with pooled, curious eyes up at the pretty teenage clerk.

"Sol, stop that."

With a moody sigh spouting, he detached from her, and reached up to place an green-and-white-packaged Aero bar atop the other toiletries.

"Solomon, I am not buying that!"

"Why?"

"Why? Don't yew ask me why!" She incised a feigned, 'kids... ' sardonic smile at the clerk, before bending down and snatching the chocolate from his hands. "Solomon, wot did I tell yew about that?" Now that she was at eye-level, he was completely paying attention to her, riddled by the lack of warmth in her pupils.

"I don't knae."

"Yes, yew do."

"Nao."

"Yes."

"No."

"Sol---put it back."

"I DON'T WANT TAE!"

"SOLOMON!"

"Hey, Barb-- whose the lil' guy?"

She suddenly halted the argument to stare through pale-wisps of hair at the balding bloke, with his dress shirt half-unbuttoned who had just strolled inside the market.

"My sister's kid. 'Staying with me awhile."
Solomon wanted to shriek that he was her son, but instead he said nothing, and buried himself in her thigh again -- this time she didn't shake him off.

<font color="#060101" size="1">[ April 06, 2004 08:46 AM: Message edited by: electroshock ]</font>

Two years ago.

"Wot's wrong?" His fret-bruised fingers skated on a snowcapped shoulder, bare of fabric, his dark eyes swollen and intangibly exuberant with concern.
Quinn ruggedly shook her shoulder and his hand immediately waltzed off the cliff, and he held both up in defensive protest. "Knock it off."

Solomon seemed shocked, but just retreated back into six month linen again-- her coldness wasn't as contagious as she would have liked it to be. "..alright..."

Then silence---an art they had never quite mastered.

"Quinn?"

"What?"

"Do yew feel bad?"

"No."

"I want yew to know that when we--"

"Solomon, I know."

"I would never use yew."

"I know."

"Then why are yew so upset?"

"I'm not upset."

"I love yew."

"Yeah, ever since Jude left, right?"

He sharply swerved his body to the side, tension wrung with a spell of dazed anger, facing back-to-back (even though she was formally sketched in sitting.)

"That's such shit, Quinn. Yew know ..yew fucking know that before Jude even came in the picture all I wanted was for yew to pay attention to me."

"But as soon as he came in the picture?"

The Brit ripped himself to half-mast, supported on the heels of his butterspread palms.

"I can't believe you're even talking about this! He's gone now!"

"But you were so fucking quick to leave me behind."

"Quinn--" he was pleading with her now, trying to coax her moodswings--he honestly preferred her tepid and luke warm to ice-cold. "Quinn, yew never even gave me a fucking chance before. Yew didn't want anything to do with me. We all knew wot yew wanted me for." When he was nineteen.

Solomon pushed himself off of her mattress, and fought into the legs of his worn jeans, fleeing like a fugitive from her lemonade-shaded apartment (rich with a strange blur of sunlight.)

He left her alone to atone by herself. And whenever she was alone, she cried.

"softly, he said ..'i will mangle your mind.'"

"This shit's strong, Solomon .. " the weatherbeaten chimes of his voice warned me, always bass-toned, but it could never ascend to the pitches and grunge-roasted growls that mine could.

Nineteen, and swimming stubborn, I blatantly ignored him to prove myself; an indignant buzz of testosterone reigning over my blood supply. Headfirst into a cocaine avalanche, I snorted through my neon 7-11 straw, and it burnt like lit kerosene and volcano gurgle. In euphoria, I felt my nose running, and teeth chattering something ill. Cocaine always made me very loquacious, so I was pacing with my tongue, reclining against the asylum white wall, that belonged to a stranger, (I never liked Trish, she called me "little boy" condescendingly, and at nineteen, all I wanted was acceptance and a solid layer of respect in their group) whimpering. "I just .. I just---I just miss her.."

My nose was running and there was a desolate tear iceskating down my cheek. I can't even remember what I was saying, all I knew was that Judas Eden, with his whiskey eyes and cheap L'Oreal-dyed aurburn hair was listening, whilst blotting the trickle vine of blood from my nose, repeatedly (in a heavy cycle of sloth-paced, tattered words) trying to coax me. "Christ, you're bleeding---I told you, your nose ..."

"I don't care." I tried to bat his hand away-- it was the Brit in me, but in reality, I wanted to be hugged.

My elder climbed in closer, condensed against the plating of my chest, which began to shudder with tempest sobs. He was in my lap, but I was hardly paying attention, until his mouth pressed against mine, he silenced me, and we kissed.

A million things spun through my mind: I'm not gay, he's not gay -- he's Jude, he can't like a man, especially a man that's not even a man, but a little boy. Is it because he's high? Is he lonely? Christ, this feels good, his tongue is moving so slow against mine -- will he want to do this again? Will this make us fags?

That was how it began, and we thought it ended with the poetry of our saliva line that formed when our lips broke away. But, no, that was just the beginning---the beginning of a wild, fucking chariot ride.

<font color="#cccccc" size="1">[ October 05, 2003 06:04 PM: Message edited by: coralfang ]</font>

Solomon, you have to get your priorities in order, baby. Do you want to get married or now?

Kate, I'm---I'm twenty three, we're so young--let's wait a couple more years.

That's all I needed to know.

He sat at Alice and Jude's dinner table completely miserable, with his brows creasing out his forehead, dark-crackling irises darkened upon him. He was a fucking lawyer, he was older than Kate, he was handsome, he dressed nicely, he was surely no street punk that relied on his art and sold his soul.

Alice and Judas seemed to enjoy his company, and Kate proudly flaunted him like a silver medal (because Solomon was gold) scraping around their salad, and giggling at the good-natured banter shuffling about the table. Every now and again, the maternal platinum blonde would nudge the Brit with a jaunty elbow to ressurrect his manners.

Michael, completely oblivious to Solomon's engraved placement in Kate's past, grinned at him.

"So, Kate tells me you paint, Solomon?"

Mr. Stills exchanged an etched glare with Jude, who viciously, and discreetly growled at the antisocial monster from across the table.

"..yes."

"What kind of paintings? Baroque? Uh.. Cubism? Fauvism..."

"Revolutionaryism."

"Oh, I never heard of that---"

Jude interrupted. "It's because it's not a real art style."

"Shut the fuck up, Jude."

"Hey, Solomon, watch your godamn mouth at my table."

"Yew want to fight, cunt?"

The family was slightly dysfunctional now.

His stubble-leathery jaw's molar-screws divided in skepticism, bewildered ink-welled pupils pooled in hypnosis on the blur of girl that vexed his train of thought. She was a vision: ?this oil painting of Greek myths and tragic underworld tales; a vinyl feline with coal-smeared crescent eyes, thick hips, boyishly-disheveled hair and lips redder than a cocaine razor to wrist. ? This girl was fiction, and Solomon in all of his year had never seen anything like it. Swimming in shallow as she minced past him, he seemed to still hear the diner's bell chiming in his ears, along with the throb of pulse amps slampitting in his temple. It was after hours, dusk was ripping the sky with the disease of rush hour and last minute pastel shades. His broom's marigold bristles were kissing the grime-screened floor, his knuckles lynched the handle's girth until they were gravestone-gray and white as she disappeared into the cramped closet of an office for an interview. Salmon, wire lips spliced exacto-knife style to gust a swollen mound of oxygen. Only one thing leapt from his studded, European-spiked tongue. "Love or lust at first sight?"

<font color="#cccccc" size="1">[ October 16, 2003 02:54 PM: Message edited by: coralfang ]</font>

City girl perfume mists swirled Arabian dances around his nostrils but didn't stimulate his senses on the street because his mind was set on masculinity; sweaty pore colognes. He strutted with a fervor, his apron tucked away in origami fold inside his bag, eyes darting down to his watch-braceleted watch, lost on the minute hand as he rounded his final corner.

It was twelve-twenty-seven PM; the lunchbreak he usually combined with his dinner break when he worked overtime on Thursdays. Stalling in the lavish elevator after offering a familiar wave to the doorman (he saw him every Thursday at this exact time) he indented a flourescent button, and strolled to the apartment door.

His head bowed in God-fearing sin, but the passion was ignited and rioting kerosene fires in his ribboned veins. Glancing over his shoulder, he only seemed to loosen when Judas answered the door to let him in. It was dark, it was mutual, it was their one time a week to love one another. Alice was at work, the kids were at her mother's.

There seemed to be a nod of mutual understanding, a heart-scrawl of a pact.

Flattening his spinal splint to the door, he pulled his Oxford up to his hair-embroidered abdomen, lolling chin to clavicle.

"Kiss me right there."

Solomon Stills

Journal 11/1. Two days post-birthday.

The magic of autumn.

Usually, when people think of love, they automatically digest the thought with the bloom and warm goosebumps that freckle seeds on your skin in spring. But, me, I think of autumn. The air is gold, the leaves are browning, and the city is brilliantly alive during the day. Night comes, spills the sky with shades of navy, but everyone is still looming, in some strange spirit, wading through the miniature tornados of spinning leaves.

Autumn reminds me of love.

Last year, I was driving to rescue Kate from the icy clutches of New York, so I could bring her home, win her over with clever kisses and make love to her like she needed me to. Last year I was suffering from my first--and hopefully, my last-- emotional/nervous (?) breakdown, and clung to co-dependency. But, as soon as autumn came, I was inspired to get her back, and I found her, and I savored her against my warm chest for almost a whole year before summer broke in and erased my every fantasy.

She left, I sulked.

Then, autumn ripped the sky later in the three months where it reigns again. In the middle of October, I felt it beginning to fill me, and I found a girl, whom I chased and didn't really inspire me the way I needed to be inspired (because her attitude was all winter, I suppose) but just a few days before my twenty-forth I found someone smiling at me in a party, and then later in an elevator, in a coral dress and long, long, winding hair. I want her so bad, and I'll get her. But, sometimes, even autumn fucks you over so bad.

She's married.

Solomon Stills.

Journal.

11/25.

I had never seen the moon so fucking bright, like some sort of gothic sun, pouring corpse-blue rays down upon the abandoned room and its' creaking floorboards. Whoever lived there must've laid in their bed, with their arms behind their head just staring up at the city stars that scrolled by, a glass roof like that was a beautiful thing.

My walk was a prowling waltz, straying with my hands in my woolen pockets around the perimeter of the room as I watched her, the strange girl--the strange girl I had never seen before in my life. She seemed almost naive to my presence, balancing on one foot, her long legs undone of any lace or nylon, just boots and skin.

I met her at a bar. Quinn had to spill a drink on her for me to even build up the guts to talk to her. I know what you're thinking--Solomon Stills is courageous, he loves women, he chases them. But, Solomon Stills' ego has been in the gutter lately.

When she spoke to me, her little mouth just barely moved, I tucked my teeth around her martini's olive, pulled it free, and watched her eyes spark with something familiar.

Then finally, she purred 'take me home.' But she didn't say it that way, she just basically asked if I'd ever make a move.

So I took her hand, and took her for a walk, cocooned her hands in my thick ones and blew hot air into the butterfly cup so she could feel warm, because winter was taking its toll. When I found the building---all boarded up in the slums, just a mere townhouse square that hadn't been peered into in years, I quirked open the boarded up door, and let her inside.

The walls were lead and flaked like bits and pieces of a starving artist's mind, I circled her, thinking, my body aching. Finally, she gave in, our hands, her hair, our mouths. I unraveled my coat and threw it on the floor so she'd have a safety cushion. I couldn't tell you what happened next, because we were naked and panting.

And then, nothing.
I spoke to her once more, and never again.

I need a fucking warm body next to me.

<font color="#1A08CC" size="1">[ November 29, 2003 01:15 AM: Message edited by: coralfang ]</font>

Alice's voice was scratchy like a widow's, bundling herself in a robe, and venturing out into the living room which was haunted with the eerie glow of a Christmas tree's dim lights.

"Jude--" she hissed, her eyelids just barely twitching from their awning. "What are you doing? It's two AM---"

Solomon lynched his human crutch's neck nape; a vivacious smile plaguing his mouth in a curling Lucifer-smirk. "Hi..."

Jude didn't have to explain, Solomon was stumbling, his speech was slurred, his knees knobby through black-blurred jeans. "We're just gonna let him crash on the couch-bed, tonight." The ever-paternal figure scurried around to draw out the bed for the intoxicated, vodka n' tonic-caned London trash, as Alice ambled to the hallway closet to fill her hands with an overabundance of blankets and pillows.

About fifteen minutes later, he was situated. The tree automatically went out with a flick of a lightswitch, and he was left to ponder in his shadows. When he was drunk at first he was so fucking elated, before it yielded.. and eventually dissipated, leaving him in a tooth-grinding state of self-pity. Whispers flickered like candlewicks from his studded tongue.

"...I want a warm body."