"...NOTES FROM THE DUMP..."

THERE ARE CHRISTMAS CELEBRATIONS…

…and there are Christmas celebrations…

…Christmas Eve, noontime in Carrie Nations, everybody is already drunk or fucked up on something or both…all the good drugs come in with Santa too and never mind that ‘…have you been a good boy’ crap, cut out a line Dude…ho, ho, ho…

…Louie and I needed a break from this and staggered around the corner to The Golden Nugget, a misnomer if ever there was one for it was only a step up from Nations and the only one for whom it was golden was Ray who owned the dump and who grilled up a couple of cheeseburgers for me and Louie while we tipped a little bar whiskey; physical need to eat sated we returned to the most nefarious watering hole in all of Drinkdom, the original den of iniquity, Carrie Nations where you could get, not to put too fine a point on it, anything illegal…back to Nations, there to contemplate in drunken misery our plight: where to cadge more money to continue dissipating in a robust manner?

…the only criteria one needed for entry into Subterranea was cash…’Roach here’s 50 bucks go get me some (fill in the blank)…Pioneer John what you got for the head? Big Boy got any weed, no…how about money Dennis, got a few bucks man like it’s Christmas Dude, I need to be drunk…help me push the boat out’…and so on…these lines are culled from the book ‘Derelict Lines 101’, a book I haven’t written yet except in my head where all the best things are in storage. I can only coax a few of them to sally forth…

…where was I before I so rudely (wisely?) interrupted my other self, my twin and doppelganger, The Fool In The Mirror? O yeah in Carrie Nation’s – which Nation’s had several owners in its day but none compared to the late great J.A. Doolittle, who once rested a .25 cal. Beretta across his forearm and began to shoot the antiques lining the walls but was interrupted on the 3rd shot when a bullet ploughed through his forearm before hitting the wall…

…mired in this olio, beyond making sense, in another dazed out world, drifting in and out of darkness, crashing to the floor of the mop closet to sleep – pass out - midst the debris, four hours of sleep in the arms of a devil, then raising up clothed in the reeking habiliments of street people, back to it, ‘Merry Christmas Louie…Dude, you got a cigarette? Left mine in the car…’ (Derelict Line 1A)…