Georgee meditates on the difficulty of cosmic travel and is deeply confused and frustrated with his own astral conduits. So, once again, the oracle known as the Sibyl must be consulted and the mind maze reentered.
You are still staring at the message and still cannot make heads or tails of it: “The bumbling of old exaltations in the myriad web pools of discontented loathing”. You’re not paying attention and you step through the archway and stumble, then immediately trip over a driftwood sculpture that seemingly materialized from the thin summer air, discarded like a rusty dagger in the jeweled and shiny aquarium gravel rocks you find yourself trudging through.
You are drama queen BOOHOOHOOing OHWOEISME for an invisible audience, with crocodile tears and wearing a mildly irritating, adhesive-applied prosthetic hard-on, a throbbing vibrating, artificial prostate implant and realistic A-cups with alert nipples, made even more so by the rough mail of the sequined gold blouse and matching panties you still have on from the previous evening’s performance. In addition to this glittering top that is throwing a matrix grid of sparkles from the sun’s oppressive heat rays, melting your mascara into your aquamarine-shadowed eyes(one of them black and nearly swollen shut), streams of sweat from your between your tits, slither down your lower back, into your violet Spandex tights and into the itchy hair of your crotch, soaking the synthetic thong cutting up into the crack of your ass and down the back of your wobbly legs.
Those eyes saw some serious shit last night. You’re still wearing the long, magenta cape and weird, translucent amber knee-high spaceman boots that somehow resemble blobby, hand-blown Murano glass vases. And speaking of glass, the dressing room lightbulb inside the right one, that must’ve fallen in there during the melée, is slicing little razor blade bites between your aching toes. Your nose seems to have stopped bleeding, but you can still taste iron, lipstick wax and someone else’s flesh in your mouth. The salty glaze that masks your painted and bruised visage seeps into your split lip and you can move one of your teeth with the tips of your bitten tongue. Your pastel blue hair is matted and glued to the spirit gum across your cheeks where the feathers were.
At least you held your own with those Swastika Girls. You were surprised at the violence you were able to wield, your ragged agility and your absolute lack of restraint or remorse. You’re fairly sure you caved someone’s face in completely. If their brain isn’t completely splattered on the ballroom’s marble surface, they certainly won’t be winning a beauty pageant any time soon. Did you stomp their skull one last time before dodging the pitchfork, but taking the whipped chain across your cute little countenance? You're fairly certain those three didn’t make it out of the fire anyway, let alone the entire audience, surprised and panicked as they were as the doors were locked and sealed from the outside. It’s a very good thing you remembered the word for “portal”.
But the others like you were not so lucky. Not that they died. That’s never in the cards. All of us are cursed to wander, in one time or another, one body or another, just like our father, Ziggy Pilate, getting into misadventures such as this, over and over again. But they’ll be stuck in La Necropoli della Simulacro, searching the corridors for centuries [days] before they can start again. You’ll have to move on without them for now. Don’t worry. Remember they’re not dead.
Don’t let this illusion go to your head again. Just because you can’t see them anymore, it doesn’t mean they’re not there. Do not fear. Remember your litany and recite it aloud.
You always forget who and what you are, don’t you? You even get attached to these people, the stupidest of the life on these increasingly corrupted landscapes. Is money all they know now? You can barely recall the other times, but was it different? No, it was always fucking brutal.
You remember that right faux-leather-gloved hand is gripping the face piece of the cherry red helmet, two-toned with the burgundy of blood, dented-in by skull and face meat and a spider web-scratched by broken teeth. The visor is completely busted out, but a thought sparks as you unzip the white fanny pack around your waist and remove a pair of dark Lennons that somehow survived the chaos more or less intact. You put those on, light the end of yellowed and bent square that you find along with an amber Bic, both having belonged, along with these vials and tight rolls of one hundred dollar bills, to the psychotic cunt whose stupid face you made go splat.
Oh well, whatever, never mind, you think and immediately feel stupid for having thought that, as you, at long last, locate your bike that is suspiciously not stolen or vandalized. Fuck, that seat his hot between your legs, but so dreamy there as you rev the throttle. You suck on your middle finger, lick the emerald nail with a globule of sweet n’ salty saliva, and give a cold tweak to your right nipple under your scratchy showbiz shirt. You squeeze the clutch, release the brake, click down the gear and open her up into the balmy twilight with no destination in mind except the fuck outta here.
-excerpt from, The Candied Tarantula (La Tarentule Confite)
More in a previous post here and the Ersatzennui episode here.
Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription for greater access and benefits, including Dilettante tier membership at Ersatzennui with George Quartz at Patreon. For more information on additional discounts, etc., please click here.
Share this post