Kathleen

It was a warm summer evening when I met Kathleen. I stumbled out of the Flicker Bar around 9pm and the sun still mocked the night hanging low and ominous over the western horizon. My pupils adjusted to the light, and the images of Marlene Dietrich I had just viewed coursed through my mind. The Flicker Bar had a side-room that served as a movie theatre. The cool wooden floors of the bar had invited and enticed me, squeaking slightly under my 140lb frame. "Gin and tonic." Flaccid currency exchange and a nod to the bar tender-just a nod-pure, simple, fucking meaningless. I paid the five-dollar admission and parted the curtains. A couple and a strange man sat in near darkness as lonely admirers of Ms. Dietrich. I choose a seat as far away from the other audience members as possible in this small rectangular room. After two drinks I decided to waste my money elsewhere and a voice from above chanted thrice, "Please move into the theatre, the movie will begin in one minute." Fuck. Three more souls join us in the theatre, laughing loudly and smacking their lips around deceit and pomp that demands circumstance sing merrily along. The documentary is very well done, but the director was quite obviously too modern a thinker to handle the precious ordeal of capturing Marlene Dietrich on film. The majority of the film consisted of a tape-recorded interview the director conducted with Ms. Dietrich in her Paris apartment. Ms. Dietrich refused to be filmed. The director brilliantly incorporated collages of past images and footage of the apartment…excluding Marlene. As I said, it was brilliant, but it was past tense, and idolized Marlene as a figment of a collective memory. The movie was time consuming and therefore useful…besides there haven't been many women on this planet that have what Marlene Dietrich innately weaves with her diaphanous sensuality. Like I was saying…

I stumbled out of the Flicker Bar around nine. I hadn't been there since it was called The Hole in the Wall. Two brothers purchased the struggling bar and began realizing their dream of creating a film society of sorts in this sleepy southern town that ever teeters between cultural maturity and backwoods charm. The bad news…they were a bunch of snooty fuckers, the entire lot of them. I don't know what one has to be snooty about when one hails from Athens, Georgia, but you know those artsy kids. The true tragedy being that the "artsy" kids that gathered virally in these huddled pseudo-intellectual collectives were typically the least artistically interesting people you'll ever meet. Their pious sanctuary to their own egos made the human in me wretch, so I walked along Washington St. in search of alcohol and people who were still willing to admit that they were alive. Now, don't get me wrong, most people appear alive, but marionette's strings are invisible to those easily distracted.

"BILL!"

"BILL!!!!!!!!!"

I looked to my right and saw Brian's face pressed sideways against the front window of the Engine Room. His tongue flailed serpentine against the glass.

"Christ man, you look like the poster child for cunnilingus education," I mused to myself. I waved, but that will not be enough tonight. Brian makes his way toward the door, so I succumb and enter the Engine Room. As I crossed the threshold I descended back into the world of the living…

"Whose birthday is it?"

"How did you know? Never mind, it's Matt's 26th." Brian is slurring horribly. It doesn't take a pearl of wisdom from the holy precipice of omniscience to see that these boys have been drinking since 3 or 4 in the afternoon.

"Happy b-day Matt. I'll be right back." Matt's a tequila kid. Never understood the attraction, but when you enjoy tequila on a regular basis, it is typically the only drink you'll shoot. Keeping in good decorum, I order a shot of tequila for myself and toast Matt.

"To kinky sex and longevity."

"HERE HERE!" The boys began shouting and singing. The tequila hit my throat like a mistress opening a letter from your other mistress… "Damn. Fucking tequila…"

"What man?" Brian tries desperately to focus on the sound of my voice. Christ knows he can't see anything but fuzzy color at this juncture.

"Nothing chief, just enjoying my Mexican candy." I can split after a drink and save face for old Matt. They'll never see me slip out. I walked over to the bar and ordered a Newcastle. The angel Gabriel poured it and returned for his monetary compensation. I fill his ears with the enthusiasm I feel from the Dietrich film. The truly sad part is I wish I enjoyed it as much as I said I did. I wish I still enjoyed ANYthing as much as I convince myself I do. Nothing quickens the blood; nothing interrupts the heartbeat-thudthudthudthud-life progresses and decays.

After another beer and a gin and tonic to top them all off, I realized that the tequila shot was once again a horrible idea. Tequila always is. I was in no shape for tequila, and I soon nodded my head in respect for my body's slight stab to my esophagus. I confessed that I had been a poor decision-maker for my body and all of my organs signed the stab of pain like John Hancock and his constituency of impotent kings.

Everything got a bit stranger and I lost my world-famous focus. Someone suggested we head out to the Lunch Paper. I failed myself by agreeing that that was in any way, shape, or form, a good idea. The Lunch Paper was an entity unto itself. The walls were littered with Kiss memorabilia, stickers of local punk rock outfits, pictures of skinheads, greasers, and vile threats warning customers that "those who do not tip do not leave alive". Proudly framed at the base of a statue of Gene Simmons hung a National Inquirer article that told the tale of a Texas bartender who allegedly poisoned 13 customers who had poor tipping practices.

The punk/S&M/goth creature that was tending bar dropped her gaze and asked silently for my ID. I flipped my card onto the bar remaining silent as well. I ordered some gin and took a long deep look at the largest collection of frightened tough-guy wannabes in northern Georgia. Hell, punk rock should have never ostracized jocks. The movement would have never died. The only people keeping the pseudo- punk movement alive now are people Darby Crash would have slit from ear to ear with his broken front tooth. Who listens to punk now? Mostly jocks. Fuck punk, whatever THAT means. It never meant anything, and it never will.

The Lunch Paper had an imposed Irish/English feel to it, which meant it had Guinness on tap as well as Newcastle. Good enough for me! I can tolerate the company as long as Guinness is involved. Brian and crew began the ritual dart playing, the rite of passage, the sensitive man's testosterone release. I planned my escape silently at the bar. Sex was mentioned, and in a strangely democratic collective it was decided that the next stop was a strip joint on Jackson St. and seemed like the only logical place for these drunkards to drop their last 100$. "I'm in, just along for the ride guys." I chimed in as late as possible, but was flattered by the uproar. Apparently it does matter that I'm here, now if I could just get it to matter to ME I'd really be on to something.

The doorman recognized me as a friend or Mr. Eric Berg's and let me slide in. Eric was my boss, a nightly regular at Topper's, and about the nicest guy you'll ever meet that has a debilitating stripper addiction. I strolled right in, "You guys are on your own." Brian and crew had to fork over 10$ each to walk in the door…poor bastards…they must be veryvery anxious to see the unclothed female form. Topper's is a womb-like experience, a temple to the female reproductive organs. I'm not talking about a shrine to breasts, hips and ass, but a personification of womanhood from labia all the way to the ovary. I walked down three stairs still feeling the hot fluorescent lights in the lobby, and across a carpet that is surely listed as one of the top-ten biohazard disasters in U.S. history. The fluorescent light ceases when the heavy door slams behind me and I am i-n-s-i-d-e.

The enveloping rush of black light dilated my pupils but proper vision was almost instantaneous. I am air being forcibly pushed through the mesh grater of repulsive eroticism …cornered …dragged …pulled …lulled …enticed. The bright stage lights smacked me in the face as I turned the corner. Pulsing, flashing, lights translate subliminal Cro-Magnon messages to the part of a man's brain that realizes the negativity of instinct. It is the force without cause. The force without mercy. Piercing white, red, and yellow beams of light sliced, scalpel-like, maiming core thought process and centralizing all matter on one thing…

"Gin and tonic please."

"This place makes me want to drink…more," I rasp.

"MAN! There are naked women RIGHT THERE!!!!"

"If I need to drink and see naked women, there are much less expensive ways of going about it."

"This is true, but they're RIGHT THERE!!!!!!"

"No they're not. They're not there. Don't fool yourself, every slip of curvaceous hip and ass is an illusion."

Who was I talking to?

Who was WHO talking to?

Leave me alone…please.

As you wish.

Brian and crew take a large lit table and a young girl [probably paying her way through college in this fucked backwoods town] hostage. I saw them waving me over, but I combat this intrusion by pretending not to understand. Head shrug-cup the ear, whispering *I can't hear you* et cetera. I was waiting for someone who wasn't already dead. I find myself waiting…always waiting. Kathleen walked between the black velvet curtains behind the stage. She entered and left unwelcome and unwanted.