The needle gently cajoles a tune out of the scratchy analog of the vinyl LP. A non-descript instrumental slowly makes itself comfortable within the dingy confines of the studio basement that I have casually convinced myself to call a home. A very lose definition of said ‘home‘ is a rickety futon, a bookshelf sporting the leftovers of academia, accompanied by a thrift store rug that has started reeking of spilt beer. The open brick walls are slightly moldy, echoing the soggy sentiments of the wintry rain that has seeped through after days of continuous downpour. Soggy walls and a rug with Guinness stains.
A plastic cup sits on the far corner of the rug, a few feet from the door to the basement. It is half-full of what is now an amalgamate of beer, soda, water, and cigarette butts and ashes. It could almost be the next revolutionary chauvinist’s cologne scent. Almost. The red plastic cup nurses the scars of being scorched by the consecutive cigarette butts. Little dark holes, with maroon edges, that lethargically leak brownish goo. Brownish goo of beer, soda, water, and cigarette butts and ashes.
What began as a nondescript instrumental slowly resolves itself into a warbled version of Cannonball Adderly’s “Mercy Mercy Mercy.” The needle, in its own nonchalant pace, decides to swallow certain notes hurriedly while precariously dragging some out of the speakers like stale chewing gum.
Regardless, even within those vacillations, the little aural nib manages to scribble unwavering sentiments. Vague, but unwavering in their vagueness … which, naturally, makes them that much more sentimental mostly because I find myself incapable of isolating the intricacies of the warbled record. I should have moved the pile of records away from the sun and stowed away in the safe haven of a crate. Maybe against the wall opposite the doorway, where they can rest close to one corner of the hygienically challenged rug.
I pace around, intermittently puffing on what is left of the previous evening’s joint. She is still curled up on the futon, with only one corner of the comforter resting on the small of her back, her face buried in the pillow. The brown pillowcase used to be a bright orange once. I stifle a cough. Her muffled breathing and the warbled record are already in discord … no need to add to that with my narcotic hacking.
Tiptoeing around the soggy portions of the rug, I make my way to the little red ashtray that could, and put out the joint, picking up a pack of cigarettes from the floor on my way back upright.
The alarm clock on the floor by the futon boldly declares that it’s only a few minutes shy of 5am.
I pace around more with the cigarette, only stopping to add bulk to the little mountain of ashes in the red cup. My eyes train around my not-so-spacious space and stop at the pile of incomplete paintings in one corner. Art can be a burden. I turn around and see her still motionless on the futon. The warbled Adderly hasn’t managed to disrupt her reveries at all.
The needle decides to gobble down some more notes in a rush, and I am reminded of the scents I detected the first time I heard my father belch. I was eight. Maybe nine. It was the most foul odor, but it was my father. I couldn’t reconcile the sentiment of disgust with that of respect and love.
He was driving me to school, dodging vehicular hysteria and the din of horns and brakes. The radio was off. The windows rolled down. Dust everywhere. Then, in what seemed like a rift in the space-time continuum, everything came to a standstill as his chest cavity heaved, and it happened. It wasn’t the sound as much as it was the odor that was unsettling. As quickly as I was disgusted, I felt a wave of shame engulfing me. It’s my father, for God’s sake! Nothing he can do can be disgusting. Not even the most offensive bodily func –
Click! Whirr!
The arm of the record player levitated itself from the grooves of Adderly’s musings, and rested itself back, while the plate decelerated itself to a stop.
Now it was only her breathing in the room. I thought about pacing around more, but thought better of it lest it results in the absolute disintegration of all universal laws of existence.
Be still.
My cigarette is done, and the flaming filter is slowly burning my index and middle fingers. Yet, the makeshift ashtray is still a few feet away.
No, don’t even think about moving! Figure out a way … Put it out in your eye if you have to! SHHH! You’re thinking too loudly, you high bastard!
For a few fleeting seconds, I consider erupting into a mad scream and collapsing to the dirty rug in feigned sleep as I hear her absolute confusion.
Cruel. Amusing, but cruel. Mostly amusing. Maybe not cruel at all.
I hold out the butt between my thumb and my index finger and aim, mustering up as much saliva as my cottonmouth could endure. The little ball of spittle bungee jumps from my mouth, puts out the ember with a soft hiss, and then drops to the floor, followed by the consumed cigarette.
Sweet!
“What the hell are you doing?”
I am jolted from my McGyver moment by her voice. I look around and she is sitting up. She looks like she has been sitting up, witnessing my bravado.
“Hm? Nothing. Why are you awake?” I was never that good at redirecting conversations.
“Well, my dream was finished. And clearly, reality is a lot more bizarre.” She looks down at the cigarette butt drowned in a ball of spittle, resting like a corpse in a pool of Guinness stain.
The solitary window in the room is lodged between the sidewalk outside and the ceiling of the basement in a seemingly last minute architectural brilliance. The slow sunrise has flooded the outside with a hazy, blurry orange, and the feet of neighbors walking by breaks up the mediocre light into an erratic shimmy of shadows dancing all over my soggy brick walls and stained rug.
“I’m sweating like a pig,” she says, irritated, rubbing her neck and flinging the comforter away.
“You know pigs don’t sw – ”
“Yes, yes, you’ve told me that before. Maybe there are some bits of information you need to flush out of that mind of yours. Pass me a cigarette?” She stretches out her arm and yawns.
In my head, I have instantly conjured up intricate theories about the accelerated evolution of pigs and deodorant products, where cigarette butts have staged a coup d’etat against big corporations, only to lie dead, martyrs in their own pools of Guinness, foaming at the mouth.
But she probably really doesn’t want to hear that.
I reach down to pick up the pack from the rug, but I’m confronted by the toxicity from my own armpit. I light her cigarette and, from a safe olfactory distance, hand it to her.
“I’m going to take a quick shower.” I turn around to head to the bathroom … squish! Revenge of the martyred cigarette butt! I look at the bottom of my right foot, and I see the cigarette butt affixed to my heel, smiling, and giving me the finger. I scrape the traitor back into the rug and walk to the whitewashed, tiled chamber of cleanliness, where my heel smears brown all over the floor tiles in blatant derision of all that is uniform.
Published by July 22nd, 2007 in Personal and Social.
toothpick ,forgive for being dumb i am trying to decipher through the article .is this a story about your current life injected with past recollection,i am really interested.thank you
tesdu I think this is tp’s virsion of “Cribs”
A virtual tour into the artist’s life…stains, green haze and all 
Don’t know why but it reminded me of “Being John Malkovich”.
Ah, more stains!
Wonderful read.
What a great read TP.
More, please, more.
hmm…personal indeed…
again. thought-provoking
do we live to stain so we could experience cleansing?
…the ever-satisfying bathroom trip is the most natural process that comes to mind
wow, your story was captivates the mind. kudos and thanks.
We had so many of those in my college days, we could’ve had a shop with them! Love it! That was great! lol
Toothpick, once again, a very captivating tale. Great job!
For the record, I mean as a statement of fact, not the vinyl, “A Sack O’ Woe” would’ve been more appropriate.
Keep up with the great job.
YekeyDama,thank you for your response yene konjo ,I finally got it kidnda ,great article very deep.
What an entertaining writing skill!!!Arif Neber!?
lots of details.colorful yet a bit depressing.Shall I say typically artistic……..I like it.
Nice, finally something of TP’s I can understand. So was this in your dream or awake state? Also was the girl your subconscious (getting in touch with your feminine side lol)?
oof, TPppppp, I like the way u write! and yea, Celeb, saying same thing myself…something of TP’s I can understand
The guy is a writer….
TP, I still hold you to your promise of podcasting some of your music…
I am not going to lie and say i understand everything… but he is not just a writer… he is an artist… in all forms… music, litreture, visual etc…
this was funny read…. thanks TP
I finally decided to read TP. I now have a headache.
Why did the writer provide wiki-link only for Guinness and McGyver? Is the link for the sake of the author or the reader? If the latter, I could have found help in more wiki-link. If the first…nah, can’t imagine TP placing an ad in his articles…
[quote comment="63161"]I finally decided to read TP. I now have a headache…[/quote]
Ask TP to roll up a joint for you
TP teter yale newe 
LOL you cracked me up
so that you be in the state of mind he was in and may be that would clear up the ‘fog’ with another one
“She is still curled up on the futon, with only one corner of the comforter resting on the small of her back, her face buried in the pillow. The brown pillowcase used to be a bright orange once.”
“I reach down to pick up the pack from the rug, but I’m confronted by the toxicity from my own armpit. I light her cigarette and, from a safe olfactory distance, hand it to her.”
I think she would have preferred manly odor over orange pillow turned brown. But again seconds after he lights her a fag, TP cleanses himself of more than just a sticky cigratte butt.
thanks for the kind words, y’all. if you enjoyed the read, all well and good … yay! if not … well … err … maybe next time, then.
a couple of thoughts/clarifications:
- this was written in perfect sobriety
- the basement and the girl are both amalgamates of a couple places i’ve lived and a couple of women i’ve dated
- the wiki-links were courtesy of nolawi, not me
dinich, i’d rather email you the “music” instead of podcasting it … shoot me an email at toothpick@gmail.com and i’ll send you a few tracks i worked on recently
TP: I enjoyed your piece although I had to read it three times get some meaning out it. I am surprise you didn’t drag and throw(or hack) the chick out the door and then take a shower. You showed your soft side, the ladies are lining up to smell your brown pillow and more….
[quote comment="63194"]- this was written in perfect sobriety
- the basement and the girl are both amalgamates of a couple places i’ve lived and a couple of women i’ve dated
[/quote]
toothpick,
so all this is true huh….? i now know for sure that you are the artist that i thought you really are
i can’t relate with that kind of life style. but i have a relative who is an artist that has a similar life style.
i think you should audition as a movie script writer or do your own movie script (i am not kidding).
lol
wow! anyways, I still waiting for the complete book
what is the status?
yap yap felasfa, there are people who do not know who magyver and what guinness is
[quote comment="63846"]yap yap felasfa, there are people who do not know who magyver and what guinness is[/quote]
i was actually loling @ the artist-audience back and forth…
BI: can’t imagine TP placing an ad in his articles…
TP: the wiki-links were courtesy of nolawi, not me
…i think its a v.good idea to have links actually…
tnx TP! i read it twice, very intersting…is there a part2?
I’m sure this doesn’t come new to you and you probably have pondered the idea of publishing a book more than once but I’m just being another voice that says its a good idea if you are. A pultizer prize maybe a book deal in the millions…I dont know, you have a great gift of diction power and poignant sentence structures buried in that cranium of yours and this type of materials are not just blog worthy but hard-cover, library classics, critical acclaim worth stuff and I hope you strike something…keep it up and remember the revolution will not be blogged!
…for the record there are ppl out in the world still waiting on the launch of the toothpick blog…
let us know when jan ’08 comes around
(assuming there’s about 8 years to go it might be a long wait…but oh well…what can one do, right?)
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