The Portable Henry Rollins Read online

  The writings collected in this volume are fictional and of the author’s imagination, except for excerpts from the author’s personal journals (which are each preceded by the date of the journal entry and can be found in Black Coffee Blues, Now Watch Him Die, Get in the Van, and Do I Come Here Often?)

  Copyright © 1997 by Henry Rollins

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Villard Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  VILLARD BOOKS is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Most of the essays that appear in this work were published by 2.13.61 in books of the same title:

  High Adventures in the Great Outdoors, copyright © 1992 by Henry Rollins;

  Pissing in the Gene Pool, copyright © 1992 by Henry Rollins;

  Art to Choke Hearts, copyright © 1992 by Henry Rollins; Bang!, copyright © 1990 by Henry Rollins;

  One from None, copyright © 1993 by Henry Rollins; Black Coffee Blues, copyright © 1992 by Henry Rollins;

  See a Grown Man Cry, copyright © 1992 by Henry Rollins;

  Now Watch Him Die, copyright © 1993 by Henry Rollins;

  Get in the Van, copyright © 1994 by Henry Rollins;

  Eye Scream, copyright © 1996 by Henry Rollins; and

  Do I Come Here Often?, copyright © 1996 by Henry Rollins.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rollins, Henry.

  The portable Henry Rollins/Henry Rollins.

  p.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-56809-0

  1. Title.

  PS3568.05397P67 1997

  818’.5409—dc21 97-2931

  www.villard.com

  v3.0

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you: Villard, Gail Perry, Richard Bishop, Peggy Truxis, Vega, Selby, Bajema, Shields, Carol Bua, Ian Mac-Kaye, Mitch Bury of Adams Mass.

  JOE COLE

  4.10.61-12.19.91

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  High Adventure in the Great Outdoors

  Pissing in the Gene Pool

  Art to Choke Hearts

  Bang!

  One from Hone

  Black Coffee Blues

  See a Grown Man Cry

  Now Watch Him Die

  Get in the Van

  Eye Scream

  Do I Come Here Often?

  Solipsist

  Three Short Stories

  Photo Credits

  Introduction

  I started writing on the road when I was in a band called Black Flag. I was young and the road held much to open the eye. So many things were happening day-to-day, I thought it would be a good idea to start writing about it. The more I wrote, the more I liked writing. After a while, it occurred to me to make a book. I saved money that I was supposed to use to eat with.

  After several months I had enough to make a fold-and-staple photocopied chapbook. I sold five hundred of them and used the money to make another run. I made a paperback later that year. A friend told me that I had to have a name for my company. Company? I was just making some books at a cheap printer in downtown LA and selling them out of my backpack. I took his advice and came up with 2.13.61 Publications. Those numbers stand for my birthday. I figured I will be the only one on the label, so why not?

  Time went on and more paperbacks came out. I got an office and some staff to deal with the mail order and store accounts. We started putting other people’s work out. More time passed and we kept moving the company to larger places and needed bigger storage space for all the titles.

  As it is now, we are a small book company that puts out everything from photo books to short-story and poetry books. We do okay.

  I was at Villard one day in 1996 for a meeting with Craig Nelson. He asked me if I would consider doing an anthology of my work. I thought that was an interesting idea. The excerpts from my books included in this volume were chosen in hopes of presenting a fully rounded view of what I do writing-wise, and I hope you enjoy it… or something.

  — HENRY ROLLINS

  Numbers are perfect, infallible and everlasting. You aren’t. Numbers are always right in the end. You may see an incorrect figure, but that’s not the fault of the number, the fault lies in the person doing the calculating. How many times will your heart beat during your lifetime? Of course you don’t know! But there’s a number that will provide you with this small bit of information. Numbers are dependable! The sun may explode, you may lose your job, you may never be able to get it up again, but at the end of the day five is five. Get it? Good! Numbers do not cut in line at lunchtime. Numbers do not write bad checks. Numbers sound cool, like when a fucking pig gets a call on his pig radio to go answer a 2-11. You can go to buy coffee at 7-Eleven. Numbers make good names. Like at a party or soirée. I always wear a sticker that has a martini glass and the words HI MY NAME IS: printed on it; underneath the printing I write in “2-13-61.” So I can say, “Hi, my name is 2-13-61, what’s yours?” Then you can say to girls or guys, “Hey you’re really the bees’ knees! What’s your number?”

  I see walking bombs on the street

  Hearts not beating, but ticking

  I am talking about detonation!

  You’re in McDonald’s

  And some guy’s head explodes

  Brains everywhere

  I think there’s some faulty circuitry here

  You see some guy in a business suit

  Walking home from work

  Look at him closely

  He’s slumped over

  There’s smoke coming out of one ear

  There’s a buzzing, crackling sound coming from his head

  Blown fuses

  Poor machine!

  But it’s ok

  The parts are interchangeable

  We’ll install a new one

  In a state of delirium I dreamt that I came upon a female cockroach the size of a girl. She smiled at me and told me to come closer. She kissed me. The feeling of her belly scales against my flesh made me convulse and sweat. We made love. She wrapped her six legs around my back and pulled me close. Her antennas lashed my back. No girl ever made me feel like that before, ever. By morning I was covered with sweat, blood, and a noisome yellow-green mucus. She had my children (twenty of them). They were semihuman in form, could reproduce in weeks not years, and could lift up to six times their own weight. We are breeding. In the alleys in the sewers in the back rooms and brothels. Not a day goes by where my children don’t grow in size and strength. We are everywhere. You try to kill us with motels and poison. This is snack food for us. You will never rid the world of us. We will rid the world of you.

  I woke up this morning in the truck. I like sleeping in the truck. It’s quiet and dark. Rain was falling on the roof. Sounded nice. Outside I heard tires screeching followed by a loud crash. I looked out the window. Head-on collision. The song “Dead Joe” by the Birthday Party immediately came to mind. There was a child lying sprawled on the sidewalk in the rain. The mother was in hysterics. The child kept screaming, “Mommy! Mommy!” I tried to imagine what the mother saw when she looked down at her child. Was the child’s head bashed in? Were any bones exposed? Was the child’s blood mixing with the falling rain and making rivulets of bloody water into the grass? Did their eyes meet? When the child would scream, the mother would jerk as if hit by lightning. Do the jerk mom, c’mon mom, do it in the rain. C’mon ma, jerk it. Use your hips mom. Jerk it.

  She lit my soul and inhaled deeply

  Flicking my ashes occasionally

  Finally, she ground me out

  After a time, she reached for another

  C
racked

  Crumbling

  Ruptured soul

  Shattered

  I wrote out a road map to get back home

  I threw it away

  Here I am

  In uncertain time

  And a shaky place

  And this is all right

  Not somehow

  But all right

  This isn’t the way it is

  It’s the way it is around these parts

  I was in a men’s room at one of those big gas-rest-food stops. At the urinal I saw six men pull down their zippers and pull out their cocks almost simultaneously. It was fantastic, like a firing squad, or like some kind of secret Masonic pud-grab ritual. Men act differently in the men’s room. They don’t talk much, and if they do, it’s real loud as if to say, “Hey, I’m not afraid to talk in the men’s room!” They act very manly in the men’s room lest someone think they are gay. There are no weaklings in the men’s room! We are in the men’s room. We have our cocks in our hands. We are urinating our way. Right. A man who is henpecked and owned by his wife or girlfriend transforms into a virtual bedrock of masculinity upon entering the men’s room. It’s a temporary club, where men, united by a need to urinate, are men.

  I poured salt on a large slug. The slug writhed and squirmed. The slug tried to escape me and my burning salt. The slug made no sound. I’m sure if I was turned inside out and dipped in salt, I would scream. I remember how the slug glistened and respirated until I put the salt on it. I remember how it tried to get away, secreting yellow-green mucus in great quantities that bubbled slightly. My fascination turned into revulsion as the slug writhed and tossed from side to side, secreting even more yellow-green mucus to try and beat the salt. It was a losing battle for the slug, because when the slug had succeeded in rubbing off some of the salt, I would simply turn the salt shaker over on the slug and the game would start again. Eventually I got bored and left the slug, still writhing, trying in vain to get free of the salt bath that would eventually suck the slug dry. Later I imagined that my whole body was a tongue, and I was dipped in salt.

  Home. The streets lie, the sidewalks lie. You can try to read it but you’re gonna get it wrong. The summer evenings burn and melt and the nights glitter, but they lie. Underneath the streets there’s a river that moves like a snake. It moves with smooth, undulating, crippling muscle power. It chokes and drowns and trips and strangles and lures and says, “Come here, stay with me,” and it lies.

  I saw a man slither down four blocks of gutter with his face pressed against the ground. He called himself the snake man, said he could do just about anything. He didn’t say a word about right or wrong or once or twice. He just talked about doing it. He bled dirt, he was down in the gutter, crawling low, he was invincible. I saw a man jam a needle into his arm. He looked my way and told me he was free. I saw a man who had cried so much that he had trenches bored into his face from the river of tears. He had his head in a vise, and every once in a while he would give it a little twist. I saw a man who was so run-down that he was pissing blue. He was pissing the blues, now that’s what I call blue.

  I was playing at this club in Birmingham, Alabama, called the Nick. I was sitting at the bar staring at the picture of Amanda Strickland. I had found the flyer at a restaurant a bit earlier that evening. The guy next to me said, “Yeah, they found her.”

  “In how many pieces?” I asked.

  He said, “One. She was shot twice in the back of the head.” The two abductors had her about six to eight hours, drove her to Atlanta, killed her, and tossed the body. The body was found about two weeks later. The guy next to me added, “She was bisexual. You know, kind of strange. A real nice girl.”

  On the day of October 1, 1984, Katherine Arnold bought a shotgun at a K mart in Lincoln, Nebraska. Katherine, twenty-eight, mother of a son, took the shotgun into the parking lot of the K mart, sat down against a retaining wall, and blew her brains out. On October 2, I came to Lincoln to play at the Drumstick. The Drumstick is one hundred yards away from the K mart. I sat most of the day in the Drumstick writing. Now and again I would hear snatches of conversation about how “this lady blew her brains out.” Later on that evening some people were telling me about it. This kid came up with a McDonald’s cheeseburger wrapper all wrapped up. He opened it. Inside was some of Katherine Arnold’s brains. After the show I took a flashlight and went out to the K mart parking lot. I walked down the lot, parallel with the retaining wall. I saw chalk markings on the pavement. I made a right and hopped over the wall; I shined the light against the wall. I found the spot. The wall was tinted brown from blood and gunpowder. The grassy area around the stain had been clipped. There was a sliver of brain still stuck on the wall. I peeled it off. There was a very strange smell in the air. I have never smelled anything like it before. I felt around in the surrounding area. I found some portions of brain tissue. I sat there alone with the remains of K. Arnold and that smell. It seemed to be in my pores, in my brain. I remember getting the feeling that this was a very special place, some kind of hallowed ground. I wanted to stay longer, I wanted to sit down exactly where she had. At this point I was overcome by a feeling of being watched, watched from the trees or from someplace outside the distance of the flashlight’s reach. It was time to leave. I picked up the pieces of brain tissue from the grass and went back to the club. Waiting outside to leave, I sat down and thought about the whole thing. After a while, the blood would wash off the wall, the grass would grow back, and it wouldn’t look like anything out of the ordinary. Maybe some kids would come there in a car, park, and drink some beers, legs dangling, feet hitting against the spot where Katherine Arnold’s head rested. I wondered if the partyers would become aware of an odor. I wondered if they would just get up without a word and get the hell out of there. I found the article on Katherine Arnold in the local newspaper. I cut it out, and drove all night to Minneapolis.

  Katherine, who would ever think that your trail would end at K mart? Did anyone tell you? If you were alive right now, I mean if your brains hadn’t been blown out of your skull with that shotgun you put to it, would you have believed that you would have done such a thing? Katherine, you didn’t see what I saw. Oh girl, some kid had a hunk of your brains in a cheeseburger wrapper and was showing it to people. I went to the place where you shot yourself, you know the place I’m talking about, you were there about twenty-six hours before me. Katherine, I searched through the grass with my hands, I found pieces of your brain covered with dead grass and dirt. I peeled a piece of your head off the wall. You might be interested to know that your husband found you. Imagine what he saw, you with your brains all over the place. Katherine, I hope you aren’t angry with me. I kept part of your blasted-up brain. I wrapped it up in a piece of tinfoil and put it in my backpack. I think about you from time to time. Hey, you made the local papers and everything. Who would have thought your trail would end at K mart?

  I just got off work. I work at an ice cream store. I scoop ice cream into cups, cones, pint containers, quart containers, coffins, and body bags. I work behind a counter. I’m kind of like a bartender. I watch the pretty girls pass the window that looks out onto the sidewalk. I’m the guy in the ice cream store. I have been here eleven hours. My legs ache. I just got off work, it’s 2:30 a.m. I’m hungry so I go to the only place that’s open. 7-Eleven. I get the same thing every night. I sit alone on the curb and eat. I have to walk to my apartment. My apartment is home. I don’t want to go home. Home is dark, home is lonely. Home is cold storage. I’d rather go almost anywhere except home. I just got off work. I signed on for extra hours at the ice cream store so I could have somewhere to go. I go back into the 7-Eleven to get a Coke for the walk to the apartment. It’s a long walk. I don’t want to go to the apartment. The apartment knows I’m coming. The apartment knows I have nowhere else to go. The apartment is smiling. It shuts off the heat and waits for me to fall in. I leave the 7-Eleven and walk down Wisconsin Avenue. I walk past the ice cream store and check the
door to make sure it’s locked. I just got off work. I hate my life. I hate myself. I feel ugly, unwanted, mad, mean, cold, and condemned. I make the walk to the apartment. I pull out my folding shovel and dig down six feet to my front door.

  Fuck you Alan: I have been here all day. It’s 6 p.m. I look forward to getting off work. It’s cool not to work at night for once. I got nowhere to go, but still… I’m waiting on Alan to come in and take over. It’s 6:15, he’s fifteen minutes late, fuck you Alan. Forty-five minutes later, Alan comes in, he’s bleeding from his eye, his forehead is smashed up. Alan also works at this fancy shoe store up the street. At 6 o’clock the shoe store got robbed and the robber beat Alan’s head in with the butt of a gun. Alan wants to know if I can pull his shift for him so he can go to the hospital. I ask him if he is sure he can’t work. Alan stares at me in disbelief. Alan goes off to the hospital in a cab. The night shift is here. I might as well be here. I don’t need the extra money and the store beats the apartment, but still… fuck you Alan.

  I played this club in San Francisco. The night before, another band played. All night long the guitar player sat in a small room with the lights out. He spoke to no one. He played two sets, he stood in the shadows and played his guitar. Between sets he went back to the small room and sat in the dark. The next day they cleaned up the room, they found the ashtray full of Camel nonfilter butts. The ends were caked with heroin. What a life.

  I’ve got a place

  I’ve got a desert

  I’ve got a good thing going

  Don’t climb down here