The Portable Henry Rollins

by Henry Rollins

  Urine-soaked hallways, puke-stained stairways

  And palm trees

  Like a postcard

  There should be a postcard

  That shows a dead street-gang member

  Lying in a pool of blood

  His dead body resting at the foot of a palm tree

  The desert ghetto

  Dogs lifting their legs and pissing on palm trees

  Palm trees lining the front of a star’s home

  Anyone can have them

  Limbs of Barbra Streisand’s severed corpse

  Thrown all over her front yard

  Her fat head resting on a palm frond

  Her crossed confused eyes looking up

  At the warm California sun

  The bums in Venice should get together and form a gang. They should get some patches to put on the backs of their filthy jackets. The initiation would be to shit and piss in your pants, without changing them, for a year and a half. They could rumble with other gangs of derelicts in parking lots by the pier. They would square off and bum change off the tourists. The gang who had more dough at the end of the night would be the winner. Not to mention the most fucked up by the dawn’s early light.

  Have you ever got the feeling that there’s no time left? Or maybe that it’s running out faster than you think, faster than you could possibly imagine? Do you ever get to feeling like that when you’re lying in your lover’s arms talking a bunch of shit that seems to make sense at the time but not really because you know that tomorrow you’re not going to feel that way? And you know it all the while and still you go along with it for some reason and you don’t know what that reason is but you never stop to question it because you’re too wrapped up in some shit that’s making you blind?

  Do you ever get to feeling like that when someone is stringing you along to your death by wasting your time with bullshit and lies that feel good? Do you ever get that feeling? Do you? Ever at all? Do you think that you’ll be here forever? Do you ever think that wasting time is losing time? Do you ever think that losing time is gaining on your death? Not death that doesn’t touch you, like in a movie or in a magazine or some fucking cause that you give your filthy money to, but your death. The real death, the one that takes your life. Do you ever feel like there’s no air to breathe? Like things are getting tight and heavy in your chest? Do you ever get that feeling in your guts like it’s going to be over sooner than later and sooner as every hour passes, as every minute, as every second goes by? Do you ever feel like the air is being sucked out of you? Do you ever feel like running until you burst into flames and explode?

  I do.

  I’ve got a stopwatch strapped to my brain. Got a death-trip man screaming in my ear. I got a part animal part machine vision digging its spurs into my side screaming, “Faster, you idiot, the sun is coming up!”

  Do you ever get the feeling that there’s no way out? Everything around you closes in. The walls that have all of your favorite pictures become your enemies. It’s suffocation. Every thing, every thought, every movement, everything becomes a knife slashing at your face. You start to think that existence is a dirty trick. A sucker punch. You’re a punched-out sucker waiting for the air to not be so hard to breathe. You have to look out because you’re walking into coffin walls all the time. You turn around and something says: Don’t breathe, don’t think, don’t move. Don’t do anything to remind yourself that you’re alive. Maybe then you’ll be okay. Okay for now or as long as it takes your heart to beat once. Don’t close your eyes, don’t do it. Don’t even blink. You don’t want to miss a second of it.

  In the evenings the noise outside escalates to the point where everyone is yelling at each other. I keep waiting to hear that gunshot, that scream, that siren, something to tell me that someone has blown their top. It never comes. I wish there was a schedule I could look at. I would stay home so I didn’t miss the men taking the body out of the apartment across the street or the two men squaring off in the middle of the street to kick the shit out of each other. That would make having to put up with all this noise a lot more worth it. I think it would relieve a lot of tension in these parts. I can see it in myself, all night long I have to listen to these assholes outside yelling like they’re getting burned alive. Three in the morning and they’re out there blasting that shitty music and yelling a bunch of shit. Tension, yes, the tension needs to be released. All I feel like doing is getting a gun and picking them off from the upstairs bedroom. That’s what I call tense.

  That’s the problem though. All windup, no release. No fire. No pow pow pow. Why can’t these guys get into some heavy thing with the cops? All the time those choppers are hovering right over the block, they never do shit. What the fuck. Why can’t there be one of those SWAT guys on the roof, someone like that guy Hondo from the TV show. I can see him now, his cap on backward so he can see better, a cigarette dangling out of his mouth as he picks off those shitty little kids on their way home from school. Nothing like that ever happens here. All we get are these overweight social workers who come and hang out, score their drugs, and leave. I’m not advocating death and destruction, well I guess I am but what the fuck? All bullshit and no death and mutilated assholes make Jack a dull boy, dull and tense.

  Push them around. Don’t you ever feel the need to kill them over and over? I do all the time. They make my teeth grind, they make the bile rise in my throat. They force my eyes to hate. When I see them die, I feel good, I feel like I’m alive again. I feel like I’ve been reborn. I am part animal part machine. Do you feel what I’m saying? Do you feel it? Yes you do, I know how you think. I know the whole thing inside out. I tell you, I think I’m going to explode. Have you ever felt like you wanted to rip your fucking face off? Burn it and feel the pain that comes when you live in this place. I want you to see this place in the middle of a firestorm because you know it would feel so good to know that they’re burning like a fucking torch.

  I was walking up the avenue. I saw a gold Mercedes parked with its hazard lights blinking. There was a man and a woman in the front. Two black guys come walking up the avenue toward the Mercedes. When they get to the car, one of them starts shouting and bouncing the car up and down with his foot on the bumper. The other one just stands there watching. The guy gets off the bumper and grabs the hood ornament and makes like he’s going to pull it off, then he takes his hand off. He goes around to the passenger side and sticks his arm inside; he comes out with some kind of necklace. He goes around to the front of the car again and bounces it some more. Then he grabs the hood ornament again and pulls it off. He throws it across the street; it lands on a roof. He goes around to the passenger side again and yells into the car window. He turns away, and he and his friend go walking on up the street.

  I’m exhausted but I can’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes, these bright white dots go shooting through the space between my pupils and my eyelids. My body stiffens and jerks backward to dodge the dots. My spine is an animal occupying my body. My jaws are clenched tight. When I notice I relax my jaw. A short time later my teeth are grinding again. My stomach is a hard knot. I’m sweating, my armpits and crotch itch. I feel like screaming but I’m afraid of scaring myself to death. My heart aches, I wait on each beat to be the one who jams my heart into my windpipe. My head aches, it feels twice its normal weight, it feels like it’s going to explode. I can almost see it ripping out of my skull, flying across the room, and smashing against the wall.

  He took off his clothes and his watch and left them in a pile in the living room. He went to the bathroom and ran the water for the bath. He paced the hall waiting for the tub to fill. He didn’t want to go into the bathroom until the tub was full. The last time he tried this, his face staring at him in the mirror made him chicken out. The tub filled with water. He walked in, avoiding the mirror. He picked up the razor and put it to his wrist. He took a deep breath and pressed down. The pressure on his skin made him stop. He wasn’t afraid to die—that’s what he wanted. He was afraid of
the pain and the blood he knew he would see. He put the razor back to his wrist and closed his eyes. He pressed down firmly and evenly. He pulled the blade from his wrist to the crook of his arm. The pain wasn’t sharp as he expected it would be. It was a deep and dull throbbing ache that he could feel in his chest and head. The razor dropped from his hand. His knees went a bit weak. He caught himself on the shower curtain, which amazingly did not come down. He got in the tub and lay down. His breathing was heavy, the air felt tightly packed as he drew it in. He looked at the faucet and the soap holder. The air was getting heavier. The phone rang in the kitchen. He laughed and let out a long sigh, his eyes closed, his head tilted forward stopping when his chin hit his breastbone.

  I don’t understand you. I don’t think I ever did. For years I tried. I’m no closer now than I was then. It doesn’t make me hurt, but it makes me wonder. Back then I had ripped wounds and a head full of nothing. Thinking of you now makes me think that perhaps I haven’t changed much at all.

  I have dirt under my nails from digging this hole I’m in. When they talk to me, they get my imitation. I treat the flesh on my hands like it’s Playtex. They shake my hand but they never touch me. When I extend myself to them, it’s as if I have put a sign on my neck saying: DESTROY ME. When I extend myself I always become the victim of some kind of cruel joke. Now, I’m all for destruction, I think it’s all right, but I would rather do it to myself.

  Downward spiraling man. Forehead pushed in, walleyed. I rip his throat out. I push him. He falls away leaving a trail of exhaust fumes.

  She points her finger. His porcelain mask falls to the ground and breaks into many jagged pieces. She looks at the face that she had never seen before. She walks away, leaving him alone with his undoing all around his feet.

  Florida Highway, 1986. Lonely slum. I passed through on low wheels. It was hot outside. Shacks, gas stations that didn’t work, dead corn in fields, children on the road, retarded and dulled by the heat. Two girls waved as I passed.

  The sun is setting on my street. I live on Sunset Avenue. The drug dealers are having a meeting in the parking lot of the apartment across the street. They pull up in Cadillacs and BMWs. The little kids watch in silent reverence. To tell you the truth, it blows me away too. Seeing these guys with their gold and the nice cars, they look real smooth. Their hands wrap loosely around the steering wheels. Steering wheel one day, LA County prison bars the next.

  Clear blue sky, palm trees, offshore breeze, nice sunset. Well-dressed black boys on my street selling drugs. Last night I was getting out of the car and one of them came up to me and asked, “Lookin’?”

  I pointed to the apartment where I lived and said, “No, living.”

  He smiled and said, “I heard that.”

  A fly was crawling across my window. I crushed him with one of the blinds. I watched him crawl with his guts trailing behind him in a snotty little trail. No I didn’t stick my face in and clean it up with my tongue. You don’t know me as well as you think you do. I watched it crawl until it was too weak to haul its own guts. What a way to go. No complaining, no pleas for mercy. No cries for mamma. A while later I was looking out the window at the drug pushers across the street. I saw the fly again. It was still stuck to the glass by its guts. Another fly was eating him. I wish I could be like that. My girlfriend blows her brains out in the bathroom and I take her body downstairs and live on it for weeks. I couldn’t do that you know. I wouldn’t have the guts. I thought of that fly again with its buddy standing on top chowing down. That fly has more guts than I do.

  Hello Mom, do you read me? Over. Yes son go ahead. Over. Mom the sky is real red now and all you can smell is gasoline. You could look around at all the dead bodies and say that we’re in some kind of hell. The choppers are so loud I can’t even hear myself think, which is okay in a way because it keeps out all the bad thoughts. Nothing to think about except death. It’s not here yet but I know it’s only a matter of time. Over. That’s a big 10-4. Over and out.

  The Mexicans on their bikes

  I see them around sundown

  Riding slowly down the street

  I’m still asleep when they go to work

  They always ride fucked-up ten-speeds

  Sometimes they pull into the store

  A six of Bud

  They weave one-handed back into traffic

  Sometimes I can look into their eyes

  They always have that hard dull glaze

  Hours of hard manual labor grinds the shine right off

  Sometimes I think I see the same guy

  I could be in Redondo, Hermosa, Torrance, Venice

  It doesn’t matter

  I always see that same Mexican guy on the battered ten-speed

  When I look at him I think of overcrowded apartments

  Too many days and nights of never enough

  Too many mangled hands Too many lies and broken promises

  That keep you hungry and hanging on

  I sit at my table and listen to the noises outside. City sounds. I can imagine a new kind of jungle complete with its own animals, habitat, and laws. The way one pusher whistles to another, each has a different sound and pattern. Like birds in trees. The police choppers, the motor scooters. The arguments, the fights, the gunshots. The eventual siren. The cacophonous blend makes me lock my door and keeps me up at night.

  When I was seventeen, I went to Spain. Nothing adventurous, just a school trip. I stayed in a hotel with a few hundred other bored, horny students from all over the USA. It was as if I never left home. It was a big party where everyone got drunk and nobody got laid. One of the cool things I did besides barely escaping getting raped by these drunk Spanish faggots at the Don Quixote was to go to this bullfight. It was me, the students, and all the locals. The locals didn’t like us one bit. We always wanted the bull to win. We booed when they stuck the poor bastard with all the knives. There were three fights in all, and they all ended the same way. They would make a big deal of killing the bull slowly, and then the matador would put the sword through the bull’s neck and kill him. They would drag the dead bull around the ring. Maybe to rub it in or ensure that the matador got laid. The last fight was the best. The moment came when the bull and the matador were looking into each other’s eyes and the sword was about to plunge. The bull pulled to one side and swept his horn up and ripped out the matador’s kneecap and chucked his ass up into the sucker seats. All of us Americanos were on our feet cheering like crazy. The locals were booing at the same velocity. They sent in another guy, and he killed the shit out of that bull. They dragged his ass around the ring three times to let everybody know that you can’t win when you’re alone scared and crazy, pitted against a bunch of men with swords who aren’t drunk and who need to get laid.

  The boy in the chip shop wasn’t fucking with me. He was just standing there waiting for his order to come up. He was pale and lean. Nervous face. Acne, that gross facial hair that resembles some kind of fungus. I watched him lean against the counter tapping his coins. Like I said, he wasn’t fucking with me. I had this overwhelming urge to kick his ribs and head in. I have no explanation for this. I just stood there and looked at his midsection and imagined myself kicking. I could feel the ribs against the toes of my shoes, just like that dude’s head I kicked in Florida. That was the hardest I had ever kicked anyone in the head. I had no animosity toward this boy in the chip shop, no hate, nothing. That’s why I was standing there wondering what my problem is. The boy eventually got his order and left the shop. I can still imagine myself kicking his body across the floor of the shop. His body twitching and convulsing with each kick.

  Driving home I imagined the car in a terrible accident, where the driver’s head was smashed into the dashboard. I thought of his brains and teeth mixed together with the food we had just bought. I could almost smell it. The smell would be like the one I caught while I was crawling around the site where Katherine Arnold blew her brains out. There would be smashed bodies, steaming food, and blue
lights of the sirens bathing the wreck in rhythmic passes.

  I don’t want a shoulder to lean on. I don’t need it. The whole idea of “Someone, that special someone!” is for me a load of shit. I must be fully contained. No leakage, no spillover. Dependency is weakness. It’s such a lie. Lying there in bed, in your lover’s arms. She’s behind me, she believes in me! No one is behind me. I am behind me. I believe in me. I don’t need any support group to keep my head together. I know what I have to do, so I should just shut up and do it.

  Walking down Main Street in Venice. I watch all the people go in and out of the stores like gerbils in a cage. There’s always people eating in the window seats of those restaurants. I look at them. They look out at me and they look away with a troubled frown. I could never eat in a place like that. I would be afraid of someone driving by and shooting me. You know they always look at me when I walk down that street. I always look right into their eyes. They always look away. Like they got too close to something they don’t like. I like that. I think that’s the way it should be. As I walked by that bullshit factory on Rose Avenue I looked in the back where they take their coffee underneath the umbrellas. I thought how cool it would be to go through the place with a flamethrower. Like a real sanitation engineer. Hey fuck it man, it’s a pig pile, and if I don’t like it I should move. Across the street from where I live there was a shooting the other night. Two girls got it on the front porch of 309 Sunset Avenue. I was out of town the night it happened. Typical luck. I heard all about how the shots woke everybody up. And I heard about how this lady was wailing and screaming all night. Fuck I wish I was here for that. I would have been laughing and partying like a motherfucker. Blasting David Lee Roth out the window. Turning on the lights, dancing on the sidewalk. Laughing in their teary faces. High fiveing with the pigs. What a drag to have missed it. The other night I was walking by the place. There were all these white dudes hanging out in front. That’s strange, I thought to myself. No matter. I pointed my finger at them and said, “Bang bang,” then I laughed and went in my house. I’m glad that those two got shot the other night. Now things are real quiet around here. There’s a lot of pigs around now, but life is one big give and take, isn’t it. Sure it is.