The Cheerleader’s Conversation
(To Mr. Yan)
Cruel to you?
You’re the one that’s always
Saying such nasty things
About me
Oh, like you know anything
Anything at all
Does she know?
What’s she wearing?
No kidding
Is she still sitting there?
Tension like a coiled rope
Unwinding between us
Some kind of understanding
An ardent asking
Foreign to the everyday
For some reason I was drawn to Hidden Palms from the moment I first heard about it, and not just for the gorgeous girl in the bikini. I love teen melodrama and have wanted to get in at the beginning of some juicy prime time serial, having missed Lost, Heroes, The O.C., etc. But none of them drew me the way Palms did, and I wasn’t sure why.
Then I discovered it was created, produced and auteured by Kevin Williamson, and my hunch seemed correct. If you don’t know who Kevin Williamson is, it only shows the debased role the writer has in our society. He wrote Scream, which is not only one of the best recent horror movies but one of the best recent movies period. I have the script in book form and reading it only reinforces what a perfect creation it is. The rest of the trilogy was pretty darn good too, the horror equivalent of fantasy’s Lord of the Rings trilogy or science fiction’s (original three, please!) Star Wars. I never saw Dawson’s Creek, which he also created, but it seemed to have been pretty successful and good too. He also wrote the script for the instant horror classic I Know What You Did Last Summer and the mind blowing, subversive The Faculty. He was the hottest writer in Hollywood at one time.
But that’s the problem with fashion – it’s great to be considered fashionable and cool, but it insures that someday the wheel will come around and you will become un-fashionable. A few movie and T.V. less than successes and Williamson sort of fell off the map, and the fact that he’s mostly worked in genres like horror and teen drama that the snobs don’t have much respect for has meant that his return to prime time hasn’t generated much buzz. Maybe because it’s on the generally derided CW network but the reviews I read of Hidden Palms were mostly condescending and dismissive, and it doesn’t get half the attention even a lame new show like Burn Notice gets. But I’ve watched it anyway and, guess what, it’s really good.
The show it most reminds me of is the last serial show I made a point of watching, Twin Peaks, without quite so much self conscious weirdness. But there’s that Lynchian tinge to it, of the gothic darkness lurking under the suburban surface, of hidden crimes and forbidden sex and very strange people walking among us. It’s unfolded quite nicely, with that great sense of structure Williamson possesses, secrets leading inexorably to other secrets, false resolutions and new characters. And, yes, Amber Heard is jaw droppingly nubile (and a good actress too) as the obscure object of desire, Greta Matthews, but the most of the rest of the cast is excellent, too, with Taylor Handley as a studly, sympathetic, wounded central character, the NYPD Blue gals Gail O’Grady and Sharon Lawrence as hot but aging moms, Ellary Porterfield as the girl nerd with an edge and, most intriguingly, Michael Cassidy as the complex, devious, magnetic Cliff. There’s also a scene stealing turn by Leslie Jordan as the flamboyant occasional female impersonator Jesse Jo, the improbable voice of reason and sobriety. The only cast member I’m not as big a fan of is Tessa Thompson as party girl Nikki, who doesn’t seem to me to be hot enough or actress enough to inhabit the role.
I’m so anxious about the show’s survival that I hesitate to say what else I don’t like, but you know me, I can’t help it – except for a brief snatch of Amy Winehouse’s Rehab, the music has sucked, and the little ads at the end for bands you’ve never heard of and never will hear of make me think there’s product placement involved here. The tunes in Scream, notably Nick Cave’s Red Right Hand were perfect and I wish a little more care was taken in finding the right songs. The “next week on” teasers at the end of the show also have the habit of giving away the shocking revelations of the next episodes and wish they were a little more obscure.
But all in all I love Hidden Palms! I really, really hope that despite the lack of buzz the show is successful. Except for The Simpsons and Monday Night Football I don’t watch any other show regularly, and you know that anything that can tear me from my ceaseless creativity (not to mention the Wii) has to be pretty darn interesting. I’ve got my thirteen year old son hooked now too, and his boredom tolerance is even lower than mine. CW has taken to running two hour long episodes back to back lately, which means I’ll be investing two hours of precious UBU time on the show tonight, but I don’t mind a bit, and if you had any sense you’d watch too!
YR PAL,
UBU
I’ve never been too impressed with Dennis Miller, not even back in the SNL days when everybody else thought he was cool. I guess it’s because we’re both from Pittsburgh, and I know that in every tavern in the city there’s a guy on a barstool who’s exactly like him – a greasy know it all master of snide bluster, a master of trivia and the possessor of an ostentatiously inflated vocabulary. Usually you just smile at the guy, maybe get a few laughs at his expense and then edge away when he starts blathering in your ear. I can’t imagine paying to hear his relentless jive, or even going to the trouble of turning on the radio or television. So it’s kind of amazing to me that he still has a career, much less gets referred to, as he was in a recent Detroit Free Press article, as a purveyor of "fiercely intelligent comedy."
"Just try to keep up" with him says Freep writer Julie Hinds. Keep up with him? That’s not hard – what’s difficult is to keep from blowing your lunch. Case in point is his very first sally in the interview, in which he says he really considers himself a "libertarian." I recently heard this one from Bruce Willis, and it’s becoming a popular line with right wingers in general as the Bush regime, the aggressive embodiment of all things conservative, continues one of the most spectacular train wrecks in our nation’s history, exposing the total bankruptcy of conservative ideas and ideals. It’s amazing that the "libertarian" claim would come out of a mouth that’s spent so much time kissing the behinds of Bush and Cheney. Isn’t their regime responsible, after all, for the greatest REDUCTION of American personal liberty in our time? The greatest example of unchecked, unbalanced, willfully abused government power? What is libertarian about what goes on in our airports? About opening mail, listening to phone calls, eavesdropping and spying on American citizens? And how about illegal detention and torture? How libertarian is that? Not to mention the packing of a Supreme Court that’s strengthening the unilateral powers of the executive branch and stripping the individual of personal rights as fast as it can. A true libertarian would be protesting at Republican fund-raisers, not standing at the podium making cracks about Democrats.
But, ah, the reason dullards such as myself construe Miller to be right wing is because he doesn’t "trust radical Islamic fundamental terrorists." (And don’t you mean fundamentalist not fundamental, Genius boy?) Who does trust them? And what the heck does that have to do with your beloved Iraq war? Saddam Hussein was a wretched tyrant, one of too many, but he wasn’t radical, Islamic, fundamental (sic) or a terrorist, he had NOTHING to do with 9/11, and our "preemptive" invasion didn’t preempt anything, only opened up a huge Sunni population to the blandishments of a previously absent Al-qaeda, brought the Shiites closer to Iran, tied down our army, killed many soldiers and even more civilians and set the war against terrorism back to behind the starting line. Kudos, Bush supporters! Aren’t you proud of your boy! He sure didn’t trust those terrorists to be where the intelligence experts knew they weren’t !
It’s ironic that Dennis denies the one brilliant thing he’s ever done, his genius career veer to the right after 9/11. After his humiliating prime time flame out on Monday Night Football, his job prospects must have looked a little dim, and he had to become pretty inventive if he wasn’t going end up as the next Joe Piscopo. And what less crowded field could there be than Republican comedy? What a growth opportunity! And for a moment there it looked like Rove and company were actually going to foist a one party system on this country and Dennis could be its more partisan Bob Hope! And since the Republican’s greatest skill and number one priority is raising funds, there were plenty of jillion dollar a plate banquets to work and lots of loose cash for the grabbing. Because Republican wit is pretty much an oxymoron, the gigs weren’t that hard either, and all he had to do was make a few smarmy remarks about Hillary to bring the house down.
But the tide has turned and with all the boys under indictment or going to jail that gig ain’t what it used to be, and the HBO and CNBC things didn’t really work out either. Now he’s trying the last show biz resort of radio (I guess game shows didn’t come calling). He’s hitched his political star to the buffoon Rudy Giuliani, who, Miller, claims is his "ideal candidate," the solution to the terrorist problem because he’s "not going to be neurotic about defending us against morons." Neurotic behavior being defined here, I suppose, as adherence to the bill of rights and other traditional American niceties. It’s also pretty funny that the amorphous terrorists can at once be these crafty criminals whose genius calls for draconian preventative measures and simple morons who can be defeated by having enough guts to blast them. If Rudy really means to defend us against morons he’ll put a muzzle on Miller rather than make him his court jester.
Though we were far from soul mates, or even especially sympathetic, there was something about Katie I admired, admired not only, with her compact gymnast’s body, long straight hair and resolute blue eyed squint, in the sense of regarding with pleasure, but also, with her abundant courage, grace and confidence, in the sense of having a high opinion of.
In order to circumvent the draconian athletic requirements of our prep school, I’d become the manager of the girls’ track team, and, despite my less than macho role, had become friends with Katie, one of the captains. If we’d been of the same sex we might have even been enemies, but female athletes didn’t have the sense of entitlement the guy jocks did and were, in fact, usually flattered when anyone took them seriously. I’d used my quick and occasionally devious tactical ingenuity to further the cause on various occasions but had also impressed Katie with my irreverent wit, which had defused a few over emotional situations.
And, yes, there were moments when she was standing there on the track, psyching herself up, hands on hips, her round muscular ass (generally considered the best in the school) curving in the drastically cut-off jeans the really cool girls wore to practice, the elaborate french braid laying straight down the middle of her back, that I lusted after her, but, come on, I was seventeen, and there weren’t many girls I hadn’t lusted after at one time or another, and our differences and attractions stayed firmly on the safe side of friendship. Besides everyone knew she’d been hot and heavy with Tad’s pugnacious brother Bill (or Twin Bill as we liked to call him) from almost the moment she’d strode into our school with the other girls as a freshman.
Katie had told me to go to hell more times than I could remember, and I no longer took it personally. “So, uh, how was your spring vacation?” I hazarded.
“It sucked,” she growled. “Bill and I broke up.”
“So what else is new.” Katie and Bill were known to regularly take short “breaks” from each other, and then, just as regularly, get back together again.
“And I just walked in on him and Ungie in the bedroom,” she continued, tight lipped. “Slut.”
“Ahhh….” Things were becoming much clearer. Ungie was the most boy friendly girl in our class, but even though she was often called a slut that really wasn’t the case. It was more of a convenient category – many of us had seriously groped around with her, but, despite all the compromising situations she’d been in, and all the boasting that had been done, in the end her main man Buddy had been the only one who’d gone all the way with her. She was, however, just the person to comfort Bill during his little hejira from Katie.
And was I just the person to comfort Katie in her hour of need? I admit the thought did enter my mind by way of a lower organ, but it didn’t linger long. I hated seeing plucky Katie beaten down and realized that I had the perspective that she lacked at the moment. I knew that this was just another speed bump in Katie and Bill’s little spin through adolescence, a trip that would no doubt end with high school. Bill didn’t really have much going for him beyond a letter jacket and a hot car, but Katie, with her smarts and determination, was clearly destined for some kind of success, a success that, as hard as it was to believe now, would leave Bill far behind.
“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” I said. Let’s go over to Pan’s.”
So Megan liked the Dorothy Hughes thang, meaning it will be published in whatever book it’s going to be published in, extending my immortality by another 400 words.
Here’s some Hughes passages I scribbled down as I was researching it:
Her eyes were slanted, her lashes curved long and golden dark. She had red-gold hair, flaming hair, flung back from her amber face, falling to her shoulders. Her mouth was too heavy with lipstick, a copper-red mouth, a sultry mouth painted to call attention to its promise. She was dressed severely, a rigid tailored suit, but it accentuated the lift of her breasts, the curve of her hips. She wasn’t beautiful, her face was too narrow for beauty, but she was dynamite.
Belligerence wasn’t like her, she was slow and sultry and she didn’t give a damn for him or anyone.
"I don’t know what I thought," she said. "How does anyone ever know what they really think?"
Laurel couldn’t disappoint him. He’d known what she was the first time he’d looked at her. Known he couldn’t trust her, known she was a bitchy dame, cruel as her eyes and her taloned nails.
– from In a Lonely Place by Dorothy Hughes
He was frightened of her, the same fright he had felt earlier when twilight was deepening over the little plaza and the absence of life under the lights and banners a thing unreal. She was unreal, alien; yet she belonged and he was the alien. She, not the kid, was Fiesta; something deep and strong and old under the tawdry trapping, under the gimcracks. Something he didn’t understand because he was a stranger.
He didn’t recognize the man with the full greasy mouth, the red rimmed eyes, the dirty collar line at first. Not until the mouth opened to push in a hunk of bread and meat. He was looking in a mirror.
He took a big, happy breath. "They are funny people, the Gringos, no? Maybe once they were proud peoples but I do not think so. Proud peoples do not root like pigs for fifty cents, two bits, a dollar, do they? Proud people are too proud."
And without warning his eyes came against the eyes of Pila. He had the same shock he’d had last night when he first looked upon her. The same remembrance of terrors, of a head of stone which reduced him to non-existence. His first quick reaction was to turn away, not to recognize her. But he could not. She was there. She existed. He was the one without existence, the dream figure wandering in this dreadful nightmare.
"The world doesn’t care much what happens to us. Least that’s the way I’ve always figured. Like this table." He flattened his hand on the painted metal. "It doesn’t care if you bump your shin on it. It doesn’t even know you’re around. That’s the world."
Blindly, he stumbled on.
– from
Ride the Pink Horse by Dorothy Hughes
Hey, I actually got the gig I mentioned a while ago to write a short appreciation of Dorothy Hughes thanks to the wonderful and talented MEGAN ABBOT. I’m not really sure what the book is going to be called or when it’s coming out, but it’s evidently about female noir writers. Maybe they’ll give me a copy if they like this. Here’s the results:
Dorothy Hughes
When someone tries to tell me women can’t write hard boiled fiction, I just wave Dorothy B. Hughes’s Ride the Pink Horse in front of their face. It’s one of the most hard boiled books ever – char-broiled really – something that’s apparent as soon as the reader discovers that the protagonist’s name is simply "Sailor." All the classic elements are there – the exotic setting of Santa Fe during Festival, the haunted, hunted man with a shady past, the innocent female in the midst of corruption, and an overwhelming atmosphere of inevitable doom leading to a final line worthy of Samuel Beckett, "Blindly, he stumbled on." And of course the result of all this darkness is an absolutely enjoyable read.
Hughes began as a poet and kept her lyric touch throughout a long and varied career. None of her other books are as perfectly hard boiled as Ride the Pink Horse, but her remarkable talent for creating character and generating suspense is apparent in all of them. Her first novel The So Blue Marble is a delicate, somewhat fey confection, but, like many noir novelists World War Two seemed to darken her vision. Her war novel The Fallen Sparrow is a tightly wound spy story, featuring the chilling, unforgettable villain "Wobblefoot," determined to bring the fascist terror he perfected in the Spanish Civil War to the United States.
Hughes captured the postwar spirit of paranoia and disillusionment in the harrowing In a Lonely Place. The anti-hero, Dix, is an ex-flyer who misses "the feeling of power and exhilaration and freedom that came with loneness in the sky" he knew in the service, and who is having a hard time blunting the sharp hyper awareness of combat enough to adjust to the dull reality of civilian life. And then there’s his troubling obsession with that elusive strangler who’s been preying on the women of Los Angeles. In a Lonely Place is the masterful portrayal of a man and a society in which the defeat of an external enemy has only served to unleash the darker spirits within.
As the golden age of noir wound down so did Hughes’s productivity. She continued to be a faithful member of the mystery community and wrote sporadically, her last novels exhibiting the same prescient sensitivity towards minorities and social inequality as her earliest. From the beginning Hughes championed the thriller as a worthy vehicle for serious writing, and her impressive body of work more than proves her point.
Monday, June 18, 2007Post-Gazette
A snake hunter in Indiana County fired at one but only managed to hit himself.
State police in Indiana said Nile Griffin, 39, of Mahaffey, was hunting snakes last week next to a creek on Old Route 56 in Center Township.
"While attempting to shoot a snake," police wrote in a report, "the victim accidentally shot himself in the right foot."
Police said he injured one of his toes.
The snake presumably escaped.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
The Associated Press
SOMERSET, Pa. — Someone kicked in the door of a man’s apartment, stuck a knife in the door and took a chilled salad from his refrigerator.
Somerset police said the man reported the bizarre burglary yesterday. He told investigators someone broke into his apartment while he went to a nearby tavern. Nothing but the salad was missing, police said.
Police said they have a suspect and expect to file charges once they finish their investigation.
Here’s my own little contribution to the field of orgiastic dance — once again from that old Sakes in Caves opus…
The music intensified, the pipes squalling, and Heather stood to take off the army shirt. She bent to slip off her shoes, and as she straightened I became hyper-aware, in that stoned Eureka! way, of her body. She still had that magnificent, oft discussed rack of yore, known in the locker room as The Great Pyramids, or, more esoterically, in George’s term (quoted from somewhere) as the display fruit of equanimity. They were no longer as improbably high and weightless as years ago, but still managed to stretch the green, metallic silk of her halter top with the same staggeringly attractive gravity, especially to a guy who was as buzzed as I was.
And then there were her legs — when exactly was it that Miller’s beanpole little sister had first stepped out on them? Was it that summer in Florida, between her freshman and sophomore years, running down the beach next to the ocean, that the scrawny sinew bloomed into this perfect, unchanged proportion of strength and shape?
As she danced on the carpet, her silver serpent anklet flashing above her dirty soled foot, they were all there, all the times we’d played around sex without ever doing anything — making out for hours in a stoned daze, just kissing and groping, stopping only to hit Dee Skull as it was passed — or mock wrestling, those legs in tights, constricting around my chest in a scissors hold.
For a flash she had the pose of Koach’s doll as she swung her arms slowly to the music, beginning that dance she always used to do, that same dance, and with that recognition an irrepressible, stoned giggle rose out of me.
“What?” She said, continuing her motions a little self-consciously. “Are you laughing at me?”
“No, no, no, not at all, far from it, I was just remembering…” And I was, the rush of the high making all of it, all of the time I’d spent with Heather, so immediate, more like a sensation than a memory. “That dance…that dance concert.”
It was a routine she’d painstakingly evolved, first under the familiar eyes in the mirror, and then to the numb gaze of wasted youth in a dark bedroom, and most famously, to the peanut crunching stares of Parents, classmates and siblings at the Spring Fling dance concert of ‘76. The stage was lit in green, bare except for a ladder set up in back, Heather performed solo, to the music from a boom box, wearing tight gray sweat pants and a leotard, a yellow snake painted on each cheek.
“When you did that…” I was thinking much faster than I was speaking. “It knocked me out.”
“Yeah, I bet it did. You knocked your little weenie out for a week.”
“No, well, maybe, granted, true enough, but really beyond that it was beautiful and graceful and all that. And I finally got it, about the ladder, I mean. I’ll never forget it.”
She snorted but smiled, moving more naturally, pivoting in a twist that was halfway between tai-chi and slow motion cheer leading.
“You know the first time…” The words were catching up with the thoughts now. ” The first time I noticed you I mean was like in awe of you was at that soccer game. Koach conned me into being a ball boy, Kiski remember? And you were running all the way down the side line, alone, unmarked, right, and Nancy shot out this long pass right in front of the goal only — ” I whistled. “Off sides. And you just yelled SHIT! and kicked the ball, blam, all the way into, deep into the fucking woods, and I know because I had to get the stupid thing. And you were bent over there with your hands on your knees, totally gassed, just panting and glaring and making this sound. And I was standing there in awe, mesmerized, and they’re all yelling at me to throw the ball in and all. I’d just — I’d never seen anybody let themselves go like that.”
The dance — it had been called “Try And Catch The Wind,” in the concert program, but could really fit any trippy music, and been renamed many times, the last one I could remember being “The Goddess Dances on the Ruins” — got faster with the rising drone of the pipes and the patterning of the drum beats, Heather breathing audibly now, her great Gauguin nostrils flaring.
“Yeah? Well you know when I decided you weren’t totally the freen that you appeared to be? After the accident, before the ambulance came, you were in the back of that one police car. Totally covered with blood, but you were laughing and joking, talking about grabbing the riot gun and wasting a few pigs.” She paused for a beat, head turned, elbow bent, knee raised. “And when they took you to the ambulance — and we all saw this — you had this huge boner.”
In my continuing researches into decadence (the turn of the century movement, thank you very much) I’ve managed to snag a few of the Decadence from Dedalus series titles. What a cool bunch of books, and what a great publishing venture, which, it appears is now waning. (I remember a trove of these showing up at the library sale and being snapped up by my good friend John. I can also still picture me begging him to let me borrow them for just a day or two and his endless evasions. And now I can see these same books lying untouched by him in a flooded basement or a recycling pile somewhere, victims of the general shipwreck of his life. Where are the books of yesterday, John! Lend them while ye may! But I digress…)
Right now I’m working my way through The Dedalus Book of German Decadence: Voices of the Abyss. It’s a great volume, full of stuff impossible to find elsewhere. It’s too bad there’s a lot of extracts from novels instead of the whole thing like in The Decadent Reader: Fiction, Fantasy and Perversion from Fin-de-Siecle France from Zone books, but I suppose it’s impossible to include all of everything. The Germans are, typically, a little more ham handed in their version but reach insane heights of true feeling. The femme fatales are a little more on top in this world view – just ask Sacher-Masoch. Here’s a few passages from a work called The Poisoned Well by one Arthur Holitsher (who, the editor Ray Furness tells us was influenced by my main man Knut Hamsun). Note the typical references to paganism and orgiastic dance that so captured the decadent imagination:
And after Desiree had ordered her hair she loosened her belt and laid it on the couch. In a few seconds her robe had dropped to the sand and she rose from the floods of dark purple, from the foam of fine rustling silk, smiling quietly, and totally naked. Then she picked many of the yucca blossoms, pressed them with both hands between her breasts and waded through the narrow stream to the statue of Pan, laying the light green chalices upon the high pedestal. She stood for a moment, the rosy splendor of her limbs displayed against the marble pallor of the stone.
Sebastian had never seen anything like it, neither in life nor in his most secret dreams: it was also the first time that she had ever danced in front of him. It could, in fact, hardly be called a dance, for her whole body seemed to dissolve into movement as the colors flowed one into the other. The gleam of her eyes, the wave of her hair, an expression on her lips – these were the only human entities. But even these had to surrender their corporeal essence to the mysterious bond which, separate and independent, pulsed between dancer and spectator and whose name was: burning soul.
Fall
Fall back in ecstasy before these women you desire
Let their will take the place of your reason
Perverse geniuses altogether adorable and excitable
Natural temptations desirable calamities
Ambassadors of narcotic intrigue
Spouses of a single night
Ladies of caprice in the palace of bliss
Fragments of ideal beauty in contemporary weeds
Figures of conspicuous consumption
Agents of seduction exotic adventuresses
Immodest Callipygian Venuses
Profound anarchists at those perverse moments
When they crave the pleasure of descending
Which lends a commonplace physical act
An air of criminal prestige
Creatures of cruel moods cruel passions
The fruits of lassitude and distaste
With an absolute adoration of their own glamour
Collectively extravagant enigmas to themselves
Fetishes working by arousing suggestion
Maenads in punk rock t-shirts and pearls
Aesthetic decadents decadent aesthetes
Actresses of love sorceresses of disaster
Aristocratic incarnations of the disorder
Lurking below the surface of things
Mistresses of sexuality shameless triumphant
Who make old teachers hoarse with desire
Overwhelmed with their splendid reality
Priestesses of an alternative religion
Princesses in search of uncommon excitements
Narcotic intrigue euphoria eroticism decadent sensuality
Pleasure and danger the known and unknown
Nirvana and sensual plentitude warm chaotic sensation
Delights mixed with fever hellish and divine
Ignorant of their stupendous destinies
Intensifying their vulgar desires through demonic practices
Forcing the blossom that should rather be delayed
Declaring the importance of the body
In defiance of conventional moral taboos
In their recurring youthfulness wisdom chaos
And evil intertwine like serpents
On the borders of a wisdom too great for their capacity
They have the immortal weariness of beauty
Analysis and dream forced to extremes
Making tormented appeals to pleasure beyond reach
Obsessed with the menacing fascination of a decay
They are determined to perpetuate
Their fierce restless troubled looks
Their mouths of sunset
Winsome and provocative
Luxurious mocking aloof
Rowdy wriggling impudent and seductive
With inquisitive eyes turned up noses
And a disturbing way of carrying on
Replete with modern temptations fashion
Addictive substances idiotic customs
Sudden desires devastating strokes of passion
Impudent challenging and even dangerous
Mysterious profligate pagan cordial
Noisy brainsick unsatisfied virtue
Masquerading as uncomprehended vice
Exquisitely frivolous daintily capricious
Wayward fugitive sordidly compelling
Morbidly erotic and blasphemous
Fervently and spiritually disturbed by laxity
And a endlessly compelling desire for seduction
Their ambitions comprised of lascivious behavior
Independent critical thinking and nighttime behavior
At once forbidden and offered hidden and revealed
What serpent instinct proposes is not necessarily evil
Temptation addiction desire downfall
Excitement tinged with danger
And the perversity of the unnatural
Privilege money class their bodies are
A source of ecstacy or an excuse for crime
The corrupt affections of the upper classes
Their only moral is finding enjoyment
This is no ecstasy but decomposition
A vision of material chaotic fantasy
Consciously embracing a morbid image
Full of unease eager for the rare
Craving impossible transformations
And a boundless inflation of their egos
Pleasurable and painful criminal and holy
In their overwhelming self awareness
Their knowledge of being somehow explorers or
Manifestations of a terminal cultural sickness
Elitism idealism scorn for conventional values
And the desire for something different
The cultivation of recondite worlds
Bizarre areas packed with formidable enigmas
Where dubious and extravagant fantasies are enacted
An alien landscape for their irresponsible indulgence
Half a mock interlude
It is not love
It is a wild ride
