#YES I KNOW I ONLY ADDED THE TEArDROP SCALE ON ONE!!!!!

[artwork-and-tingz]

ermmm some wof au dib concepts, i like to make his wings take the role of his trench coat

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

What’s yours is mine 1

Warnings: nonconsent and rape, allusions to abuse, stalking, possessiveness, pregnancy, and more tags to be added.

This is a dark!fic and explicit. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Pairing: dark!Ransom Drysdale x pregnant!Reader

Summary: After five years, your past is far behind you but just as you think you can live your happily ever after, your ex shows up at the worst moment.

Note: I couldn’t sleep and ended up writing this and it will not be a long ongoing series but it will be a few parts. But Roo you say that all the time. Yes, well, I’m trying and I’m sorry but I’m gonna try to not be the worst.

Hope you enjoy it. Thank you. Love you guys!

Please leave some feedback, like and reblog <3

“Oh my god, is that really you?” the voice made you stand stalk straight.

You took a breath and forced a smile before you turned to the indomitable woman. You never expected to see Linda again, not after you broke up with her son almost five years ago. And there she was, as rigid and righteous as ever, her thin lips curved in a mocking grin.

“Linda,” you greeted her in a singsong and looked around the grocery store. You never went to the overpriced organic market but your local shop didn’t have dragonfruit and you had a painful craving, “how are you?”

“Darling, I’m just great,” she held an empty basket on her arm, an odd sight as you never expected her to do her own shopping, “oh, and look at you!” Before you knew it, her hand was on your stomach and you struggled not shy away, “how far are you?”

“Um,” you looked down at the large ring on her finger and resisted the urge to step away as you often did in this situation, “almost five months.”

“And married?” she grabbed your left hand and pretended to admire the small teardrop diamond, “gorgeous.”

“Mhmm,” you waited for you to release you and swayed in place, “you barely look a day older than the last time I saw you.”

“You’re well? You look well,” she primped her short hair at the compliment, “oh, a baby.” She reached out again and you sighed as she rubbed your stomach, “for luck.”

You tried not to frown and ended up laughing at the tension, “well, it was nice running into you.”

“Oh, you know, I barely come down here but we’re headed up to my father’s place, you remember, such a cozy house, and Joni is in charge of food and well, I wouldn’t trust her with a plastic spoon so of course, I have a back up plan.”

You nodded along with her awkwardly, frozen in the spot as the dragon fruit barely seemed worth the torture. Linda was hard to please and alway derisive, but for as long as you were with Ransom, she had taken a keen shine to you. That alone came with an edge but it was rarely used to cut you.

You forced another laugh, “that sounds fun, getting away from the city.”

“Ugh, just another family gathering,” she waved it off with her free hand, “I’ll have to tell Ransom I ran into you, if he even shows up.”

“Well, I don’t think--”

“He’s grown up so much,” she interrupted, “you wouldn’t believe it. He got his own imprint in my father’s company publishing true crime. He’s really making a place for himself now.”

“That’s great,” you tried not to falter at the mention of her son. You hadn’t ended on the greatest terms and your relationship had been tumultuous and regrettable.

“I hope you have a great weekend, Linda,” you said, “but I got to--”

“Oh, not at all, I’m keeping you,” she squeezed your arm, “God, he was such an idiot to let you go.”

You nodded and swallowed through your tight throat, “I’m glad he’s doing better for himself.”

“You too,” she trilled, “oh, before I let you go, darling, is it a boy?”

You blinked and your smile wavered, “how did you know?”

“I could always tell,” she said, “so precious.”

She gave your stomach one last pat and disappeared into the produce section. You blinked as you looked down at the scaled fruit in your right hand. Chocolate, you needed chocolate.

You were rattled as you waited in the express line and put your things on the belt. You hadn’t thought of Ransom in a very long time. Not much. His shadow followed you around in those moments when your heart raced and your head spun, but you had learned to work through those fits. No one else knew what happened behind closed doors, they only knew Ransom, not Hugh.

You paid and shoved your fruit and candy into a paper bag. You headed out into the misty spring air. The rain had finally stopped and left the streets slick and shining. The sun was hazy as it clung to the last of the clouds and you inhaled the wet scent of grass and gravel.

You let your key hang from the ignition as you took a moment to gather yourself. You stared at the modest ring on your finger and held your stomach and you swore you could still feel Linda’s bony hand there. 

You had a loving husband, Dez, and a son on the way. Ransom wasn’t a part of any of that and this was just a blip on radar, the aftershock of the storm that ended years before. You sniffed and turned the engine. You wouldn’t go back to that store, it was far too expensive and the clientele were certainly not of your ilk.

🍼

Dez was in the kitchen when you got home, the smell of steak and peppers rose from the frying pan. You kissed his cheek as he kept one hand on the spatula and you dropped your bag on the counter beside the stove. You went to the fridge and poured yourself a glass of water. You turned and leaned against the marble and drank deeply.

“So, hon, how was your day?” he asked as he put the spatula down and peeked in the bag, “hmm, odd pairing but I don’t hate it.”

“I had a craving,” you shrugged, “it was… okay,” you heaved, “what’s for dinner?”

“Steak fajitas,” he said, “I trimmed the fat for you and,” he turned and reached out to you, “and I got you some champagne… non-alcoholic, obviously.”

“You know it doesn’t have the same effects,” you kidded as you put your glass down and settled into his arms, “and well,” you looked down at your stomach, “we already got one drunken night growing.”

He laughed and bent to kiss you on the lips. He rocked you as the pan sizzled behind him. You closed your eyes and tensed as suddenly your head flashed with the memory of Ransom, of the way he’d kiss you, harder than Dez, and the way it always turned to more whether you wanted it or not.

“Hey,” Dez pulled back, “you okay?”

“Yeah,” you lied, “hormones.”

“Aw, hon, well I have the perfect dessert planned,” he purred.

“Oh yeah?”

“Mmhmm, strawberry massage oil,” he framed your face with his hand, “a nice long back rub…”

“Perfect,” you giggled, “why are you spoiling me?”

“Don’t I always?” he smirked.

“Hmm, rarely without reason,” you said.

“Well…” he voice trailed off and slowly he dropped his arms. He turned his back to you and grabbed the pan, stirring the contents with a shake, “I didn’t want you to miss me too bad.”

“Miss you?” you came forward and bent your arms over the counter, “where are you going?”

“Chicago, there’s some evidence down there we need to look at and they refuse to transfer it to our office so… bullshit confidentiality clause, but we need it.”

“How long?” your heart dropped.

“Well, I gotta leave in the morning but I told Gary I won’t stay longer than Monday.”

“And what did he say?”

“He laughed,” Dez shook his head, “I promise, I’ll do my best to be back as soon as I can--”

“No, I understand,” you said gloomily, “it’s just…” you cupped your chin and tapped your lips with your fingertips, “I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you too,” he said as he turned the burner off, “and this little guy,” he touched your stomach and you shivered as you remembered how Linda had done the same with her cold palm, “so, you choose a name yet?”

“Still not naming him Superman, babe,” you chided, “but no, I can’t make up my mind. God, it’s like my mind is in shambles, I can’t remember why I go in a room or even focus on one thing for more than two minutes before I’m distracted by what colour I want to paint the nursery and I can’t even decide on that because then I’m thinking about what kind of wood the crib should be--”

“It’s fine, you’re fine,” he assured as he opened the bag of tortillas, “you’re still there, you’re just… sharing a brain right now.”

“Wasn’t enough to go around in the first place,” you scoffed.

“Shh,” he arranged the plates carefully, like a five star restaurant, tortillas stacked, steak and veg together, a little dish of cheese, some sour cream, lettuce, salsa, all divvied out in a spectacular salsa you would only make a mess of.

“I thought the pregnancy would give me a chance to finish my book, but--”

“Well, you got maternity leave after that,” he said.

“From what? Sitting at my keyboard and crying? I’ll just be holding a baby and crying,” you sighed, “you said you’d take some time off.”

“I did say that and I will,” he grabbed the plates and nodded you out of the kitchen. He set the plates on the table and you sat as he went to grab two glasses and as many bottles. He poured you your spineless champagne and had a beer for himself, “I don’t want to miss anything.”

“You can’t take forever off,” you muttered, “we both know that. I could go back to copywriting and maybe--”

“Babe, that job made you miserable and you will finish your book,” he handed you a napkin, “I’ve read your stuff, it’s… you said your ex was in publishing?”

“Did I?”

“I thought you did, you never really… talk about the exes, which I love but, I think you said something about it. You don’t think he would--”

“No,” you snapped, “no,” you said softer, “he wouldn’t.”

“Sorry,” he said startled by your reaction, “I didn’t--”

“It’s nothing, I just-- exes, right?”

“It was a stupid suggestion,” he said, “I’m sorry, but… I have a client, he might have some contacts.”

“You don’t have to do that--”

“I don’t have to, I want to because the world deserves to hear your voice,” he insisted, “I hate to share you but I’d be selfish to keep you to myself.”

You smiled and unfolded a tortilla. Still, your heart raced as the second mention of Ransom that day had you on edge. Dez watched you build your fajita and you looked up at him.

“Well, since you’ll be in Chicago, maybe I’ll get a few pages done.”

🍼

The call came on Monday, Dez wouldn’t be home that night. You contented yourself to stay in with your laptop and sugar cookies. Still, you barely got a sentence done before you snapped your computer closed and gave up with a frustrated grunt. You slept, not well, and got up with some trouble as your hips ached.

A good morning text from Dez made you smile but there was still no promise of an impending return. You felt pent up in the apartment and lonely as its emptiness reminded you of your absent husband. Too tense to sit down and type, you opted to go for a walk, hoping it would calm your nerves.

You walked past the shop windows and stopped to peek in at used books and handmade candles. You had no destination in mind, only a restless step. There was a little store at the corner with locally made quilts and knitted sweaters. The smell of potpourri wafted out from beneath the painted door and made your throat tickle. Even so, your curiosity drew you inside.

A small woman greeted you from behind the desk. She held two needles as she crocheted some indistinguishable craft. You smiled and said hello as you headed down the centre aisle. You looked along the racks of quilts, floral, striped, plaid, and polka dot. You stopped at a bright yellow piece with honey bees along the border. You hadn’t thought of yellow for the nursery.

You felt the soft fabric and checked the tag. You lifted the quilt from the bar, content that it was worth it and a great motivator. You stopped before you could turn back, a familiar voice chilled your blood.

“It’s cute,” Ransom said as he stepped up next to you, “kinda girly for a boy though.”

You glanced over at him and folded the blanket over your arm. You backed up but as you turned he did too. He blocked your bath as he stretched his arm across the aisle.

“My mother told me you were expecting,” he said, “and she was right, you look good.”

“What do you want?” you whispered as you clutched the quilt.

“Nothing, just saying hello,” his mouth slanted.

“Hugh, I’m not stupid,” you hissed, “it’s been five years.”

“Hugh,” he repeated dully, “you remember your manners.”

“Leave me alone and let me past,” you tried to duck under his arm but he shifted his body over and backed you up to the end of the aisle.

“And married,” he taunted.

“He’s outside,” you lied, “if I stay too long--”

“I didn’t see him when you walked up,” he intoned, “he must be easy to miss.”

“Have you been following me?” you uttered.

“Only from the cafe,” he shrugged, “short walk.”

“Please, get away from me,” you quivered.

“I’m not doing anything--”

“You know exactly what you’re doing,” you hissed, “now I will scream so move.”

“Mama Bear,” he crooned, “I love it, you’re so protective.”

“Hugh,” you warned.

“Sweetie,” he hummed.

You shoved his shoulder but he didn’t move. You hit him harder and he winced. He chuckled and stood straight. He waved his arm down the aisle and stepped aside.

“Don’t make a scene,” he said, “you always did like to be dramatic.”

“Fuck you,” you snarled, “don’t come near me again.”

“Don’t act like you don’t miss me,” he called after you as you dropped the quilt on the counter, “we were so good together.”

You left without buying, a shrill apology to the lady at the counter as you went as fast as you could out the door. The bell tinkled after you and the door clamored shut. You felt nauseous and dizzy. The last thing you wanted or needed was to ever see that man again.

[melmac78]

Two bracelets, Two Brothers, Two medals.

(Inspired by the TAG Olympics challenge, but own spin.)

•••••••••

The 2060 Vienna Olympic Games were the talk of the world.

Especially the two Tracy brothers from America competing in 50m Rifle and Skeet.

Both men were naturally well known for their famous astronaut father, and both for their own military years.

It showed in the popular - almost matching - cuffs they wore.

A concho based on the US Calvary of old shined in gold and silver. Two smaller brass rivets held the parts of the band secure.

The leather bands were decorated in two different designs, dyed two different colors.

Each designed half represented a brother.

Scott’s was subtle - a medium brown side and briar brown side. No one could see the difference unless looked at closely.

Gordon’s? - well after being told by his brother nothing ostentatious, especially the original color pairing, settled for mahogany and a muted down blue. He thanked Virgil for figuring out a cobalt blue dye.

No one knew the patterns symbolized the brothers though.

Scott chose arrows in his design half, the closest thing he had to looking like his beloved Thunderbird One.

Gordon had teardrop like scales on his side, a nod to his last Games as a swimmer and the closest thing he could use for Thunderbird Four.

No one said anything - much - about the accident that could’ve ended his life but lead to a decision to not continue an Olympic swimming career. They celebrated instead his recovery and focus on a different sport.

First, the 50m, three position rifle event was days one and two of the Games. Both made it to the medal round.

40 shots in prone position, 40 kneeling, 40 standing.

Two hours, 45 mins.

Both men were drenched in sweat under their special jackets, unable to see each other due to blinders, but both excited they were competing for a medal.

The scores tabulated, and announced.

G. Tracy - U.S.A. - 458.6 - gold

S. Tracy - U.S.A. - 458.2 - silver

J. Lazuli - Great Britain - bronze

The brothers however celebrated both medaled. Scott hoisted Gordon up and spun him around, shouting in glee his brother won.

The family was ten times louder than the crowd… if it were possible.

Both brothers received their medals, and after the anthem finished, locked hands and raised them to the sky. The bands glinted in matte and reflective colors.

•••••

A few days later came skeet.

Both men excelled in the qualifiers again, hitting an impressive 123 and 121 out of 125 targets to qualify for the finals.

That was just the first five rounds of 25 targets each in three days for the brothers.

Then came the finals, and they were two of the six remaining.

Three rounds, 20 targets each.

Both brothers were tied going into the last round, and when Mac Fluorite of Italy had 8 misses to only secure bronze, it came down to the final two.

Gordon had an impressive 18 of 20.

Scott missed one on his next to last shot. If he missed again, they’d go to a shootout for medals.

The call of pull - a shot - and a pink puff secured the gold for Scott Tracy.

S. Tracy - USA - 59

G. Tracy - USA - 58

M. Flourite - Italy - 52

Another set of hugs - as Gordon couldn’t lift Scott, ceremony, medals, and pomp and circumstances.

With their last ceremony finished, it was time to face the media.

A question was asked about the bands and if they had any meaning.

It was Gordon who talked at first, as Scott choked up on memory.

“Four years ago, I was nearly killed in the hydrofoil accident. I worked hard to walk again, but we knew my days as a member of WASP and… harder for me … an Olympic swimmer were gone,” he said.

“It left me angry at the world, the life I was given…

“But Scott, who is a retired Air Force Captain himself, suggested I put that anger to good use and fire at it instead.”

Scott then spoke up. “I suggested he try air rifle and skeet, as well as trap, as he still had excellent vision and agility,” he added. “It was some time after the accident we started, just to be sure he was ready, and we practiced, hard.

“When I found out both of us qualified for these Games, I had my brother Virgil make the bands you mentioned,” the eldest continued. “Alan chose the gold and black rivets, and John, being John, chose star closures…”

“And we chose the dye colors… though I thought about Orange and Sky Blue,” interrupted Gordon.

Scott chuckled and gently cuffed his brother on the back of the head. “Right, because USA has orange in the flag,” he teased, knowing it was actually rejected more due to it being IR colors.

The reporter however didn’t catch the possible connection, and continued. “But you both were right on the gold and silver US button - gold and silver for both of you. Congratulations,” said the woman, shaking their hands.

Yes, the brother had an incredible experience and a gold and silver each at the Games.

Yes, both would enjoy the closing ceremonies since they were unable to attend the opening in prep for their first contest.

And yes, Scott - along with the rest of the US delegation, said to Gordon that no, he couldn’t go shirtless and be oiled up like that Tonga flag bearer years ago for it.

But the fact both brothers were there celebrating each other’s accomplishments after all they went through four years prior was worth more than either medal around their neck.

[kvetchlandia]

Richard Meltzer     Lester Bangs Passed Out on Meltzer’s “Highly Uncomfortable Living Rm. Chair,” 104 Perry St., Apt. 4, West Village, New York City     1972

On December 14th, this December 14th, Lester Conway Bangs, while probably not the greatest writer of his generation, arguably its most vital so far to die, would have been 36. Haunted and driven by demons, so- called, a cheerless many of whom/what/ which — or their kindred ilk — he directly sought, found cum stumbled upon, or was inadvertently ensnared by on the demon picnic grounds of Rock and Roll, he never made it to 34.

Following the lead of a handful of babes in the rock-critical woods, one of which I'll admit (if sometimes reluctantly) to having been. Bangs at the dawn of the seventies played as prominent a role as anyone in both expanding the expressive boundaries of rockwriting as a form and giving it a voice that played the newer, more mannered and cautious, mass-market rockmags like Rolling Stone and Creem — the latter of which he even edited for awhile — as on the dime as it had played the catch-as-catch-can, limited-edition fanzines whence it came. Though he also served as the burgeoning genre’s most prolific scribbler, a mission he sustained with relative ease for the bulk of his days, it is to the man’s lasting credit that he rarely delivered copy on anyone’s dotted line. In fact, he probably “got away with more’’ in major- publication print than all his rockwrite brethren combined, conceivably (however) because it merely simplified matters to have a single Designated Outlaw, one entrusted with a blanche enough carte — and unmonitored options galore — to spike with “authenticity ’’ a rock-media stew of bogus Freedom and ersatz Candor.

Retrospectively cliched or not, there was an existential purity to the sheer commitment evinced by Lester’s prolonged wallow in (and about) the rock- and-roll Thing-in-itself. It was, in many ways, the critical headbang to end all critical headbangs; it would be hard to even imagine, for instance, a professional art-film bozo, a jock-sniffing sports jerk, or a food-review lunatic more uninsulatedy gung-ho vis-a-vis x — either as primary experience or typewrite wankery. His patented shameless multipage gush, coupled with an unswerving advocacy of certain conspicuously over- the-top rock genera (Velvet Underground offshoots; Heavy Metal; Punk Rock), made him a must-read favorite with both cognoscenti and dipshits alike, and he came as close to encountering idolatry per se as any non-musician in R&R. A good deal of which — natch —could not help hitting the self-consciousness fan, but while a man’s life was ultimately undone in the process (“I’m Lester — buy me a drink! ’’), the integrity of his art/craft was essentially unaffected. For, while he might have been a tad too glib-messianic those last couple years, he was by no stretch of things an opportunist, never really giving a hoot for what in squaresville would be known as a career. (Or, perhaps, unlike his role model Kerouac, he simply didn’t live long enough for that, too, to be strenuously tested.)

In any event: dead, cremated, literal ashes. California born (Escondido ’48), bred (El Cajon, ages 9-23), and traveled (I first hung with him in San Francisco, last in L.A.), Lester bought the big one on the opposite coast — his final home, the fabled Apple — April 30/82, ostensibly from a hefty pull of darvon employed, in lieu of aspirin, to placate the flu. Since his death, variously interpreted as a mile-radius teardrop’s once-in-a- lifetime terminal burst, a joke and a half on both himself and his precious chosen whole damn Thing, and — by occasional uncouth louts — the final glorious triumph of his excess, the spectrum of Bangs-in-ongoing-print has dwindled from monochromatic /sparse to colorless/ nonexistent. Of the two books in his name which appeared during his lifetime, quasi-coffeetable numbers on Blondie and Rod Stewart, neither a particularly representative Lestorian effort (or even particularly good: the former admittedly hacked out “in two days on speed,’’ and looking it, i. e., ad hoc and forced; the latter disowned as a clumsy, if innocent, foray into “writing as whoring’’), both are either out of print — officially — or on the back burner of barely having ever been in same, at least as regards this coast, where I’ve yet to see either in bookstore one. Nor have two posthumous whatsems. Rock Gomorrah, cowritten (early ’82) with L.A.’s Michael Ochs, and a projected collection of unpublished fragments scrounged from Bangs’s apartment a day or two after his death, gotten more than inches off the publishing ground — the former for reasons which if herein revealed would get me sued but good, the latter because, in the words of editor Greil Marcus, “the stuff is less tractable than I thought at less than 5000 words or so.’’ Also stalled, and/or abandoned (and/ or nonspecific pipedreams to begin with) : all known plans to reissue out-of- print Live Wire LP Jook Savages on the Brazos, recorded, Austin, TX, Dec. ’80, by Lester Bangs & the Delinquents, lyrics and vocals by guess who. In fact, the only anything by L. C. Bangs readily available where availables are sold is his liner copy for The Fugs Greatest Hits Vol. I, released by PVC/Adelphi some months after he’d croaked, for which he (or rather his atoms) later copped a Grammy nomination, and for which, reliable word has it, he never was paid.

Well, I’ve been proven wrong; it hasn’t been easy recollecting Lester in even half a toto in so much tranquility. Didn’t seem like such a bad idea back when obits were appearing left & right and at least two- thirds of ’em smacked of revisionism at its well-intentioned worst; having ridden the range with the guy, having been as intimate with his daytime/nighttime revealed essence — I would bet my boots — as anyone in or out of various possible beds with him, I had fiery goddam galaxies to say in his behalf that were simply not being said, at least not in print by his designated peers; and, although my no longer living in New York couldn’t help but delay my shot, remote and after-the-fact seemed like the ticket, y’know anyway, for some major necessary rerevision.

But here it is two, two and a half years gone & more, and whuddaya know if all the raw goddam pain (at the loss of, yes, a brother) and jagged fucking anger (at a waste of life, life-force, and relative inconsequential like “talent” and “genius”), an unbeatable duo which for weeks, weeks, months gave the Lester totality so cosmic a shape, scale and intensity, have by their own inevitable burnout given way to the contemplation of standard-issue mere data, of the skeletal remains of a larger-than-life life which have come to make sense (or not) in too neat, too linear, a manner. Well — hey — fuggit: Even if grocery lists, chalk diagrams and hokey storytellin’ are the forms ongoing life-as-life has imposed on the mission, there’s still a heap of essential Lester information that could use, uh, exposure to printed-page light.

What too many write-biz intimates sought to do in the wake of his death was debunk the Lester Legend (solely) by reciting evidence that his bark was worse than his bite. While I’m sure he’d have “wanted it done” (i.e., have the saga-as- litany scraped of treacherous barnacles, or at least of their treacherous vogue), I can’t imagine the projected post-life intent of such a wish as in any way entailing cosmetic overhaul, especially in the service of moral/experiential object lessonhood. Lester’s day-to-day transaction with post-adolescent life-as- dealt was — let’s be conservative — 94 % anything but pretty. If he’d have wanted his entire whatsis to serve up viable scenarios for intimates and non-intimates alike (gee, would the Pope prefer to be Catholic?), there’s no way the deal’d come out even provisionally Lester-functional without interested non-intimates having retroactive access to as hefty an eyeful of the not-so-pretty — in all its hideous, non-Clearasiled blah blah blah — as intimates galore regularly managed to cop and, in their various personal ways, have already learned from. To deglorify an earlier incarnation of shit (which the man himself was clearly hellbent on doing in his waning days on earth) you’ve got to at least speak its name — loudly! — for the whole entire planet: c’mon now, one & all. A solemn responsibility (I call it) which, credibly/incredibly, the smelly sumbitch’s closest associates have, to this day, all but refused to consider.

To wit: For every time anyone saw the defanged, declawed Lester teddy bear rear its cuddly li’l head (see obits 2, 3, 5 & 7) the man was uncountable times the asshole, the buffoon, the sodden tyrant; been those things myself — in semi-prior lifetimes — so I know. Back in ’73, for inst, the soon-to-be-dead Lillian Roxon gushed shameless love for the s.o.b., in New York on Creem business, ordering up a Lester button and leaving it in his hotel box; response to this purest of offerings was “What’s that fat cunt want from me?” About a year later I get this call from Nick Tosches requesting that I please take Lester, who’d shown up at his door on acid, “off my hands”; took him to a party at John Wilcock’s place, during which he verbally brutalized Wilcock’s wife (in green Fingernails) for being a “hooker,” snapped at an affable Ed Sanders for being “the only alkie in the counter-culture,” and had nothing more to say to Les Levine’s Asian girlfriend (wife?) than “Yoko is a lousy gook”; further into the night, at Vincent’s Clam Bar in Little Italy, he literally bellowed ( more than twice), “There’s a lotta tackin’ wops in this joint.” And how can I forget the way he treated me and Nick, his closest approximate friends f'r crying out loud, as our wonderful editor while at Creem? He’d call us each up at 3 a.m. to urgently solicit various (rather specific) reams of pap, needed via Special D toot sweet; we’d climb outta bed, peck away bleary-eyed to whack out the closest possible takes on what he’d claimed he wanted, whereupon he’d reject ’em with a vengeance (“I won’t print beatnik shit”), then run thoroughly like-minded i. somethings — under his own byline — or with our words, usually verbatim, laced throughout. Just a few “examples,” dunno if they sound like big stuff or small, in any event typical Lester, with plenty, plenty more where they came from — y’know times n-plus-many.

In spite of such anticommunal upchuck, or quite possibly because of it — post-adolescent of a post-summer-of-love feather & all that — I did have deep affection for the bastard during my final years in New York; he could really piss me off (and I, I’m assuming, him) but bygones were always eventually ditto. In those days I generally shared his affection for The Edge, and might even’ve gone extreme slightly ahead of him; in January ’72, this is true, he actually dubbed me “the Neal Cassady of rock and roll.” But by fall ’75, when I split New York to at least simulate an escape from the Frantic and Hyper (and he subsequently arrived, ostensibly to embrace same), I was feeling the first stirrings of apprehension re my own prolonged massive intake of Edge Substances (emotional, cultural, but above all chemical) and was on the verge of an early series of attempts to, y’know, cut down, to maybe get off my collision course with all sorts of walls, both metaphoric and real. Lester, meantime, seemed on a rapid upswing in the intake dept.; what had so far served as mere horizon or frame for his trip, or at most been its semi-essential fuel, was now lunging headlong for the foreground of his life ... or should we call it the twin foregrounds (life as Mythic Construct; life as physical/emotional/cultural Hard Mundane Reality).

Hey, the guy was beginning to scare me. Certainly as an advanced — or rapidly advancing — version of what I no longer wanted to be and could (possibly) imagine once again becoming, but more as this vivid, palpable spectre of specialized human decomp not just out there but right there: a pal & a buddy headed (willy nilly?) for the sewer. From late ’75 immediately onward, on those unlikely occasions when separate coasts — underscored by far fewer rockwrite junkets — any longer allowed for it, I was usually unable to handle being in the same room with him, knowing I’d have to witness whole new increments of what could really no longer be passed off as anything but (gosh) misery and (dig it) horror. Where in the earlier ’70s it was almost cute — once in a while — the way Lester would stumble into classic self- directed drunk jokes (like the time he called me from the Detroit airport to tell me he was headed for an Alice Cooper show in London, presumably England, only he’d drunkenly got it wrong and was on his way to London, Ontario), there was this half-week in ’79, for inst, during which he hung out at Michael Ochs’s house in Venice with no daily design but to get skid-row-calibre gone and stay there, that was just fucking grim. Looking an unhealthy as I’d ever seen him, basic shit-warmed over with an ngly bump on his forehead (which he claimed he was “treating with Romilar”), he refused to eat without an Occasion. When, one evening, Michael and I pretty much dragged him to a Mexican restaurant, he refused to actually step inside until he’d fortified himself with the cottons from six Benzedrex inhalers — the local pharmacist was out of Romilar — busted open on the sidewalk with a shoe.

Washing down their remnants with a Dos Equis as his enchilada sat there staring at him, he quoted (or claimed he was quoting) Sid Vicious: “Food is boring.”

So, inevitably, when Billy Altman rang me up from N.Y.Clearly on a California morn, to let me hear it straight from a friend — “instead of from a creep” — my immediate response to no more Lester, steps ahead of all the pain & anger & whut, was holy fucking shit, the fucker finally did it; it’d been in the real-world cards for long-long times for Lester to cease to be. Though even on his gonest days he was no way a classic cornball suicide-romantic — heck, I don’t really think he was all that clinically suicidal (big-sleep fantasies never overtly/covertly lured him, not even metaphorically, from the darkest sub-basement of his World of Dread; nor was Danger, though he often nonstop lived it, itself the merest tickle of a ripple of a thrill for him, a context before the fact) — he’d sure staged more corny, frightful dress rehearsals than Jim Jones plus Judy Garland (squared) for simply ending up dead.

Biggest of which I ever saw was January ’81. I’m at Nick’s place in New York, en route back to L. A. from Montreal, when who should pay a surprise visite but Mr. Bangs, cassette in hand. It’s a tape of these tracks recorded during an Austin romp I’d heard about second or third hand (he’d planned to “live there forever,” it was said, ’til a night in the local drunk tank — on top of who knows what else — totally changed his mind), and in the course of the next 12-15 hours he played it, for us and at us, many times. Also during this stretch, after boasting, rather proudly, that he no longer drank, he managed to ingest at least 36 cough- suppressant tablets (three 12-packs of Ornical — we weren’t always watching) washed down with sizable slugs of bourbon, as there was nothing else but water to wash ’em down with.

All stages of this ordeal, in which Nick and I were little more than foils for surge upon surge of what we’d come to regard as typical Lestorian bathos, were hardly bearable in the state we were in (after far too many “nights with Lester,” going back to the days when we even could dig it, we’d opted for a change to take this one straight), but the morning-after phase was literally one for the books. On the umpteenth playback of what was soon to hit the racks as the Jook Savages LP, Lester insisted that one particular vocal was pure Richard Hell (in Lester’s cosmos an a priori yay); my dogtired no-big-deal of a response was it sounded existentially neater than that, more on the order of Tom Verlaine (a Lester nuh-nuh-no). Suddenly hair-trigger sensitive — in a performance-trigger vein — he tapdanced back with “Then I might as well go sell shoes in El Cajon.” Next cut he compared himself to somebody (very contempo) else, prompting me to comment, for non-pejorative, sleep- denied better or worse, that his vocals (across the board; in general) had the same basic flavor as those on such country-western parodies as Sanders' Truckstop or the Statler Brothers’ Johnny Mack Brown High School LP. Affecting grievous offense, as if any of his b.s. actually mattered (the Lester of ’73/’74 — in any chemical state — would merely’ve giggled), he took things up a full notch of indignant/sarcastic: “Well I guess I’m just no fucking good. ”

But he wouldn’t stop playing the crap, not with every cut looming as a supercharged occasion for kneejerk call- and-response, a challenge for him to goad Nick and/or me into goading him, in turn, into mock-self-deprecatory one-liners ad nauseum — a dress rehearsal, as it were — his puke-stained sweater seemed appropriate — for his triumphant appearance on Johnny Carson, which he had no doubt the worldwide success of his Blondie book would imminently require . . . along with a shot of his mug, cleanshaven, on the cover of People (over which he whined “fear” of besmirched personal image).

Ultimately Nick and I, weary of further compliance in so shoddy an interpersonal number, old buddy or not (and/or old bud in particular), found ourselves laughing in his face; enough was enough, and the sight of this bumbling mammal going gaga for an audience of two-who-knew- better was kind of otherworldly amusing. The object of our yuks, however, took it as us laughing with him: Great Moments in Standup/Audience Rapport! Swollen with illusory (or whatever) whacked-out self, Lester then proceeded to announce his program: (1) to save Rock & Roll; (2) to become president (presumably Oi the U.S. of A.); (3) to move to England and in turn save their Rock & Roll. As mere dipshit goals, nos. 1 and 3 meant topically little to either of us — geez, we’d all but buried the Anglo-Am mainstream as even an idle, y’know, sometime hobby or whatnot — but (2) hit us firmly, instantaneously, in the breastplate.

Lester’s neurons, no recent model of health to begin with, had made the short-circuit of Lester Bangs . . . [tenor saxophonist] Lester Young . . . (latter's nickname] Pres . . . Pres/U.S.A. per se!!!

Guffaw, guffaw — we guffawed — though I guess we could've gasped (or shuddered). Then: a heavy silence, as cosmic (or whatever) as it was awkward, filled presently by the man himself:

"Hey! I'm gonna buy some import albums! I'll get a whore I know to lend me her charge card! Cab fare too!" And he was off; no amiable nudging, no “Get the fuck out of here" could take the place of timeless vinyl hunger. Gone at last — and we gave him (in all solemn, empirical, non-jive reckoning) six months to live.

But of course he fooled us, by (nearly) a whole damn calendar year. Surprise, surprise: but an even bigger surprise was the extent to which he managed to actually turn things around — well, almost — during that extra annum, especially during its. and his. final months. Not only was he still among the living, not only did he no longer seem conspicuously earmarked for premature exit — the Lester with whom I spent a rather refreshing week in February '82 gave every indication of having already gone beyond mere survival (as an issue) and appeared, astonishingly, to be thriving on the theme.

In L.A. following his mother's eventually fatal stroke and staying with his 56-year-old half-brother in Studio City, he accompanied me one night to a low-stakes poker game attended by members of the Blasters, the perfect setup, you’d figure, for Lester to revert to type. But no, he just minimally fun-&- games'ed it like anyone else — no lookin' for opportunities to “be Lester," no showing off for rock-roll peers either verbally or intakewise. no diving for the evening's jugular and letting 'er rip — and after two beers (!). without so much as a grimace, he declared he’d had enough. Postgame he engaged Phil Alvin in a lively musical dialogue, but at no point did fightin' words fill the air, or were axes even poised for grinding. The pair agreed to exchange tapes — a wholesome friendship in the making — and next day Lester complained (true, true) that reefer had been smoked.

As the week wore on in consistent, low- key fashion. I was struck by the fuckload of inner capacities the guy was perceptibly calling on, left, right and center, to extend his defiance of Death to the domain of just plain living, capacities I hadn't caught sensory evidence of — all previously told — for more than 11 minutes total. A far cry from anything as cheaply benign as, let's say, more frequent eruptions of "Lester washes the dishes" (see obit 04), what I got to witness was kind of on the order of a whole new Lester, one who'd finally found a non-lethal, functionally less jagged (though in no way “benign") rhythm for his life. Engaging him in tight quarters with more open-heartedness per se than I*m sure I’d ever mustered (sharing an Edge does not always make for brotherhood-by-numbers. let alone by pure, unedited inclination), I willingly submitted to his rap/rant and bought its tenor if not its verbatim transcript; by the time he returned to New York, his mother still hanging on. I’d seen and heard a New Lester series pilot that could credibly have played — prime time — on the Pro- Life Network.

For starters, he’d learned to slow down, to proceed apace through a given experience without easy reliance on everpopular on-off switches. He'd gotten far more selective about the company he kept, seeking out, for the first time in his known adult life, social interactions stressing soulwarming interpersonal comfort over thrash-trigger me-you tribulation. A good deal less insistent upon strapping each day to an emotional chopping block (as recalled, for inst, in that old chestnut of his, “I need to be in love!"), he'd begun to let his life embrace emotional motifs of greater duration and resiliency. And. as stuff like this fed back to his theoretic apparatus, even Lester's ideas (as stated) began to display an unexpected day-to-day congruity; no longer, it seemed, would he write an anti-racist wowser for the Village Voice in one breath and scream, "Fuckin’ niggers!” at Village Oldies the next. Lester-as-flux had had its thoroughly engaging run. and for this to give way to a “maturer” unpredictability was not the worst of possible outcomes.

Even the drastic reduction in Lester’s intake of physical poisons bore little trace of on-the-wagon-or-bust — y'know, as if any day, minute, second the tension of it all would cause him to snap right back with equal vengeance — particularly with its status as but part of a whole-body package that included both eating at regular intervals and a radical olfactory modification: He now took baths. (One afternoon in ’74 Nick and I met Lester at some ritzy midtown hotel. Though he’d been in the room all of an hour, the smell was like a dog had died there, and been left to rot, weeks or months before. Consequently, we vetoed his offer to call down for drinks on Creem’s tab, suggesting, to his consternation, that any dump of a bar would be more, uh, whatever. Many of his heterosex liaisons had foundered on the rocks of precisely this issue.)

In terms of cultural orientation, no longer was he monomanically enslaved to rock & roll (-or-perish). For virtually the first time since the sixties he didn’t need, burningly, brand new Big Beat LP’s in his mail slot each (and every) day; the state of the Art, wobbling on a multi-year terminal gimp, no longer served as his external psychic barometer, his armband of first-person pride (or shame); having finally produced Music of his own, to severe personal specifications (regardless of the giggles it inspired in jerks like me), he no longer needed to prove anything with it or through it. Crucially, though some would probably like to deny it. he no longer saw Rock’em-Sock'em as a viable metaphor for his (or any, kindred or otherwise) state of being, viewing it as the all too easy — and ultimately, revoltingly, unsatisfactory — crystallization of (mega-numerous) blank and scattered lives. Lester's break with rock-roll mythos as his be-all/end-all of etc., which I have no doubt (had he lived) he’d've sooner rather than later made official, was as profound, and profoundly moving, as his break with the Myth of Lester. As one committed jackass who’d made the same painful transition — goodbye, Rock-Automated Self! — I knew how tough a bond the chronically intermingled personal/cultural can be to crack (and my heart went right out to him).

It also warmed my cockles, considering his record in the mere civility dept., to see him relate (graciously) to his half- brother’s wife, this unaffectedly pretty 21- year-old rural Mexican the macho blusterer, a stuntman by trade, had recently acquired, maritally, while on location Down South. Though she knew pun near zero English, my first sight of her she was watching some random English-language crap, while hubby rested for a shoot of the Fall Guy series, on the tiny TV in her fussy suburban kitchen; materially cozy for the first time in her life, she seemed lonely, disoriented, far from home. Silent and solemn, she visibly stiffened — shyly? menially? — at the intrusion of Lester, my girlfriend Irene and me. only to be put at ease by Lester introducing us, without missing a beat, as, well, friends of the family. Like it mattered to him that she feel like family — and thus shared in all aspects of etc. — and for a moment the loneliness left her face; she smiled broadly, shook (or at least took) our hands, went back to her tube.

But what came off as so genuine when he was dealing with his family, his friends, kind of sputtered into the ether when he tried to branch it to the family of Man. Whenever he got to talkin' Hard Humanism, which had all the earmarks of being his preoccupation of (Rock- replacement) record, he’d make these broad, lecture-ish, relatively flavorless statements which often didn't wash.

Never wholly credible 'cause once again he seemed to be performing — without booze/etc. but surely with a script — he’d say thus & such about human courage and folly that not only had an artificial ring, it tended to run in direct opposition to what had clearly been his experience. Even his word choice sounded stilted, alien, not his own; when he spoke of "women" he could easily have been reading straight from a column in Cosmo.

A lot of which suggested a Lester so hellbent on being a good boy once and for all that to merely work overtime cleaning up his own act was scarcely sufficient; he had to render a transpersonal commentary that made his good intentions “universal,” even if the topical universality he’d taken an option on was simply the first he found it comfortable song-&-dancing a provisional connection to. There were moments when his bill of particulars made me uneasy, realizing that to intellectually challenge any of this would be like kicking mud on some kid’s newest/truest pastime, 'specially when it was one so socially redeeming, so non- self-destructive. one which, for all intents and purposes, I basically shared with him anyway. What really counted was the miracle of Rock Tough Guy #1, after 15 years of rocknroll plug-in and little else, during which he'd come to thread that needle upside down (and asleep), to the point (even) of smugness, flipness, pomposity, out on a goddam limb over something else: a neophyte at last! (I could dig it.)

Anyway, finally, on the last night of Lester's stay — which worked out as our last time together, period — we did something we’d previously never found the appropriate nexus for: trading rants (in earnest) with blank tapes a-rolling.

For something like five-six hours we went apeshit re such topics as: the sellouts & prejudices of mutual colleagues; novels and novelists; New York as (quite possibly) the coldest outpost on Emotional Earth; the usual standard rockish garbidge (plus some un- and some non-). We also hit on shrinks-we- have-known, with Lester's rap on this rooty-toot of a subject being the single one, from the four-and-a-half hours I’ve so far transcribed, which most tellingly nutshells the excruciating self- examination he had to've undertaken — and undergone — just to be sitting around discoursing as fluidly as he was, to’ve transcended whatever the fuck en route thereto:

“Like I went to a psychoanalyst, one in New York and one in Detroit, for a total of, I dunno, three-and-a-half years. I finally concluded, I mean yeah I’m insane, I’ve got my problems, my sicknesses are fucking me, yeah, I’m sure they both probably helped me, y’know, I know the last guy in New York, it's like everybody I know was totally appalled by my drinking and drugging, well like you, right, and everybody else had the same reaction, y’know, except my shrink. He’d say, ‘No, that's alright.’ I went out to this, he had a country retreat, a whole bunch of us would go out there on weekends. And the first time I went there like I got drunk on Friday night, and Saturday morning I got up and washed down a bottle of Romilar with a bottle of beer while sitting on a slick rock by the stream. I got this great idea for something I wanted to write, I stood up on the rock in boots like these and whoosh, went like that and smashed, see it, the scar on my nose? That's how I got it, smashed my face open.

“And he thought my druggin' and drinkin' was great, y'know? He said, in fact he kind of told me I'd be not as great of a writer if I gave all this stuff up. And I said, 'Yeah, but look at all these people, they rot away, they end up like self- parodies like Kerouac and Burroughs and all that sort of shit.' And he said. 'No. no, not everybody's like that.' I said, How could I someday be 55 years old and have to take a handful of speed to sit down at the typewriter?' Well he said, 'People do it. heh heh heh!' Well both my shrinks, especially this guy, they had real great humanist compassion and empathy and all that, but I know what both of 'em did, and in the long run in essence they were no good for me, because they were getting off on me being there. It’s like they’re so bored, one housewife alter another, 'I don’t love my husband, I don't know why.’ Then they get someone like you or I that's actually interesting, that has ideas, and so it's fun time for 'em. I mean if I hadda follow this guy’s advice I’d be dead, uh, pretty soon.”

Hmm: one effing eery end-of-quote as, alas, all is now dust — reactively acquired caution or no. Possibly possibly possibly, any tonnage of prudence would inevitably have proven insufficient for the autopilot courses he was still, evidently, all too capable of flying. Or, reversing horses and carts, maybe his tortured shell was already jus’ too beat-to-shit, with even a radical lessening in his scale of abuse being too little — archetypally — too late. And then there’s this pharmacological biz about purified cells succumbing to doses they’d have been more than up for when poison was all they knew. (And can we ignore the Wrath of Influenza?)

Even if, to some bitter-enders, his death remains as shrouded in formal “mystery” as those of Eric Dolphy and Warren G. Harding, all-of-the-above can't help but provide a not-unlikely profile of how Lester came to die. Throw in a few more mainline Causalities (cultural: rock-roll glut, esp. coupled w/ too literal an intoxication with Kerouac, Celine, et al; primalpsychological: a childhood more woeful than most, his Jehovah's Witness mom — pushing 50 when she had him — mind-setting, almost singlehandedly. a chronic “inability to cope"; geographic: the Apple, even when it wasn't absolute Edge Central, affording him. given his makeup, scant opportunity for inner peace) and you'd easily have an explanation that 'd hold up in a court of his cronies/cohorts/camp followers.

But if Lester was the pawn, victim, and (indeed) fellow traveler of such easy- Aristotelian a-implies-b, he was also, in those last fitful months, a scatterer of all such shit to the winds, a man who showed his true destiny muscle by throwing all the elements out of on-the-head mythopoetic sync just when they threatened, conspiratorily, to reduce him to merely another Jim Morrison. Jimi Hendrix. Mr. Kerouac. Screamingly, courageously, he committed himself, as wholly (really) as possible, to a counter-causal gameplan which even if flawed — and accidents, y’know, happen — did actually manage to defuse (at least where I live & breathe) the mythic oompah of any time-delayed rat-trap he may subsequently (or previously) have fallen in. If there's anything almost pleasing about the timing, the anti-drama, of Lester's death, it's the monumental Mythic Disjuncture factors he'd set in motion were thereby — implicitly, explicitly — to forever effect.

LESTER’S (WRITERLY) LEGACY — “One of rock’s most colorful characters, Bangs made his reputation as a pugnacious, participatory journalist who was not above picking fights with rock stars in pursuit of a good interview." So wrote one voice of prevailing wisdom, Patrick Goldstein, in the May 9/82 L.A. Times; nothing — latter part — could be farther from the truth. If Lester (the writer) more than once battled Lou Reed into (and beyond) the wee hours of etc., it was not to get a story, it was to live a story: to encounter all the rock-related being his writerly credentials (as a wedge) were able to afford him (as a person)'. Nor was he in any way enthralled by the sickening spectacle of stars being stars; artists, maybe, but stars, fug 'em. When he as mere citizen found himself face-to-face with the pose, pretense, and professional guardedness of such gaudy, extraneous creatures, Lester could not (for the life of him) deal with such crap but to cut right through and speak, directly, to the mere citizen in them, or (failing that) force the situation into functional self-destruct — before the fact of anything so dispassionate as actually “writing it up."

That his eventual write-ups tended to display utter contempt for the entire food chain of music-corporate life, often biting, intentionally, a grimy hand that could not’ve been more willing — his mighty Credentials & all — to feed him, heck, fatten him, was but half the take-no-shit of Lester's essential statement as a writer de rock; forcefeeding the stuff, his stuff, the stuff-as-writ, to the only marginally less corporate (or grimy) running dogs of rockwrite publishing was at least as pugnacious a gesture of this-is-what-I-am/this-is-what-I-do/take-it-or-be-fucked. Since the extent of his success in shoving it down so many otherwise unyielding editorial throats may have had less to do with his willful intent than theirs — camouflage, for inst, for their being life-deep in major-label record company pockets — its significance at this juncture is, at most, merely ironic; the reciprocal influence, in any event, of his ease at getting published upon subsequent moments of raw critical-expressive spew was procedurally nil. In fact, what may most enduringly matter about Lester's approach to his chosen profession, way ahead of dandy journalistic touchstones — "courage," “integrity,” “pride in craft" — that he ate for breakfast like so much broken glass (but which, really, you can still get from Nat Hentoff and Howard Cosell), is the “anti-professional," forcibly non-dehumanized square-one struggle he by design submitted to — and could not. with any kernel of his humanity, avoid - in order to pump out critical prose of any scale of note. (Pugnacity with form; with ritual creative context; even — especially — with roleplaying writerly/critical self.)

That he was ofttimes a great writer/critic, so-called, was but icing on the cake. That scant few others, on the hottest days of their lives, have even approached him — or particularly cared to, considering the requisite gravity and passion of the chore he’d set — probably says as much about their investment in lesser quals of cake as it does about the relative inadequacy of their writerly follow-through. Rockwriting is, and nearly always has been, the trade of simps, wimps, displaced machos, brats and saps; of, in Lester's own words, “ass-kissers of the ruling class”; of fuddy-duddy archivists with cobwebs on their specs; of pathetic idealizers of a lost youth no one has ever (even approximately) experienced or possessed; of sycophantic apologists for chi-chi trends, musical and extramusical alike, without which (so they've always claimed) “rock is dead”; of binary yes/no cheeses with the cognitive wherewithal of vinyl, shrinkwrap, the physical column- inch. Rockwritin' Lester, like anyone else in the trade, was certainly each of these things from time to time, though (probably) none of 'em, singly or in tandem, for longer than the odd off review. Sadly, though his untradelike comportment surely tantalized mere tradefolk while he lived — at least in terms of Style — and even begat a not-half-bad (early-’70s) clone in “Metal Mike" Saunders, his actual abiding sway among such clowns, beyond the occasional liftable riff, was — as it continues to be — infinitesimal.

Finally: the twin silly questions (1) where a still-living Lester might hypothetically've taken it (i.e., beyond the rockwrite fishpond) and (2) what such imaginary newstuff could/would conceivably’ve meant to his basic audience. Second one first. Okay, that Lester's rockstuff generally read so hot as personal testimony is one thing; for it to have been perceived by so many as being eminently, genuinely about something — something rather specific, in fact something "rear’ — is something else. When you get down to it, the gospel of Lester's radical about-ness rested largely on a big hunk of readerly illusion, the illusion of a functional one-on-one between the guy’s fertile imaginings and the psychic infrastructure of rock & roll as dealt; there could be harsh discordance, of course, but as long as a firm relationship could (for whatever readerly vested interest) be consistently inferred between Lester’s mindgames and rock’s g-g-games per se, you at least had the stamp of a viable — if totally simulated — one-on-one. But, really/truly, while Lester’s psychic playground may surely have been one drastically twisted maze, its actual correspondence (sympathetic, hostile, whatever) to rock's own labyrinth, one so airtight and dank as to make his seem like wide open etc., was far too often naught but a matter of readerly convenience. Everyone loves a cipher, a living/ breathing anagram or two. even some — hey — with flaws more rampant than Lester’s, but for the man’s writerly service to’ve been gauged (almost solely) vis-a-vis his reliability as a stand-in cipher-of- x, y’know for readerfolk too lame — or lazy — to suss out x themselves, is the real tragedy of the trip, particularly when the first-&-final glue of most folks’ attachment to his writing was never much more than their own desperate attachment to an x they could, and should, have been accessing more independently (and less desperately) to begin with.

So, anyway, here's the rub. Had Lester lived long enough to both sever his own desperate rock connection — officially, in sheets read by his fuckheaded fans, simply by writing other stuff — and, furthermore, to back it up with an equally official rejection of the Fount of Neurosis from which he'd sung its tune (and they'd listened), it ain't really much of a longshot to imagine him losing a huge percent of the fuckheads — certainly the most gung-ho among 'em — in, well, no time flat. And, c’mon, how much of an immediate, uh, new audience was he likely to yank in writing up (as he insisted he would) such transcendently pivotal mere-humanistic trifles as the dearth of love (as we know it) in scene X or Y . . . how this set of new-age culture jerks uses that set of new-age culture jerks as props in regards to bluh . . . New York editors who pull rank (pshaw!) along collegiate lines [a hard-hitting exposé] . . . or, I dunno, something about shams and follies in clothes and/or grooming?

Plus, well, though, um — (even if) — then again: Aside from loss of ad hominem authority due to the fickle scumbait nature of the pop-world Beast, aside from the fact that many of his generic partisans would prob'ly now be targeted, topically and even personally, in scathing printed-page rants, aside from the limited run such goulash (Sensitive Ties His Laces, w/ Brass Knucks & Footnotes) has ever had — hey — can ever/will ever have . . . aside, aside, aside — the most glaring fact fact is how few times, as of his death, he'd as yet even aspired to the heights (or whats) or non- rock journalism. Four-five-six, some number like that, in the Voice and wherever else, all of ’em still pretty much rockwriterly appendices to the rockwrite “adventure," meaning he had a good ways to go before he'd’ve got the wings/chops/ legs for a total-pulp plunge (or at least a regular shift) at full oldtime capacity (but with newtime thrust and content). Which would’ve been no fall from grace no matter how you scope it — give the boy time (for fuck sake) to stumble and bumble and get it right — but how would any possible Lester have dealt with a (previously amenable) shithook book co. like Delilah telling him not now, sonny when he handed ’em a ream of copy on (let’s imagine) friends who’re fuckups? Personal persona limelight Lester had learned to live without — but writeperson limelight? (It would not’ve been easy.)

Okay, he's dead. All this brand new grief and hardship never befell him; never will. But words on pages remain: What is their lot? Lester's standard fare was so paradigmatically “of the moment" that he was the rockmag shootist. But books of the stuff? Nah; it’s kind of nebulous how even his best mag outings will wear when inevitably (??) anthologized. For someone so public in his orientation, both as input and output, he was — don't laugh or even smirk — one of rock’s more precious and fragile "private moments.” Private moments you can always document — coercively, of course — but try and play ’em back and. well . . . we'll all see, I reckon.

LESTER LEAPS IN — Y’all know all by now how Lester leapt out of New York; lemme just finish with how he leapt in. His first night in town, just a visit, fall "72, he stayed with me and my girlfriend Roni, West Village, 104 Perry St., apt. 4. Arriving semi-direct from JFK, he split pretty quick for the nearest grocer, returning with three six-packs of Colt 45. What he did for the next day and a half — all he did — was wade through 18 big ones, half quarts, as follows: start can, drink fast, get tired; fall out, dropping remainder; awaken following can’s impact with floor; stagger to fridge for fresh one; repeat cycle. What he mumbled or muttered during any of the 18 pre-fallout phases I simply do not recall.

So like hey y’know wo hey hey wo-wo hey, OLD SPORT: love ya, hope I didn’t cramp yer style, g’bye.

--Richard Meltzer, “Lester Bangs Recollected in Tranquility”  Dec. 6, 1984

[thevoidcannotbefilled]

hgdbdn,, vast prompt..... but with a jon? 👀

(I’M SO SORRY THIS TOOK FOREVER BUT I GOT YOU ALKSJDLSA)

Warnings: Falling, feelings of vertigo, head trauma, death, Vast-related existentialism, ‘does my life having meaning’ type existentialism, mention of being buried alive

Hope you enjoy~

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

Jon doesn’t intrude on others’ nightmares every night.

Of course, most of the time he watches. He can’t not watch. It’s not in his nature or his ability to refuse, and he’s stopped trying to a long time ago. Pained faces, desperate cries, and fear, endless fear in his head. Sometimes Jon wonders if these nightmares are the only thing keeping him alive at this point, if the meager supply of repeated terror stills his hunger enough to keep him safe from the Eye’s infinite gaze. 

With the way his hands shake and the gnawing hunger grows, he hopes they don’t. If they don’t feed him, then this hunger has a purpose. Other than obviously keeping him away from innocents. 

But tonight it’s different. Whether its his own mind playing tricks or the Beholding hungry to watch something new, he doesn’t know. Whatever the case, he doesn’t have to watch Naomi grip helplessly in her sunken grave, crying desperately for someone to save her.  

No, tonight he squirms in his chair, watching the not-dead face of Micheal “Mike” Crew hold a cup of tea. 

It’s a similar scene to before. A table, two cups, a few snacks, and of course, the two of them alone. Mike still has that pleasant expression, looking almost bored at Jon’s intrusion. If Jon ignores that half of Mike’s head is caved in, and the way it’s slowly dripping blood onto the otherwise immaculate carpet, then he could trick himself into thinking this is just a bad memory. 

But Jon is bad at not noticing things he’s already noted, and he checks his tea for any traces of blood.

The cup is empty. 

“Would you like a cup of tea?”  Mike asks, sensing his predicament. He doesn’t hold the kettle, only his cup. There is no kettle in the room. Jon wonders if he can even see out of the caved-in side. 

Jon lets out a breath, “I’m-I’m good, thank you.”

“Are you sure?” Mike says immediately. There wasn’t a pause between Jon’s reply. The conversation is not the same as before, but it’s fast forwarding to its conclusion. He waits, watching back, ready for Jon to continue their charade. 

“…yes.”

“-It’s good-“

“-I’d like your statement-“

“-How rude. I was only offering-“

“-Just make me fall already,” Jon snaps. 

The expected response doesn’t come. Mike, still holding his cup, just stares. A trail of blood runs down his forehead, sliding past his cheek, and flows slowly ever downward until it settles on his chin. His smile quirks. 

“You want to fall?” Mike asks incredulously. His voice is muffled, heavy, like someone added a grainy filter after running a marathon. He lifts the cup to his lips, the first time, Jon realizes, but he’s too busy watching the blood on his chin. The trickle pools at the point, slowly growing from a small dot to a fat teardrop. It trembles, waiting, growing, but not falling just yet. 

Mike lets out a satisfied sigh, apparently finished with his sip. He places the cup on the table. Jon’s gaze darts to it. He’s not surprised when he sees that it’s filled to the brim with dirt stains and gravel.

He wonders, vaguely, if the Buried felt remotely similar to being buried alive. If the lack of intent to keep you alive makes the suffocation any less brutal, the fear any less real. Or if the Buried just didn’t want to share with the End, and the two fears simply reveled in Mike’s fear hand in hand in his last suffocating moments. Perhaps, they got nothing at all, Mike too far gone already from the blow. 

“So you’re ready to fall?” The dirt makes Mike’s voice hoarse. He’s spitting gravel out now. His tongue flicks a rock in Jon’s direction, landing in his cup with a soft pang. The man’s smile is rotten with mud, but it doesn’t stop it from twitching fully. And still, the blood still hangs, waiting just waiting-

Jon meets Mike’s gaze. The playful green is dulled to something almost black. As much as he’s looking in his direction, Jon doesn’t think he can actually see. Still, Jon leans back in his chair and tries to meet the dead gaze the best he can. “No,” he admits, and he doesn’t know how you can sound tired in a dream, but the resignation in his voice is far too blatant to be blamed on anything but exhaustion. His eyes land on the dirt stained cup. “But I don’t have much of a choice, do I?” 

“We all make-”

“-Choices.” Choices, his choices. Choices for others. His life is full of choices. “Yes, I’ve heard it before.” 

That smile twitches again; a rock falls to the ground. “Not that they matter much. Tell me, how much has killing me changed things?”

Jon presses his lips together. He could tell him that no, that wasn’t him; Daisy did that. He could also assert that while he didn’t particularly affect Jon, there are now several lives free from the Vast avatar’s hunger. He could even say there’s one less ‘gentleman’ in the world. 

But he doesn’t say these things. These things do not matter to the Falling Titan, and ‘change’ is only relative to scale. 

No, nothing has changed as far as the Vast is concerned. 

“I thought as much,” Mike says, with at one point would have been a laugh, but sounds more like a cough. 

Mud covers every inch of the previously pristine cup. Jon should feel cornered, buried like Mike, but the room is blurring, the air around him anything but that warm, damp stillness. His head is light, his heart thumps wildly, and he has to resist the temptation to grip the chair like it would do anything to help him. He asked for this, literally, but the memories of his breath being taken away by endless winds fight with the logical inevitability of the moment. He doesn’t panic, but that doesn’t stop him from trembling in his seat.  

Mike’s dead gaze goes sharp. For a moment, nothing breathes. No wind. No sound. Just, knowing. The eye before the storm. It’s only broken by the drop of blood. Finally reaching its limits, it lets go, falling, falling downward to the buried cup… 

Mike’s smile finally breaks, and he breathes easy. “Have fun, Archivist.”

The drop of blood hits the cup, and the floor is gone. 

(Here’s the thing about dreams. They’re exaggerations. No matter how level-headed and real a dream could be, there’s something hyper realistic about it that emphasizes some sort of feeling in your life, even if that feeling is just a deep sense of boredom. A focus, a pinpoint, a moment to read the little details until it doesn’t feel real anymore. Dreams represent the psyche in a way that always speak the ‘truth’, even if that truth is an irrational lie we believe with every fiber of our being. 

It’s no wonder the Beholding uses it as a weapon. The subconscious is an easy way to deliver fears in a way that’s inescapably yours. Trapped under the microscope built on your own memories, the Eye can focus, swivel, and simply watch the way the human imagination can twist its own fear until it squirms helplessly under the subconscious power of its own truth. 

The Archivist is its lens. The Archivist knows just how to focus the right way to see the worst of every possible moment until it’s fine tuned to Know. 

The Archivist is the hyper-real. 

So no, Naomi didn’t fall fully into that grave, but dreams cheat and of course, it’s far more satisfying to claw your way out for all eternity than to escape. The professor sits with squirting hearts, sadly only a slight exaggeration. But the way Tessa eats the plastic bits of the keyboard is such an improvement over simply watching her tremble from another doing it. Awake, the Archivist is not an abomination of endless eyes, but with the way he watches and wants to know, his gaze might as well be thousands and at night, it is. 

They are exaggerations, but interesting ones, showing truths that feel real, even if they’re technically fake. This is how dreams feed the Beholding. Watching, Knowing fear in its most primal form.

The Archivist is a lens. He watches for the Beholding, and in turn, it knows. But the Eye has a doorway to his mind now, and despite being its servant, he hasn’t been feeding it well. The Archivist oh so wants to be human, to pretend he has a place among those he should feed upon. If the Archivist wants to be human so badly, then he should allow himself to be watched, known. 

The Archivist has fears of his own, and tonight, the Eye will drink in every bit of it. And dreams, they’re exaggerations, and in order to compensate for the lack of watching tonight, the Eye will make sure the Archivist feels his fragile human fears in the most raw form imaginable. The Archivist does not know how to understand his own emotions, others or his own, but tonight, he will be forced to face his own fear with a cruel, unrelenting quality to it, in a way where it keeps wrapping around until it’s both truth and lie. 

Tonight, the Archivist will suffer, and he will be watched.) 

Jon feels like he’s falling.  

But he’s not. 

Falling implies he’s going anywhere. But he’s not. He can’t be. Despite the fact he can see things moving beyond him, they feel like they exist in a place that’s not Mike’s apartment or even a place that’s real. Because the apartment is gone, the chair long disappeared, and Jon’s just falling, but not actually falling because it feels the same way as if he’s in a chair, caught in a whirlwind, but trapped by something keeping him from escaping it. 

The Fears don’t care for technicalities, even less so in dreams, so while Jon is technically not falling, his stomach’s dropped and the bile rises, only to be shoved down by the way his heart kicks everything into place. The air buffets cruelly around him to create constant walls of bruising pain. It shoves whatever air he has left out of his lungs, but when he breathes he feels choked by the sudden influx of wind that make them feel like they’re about to explode. 

He tried to scream when this started. He could tell he tried to make a sound from the way it tickled his throat. But the moment he opened his mouth, the rising terror was forced back and was choked down to his stomach by the gutting winds.

He can’t feel. He can’t move. He can barely think. His voice is long gone to the winds. And yet, a cruel part of him has complete clarity of all of this. Each bruise created from the terrible winds. The acidic taste of bile on his tongue. The carnal part of him that tells him ‘he’s going to die’ despite knowing he’s technically not in state where he can. It notes, it analyzes, and it tells him to look beyond the air. 

And he does. And apparently it’s his choice, for all that’s worth. 

In the distance he sees people. Familiar people, but not the ones he usually sees in his nightmares. They move slowly, languid, and if they’re speaking, well, Jon can’t hear his own thoughts, let alone their words.

But he sees Tim mid-laugh. Watches him, as he transforms into something sharp and bitter. His face looks cracked. 

He sees Basira, expression hard, but she looks beyond him. She’s seeing something more important than his pain. 

Daisy stands too far beyond her, but her face is…wrong. Too sharp, too ready, and he sees her grip on her knife slowly get tighter. 

He does not see Melanie or Georgie. But a figure he doesn’t recognize smiles sadly at him, and that bothers him than any hate he could see from her. 

Farthest away, barely a blur, Martin stands alone. Jon tries to watch to get more than a glimpse, but he’s gone before he can even miss him. 

But he’s only the first. 

Jon wants to reach out. To move, do something other than be stuck in this whirlwind. But he’s moving his arm, and it feels like something is pushing it down from all sides. The air cocoons it, pressing down even as Jon uses all his strength to reach out and try to do something. But he can’t. 

He can only watch as the wind takes them too. 

They may be frozen in this distortion of time, but the winds strike with an uncaring grace. The mystery woman is first, then Tim quickly after. In the split seconds before they’re gone, terror and satisfaction fill them respectively, but for the time spent on their faces, they might as well not have existed. 

Daisy’s form blinks. Gone, but back in a heartbeat. 

But Basira and Daisy blink away a second later. Together, but gone. 

Martin’s form blinks. For a moment, he’s there, just the two of them, and he could just maybe-

But Martin turns away, and if it’s the wind or the fog that takes him, he’ll never know. 

And Jon’s hand is barely raised an inch. 

He wants to scream again, but he knows it will be meaningless. The endless wind would just take it away from him, and even if it didn’t, what’s the point? The void beyond him would just swallow it whole. 

He’s saved the world, Jon thinks in that brief bit of clarity. That should matter. Things he does should matter. But everyone is gone. And those who aren’t gone will be soon. He’s the Archivist, a monster, and monsters can’t escape things as human as death.

The wind swirls and swirls. He feels the loss of everyone, but nothing changes here. Jon is still raising his hand to do something. He doesn’t know what. He blinks and a thousand stagnant worlds blur ahead of him. They’re not his, a part of him screams, but if he can do anything, anything, it would be worth it.  

He raises his hand for eternity. The winds never stop. His skin is made of bruises, and his heart has made everything else stop. He can not scream, and does not want to. The terror in what will happen if he doesn’t take every thought into moving his hand is far more pressing. 

Jon reaches through the wind. For a brief moment, a wonderful blessed heartbeat, he touches the ground, and he feels dust on his fingers. 

And then he’s thrust back into the whirlwind. The ground he touched flies away, gone before Jon could even see the patterns he made. He settles back into the same falling position as before, stomach dropping, bruising winds, pounding hearts, the works. 

His fingers are spotless. 

The world isn’t silent, it can’t be, but the wind is just white noise at this point anyway, and Jon is empty. He tries to think. He tries to figure out what he’s feeling. He tries to understand and feel dust. 

But all he does is fall. 

When Jon finally wakes up in his chair in the Archives, he’ll be shaking. He’ll grit his teeth, and glare into the piles of statements around him, glare flickering into more hungry for a second, before turning back into anger. He won’t be able to place exactly why he’s terrified, only feeling cold and empty, wanting something to fill that space where his scream was forced to hide. 

But he always knows why he’s afraid. 

In a world of monsters, and Powers beyond your understanding, it’s easy to fall into existential terror about your own existence. Keeping themselves alive become the most important priority, and as more complications arise, ‘to hell with everyone else’ brings a delicious amount of terror for their gods to revel in. 

Then of course, your life has to have meaning if you protect it so feverishly. Every life you take, every step towards monsterhood, and every second you build a world of horror should lead to something. To make every bit of pain and suffering worth it, right? To make something of a world that doesn’t otherwise care for your existence, right? 

Life is worth it, right?

Jon will remember his spotless fingers and will wonder-

Has being alive changed things? And if it has, was it worth the cost of trying to move a world of dust?

[bluraydisco]

Life On Mars In Boston: Adjust Time On Hour

Possible Time/Space traveler (or perhaps just a schizophrenic homeless man) leaving cryptic messages and glyphs in the area of Allston, MA (from late Summer to Early Fall 2018).

These images are the main reason I had created both a Redit and a Tumblr, so that I could get answers to the meanings behind it all. If this subject matter piques any readers attention and if anyone can decipher the meaning behind any of it (if there is any at all) feel free to comment with suggestions of what they could mean!

After much research, I know SOME of these are indeed simple hobo symbology (ie: the feathered arrows featured below). However, there is some unknown imagery such as crosses/unfinished clocks, a circle with a "teardrop" left blank on the inside or including either an A, B, a DC or even a question mark! (+/-). This individual also has written messages to a "Lauren" (one legible the other not so much) and has an obsession with the U.S.A., Time and Mars. As a matter of fact that planet was visible to the naked eye during the first of happenings

A little backstory:

I first noticed him in late August/early September while I was on my way to work, waiting to cross the street. He is a short, thin straggly looking man with thick stubble, a gray mullet, wearing a red hat, wire rim glasses (80s style) and a brown blazer. He was sitting at the bus stop. Then, in a flash, I saw him manically get up and he started writing on an advert for a local gym that was on a city recycling/rubbish bin with a sharpie. After work I took a snap of it. It was the first of many *unfinished clocks.

***NOTE: A Reditor with the handle "Qualiawiddershins" concluded on the "Fringe Science" forum that these are known in psychological circles as "clock tests". In which delusional patients are instructed to draw a clock (from memory) by their Doctor in order to come back to reality and to come down from their mania. What intrigued this commenter was the fact that the subject was using this specific method for his own advantage in order to further justify his obsessions/fantasy world. END NOTE***

The next day revealed a rather large diagram at the very same bus stop where ad space is supposed to go. It contained plenty of A's, B's, what I call "teardrops" connected with the word "America" intersected with arrows and, of course Mars, up top and circled. I thought it was scientific, so a close friend (who has a legit background) theorized the following:

"I think he was a physical chemist. Electron cloud diagrams, charges, anion and cation exchange...Or maybe I've been staring at it for too long".

***NOTE 2: I uploaded the pictures on the Science thread. As it turns out, she was indeed looking at it too long. No science to it. Just incoherent ramblings and (as stated at the start of the post) some "Hobo symbology". END NOTE 2***

The blank area behind the route map of the same bus stop was also adorned with a compact oval version. Mars written in the middle curving arrows surrounding it, with A's and B's on each corner of the square surface!

That Saturday, I went clubbing. I passed a Bank of America ATM kiosk in which I had discovered his "Magnum Opus"! There were more mentions of Mars and more lettered circles with tear drops and clock tests! That's when I became tantilized and had decided to follow and record his work. Simply because of the strange, almost "Toynbee Tiles" aspect to it all.

The next few months I had decided to do some field investigations on my days off from work. That's when I realized there were markings in specific areas. Mostly where that certain bus route is!

He had labeled apartment buildings, restaurants, convenience stores. Mainly near doors, entance ways, and in the front, sides and in the rear of these businesses and residences. Hell, he even tagged an old fire call box, a window and a fire hydrant!!!

The message to the aforementioned woman read "Lauren, if you care PROVE IT". As I stated previously, this was in two spots, one readable the other...chicken scratch. They were both written on City Utility boxes. If it is the same person (and there are more teardrops and crosses/clocks on these, plus the handwriting is too similar for it not to be, in my humble opinion) this changes the ENTIRE narrative and it's absolutely heartbreaking.

I eventually returned and did a walk through video of the ATM Kiosk. There I found a body of water with numbered bouys where there appears to be a countdown. It's only after someone mentioned it I had realized that 9 repeats. More mentions of Mars. More circles w/ teardrops, crosses and clocks.

Then, there was a crude map of the United States listing (what I assume are) possible places where he has lived or visited and locations such as Cape Canaveral, NASA and Houston, Texas. Some of these locales have question marks over them (Like Kansas). There are even some local-ish areas he had jotted down (Sandwich and Falmouth).

There are also unintentionally humorous misspellings ("Welleft" = Welfleet Beach and "MinneSODA") and oddities such as a mention of Georgia Peaches and Manhattan being placed on the West coast. (Possibly in reference to the "Manhattan Project")?

Eventually they painted over his "Sistine Chapel". Only for a smaller version to appear on a new bus stop marker down the street with the message that read "Adjust time on the hour" and another map of the Good ole US of A, with Houston, TX and with Kansas bold, prominent and inside of a rectangle. (No question mark this time).

The last thing he had done is return to the freshly repainted ATM kiosk!!! There he started a bigger map ( of which remains an unfinished outline) and had drawn a message that read "Navigate" in a circle w/ teardrop with arrows pointing outward. Sadly, he had run out of black marker and used a barely noticeable red pen to finish a smaller scale US Map, with no mentions of other areas but Kansas front and center (and yes, enclosed in another rectangle)!

*** NOTE 3: Thinking it would be right up his alley, I have been sharing my findings with host of You Tube's " Down The Rabbit Hole" Fredrik Knudsen on Twitter and boy was I correct. It resulted in retweets and threads from him and a few of his followers. I often keep him/them up to date on anything recent. (ie: My recent realization that SOME of these markings are mere Hobo symbology or variations that there of) END NOTE 3***

Through the months of late August into early October he has been active. Since then, he has been quiet. The city had cleaned up or covered most of what he has done. I walked down the street to see if he had resurfaced after November Fourth because of his "Adjust Time on hour" message. Unfortunately, I had found nothing new at the moment of this writing but will continue to look.

Perhaps he had simply descended into the ether of his madness or he had truly ascended up into the Red Planet on the day Daylight Savings Time ended? For now he has vanished without a trace. Leaving no more markings. Will he reemerge? Who knows? (Ironically) Time will tell.

***NOTE 4: I have various photos and (full) videos here. Linked is my You Tube channel, which goes more in depth visually about what is contained in this blog. Enjoy!!! END NOTE 4***

Thanks so much for reading.

#LifeOnMarsInBoston.

-DGD

[caveartfair]

7 Art-Historical Treasures for Sale at TEFAF Maastricht

The European Fine Art Fair, better known as TEFAF, anchors the social calendar for any serious collector of antiquity, Old Master works, or fine jewelry (read: anyone serious about the finer things in life). The annual fair, open to the public March 16th through 24th, takes place in the MECC Maastricht, a conference center in the eponymous sleepy Netherlandish college town, and gathers 279 international dealers of art and antiques from around 21 countries. Now in its 32nd edition, TEFAF Maastricht expanded its modern and contemporary section, a shift in focus that speaks to the rapidly aging collector base it has relied on for so long. It might have been nice to see dealers teasing out the connections between modern, historical, and ancient artworks, but as in most fairs, each dealer is out for himself in the high-stakes sales environment. Still, I can’t complain—the pleasure of TEFAF lies in the many opportunities to view spectacular artworks and objects of all kinds that frequently live in private collections beyond public view.

Queen Josefina of Sweden’s natural pearl and diamond necklace

Symbolic & Chase, London

Booth 247

Queen Josefina of Sweden's natural pearl and diamond necklace. Courtesy of Symbolic & Chase, London.

The exceptional and aspirational jewelry presented at TEFAF makes one wonder if there are events grand enough today to merit such overindulgent showpieces. Still, a girl can dream, and Bond Street dealerSymbolic & Chase’s natural pearl–and–diamond necklace from the collection of Joséphine de Beauharnais, the 19th-century queen of Sweden and Norway, conjures immodest princess fantasies. For various environmental reasons, the gigantic, teardrop-shaped natural pearls that hang from the double strand of round gems can no longer be produced today. Their size and luster certainly befits their royal heritage, and the piece features in several of Josefina’s officialportraits. The accessory reinforces her power and youthful beauty, but “besides being immensely becoming to her looks,” art historian Diana Scarisbrick wrote for Sotheby’s in 2014, “the effect of this iridescence, while quite different from the brilliance of transparent stones, was also majestically imposing and transformed Josefina’s appearance from that of a mere mortal into that of a Queen.” If diamonds are more your thing, the dealer also has a whopping 114-karat yellow diamond necklace accompanied by Colombian emeralds and, yes, more pearls, designed by JAR.

Barry X Ball, Sleeping Hermaphrodite (2008–17)

Fergus McCaffrey, New York, Tokyo, and St. Barth

Booth 440

Barry X Ball, Sleeping Hermaphrodite, 2008–17. Courtesy of Fergus McCaffrey, New York, Tokyo, and St. Barth.

The undeniable hit of the fair (at least based on the hordes of photo takers)—and a much-needed shot of grandeur for the modern and contemporary section—is Barry X Ball’s “Masterpieces” series, robot-generated recreations of iconic sculptures from the annals of art history, presented by Fergus McCaffrey. Ball’s version of the Louvre’s famous Hellenistic sculpture, Sleeping Hermaphrodite (ca. 3rd–1st centuries B.C.E.), appears in translucent pink Iranian onyx, a fitting millennial-pink homage to a sensual icon of intersex identity. Last year,Artsy named Ball one of seven artists “smashing our expectations of what marble can be,” an honorific confirmed by his utterly 21st-century approach to traditional works of art. After taking hundreds of images of the original sculpture, Ball creates a 3D scan, uses a CNC milling technique to carve the stone, and then polishes it by hand. This might at first seem like a cheap trick (if hand-carving was good enough for Michelangelo), but Ball’s methods reject high-brow notions of originality and authenticity, and—perhaps to the chagrin of some historians—attempt to improve upon or “perfect” what many would consider already-perfect masterpieces. The striking Hermaphrodite is on loan from the artist, but two busts nearby—Envy (2008–19) and Purity (2008–18)—are available for $425,000 apiece.

Atwonzen, or Magnificient Beaded Head, from the Dschang Region, Cameroon (ca. 1700–1800)

Martin Doustar, Brussels

Booth SC 4

Atwonzen, or Magnificient Beaded Head, Dschang Region, Cameroon, c. 1700–1800.

The Brussels-based art dealer Martin Doustar, who specializes in ancient and primitive works, presents a selection of rare and spectacularly colorful artifacts. This beaded head from Cameroon is one of only seven known atwonzens from the Bamileke culture (one is in the collection of the De Menil Foundation, another is in the Musée du Quai Branly, and the rest are in private hands). Bill Ziff, the prominent 20th-century collector of primitive art, was the owner of this finely wrought piece, composed of glass beads and cowry shells. The complexity of the beadwork and its “striking expression of death,” Pierre Harter writes in his 1986 volume, Arts Anciens du Cameroun, make this mask a particularly fine example of the genre. And it has a price tag to match: €160,000, or a little more than $180,000. Prized tokens of power, such pieces were carefully constructed by the best royal artisans to be worn by chieftains on their belts; the care with which the mask was stored has left it remarkably preserved.

Kees van Dongen, Plumes blanches (1910–12)

Dickinson, London and New York

Booth 402

Plumes blanches, 1910-1912. Kees van Dongen DICKINSON

Throughout the fair, I found the society women populating Kees van Dongen’s portraits staring out at me from their muddy canvases. The smattering of works by the French-Dutch painter on view at various gallery booths seem to foretell a coming moment for an artist frequently overshadowed by Fauvist and Die Brücke peers such as Henri Matisse and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. The two lovely Van Dongen paintings in Dickinson’s presentation are an homage to the female form. Nu fauve a la jarretière rouge (1905–07) shows a pretty, if somewhat predictable, odalisque rendered in broad green-and-pink brushstrokes. It’s the unknown woman in Plumes blanches (1910–12), however, that captures Van Dongen’s knack for decidedly modern, emotionally complex portraits of upper-class women. The dealer could not confirm the identity of the sitter, who looks out at the viewer almost confrontationally, her exceptionally plumed hat adding to her regality. Yet her dark skin suggests that she may be of North African descent, a hypothesis supported by the recent trip the artist had taken to Algeria. Nevertheless, she is a showstopper; her mysterious air and dramatic accessories can be yours for $6.5 million.

Wall Hanging (ca. 1st half of the 18th century), probably Mexico

Eguiguren Arte de Hispanoamérica, Buenos Aires

Booth 153

Wall Hanging (detail), ca. 1st half of the 18th century.

Wall Hanging, ca. 1st half of the 18th century.

At the very back of the Latin American art dealer Eguiguren’s booth, which prominently features antique silver, is an intricately embroidered wall hanging of astonishing quality. The background, composed entirely of flattened silver wire coiled around silk thread, lends it a rich opulence, which wonderfully reflects light. The painterly, decorative elements of the work—Rococo symmetry and flower motifs inspired by Indian chintzes, textiles then heavily imported into Europe—speak to a global colonial history marked by the craze for ornate splendors. A coat of arms surmounted by an open crown and mitre in the work’s center suggests that the costly commission was for a high-ranking bishop. Eguiguren originally dated the wall hanging to the late 18th century, but TEFAF officials believe it hails from the first half of the century, a correction that makes the beautiful condition of the piece even more worthy of its €300,000 (about $340,000) valuation.

Cradle (1907–08), designed by Josef Hoffmann and executed by J. & J. Kohn

bel etage, Vienna

Booth 606

Josef Hoffman, Cradle, 1907–08, executed by J. & J. Kohn. Courtesy of bel etage, Vienna.

Josef Hoffman, Cradle, 1907–08, executed by J. & J. Kohn. Courtesy of bel etage, Vienna.

Josef Hoffman, Cradle, 1907–08, executed by J. & J. Kohn. Courtesy of bel etage, Vienna.

Moms of a certain social standing know that we live in an era in which discreet wealth is the new status symbol, a trend encapsulated by the inexplicably expensive clogs that have quickly become part of the official uniform of a certain subset of Brooklyn mothers. It’s to this group that I recommend Josef Hoffmann’s deceptively simple, perfectly balanced cradle on offer from Vienna-based gallery bel etage. For a cool €130,000 (approximately $147,000), you can take home the fully functional and perfectly engineered bent beechwood crib by the influential avant-garde designer. In keeping with the ethos of the Vienna Secession and Wiener Werkstätte, groups dedicated to elevating the designs of useful, everyday objects,many of Hoffmann’s furniture and applied arts have been widely copied and distributed. Yet this piece, a rare example of his work for children, won’t appear in the houses of jealous friends: Only one other iteration of the cradle is known, and it lives in permanent stasis at the Berlin Bröhan Museum (that model, however, lacks this one’s charming curtain fixture).

The Anna Maria Trip Dolls’ House (ca. 1750–60)

John Endlich Antiquairs, Haarlem

Booth 235

The Anna Maria Trip Dolls’ House, c. 1750–60. Courtesy of John Endlich Antiquairs.

The Anna Maria Trip Dolls’ House, c. 1750–60. Courtesy of John Endlich Antiquairs.

The Anna Maria Trip Dolls’ House, c. 1750–60. Courtesy of John Endlich Antiquairs.

The voyeuristic pleasure of dollhouses and the confused disbelief of seeing finely rendered objects in a miniature scale commingle in Anna Maria Trip’s sumptuous model from the mid-18th century. The fully furnished three-story house offers a revealing glimpse into the world—and worldly possessions—of the well-to-do in the Netherlands during a time of extreme luxury and social ambition. Splendid dollhouses such as this one were not meant for children to play with; they were instead displayed as wünderkammer to entertain visitors and to show off their owners’ excellent taste. Here, the elegantly appointed rooms sportthe chic chinoiserie styles popular at the time, and are decorated with silk-upholstered furniture, real miniature paintings in gilt-bronze frames, and an unusually large collection of objects executed in silver. In an age of short attention spans, a doll house as intricate as this one invites and rewards prolonged looking. The dealer said that a foundation purchased the work, and it will be on display in a Dutch museum.

from Artsy News