Essay originally published in The Statesider
By Mel Watkins I left America 15 years ago. I never intended to come back. After 15 years in Europe and Asia, I became so accustomed to things like affordable health care and reliable public transportation that the comparative merits of police violence and fundamentalist Christianity lost their luster. While I was gone, America changed. The more it changed, the more confused and angry and frustrated I became. But despite that, America is still my home, the place where, to paraphrase Robert Frost, they have to take me in when I have to go there. In 2021, I decided it was time to return and see what was happening to my country up front.
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By Ace Backwards
When you live on the streets you gotta do a lot of improvising. Thinking on your feet (literally). Using your wits (what little you still have left after all the weird shit you've been through over the years). Case in point: By John Clancy
This hard-ass kick-ass no-shit shit-kicking son of the soil sonofabitch comes straight at me By Suzanne Lavender
So, we drove past this turtle. And I saw it from the driver's side window, fairly good sized, maybe 10” or so across and when I looked down, it looked up. And it was cracked. Wide open. Right in the middle. And in that split second of looking down, I saw that there were internal organs exposed. And ants and flies. But that turtle swiveled its head and looked up at me. I gulped and drove. By Eric Galatas
About a year ago, I drove from the foot of the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico in a turn-of-the-century classic with an odometer topping 180,000 miles. I made the trip after my mom said she was going to put her grandfather’s clock out on the curb if neither of her sons wanted it. By Oedipa Maas
1 watch mirror He was not a mercy fuck at all, but the way he looked at me—stricken—and couldn’t take his eyes away eclipsed whether I wanted him or not. He wanted me so much I never got to consider whether the answer was maybe. It was “why not?” from the start. By Ace Backwards aka Peter Labriola
We got the news the other day that Mott died. For a half hour, Mott was the gossip of the day. And then, he’s forgotten. It’s amazing how quickly people are forgotten. Story by Marco Collins, Storytelling by Rob Knop
Debauchery is a test. Sex beats, alcohol, fast climbs, high dives. Ears ache. Teeth buzz. You slip on sidewalks, you pick up stick figures, tattoos are injected skin deep. It’s like a chorus girl has dared you to make use of all of Paris; so you rip through its layers; its streets, alleys and clubs, greeting any gaze that shows promise with a smile. A flinch. Always knowing the morning will be your afternoon, because you’re still in Seattle, where “clocking in” by sunlight is a comic pursuit. By Ace Backwards
Larry Wolfley was a well-known local photographer back in the 1990s who specialized in taking black-and-white photos of the young gutter punks hanging out on Telegraph Avenue, as well as the punk rock scene at Gilman St. where he was house photographer. . . Somewhat of an anomaly as this old guy hanging out at these youth culture scenes. By Oedipa Maas
I stripped to this (Pussy Tourette - French Bitch) . A lot. It was in my regular cd rotation. At the Mitchell brothers. So did a bunch of other “hipster” strippers I still know & love, who may want to remain anonymous about that. Anyway. I miss the solidarity between sex workers & LGBTQ (oh yeah there was crossover, big time…) |
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