Cat Fight!

The cat has murder in his eyes and the room stinks of awful decay.
Fear?
Nothing that subtle.
A knife in each hand and there is piss, sopping through the floorboards.
The ghosts below are moaning their indignity.
No rest for the aging dead.
Long past their bedtime, though.
The band is restless.
The fiddler scratches his bow, reminding the cat what happens if he goes down first.
Guts of his brother start to scratch as the lead fiddle is tuned.
Xylophone bones pop and plunk.
Not quite perfect tones, but what the Christ can you expect from the dead?
Don’t act like they owe us something.
Another reel is struck and the belaboured calamity downstairs is muted by the din.
Sure enough they send someone to cut out the boom, bang and squeal.
The tongue named Silence flops lonely up the stairs and bangs on the door.
The band plays on.
Bangs again.
Now in time.
Silence slides under the door and takes the stage.
Wet, slapping percussion.
A counter beat.
Don’t get hit.
He lunges and I sidestep, arms whirling like I’m enjoying the music.
To be honest with you, I am.
He keeps his pace frantic and I’m no dancer, not really.
The cuts are getting deeper and all of the tiny cities are falling out, homogenized with the piss empire on the dirty floor.
Miniature red liquid goblins run riot and the odour wraiths are too stale to do much about it.
Next thing you know, some guy will ejaculate in his death throes and send a whole new kind of party to work down there.
I hope that that guy isn’t me.
Fuck, Louie, you owe me.
Four thin lines to the left cheek.
Eight on the right.
I’m slowing down.
On fire.
His tail rides high and the cat sprays me with more piss.I yank the elegant protrusion and he squeals.
Back legs rake at me and he’s got four paws swimming in space.
We roll past Mars and Venus and out to the cold planets.
Sorry, Pluto.
You’ve been forgotten.

Taking The Throne Tour

Time to Take The Throne, sucker.
That’s right, folks, we in camp Gay Paris are riding out into the sunset (read as anywhere that the booze is cheap and ‘love’ comes easy) with our sleazey grime family, Brothers Grim
Joining us for the NSW dates will be long time lovers, The Snowdroppers and new additions to our hot spots, Kira Puru & The Bruise.
For the VIC dates, we have grabbed The Yard Apes, Marshall & The Fro, Little John and Plague Doctor (with more TBA) to give you something to drink, think and thrust to.
Don’t thank us yet. Wait until we’ve got more intimate.
Thursday February 10 – The Lass O Gowrie, Newcastle NSW w/ Kira Puru
Friday February 11 – The Vanguard, Newtown NSW w/ Kira Puru
Saturday February 12 – Baroque Bar, Katoomba NSW w/ The Snowdroppers
Friday February 18 – The Evelyn, Melbourne VIC w/Marshall & The Fro
Saturday February 19 Karova Lounge, Ballarat VIC w/ The Yard Apes
Sunday February 20 Old Bar, Melbourne VIC w/ Plague Doctor and Little John
Sunday Febuary 20 – mystery special event!!

The Man Who Loved Fire

The stilted notes that I found in the arsonists desk drawer – of course, they are badly burnt and even more wretchedly difficult to decipher because of this pyrophiliac and his breeding spree that took down four city blocks and got a whole bunch of efreet pregnant.
Cabaret marionet. Pull strings. Final burlesque basement sale. They will ENTER from stage LEFT.
Hell is the first step. Don’t tell them that. Opening night until the party goes stale.
Wooden boys. Glow worms. Spotlight attraction? Three field system for the worms and are the UV lights helping as an erotic aid?

The Action:
Silence booming through the hall in scattered warm spectrum, actors quail first, then blacken and blaze, the dance of London Bridge. Then umbral shades flitting in the back draft as he makes his getaway, incandescent.
Varnished bodies and painted on clothes. Dripping oil and grease paint piss. Wood smoke perverted.
“He set fire to the star in the bathroom!”The ushers have all been strung up with white hot chords of silk and steel, the worms are descending already.
Ticket stubs flutter down from the rafters, noting time, date and seating arrangements. Memory moths.
Shame flakes.
“Please, less volume on the street theatre gun fights!”The gas tanks keel over and give up, rupture/rapture/repose. My embalming fluid is really starting to heat up. I begin to split at the seams.

The After party:
“How debonair!”The worms are crawling all over her cloven hooves and the men have gathered round the base of here monumental spine, throwing climbing hooks and digging in with spike and crampon.
The smallest of the men shoves a long syringe into her immense varicose vein.
“For later testing.”
She bellows: WE WILL HAVE OUR REVENGE.

Stay Down In The Hole

Long time coming.
Wall fell down.
Well has been poisoned.
Cats are in the bag.
Lifeless.
But if you’ve been keeping up, you already know all of this.
I remember when Hell was cold and quiet, not full of young ghosts, rubbing their tits on any devil with ties to the blues community.
What a fucking scene.
Then it got hot and dark – that’s fine, for a while, but then someone busts in and flicks the light switch. No one is beautiful at four in the morning, especially in a bathroom stall under flickering glass tubes, make up smeared and gag reflex kicking in.
I tell them that I’m in love, nonetheless.
I’m a fabulous liar.
But it’s easier when they can’t look you in the eyes.
Buy two patches and stay ghost.
Get gone.
Get back to that silent ice box.
Stygian and still.
Chasms where the beasts loiter, cards on the table and bottles of cheap liquor spilling in gutters, roaches getting drunk too.
But everyone whispers.
Echoes of that now.
Savage nostalgia cannibals gnawing out the long intestine, stuff it with offal and make a real meal of us.
Candy cane legs running across the ceiling in stilettos.
I was going to grow up and be a dancer.
Plans change.
Everything dies, given time.
They’re handing out time like it was about to go out of style.
Gas light and good plumbing, that’s all we really need.
Put beer cans in a bucket of water on the front porch and they’re good to go in the morning.
Drink whiskey from crooked stills when the sun sets.
Night falls early in kind towns, falls fast and heavy when you crawl down far enough.
A long way to go.
New Hell is sun up, pants down around ankles and thrown from a slow moving car.
Roll down a hill and wind up in a rose bush.
I first met the wolf there.
It was 1985.
It was also 1767.
This hole is a special kind of wonderful.
Send help.

More Night Life with Slim and WH

EARLIER
“Wrong answer, fucko.”
I hit him right in the drooling mouth and that piece of shit goes down, bleeding and missing teeth.
Slim is losing blood too and our man prolly caught whatever Mr Pickins has, dude messes with some weird shit.
Demons, I hear.
Whatever he can afford that will fuck back.
He’s not pretty. OK, he’s gorgeous.
I get it. Can’t judge. Won’t.
Whatever.
Our man is a liar and he’s down.
“Step off, Slim.” I say. Flip my grip to the dirt, right at this guy.
He’s sobbing and saying ‘no.’
He’s saying it enough to piss me off and my temper ain’t nowhere near as bad as this fucking tall redhead at my side.
“What, fucker?” Screams Slim in an eerie half volume.
Have another cigarette, asshole, it will do wonders for your diction.
“What?”
The shit head is pissing himself.
Literally pissing himself and wringing his hands.
He’s saying commercial prayers, right to our faces like we’re a couple of amateur off the book thugs.
Fuck this. We’re professionals.
“Tell us where he is, shit for lungs, last chance. Slim, assure this asshole that your shit is loaded.”
“Fuckin’ ay loaded, WH. I’m a fucking professional.”
“You know what that makes you, you rat fuck piece of shit?”
The guy is crawling towards us, clawing at his cock and face.
Like that makes a difference.
It’s almost worrying.
“Dead.”
Boom bap bap.
That is the rhythm.
It’s almost hip-hop and when his body spatters on the floor, there’s the bass line.
If you got the chronomamcy to slow this down, you’d get a good break.
That’s how they catch it.
Shit like this always happens so fast.
I can’t stand happy hardcore and BPM.
Fuck.
Give murder back it’s art.

LATER
Back in my apartment.
Stinks like a fucking grease fire.
I make Slim smoke on the rotting balcony.
Nice view of the hotel car park.
Android hookers standing in a line, not even hiding their plates.
Dudes drive by, casual, but the whores are too poorly made.
Even for this neighbourhood.
I bet my cash is real good here.
Real good.
Moral even.
“It’s on your hands, Prophet,” says the tall fuckwit.
My partner. Right?
He coughs and hits again.
Delicious smoke tendrils in ambient light.
I love how it flickers. Crazy light.
Crazy , tall. sonofabitch.
No nicotine in the house.
As much ‘drine as I can handle though.
Can’t he smell it? Like piss and vinegar and mothballs.
I can’t handle it anymore.
Too many moths come to visit.
Now I gotta be wary.
You can’t trust a knife or gun when they flutter in.
You can’t trust yourself.
I spit. It’s a long way down.
A droid-whore looks up at me, red trigger eyes focusing.
Fuck off, I sign.
She/it flickers back at me in binary.
I get it. I just don’t care what she is getting at.
The sluts scatter when a noisome pack of Bird-cops wheel past.
Carrying body bags. Half a dozen.
Half a dozen of each.
So low.
They ignore us of course.
Whatever they’re dealing with is so much bigger than us.
Far as they know.

LATER STILL
“It’s on your fucking hands, you piss poor prophet!” I say.
Standing right behind him.
He towers down.
He doesn’t turn around.
Just takes a raw drag on another cigarette.
Reeks like fucking Hades junk.
I cough. Not politely,
“You wanted to pump him,” says Slim.
Smug.
“The fuck I did. You were mad.”
“Should I be, shit?”
My hands are scarred with teeth.
“Yeah, don’t hit ‘em in the mouth, Hubris .”
Is he going to hit me in the mouth?
He laughs.
“Ah, cocksucker had it coming.”
“Unprofessional.” I grin.
“Fuckin’ ay.”

WH has no problems with bouncers

** Edited by Smokin’ D **

Much love.

Bouncers

This article from The Daily Telegraph caught my attention this morning.

I’m sure many of you have had run-ins with bouncers before. Shit, Slim Pickins can’t get in anywhere after 3 beers because he gets the “drunk eyes”.
But how many of you have started a fight with one?

You wouldn’t be stupid enough, would you?

Now, I’m a manager at a hotel just out of Sydney. It has a family-friendly atmosphere with a large bistro, lounge area and a few nice courtyards to relax in. It’s nothing like Kings Cross – we don’t have a nightclub, we don’t charge for entry and we have to actually be nice to our patrons and make them feel welcome. But, we still have security on our busier nights because where there is alcohol there is trouble.

Recently we had a security guard posted to our venue through the company we use. He came from a few Kings Cross nightclubs and seemed like a decent guy – friendly and talkative.

One Saturday afternoon a small group of locals were in having a few drinks in the lounge area. They had 3 drinks and one of the couples was making out – probably not the best look considering it’s just next to the restaurant – so all that needed to happen was to ask them to tone it down and explain to them that they’re right next to the restaurant and there would be kids around etc – it’s not a big deal and there would have been no problem.

Instead, what happened was Mr. Kings Cross went over to them, cut the girl off (who had only had 3 drinks) and tried to confiscate the drink infront of her and tell her to leave. Obviously she was a little offended, they were quite good customers of ours and had never caused any trouble and she was clearly not too intoxicated. There was lucky to be 40 people in the entire hotel at the time and the majority of them were out in the other end.
It didn’t matter to security though, when she wouldn’t get up to leave he stood over her (he’s about 120kg) pointing at her and then the door and yelling for her to “step outside”. When her boyfriend tried to intervene and tell him to back off, he too was invited to sort it out outside.

Needless to say, he didn’t last long at our venue and is probably much happier back in Kings Cross now where he can get away with “smashing people” because he “doesn’t give a shit” and he could “lose his license” for all he cares – his words, not mine.

Which brings me to another incident involving my best mate. I wasn’t there for this one but heard about it all afterwards. He was out watching a few bands one night with another mate of ours and ended up quite drunk. He wasn’t doing anything, just standing there watching the band (and probably spilling beer down his arm without realising it) and a bouncer came over and told him he had to leave. He knew he was too drunk to be there, so didn’t argue it and simply walked out the door. He stood on the footpath out the front waiting for his mate to finish his drink as he was driving him home.
The bouncer asked him to move on and he tried explaining to him that he was just waiting for his lift home.
The bouncer kept telling him to leave and he said something to the effect of “I am dude, that guy right there is driving me” and took a step towards the door to point at his designated driver, when the bouncer punched him in the face. He was doing nothing wrong – it is deemed a reasonable excuse as per the Liquor Act to remain in the vincinity of the premises to obtain transport – that is all he was doing and he got punched in the face for it.
Police ignored his complaint, probably because he was visibly intoxicated and they automatically sided with the security staff.

I’ve similarly seen several bouncers chase people down the street and proceed to kick and punch them while they lay on the ground.

I know that sometimes a little more force is needed to resolve a situation. But I also know that a lot of the time with security staff, they make things much worse than they need to be in the way they treat patrons.
Most of them are simply on a power trip.

It’s almost childish. If a patron doesn’t listen to them, they resort to physical violence because they know that the majority of the time the law will side with them (after all – they are the sober ones, and it MUST be the patrons fault if an argument erupts) and they are almost certainly going to win any sort of physical confrontation because their 8 other gorilla-sized buddies will jump in to help kick the “trouble makers” head in.

The OLGR and the NSW Police need to look a little further than simply blaming any incident on a licensed premises as “alcohol fueled violence” and work together with licensed venues to bring about a complete overhaul to security licensing in NSW to make regulation and control of licensed venues more effective. Bring back some responsibility for patrons and security staff. Hold patrons AND security staff accountable when they are out of line, not just the patrons.

Security staff are supposed to be mediators. They are there to prevent violence should they anticipate it. They are there to promote a friendly and safe environment for patrons and staff alike.
They need people skills, respect and decency and to understand that they are not the law and they aren’t the god that they seem to think they are.
They aren’t there to be thugs and throw punches.
And they certainly shouldn’t ever chase people off the premises and down the street and continue to assault them.

Acts like that are a disgrace.

They, along with anyone else who commits an act like that, should be sentenced to a lengthy stay in prison. I hope, for the family involved in the article mentioned above, that they are found guilty and that they do face lengthy stays in prison. An innocent man has lost his life because a fat piece of shit guarding a door felt tough in the company of his mates. They should be fucking shot.