Matt Hawthorne Is A Myth

Lack of words. Driving me mad. Frank Ocean. Sleep elusive. Steel behind my eyes and a hard rain is just what we need. Kill or be killed. Drugs for the droogs. Fingers on lock-down. I can’t even rap. My flow inter-ruptured. Stoic with static. Brushfires and barricades. Let your hair down. Be a beast. Carnal juke, fatal grue, It’s all mystic. Editing with the lights out; dreaming in the predatory dark. Tripwire eyes. Let the fill write the lines, drop dimes, telephone lines. Put the shades down, baby we’ve got a lot to talk about.

I just wrote a seven paragraph diatribe on why I hate the terms “slut-shaming,” and “vilification.” Then I realized that I don’t really give a fuck, save for the fact that the terms are linguistically offensive. So is the word “tasty.”

And then I thought: A woman’s vagina is none of my business unless I’m inside of it.

Maybe I’ll write a well-thought out post on those terms as a misnomers. Or perhaps I’ll just have some scotch and listen to Tom Waits.

It’s the little things that make you realize how screwed up you really are. You’re awake. Held hostage in an airport bathroom where the smell of someone else’s shit is both sickening and strangely intimate. It’s those bathrooms where the tiles are colored mustard yellow, or spearmint green, or chalk, or butterscotch, or any other number of colors named after food items. No one wants to take a piss in a bathroom colored baby shit green.

Coughs emulate from the stalls around; the sound of rushing water, sinks with scum around their faucets, knobs crusted with scale, pale goop caked on like layers of plaque on neglected teeth. Aunt Gretchen had teeth like that; sucked sour and bloody, and her smoker’s cough would wake you from even the deepest sleep.

You know those emergency aircraft doors? Well, just so we’re not mistaken here, they each weigh fifty pounds. That doesn’t seem like a lot until you’re sitting next to one and the wings on the plane keep screeching and bucking. “If you are unable to perform the duties which are required of you whilst seated in an exit row, please inform one of the flight attendents and they will reseat you.” That’s what the little placard says. You know, the one that is stuffed haphazard and water-stained into the blue pebbled leather pocket of the seat in front of you. The white tray table and latch cowering smooth and deadly half an arm’s length away.

In case of a water landing you may use your seat cushion as a floatation device. Of course, you’ll have to wrestle that fucking door open beforehand and no matter what they tell you when those clown-faced cunts are thumbing through that plastic card, while they’re tightening those detached seatbelts, inserting the buckle into the strap and lifting to release, it’s never simple. People panic. They forget instructions. That’s why the latches on those doors are painted red; why two words are shouted in hard block letters if you’re looking at them head on. It’s so when you panic, when the fear rises up in your throat coppery, you can operate on autopilot. “Pull. Exit.” Like good sex. Like masturbation. Life relegated to simple instruction. Pull tab to remove. Open other end. Wash, rinse, repeat. All you can think about is the poor bastard next to you.

He’s wearing loafers. The kind that have leather tassels tied to their vamps, shined to a glossy finish. Kids used to call them fag shoes. This sad bastard is sitting next to you and he’s wearing his tassle loafers and breathing heavy, and thumbing through a copy of the New Yorker. His fingers are thick and short; his fingernails squared with no visible cuticle. You remember reading a story about fingernails once; their allusions to a person’s health based on their shape. Square ones mean that you’ll most likely die of a heart attack. Too white, you’ve got Hepatitis. Yellow around the cuticle means you’ve got liver cancer. You’ll die screaming in pain and bleeding internally. Brittle fingernails mean calcium deficiency, which means thin bones and osteoporosis. Clubbed nails, you remember, mean lung cancer, gastrointestinal bleeding, Chron’s disease. He’s reading a story about the Middle East, and all you can think about is how, if that creaking underfoot is serious, this guy is going to trample you so that he can save his own pimpled skin.

You’d probably do the same.