158 lines
9.7 KiB
Plaintext
158 lines
9.7 KiB
Plaintext
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_____________ _/_/ | | \ \ _/_/ _____________
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| ___________ _/_/ | | \ \ _/_/ ___________ |
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| | c o m m u n i c a t i o n s | |
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| |________________________________________________________________| |
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|____________________________________________________________________|
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...presents... If Six Was Nine
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by OXblood Ruffin
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06/01/1996-#311
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__///////\ -cDc- CULT OF THE DEAD COW -cDc- /\\\\\\\__
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\\\\\\\/ Everything You Need Since 1986 \///////
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___ _ _ ___ _ _ ___ _ _ ___ _ _ ___
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|___heal_the_sick___raise_the_dead___cleanse_the_lepers___cast_out_demons___|
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For the first half of high school, I was the king of all WASP-ass
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preppies. I could have been the poster boy for the J.Crew catalog. Madras &
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Weejuns. Chaperoned parties. And the big Kahuna, summer riding camp. Then I
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discovered reefer, rock and roll and the scent of estrogen. And to make sure
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that I looked the part, I deconstructed wholesale. Goodbye Brooks Bros. Hello
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Sally Ann.
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Pretty funny really. Going from starched shirts to clothes that smelled
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like a stranger's closet. But when you're starting to get more trim than a
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barber you learn to compromise your nose a little. Then something else
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happened. Since I had lost the Jay Gatsby look I started meeting really
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different people. Mostly in pool halls. Hustlers. Junkies. Wiseguys. A
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school kid smoking French cigarettes, holding the door open for hookers. Like,
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I really fit in.
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It was fucking hilarious. All day cooped in a boy's school for the pimply
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elite. Sweating over the mysteries of Latin. Sleeping through calculus.
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Dreading the thought of having to stand in an open shower after gym class with
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fat guys who got boners. Then the bell would ring. Yippee. Sun glasses,
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check. Rolling papers, check. And look out, Mack-daddy was steppin' to it.
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Twenty minutes after final period I strolled into another world. I had
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spent a lot of time learning how to shoot snooker with the country club kids.
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That helped. In a pool hall no one gives a rat's ass where you're from if
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you've got a game. Then one thing led to another. And pretty soon I was
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hanging out in after hours clubs with men who collected gambling debts for a
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living. It was bizarre. The only white face in the house, bangin' teenage
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welfare mothers in the john, smoking opium. When I think about it now I can't
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believe that I walked out of some of those scenes alive.
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And did <I> have a brain-on. Camus for breakfast, Salinger for lunch,
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McLuhan for supper. Library lad goes to the demimonde. And with that kick-ass
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flea market profile. Boy, did I think I was hot shit. Everyone at school
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thought I had lost my freaking mind. While the BMW brats were passing the
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watercress sandwiches I was out bum-rushin' the gutter. Making plans for the
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big novel. I bought into all that art house yang. You know. Crawl up the
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asshole of life, experience everything, yadda yadda.
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Needless to say things weren't going swell at home. My father was a hands
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off kind of guy. But not Mom, oh no. She'd be scream-crying at me... "Why are
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you doing this to us, I don't recognize you anymore, what's wrong with your
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eyes?"
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And I'm like, "but you don't understand, I hate school, I want to be an
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artist." Then out the door shaking mad and into the arms of some hard-bottom
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girl. It was insane. The only place I wanted to be was in the underbelly. It
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was like having an armful of smack. All the hurt went away when I was there.
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For a while I was happy. Shitty day gig (school) erased by night ho's and
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gangsters. Because I hung with guys who got even with straight razors I felt
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powerful. Then after a while the thrill started to wear a little thin. I'd
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show up for class still fucked up from the night before but not really looking
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forward to the next field trip. It began to unravel. I could play the part,
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but for those guys it was no movie. Quentin Tarantino's got it all wrong.
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That shit ain't glamorous. It's nasty and inconscient.
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I felt like a guy who had fallen in love with a girl who turned into a
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world-class cunt. And to salt the wound a little more, there were all of those
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happy assholes at Ralph Lauren High to deal with. Life sucked more than the
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Bermuda triangle. There was nothing. I had nowhere. My only friends were
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books by dead men. My only solace, a few pretty words. It went this way
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forever. Or so it seemed during those times.
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It lasted throughout the winter. And on the first decent day of spring I
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cut class and went to a musician's house. I liked him. We were both outcasts
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and we both liked drugs. A little negative bonding. Somehow I managed never
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to have done acid throughout my <consume all> period. So we spent the day
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tripping. At some point he had to take off and do something so I hung out and
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listened to tunes. Those were the glory days of guitar gods. Beck and
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Clapton were peaking. Then, thwhack. Hendrix.
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It's funny. I had heard "If Six Was Nine" plenty of times. And in fact,
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I didn't really care that much for it. But on that day, lying on the floor of
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my friend's living room, with a head full of paisley vibrations, Jimi Hendrix
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changed my life.
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The lyrics go (roughly)... "If six was nine, I don't mind, I don't mind,
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cause I got my own world and I ain't gonna copy you. If all the hippies cut
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off all they hair, I don't care, I don't care, cause I got my own world, and I
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ain't gonna copy you...." And behind the vocals comes this bad ass Strat solo,
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whammy bar slackin' and stretchin' the strings from the blues to Katmandu
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layered with sounds that healers throw on demons. And on that day, with the
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volume way up, the sun broke through the clouds and washed over a messed up kid
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lying on a borrowed floor. And it was over. I had my own world. No one
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else's. Mine.
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I didn't have to fit in anywhere because finally I fell into my own skin.
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I could go anywhere and I was me. I could go nowhere and I was me. When I
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made mistakes I didn't have to kick the shit out of myself. Suddenly there
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weren't so many dickwads at school. Just a lot of well-upholstered preppies
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doing the ciss-boom-bah thing because they were just as scared as everyone else
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and that's how they dealt with it. All it took for me was eighteen months of
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cheap clothes, bad company and street pharmaceuticals to see some light at the
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end of the tunnel. Plus a few trips to the emergency ward.
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What I did was really stupid but it's what I did and I take responsibility
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for it. I came out alive. But every day some poor shit buys it. And when I
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see a war memorial I think, where's our monument, where are our medals? Kids
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have to fight every day in a war they didn't declare. With what? The right
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clothes? By not asking embarrassing questions? Then just when you think it's
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never going to end, it mostly goes away. Usually about the time your skin
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clears up.
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So why am I still up when everyone in their right mind is sleeping...
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sitting on a hard chair... staring at a screen that's making my eyes hurt?
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Because I waded through all of the same crap that everyone has to wade through.
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Because I was saved by a song I heard again today that made me remember a lot
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of heartache (Mr. Computer Wonk gives his famous pep talk). But somewhere out
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there someone is in the middle of what I went through. Sitting in the dark,
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alone.
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It's OK. It won't last.
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.-. _ _ .-.
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/ \ .-. ((___)) .-. / \
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/ \ / \ .-. [ x x ] .-. / \ / \
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-/-------\-------/-----\-----/---\--\ /--/---\-----/-----\-------/-------\-
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/ \ / \ / `-(' ')-' \ / \ / \
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WORLDWIDE \ / `-' (U) `-' \ / WORLDWIDE
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`-' .ooM `-' _
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Oooo / ) __
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/)(\ ( \ Copyright (c)1996 cDc communications. / ( / \
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\__/ ) / All rights reserved. Award-winning CULT OF THE DEAD COW \ ) \)(/
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(_/ is published by cDc communications, P.O. Box 53011, oooO _
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oooO Lubbock, TX, 79453, US of A. Edited by Swamp Ratte'. __ ( \
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/ ) /)(\ / \ ) \
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\ ( \__/ Save yourself! Go outside! Do something! \)(/ ( /
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\_) "THE COW WALKS AMONGST US" Oooo
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