Hope Gardens
Lamb ♣ 04 | LGBTQ+ Serial Fiction
From the beginning:
We Regret to Inform You | Lamb ♣ 01
Hope Gardens
Trigger Warning: Drug/alcohol abuse, violence, suicidal ideation.
♣ ♣ ♣ 04 ♣ ♣ ♣
Among Lamb’s papers, I found a dozen or so handwritten stories, rough drafts mostly. Some were also typed up and looked like they were submitted to magazines, returned in self-addressed envelopes with form rejections, one with a scrawled note encouraging him to submit to a zine called Freak Parade and saying they liked his style but the content was too edgy for them.
In journal entries from 1993, he wrote about punk rocker GG Allin (born Jesus Christ Allin to a fanatic Christian doomsdayer father) and how his death by overdose had been celebrated in a crazed night of partying at Casa Loma in the Lower Haight. Apparently, someone had swiped one of the Polaroids taken of GG the night he died, and as it was being passed around, they debated whether he was ODing or already dead in the picture.
That night, a very drunk girl fixated on Lamb, friend of a friend—she burned him on the arm with her cigarette, stuck her hand down his pants, and then tried to strangle him in a booth while the party raged on around them. She was petite, probably couldn’t have strangled a baby chick (he wrote) but when he pushed her away from him finally, she laughed at him, called him a faggot and demanded he slap her which of course he wouldn’t. Then she slapped him, and when he didn’t react, tried to slap him again, so he grabbed her by the wrist, and then the other one too as she kept at it.
All the while she’s screaming every nasty thing she can think of, more and more incoherent, and when her friends all started laughing at her—I guess she was well known for this shit—she sat cross-legged on the floor and cried for so long Lamb left, afraid he had unintentionally hurt her.
He made another journal entry a couple years later that he was in Alphabet City in New York, and visited The Gas Station, the punk club at East 2nd and Avenue B where GG performed his last show, and then overdosed in an apartment across the street.
Lamb wrote the short story which follows early the next morning on his friend’s couch after dreaming of GG buried in the grave dug for him by his father IRL, in the basement of their off-grid cabin in the backwoods of New Hampshire—one hole each for GG, his mother, and GG’s little brother.
I wonder why the father didn’t dig a fourth grave for himself if he planned to make good on the suicide pact he urged on his family?
HOPE GARDENS
By
Lamb.
A burst of flame, a face illuminated, gone—here, there, near the street, across the street, on the sidewalk, to his left, down front, at the back of the hall.
Chemical reaction. He said this to himself over and over before the show, each time a match was struck, a lighter flicked, a cigarette glowed into life. Chemical reaction. Chemical reaction. Chemical reaction. He was a chemical reaction, they all were, fire was chemistry, also fluids, powders, potions.
With red, blue, yellow flashes flying around, he screamed at the world. Faces loomed toward him and away, faces, faces, faces turned toward him, faces yelling.
“GG Allin is God! GG Allin is God! GG Allin is God!” Shut the fuck up!
All night, through the aperture of drink, the haze and slip, the liquid churn of the club, the scream of the music and his own voice, raw, so raw it cracked, faces flew apart, his face bloodied as he shrieked and they punched, and he swiped back at their leers and their howls. Gash, bash, tear, rip—tear it all apart.
“GG Allin is God! GG Allin is God!” That one guy, motherfucking idiot, screaming it over and over, wanting to get smashed in the face, wanting his teeth knocked out, see them skitter across the floor, see people stomp them into crumbs with their boots, snort the crushed up teeth.
He went after that dumb fuck, tried to bash him with his head but missed, ended up on the floor, took a kick, didn’t feel it. He came out on stage wearing a black trench and a jockstrap, but the trench was long gone, he wiped the blood from his eyes, his hands were covered with blood, people screaming—“GG Allin is God!” that fucking guy—mayhem not three songs in, the band pulled back behind the stage and left him to it.
Stomp, kick, pound—someone ripped his jock pulling him off some dick that punched him, it broke, now naked but for combat boots and thrashing around, now people laughing and pointing—“GG Allin is God!” FUCK that FUCKING asshole!—and he burst out into the street and the crowd followed, tear this motherfucking city down, trample it, everything in it, into dust, into lines big as an avenue, snort them all up and scream, he screamed, and everyone screamed and followed him outside.
He marched around, and scared people just passing by. Red and blue and red and blue flashes out there, fucking pigs squealed, blocked the way to Johnny’s place. He hid in the narrow alley full of weeds and trash next door, and still he saw faces and flashes—poof, cigarette, face, darkness, here, there, by ones, twos and threes—he thought they would never leave.
The alley was his home now.
In the long gloom at the back, the street light faded into murk, he wondered if they would devour him, the demons gnashing, tear him to pieces with hooks and broken glass, he didn’t care—
(his papa whispering “the end is near” instead of “goodnight I love you”)
—if he got caught and went to jail again he wouldn’t be able to carry out his suicide pact—with the fans? His dad? Now he couldn’t remember. Maybe just him.
He walked to the back of the alley—gibbering ghosts, long knives, guns, brain matter—aborted, murdered—melted into darkness, a pile of trash, an overturned shopping cart. He puked from the adrenaline and the crank and the whiskey. He laid his cheek on the cold, prickling cement.
The noise in the street shifted. At the mouth of the alley, the path to Johnny’s door was clear, Johnny who waved at him, come quick, he ran, they laughed and laughed all the way up stairs.
Someone lined up some coke and he snorted it. Someone handed him a whiskey and he drank it. Someone gave him back Lily’s dress (Lynn? Lily?) the one she threw at him after they argued, after she slapped him and he punched her in the back, she called him a cocksucker and said, “Put this on!” a long black dress, the dress he wore to the club, he put it back on. At the party now, she wouldn’t talk to him.
He fell downstairs with some guy to score, down the block and back, ripped the dress—a woman saw them coming, stopped, crossed the street—they met some other guy at a building down the way, he didn’t want them to know which apartment he lived in, they ran back to Johnny’s, nobody had a needle so they snorted it.
“Lynn? No, Lily!” he yelled at some dude. Lynn or Lily? No, Lily was that other girl, the one he went to jail over because he cut her, but she cut him too, but he had a reputation so he’s the one who went to jail. Bitch. “Yeah,” the dude said, “bitch.”
He snorted another line, yelled for them to TURN OUT THE FUCKING LIGHTS it was too bright, in the dark, lighters flicked—*FLASH*—they passed a Polaroid around, flashes in his face, he punched someone, no, a wall, he might have broken his hand.
Shots of whiskey. Flashes. Someone was talking to him, he couldn’t see their face in the dark, they walked off. Flash. A flash was a chemical reaction too.
Two guys cornered him against the wall, FLASH, their red faces headlights, they put a cigarette in his mouth. He puffed, they talked about touring Europe, two girls pulled them away, nervous.
He slid down the wall, he didn’t have to talk.
What was that yawning brown bed? What was that tumbling, over and over?
He started awake, folded on the floor—“LET’S GET THIS PARTY STARTED!”—he snorted up a big line, all for him, voices, tunnel, trash, broken glass rattling, he felt himself squeezed and then, POP!
What was birth but a flame blown into life, and death but that flame snuffed out. Chemical reaction. To his mama, first and last: “You killed me.”
Murmuring at the dried foam of blood on his lips, cackling at the dried film on his eyes, a scream. *FLASH*
♣ ♣ ♣
Well done on the "other" style for the inserted story!
Hesitant to click like, sure didn't like it, not in any sense near to the word like. I have to remind myself it is fiction. This kind of realism is too heavy on my constellation. A lot of people seem to really 'enjoy' this though. Big admiration for the craft at the same time. What powerful imagery and style, Troy. I can't write like this without feeling every blow, I can hardly read it without being there, becoming that guy.
But enough about me, back to Lamb....more chapters ahead.