“But time has passed and now I am alone again. Shadows leer and I hear laughter from some dark place. I close my eyes and dream in orange and purple. Once I was the Chemical Prince; tonight I am pale and depressed. At the end of my journey will be comfort and dim lighting. Between here and there I will love nothing but oxygen. In time there will be electric piano and the blood in my head and I’ll wish I could vanish into steam. . . .”
“We took some pictures on that hill—with “HOLLYWOOD” looming in the background. I took my shirt off and put on my goofy white sunglasses. John unbuttoned his shirt and put his hands on his hips. We told ourselves this was work; we were creating an image for VIII Nothing. The message was this: Where there are cities, we will go to them; and when we get there, we will be your friend. . . .”
“Along the way, he meets and falls in love with a dozen or so women, befriends an honest-to-God psychopath, sees High On Fire perform in Oakland, is diagnosed with a mental illness, eats at a Denny’s with the hardest dudes in existence (writers Tim Rogers and Zak “Delicious” McCune), writes a suicide note, walks in on two consenting and lustful adults engaged in the act, gets lost in the sinful parade of Bourbon Street, sleeps on a table in a two-story deli in Manhattan, and swaps saliva with the lead singer of Deer Tick in a bowling alley/music venue at midnight on New Year’s Day. . . .”
“I took an elevator up to the fifth floor. I walked past an enormous window on my way to the clinic where doctors and scientists were waiting for me, and only me, to show up. I stopped. I turned around and stepped up to the glass. Through the pattering droplets on the window, I could make out the vast expanse of a lonesome sky. It was swirled with muted blues and purples and planet-eating blackness. Low-hanging clouds were illuminated with an apocalyptic pallet of hazy orange-reds and red-yellows—all of it light pollution. Maybe the light was coming from Washington, D.C., I thought. I shrugged. Who gave a damn. Not me. Soon it would be midnight. I had to be on a plane in nine hours. I wondered if that was enough time to cure malaria. . . .”
“Two beers in, the interviewer stands as a lone sentry near the venue entrance, where the fire can be felt, and new faces can be seen. Jessi Darlin is one of those faces. She is 5’3” and dressed in a leotard covered in sequins. She is wearing wrestling boots. Her blood-red lipstick and pale complexion give her an otherworldly appearance. . . .”
“My brain is full of all sorts of bad chemicals that I did not give permission to be there. I am perfectly aware of dark things our DNA is filled to the brim with. I am familiar with the suicides and severe depression that haunt our genetic makeup. And I know that sometimes—often, really, as of late—I feel bad for reasons that are beyond my control. It has made things very difficult. If someone like me is left to the wide-open world without a project or a purpose (which for so long was my education), I become a terrible enemy to myself. I become a villain. . . .”
“We made a turn onto 7th Street, and then onto a road whose name I cannot recall, but which is named after someone or another, maybe. And we talked about the cake, and about the mini keg, and how we hoped to arrive and proclaim ourselves the Heroes of the Birthday Party. We had brought dessert and booze. We would soon be very popular with a few people we very much liked. And we were very pleased indeed. . . .”
“The air is nice and it was a good idea to come out here. The whole city is plunged in black shadows. Darkness for miles. Can’t get over this eerie glow, though—hovering just below the bottoms of the clouds. Moves a little, too. Haven’t seen anything like this before. Feels apocalyptic. Honestly, I don’t know if I’d be upset if I knew nothing would ever go back to normal again. If everyone was dead inside their homes—asleep forever in their beds. . . .”
“And I burned those little candles until none were left. And I slept until the sun was setting. And on that last night there I curled up alone on the floor with my stuffed animals. I turned the heat up high. I could have kissed another girl the night before but I didn’t. . . .”
“Outside there were fifty or so self-loving young people, who were kissing and hugging and swilling down alcohol and sucking down cigarettes and swearing for no real reason. Everyone’s bodies were in the same place, but their minds were somewhere else. There was a lot of stupidity and solipsism and senselessness to be found. It made me feel a little dirty for reasons I couldn’t explain to myself. . . .”