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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (July 10, 2009)
1ft street roots 13 Education * Dialogue * Independence Hungry for Desire This is the first oftwopart, biographical series by Karleigh Frisbie Karleigh Frisbie has been living in Portland o ff and on fo r six years. She recently finished her first collection o f short stories, Ventral Tegmental, based on the experiences she had living outside o f society as a heroin addict. Currently, she is working on her bachelor’s degree in writing and is living with fam ily in California. ' BT KARLEIGH FRISBIE contract. The other three members took ordinary jobs, like driving cabs and waiting moved in with Jack after otfr first kiss. tables. Jack refused to stop living like a rock That happened after I made him take a- stair and blew the last of his money on shower at my Pop’s apartment across powdered drugs and leather pants town. I bought him a new toothbrush because Supposedly the Sunset Strip had become a I had often caught him cleaning shoe polish ghost town, an embarrassment even. Jack out of fingernails with his old one. He trekked up north to Frisco where he said it borrowed a pair of Pop’s boxer briefs and a was “easier to be honieless,” and squatted T-shirt with the word “Vaurnet” on it. It was above a closed service station on Guerrero then I decided he was ready to be m y . Sfreet, giving hand jobs in alleyways for dope boyfriend. Moving from my Honda Civic into money. A few years later Hanson got a call the shoe store was ecstatically welcomed. I that Jack was in ICU at S t Francis Memorial did not miss having rotks thrown at my Hospital. He had an abscess on his arm that windshield as I tried to sleep, snoopy had gone septic, and a critical* case of pedestrians peering in at me balled up in Hepatitis B. insomnia in the back seat “It’s a girl!” they’d “Hey Chicken-Boy, let’s sell some shoes! squeal. No, I did not miss this. Nor did I miss Let’s get pumped!” the middle-night urges to urinate which “Buy me some coffee and maybe I’ll have resulted in squatting curbside, hoping some the motivation,” Jack said. night-owPor bar-fly wouldn’t catch me. “Oh no, no, no. The motivation is; dear Jack and I rarely left file shoe store that Jackie Chicken-Boy, whether of not you will summer. At night we’d lock the front doors have a place to lay your pretty head at night. and pull our bedding out of the storage closet,, And I see Brandi’s staying Lere now, too. I arranging the thick mound of blankets in the might have to collect some rent from her.” far corner of the store. Td fall asleep with the “Oh whatever, Hanson! I Sold three pairs oscillating frtn breezing over my face every 10 of DanskoS yesterday. You should be fucking seconds, the smell of new leather sedating paying me,” I said. I was hunched over a me. foot-mirror, applying a thick layer of eyeliner, The shoe store specialized in Scandinavian “and might I remind you Hanson, that . clogs and ergonomically-correct sandals. Most without me and my trusty old Honda, you of the clientele were much different than me would’ve never had those orders delivered to and Jack. Nurses and line cooks, yoga Birkenstock on time.” instructors and retired people. It also “Damn. The fax is still broken.” attracted the town misfits, who would come I smirked at Hanson. in before nightfall with changethey Collected “I’m going to get coffee, and then I might from recycling bottles to buy shoe glue or go down to the pawn shop to see if I can find anything with a propellant — rain-proofer and a deal on a fax machine. Jackie, two Sweet-n- Meltonian Super-Shine. Lows?” - ' . jack’s older brother Hanson owned the “Three.” Jack was tuning his guitar, a pick store and would mosey in every morning to in hte mouth. A n d lots of milk.” C O N T R IB U T I N G C O L U M N I S T K check invoices and re-merchandise. Usually* he would come in yelling, since we were still asleep at the back of the sales floor. “Goddamn it, Jack! It’s quarter past 10 and you don’t even have the sign out!” ~ “Asshole,” I’d whisper to Jack, before he jumped up and slid into his jeans. . Jack did not get paid for watching the store all day. Instead, he got to live there. It was an agreement Hanson.made With him after saving his life. “You’d be huddled in a doorway without me,” he would constantly remind him. “Not to mention, dead.” jack would sit out front of the store with his guitar and a drippy Styrofoam cup of coffee. Sometimes weekend strollers up from Los Angeles to ride the wine train and eat at epicurean hot-spots would stop and listen politely, leaving him a dollar. But most of the town folk knew he was Hanson’s “crazy” brother. The “fallen star” they’d call him. See, Jack wasn’t always homeless and unemployed, at the mercy of his big brother. In fact, Hanson used to be quite jealous of little Jackie. Back in the late 1980s, when I was an awkward middle-schooler with a terrible perm, J used to stay up late at night and watch Jack’s band, Steel Venom, shake their big hair and blow lipsticked kisses to the camera on Headbanger’s Ball. Their one hit, “Hungry for Desire,” had a video that featured both a junk yard and a boa • constrictor. Well, according to Jack, by 1991 metal had taken a nosedive and Geffen Enterprises didn’t renew Steel Venom’s I got dinner from 7-Eleven every night. It was basically our kitchen. We closed an hour early; the sun hadn’t even considered setting yet We walked dreamily; a few folks passed us and smiled and said, “Hi.” Some even talked to; us for a b it Small town life was a mumbling ongoing conversation. It was a long, extended family reunion, with family you didn’t even know, family you had never met but you knew all about. They told you everything: their fears, their secrets, thèir plans. If they didn’t tell you, someone else already had'. You knew their habits, the ordinary ones, the embarrassing ones, even the disgusting unmentionable ones. You’ve heard the rumors and you’ve witnessed the ■ In a car parked on a city street, X was afraid people would see me. They would laugh at me or pity me. Truth was, they didn't see me back then. X was invisible. la c k and I had become an important part of the fabric of town. We were no longer ghosts. We had names. We were probably even talked about at dinner tables after grace. truths. In a car parked on a city sfreet, I was f afraid people would see me. They would laugh at me or pity me. Truth was, they didn’t see me back then. I was invisible. Jack and I had become an Important part of the fabric of town. We were' no longer ghosts. We had names. We were probably even talked about anson was gone all day. He always was. I at dinner tables after grace. think he hated the shoe store. He always We cut through the park, where a group of boys did skateboarding tricks off the gazebo, made excuses to leave. Customers would trickle in all day as Jack would take requests whirring and clacking. An old man, with slow, deliberate movements, wet his gossamer by the front door, “Somethin’ Else,” and “Good Golly, Miss Molly.” I’d be frying on the silvery-white hair in the fountain. “Hot one,” Jack said as we passed. The man nodded, and old dead stock shoes I found in the crawl space above the backroom; granny loafers and then fumbled with a damp cigarette from his shirt pocket. Jack lit it for him. Scholl’s sandals. I considered them my We sat on the curb in front of 7-Eleven, payment where the smell of dryer sheets from the “Babe!” Jack called to me. I was Shaving laundromat next door made my Hot Pocket my legs in the rusty cold-water sink. He wanted me to come play with him. He wanted taste better than it really was. to teach me some minor-seventh chords and a ack held the faucet on for me as I sudsed Rolling Stones song, a Cheap Trick song. Jack my eyelids, purply-grey foam streaking my convinced Hanson to buy me a light, rearms. nonthreatening nylon-string acoustic since I “You have clinic tomorrow, babe,” He said had helped him and his family move from as he handed me a towel. Lakeport to Petaluma. I had spent that He was the organizer out of our coupling. afternoon wrapping dishes in sun baked pages of the Lake County Record Bee, and jimmying He’d write lists on yellow post-it notes, his handwriting as bulbous and as blimpish as a headboards and end tables into the U-Haul. third grader’s. Clinic. Shower. B string. Wild Hanson only viewed me and Jack as cheap Horses-easy. Madeline-Birks-778r0264. labor. “You gonna have a talk with them . I rinsed my razor and went outside, tomorrow?” dragging, a stool and my guitar in one hand. “Jack, I ’ll be done when I’m done. Probably Jack had patience. He positioned my fingers three more months.” . on the fret board, contorting them into “They want you on that shit forever, You impossible assignments. He’d take apart gotta just tell them ‘I’m ready.’” songs and wouldn’t put them back together ' I was making a face. The face that happens again until I had every note down. He’d count, when I chew on the inside of my mouth when keep the beat on his thigh. He’d smile when I’m irritated. I’d get frustrated, and call me a rocker when “You’re scared. They want you to be I’d get confident. scared. Thfcy want to imprison you, Brandi.” “Wanna lock up and get din-din?” He asked ■ i Dynamic Drupal customization training media Shome me. “We made ten dollars.” Site Design & Development .com
