Photographs and text from the ongoing project, CITY OF SYRUP
“Step a way from the vending machine,” Mike says with his palms facing the glass, slowly backing off. “Danger, danger.” He says this with a precise robot monotone, and it's good for a laugh.
I'm at my chair, looking into the office kitchen from an off-angle, obscured by a wall and the fluorescent lights bouncing off the vending machine glass, only half of Mike's body visible to me, his hands still vertical in the danger-danger position. This must be, this can only be, a secret code, another language, a set of organized and encrypted actions. Step uh-way from the vending machine.
I gaze off at the potted plants by the window and then back to the bright-white computer screen in front of me, then drift off again to the kitchen where a tiny damp dot of sweat is forming on the small of Mike's back, as he pops his change into the slot one coin at a time, pressing each in fully with his thumb. A perfect circle of darkness, slowly expanding over his button-down shirt, seeping into the cotton fibers, saturating every particle and thread. Ceaseless dampness.
My mind is gone and my eyes turn back to the computer screen. Blinking new messages in a morse code dance.
“What was the name of that driving instructor again?”
“The Iranian.”
“He had like, sunglasses. Always wore that small hat.”
“Al, the Iranian.”
“Fucking, he used to hit on the high school girls that he taught how to drive.”
“One time he picked me up for my lesson, what were we, 16? And he said, 'Oh you live right around the corner from that Maddy girl? She is so fucking beautiful.' Like 55-year old Iranian dude.”
“He told me that he went out into the desert and found a special scorpion, which he killed and took home, dehydrated and minced, and then smoked. He smoked this fucking scorpion and started hallucinating.”
“Didn't he drive trucks in Russia too? Through the steppe or whatever. He had a head-on collision on the side of a mountain, he said it was a true shit-storm. He sensed his truck was going over the guardrail, down the side of this Russian mountain, to fall thousands of feet, and he managed to climb into the rear compartment and somehow that's how he survived.”
“What?”
“He crawled into the back of the truck and somehow that, like, protected him.”
“Scorpions?”
“Al.”
“My instructor was named Raffi. I mean, that's what I called him. I don't actually know his name. But he reminded me of Raffi. He had me drive to Panera Bread so he could get sandwiches."
“You guys want to smoke some hashish? I got it from Al's connect.”
Jules takes out a small ball of tinfoil and unfurls it to reveal the white resin within. Out come rolling papers, filter, ballpoint pen. The rest of us watch while Jules rolls, a thing of beauty. He rolls like a champion.
“Jules, you roll like a fucking Blackwater mercenary.”
This hash joint is a small triumph.
“You roll like Robert Deniro man. In fucking Taxi Driver.”
“That's my fucking dude right there. Yo Jules you're my fucking dude.”
Quiet again for the lighting and first couple of hits.
“Puff-puff-pass.”
“Shut. Up man no one says that.”
“We all think it.”
A crack in the conversation, in which these small truths rise to the top like struggling crabs in a bucket.
“It's true though, I mean we all think we're the shit. Like, ohhh you wanna smoke trees? Like, yo hella faded.”
“Like, sticky-icky.”
“Like, um.”
“So blazed.”
“Yeah, let's burn. Let's burn man!”
“Fuck that shit think you cool cause you smoke weed. I smoke hella weeeeeed.”
“Yeah except fuck that west coast shit. Hella, hecka. That's bullshit.
“I smoke weed like a dungeon dragon.”
“That's what's good.”
Perfectly rounded, executive sentences. Efficiency of communication and say only the most important, meaningful things. How much can you say, really, without saying much at all. Dot dot dash dot dash.
“Have you seen Baby Elephants In Kiddie Pool?”
“Yo have you seen Dog Puke Sex?”
“Tickling Child Chimpanzee.”
“Gorilla Sucks Own Dick.”
“Have you seen, um. Monster Truck Jumps 747.”
“Rogue Helicopter Pilot.”
“Local Town Hall Meeting Goes Awry, Caldwell, NJ.”
“North Korea Mass Games 2010.”
We cram on to the couch, our brains fully flooded with hash-feelings. And there they are, one million North Koreans in a stadium executing synchronized dances to create messages for Kim-Jong Il. Grouping together to form roses and hearts and Korean characters, like a marching band times a hundred.
“It's like this. Every person in the stands gets a massive oversized book with like a hundred monotone pages. For every seat in the stadium, there is a specific book. They hold their books up, and then at the exact right time, they flip the page. When this happens the overall image changes.”
“Like pixels.”
“Boom.”
“I need to find one of these books.”
“I need to call it a night.”
