It was so quiet when found. It knew what it was no matter where it’d ended up and was cavalier about the whole thing.
Either I’d get its lines and Recognize… or I wouldn’t. The last person hadn’t. The one who’d draped it on the racks I could not bring myself to paw through in this place.
“Maybe it was for you~” it whispered as casually as Cary Grant on a hiking holiday.
It was the shape of it. Reminiscent of something I’d always wanted, so badly I was sure I would one day make. But the original. I knew it. Sure as the sun. Made sense of every imitation I’d kicked away from me in fashist contempt.
Even if I Bikkenberg’d it to high heaven for science instead of playing with it on the grounds of personal proclivities, it could have a place in my archives or arsenal with as much aplomb as it wanted.
…if it was ordained.
The suede smirked softly against the skin of my palms as I walked through the eternal estate sale maddeningly wedged into a warehouse one more time, an eclectic assortment of tiny def-initions balanced in one hand.
def-initions: definitely additions to traveling altars.
The language of the fashist orders of Angels
A teeny snuff bottle /netsuke-adjacent lil blue & white chinese porcelain piece and a delicate English tea cup and saucer for all the mad hatter-isms ringing the Alice in wonderland portal I arrived on earth through…
And a surprise. One that paved the way for the old MGM star on holiday draped across my other arm to even blip on my radar. A vintage bottle of cologne.
God got playful. A sudden decree. No technology.
“Use yer teeth. Checking the annals of history not allowed until upon the far shore.”
Would I trust that I knew that label on the Day I was faced with it due to my designhead pedigree? Or would I put it back, punked by uncertainty?
let’s see how back on the beam your wily lil arse are, aye?
Yaaar~
That joy of the hunt /how Dare you challenge me??/ how Dare you not try to rely on those teeth yo ass cut?!lol…prepared me for the aforementioned interaction with ye as old Hollywood as my generation gets up there.
The reaping was finished.
The time of hazing began.
…This warehouse was an incorrigible limbo nothing deserved to while away within.
Tchotchkes and kitsch smushed against authentic estate gems, real silver and other things rewilded by offspring sans any comprehension of what their passed on elders had bequeathed to them. A place to be respectably rescued from if there ever was one.
There was blood, guts and nothing but net when it came to haggling glory across the def-initions.
Shamelessness and pandering in both directions. I wore him down the way hot tea cools a body on a sweltering day for the def-initions… but he wouldn’t budge on new old Hollywood. As much as I desired, anyway. He came down 25%. But by then it was no on principle.
I gave up the ghost of MGM, but roared that he shouldn’t be back in the pandemonium of the insane main event. He should be a whetter of appetites up front, at the top of the gauntlet they make everyone pass through, whispering of what could possibly be to come.
The fashist samurai bowed and did as I all but demanded as I watched, placing MGM on the rack alongside rare books where he’d belonged.
“Ya did good,” new old Hollywood said with nothing but casual elegance as we said our goodbyes.
“& thanks for the swell digs upgrade. It was a madhouse back there, dog eat dog, I tell ya”
a suede vintage men’s shirt, bewilderingly denied.
I’d staved off even going to that cenote in the first place, succumbing my last day due to hearing something calling me.
…was it him too?…or just them?
I went back to the cabin and gingerly stroked my def-initions as I packed for the road.
Oh.
Looked up the cologne.
Bullseye. It was one of the first man’s man colognes to hit the American market back in the day, spiked heavyhandedly with my amazonian namesake, Artemisia. All that lore my despotically elegant elder designhead brother has been depravedly dousing motherfuckers with for years? The precursor is now with me.
But …he whispered to me all night, New Old Hollywood.
Nick and Nora’d me in the ear like he was in the bed besides mine until I fell into a sweet but softly fitful sleep.
The two nights in the cabin were a perfect close to a great Sebastopol stay.
I woke to GF zucchini bread slathered with butter and gambatte geterdoneing with my injured friend so he’d be ready for the war is hell battlefield of grownassed body self repair.
As we drove outta town he sang goodbye, a negroni soaked ethereal voice, dancing across rolling hills full of vineyards after us until I couldn’t take it anymore.
The fellow Fashist who’d been at my side on both sides of my partially failed campaign was at the wheel.
“It’s singing to me as we leave~”I moaned chaotically.
“The shirt?” I nodded morosely.
“… The one you tried to give me when you wouldn’t get it just so it would not have to stay there? ” she laughed. I groaned comically.
“How much did he want for it?” she asked and balked like I did when I told her, even what he’d come down to.
…. but I was still like no.
It’s the battle, people!lol.
It was right by our first pitstop so we went back. I felt re-suited and booted with her hell nahing at his ask too.
“I’ll wait in the car,” she grinned, her son utterly bemused like he was used to this kind of fashist madness with her.
I headed back into the fray like the 80s kid who knew they couldn’t come home if they didn’t win the fight, nodded at new old Hollywood posing at the top of the gauntlet and squared back up nip to nip with the tall, bespectacled samurai, who grinned.
Two minutes into fussily shaving off percentage points I got fed up.
” I was driving outta town, man! He literally called me back to Get him! I still gotta clean him &-Ya gotta do me better than that-!”
I lowballed him one more time. Whine or not, there are rules of engagement one must adhere to.
He groaned against the feigned insult, saw my lowball offer & raised me ONE dollar.
Sold, with both of us grinning stupidly at each other over the Sunday morning adrenaline goose for us both.
The shirt winked at me & elegantly bowed at the dude he’d just been set free from as I grabbed him by the collar and exited tartarus.
I skipped out to the sun and thrust the boy up in the air like a wrestlemania belt in the hands of Rowdy Roddy Piper-
( golden age WWF, not wwe lol)
… and Macho Man’d my ass back into the car so we could get on the road, yakking just as happily and incoherently.
On the way to next I found this:
…I felt Piero Dimitri grinning down at me from heaven and just grinned like a little kid the rest of the way.
The man who helped me cut these big assed fashist teeth in this designhead mouth a lifetime ago spent his last days relocated out here for his health. I knew who he dressed, but I never saw any of the west coast era of his long lived life. But a big swath of his success had been suiting up the men on shows like Dynasty right alongside presidents and the square jawed journalists quelling everyone’s fears from nightly news desks so that and the sun made sense.
But I’m sure this Carroll dude and him crossed paths. One way or another.
…a great end to a storied stay in Sebastopol.