RETURN TO SNAKELAND - Sixth Fragment

* This is a fictionalized account of some shit that actually happened. All the names, locations, etc. have been changed to protect the innocent. – JG *

The Snakeland references in the following excerpt are more accurate to my actual experience than “Heavy Into Jeff” and also shed a little light onto the whole relationship with the Heads. I never completed the larger piece that this was excerpted from, but maybe what I’m writing here is what that piece could’ve become, should’ve become.

BATTLE OF THE BANDS (Edit)

study hall reading No One Here Gets Out Alive my favorite part teenage Jim Morrison kneeling on his younger brother’s shoulders spit thick and ropy from Hershey bars or orange juice dangling it right over brother’s face sucking it up just before the moment of (nauseating) contact

huge study hall third biggest room in the school room to hide in

Andy Warhol Velvets first album banana t-shirt black Chuck Taylor All-Stars chucks we call ((called)) them bleached the trim white (yellow) two color just like Paul Weller in the Jam (did he really) ((saw it in a picture once probly the drummer actually))

bedrooms suburban bedrooms sunshine suburban sunshine bedrooms spent so much time hiding from parents brothers sisters in each others bedroom bedrooms no wonder all we thought about was fucking

(did i say that out loud) ((hard to tell w/ headphones on always got caught singing along)) (FAGGOT)

all we ever thought about was girls all we ever got called was FAGGOT no wonder we were so confused

FUCKIN FAGGOT

PUNK ROCK FAGGOT

FAG

they were tough lived in the Proj drank beers and smoked weed in Snakeland glare mutter under your breath walk away there was always more of them than us that one was like a man he was huge how many times did he get left back anyway

((Burroughs says you must have run cowardly at one point to be able to express true courage)) (FUCK YOU FAGGOT)

did they kill Katie Hoehner we’ll never know Kenton cops don’t care about some Proj slut killed in Snakeland she probly had it coming 4 suicides and a murder and Jeremy Janks killed his whole family by graduation they wanted to change the school team from the Blue Devils to the Blue Angels because they thought it was SATANISM upside-down crosses and pentagrams spray painted on the walls at Snakeland

she sat in front of me in homeroom and then after freshman year she didn’t empty desk they moved us in together for sophomore year

((we didn’t even get a half day when Katie got murdered today they’d deploy a SWAT team of social workers and psychiatrists to protect our fragile psyches did they even make an announcement when Gene killed himself all anyone did was scrawl DEAD over his face in my junior yearbook))

even though she sat in front of me i never thought about fucking her (pale and scrawny) it probly would have been weirder then if i had ((didn’t happen til years later another Katie blonde cheerleader beat off to her a hundred times if it was once picture in the paper murdered by her husband i beat off to a girl who’s dead felt old and very lonly))