this is from yet another e-mail conversation... it's a true story, of course....
Alice Crowley wrote:
there's a long story behind the yellow paper with the photo of "shelly". remind me to tell you that one.
im waiting....
okay, so this takes place in the summer of '97, also known as the
summer that was concealed
by shadows. (actually, that's just a joke,
because we came up with the title about four months after the fact....
we were gonna call it "deine mutter" as a contraction of 'deine mutter
ist eine dicke frau', or "your mom is a FAT woman"....) anyway, we
were living at the house on the corner of waller avenue, a pretty busy
thoroughfare, and crescent, which was just a backstreet into the student
ghetto. the intersection was right there at the train tracks...
kinda like this:
T # |C |
r # |r |
a # |e |+-+ garage (hit by courtnee)
c # |s |+-+
k # |c |
s # |e | +-+ our house (but not in
# |n | | | the middle of a street)
# |t | +-+
-----#-------+ +----------------
# Waller
-----#---------------------------
#
this explains how some dude jumped the tracks and hit the bushes in front of our house late onne night while andy and i were watching braveheart at 3 am (actually, the night before graduation in '98). the proximity to the tracks explains the train whistles on the CD, and the position on the corner explains how we managed to make so fucking much noise in the student ghetto. i loved living there, if only the amenities hadn't completely sucked ass.
just down crescent about two blocks, the street deadends against a vine-covered chainlink fence. there's a pedestrian sized hole through which you can find your way to the driveway in the back of an apartment building, and the second house down was 923 journal avenue, where kk and neal lived. it was great --- we'd just walk over to each others' houses in less than five minutes.
there was actually a garage that belonged to our house. thirsty lived in there, and andy parked his ancient acura on the street just outside. courtnee hit the garage with andy's car at the end of the summer of '97, and didn't tell us. the side door to the garage never latched again after that, so while i was gone to san antonio just before thanksgiving that fall, some dude walked in the side door of the garage and stole my lawn mower and hedge clippers --- nothing else.
there was a fence next to the street, enclosing the backyard. one day in the summer of '97 i was outside doing the yardwork. i can accurately place this as the summer of '97, before the recording was finished, because the peppermint oil incident had not yet occurred, and brad was still living in the attic at 923 journal. anyway, i was cutting the grass in the backyard. andy drives off to go somewhere, so i went outside the yard to cut the grass by the fence where his car usually sits. about five minutes later, i've finished the yard altogether, and am making the rounds with a rake, and i see all kinds of paper where andy's car usually sits. since i'd just mowed that and it was clean, somebody had obviously /just/ driven by and dumped this stuff out the window. so i sigh and begin to gather the litter up off my yard...
and then i see a photograph amongst the papers. a real photograph, taped to a yellow piece of paper about the size of a steno notebook. a photograph of some blonde caucasian woman in white lingerie, standing in the leg-up position against what looks like a hearth that never left the seventies.
okay, this is odd.
and i look at the paper. written in red pen is the name Shelly with some cryptic numbers, and the rest appears to be photocopied in black, a message to "brian" from "liz"... "i hope i'm not being to forward," the note simpers.
this is really odd.
so i sift through more of the stuff in my hands, and it's all porn. every last freakin' bit. maybe 50 to 100 small pages detailing the workings and extolling the virtues of this underground swingers' network, all written from some woman named Liz (obviously a madame) to some man mentioned only as "brian." it was enthralling. andy arrived home moments later, and i showed him the stuff. we laughed. he posted shelly on the fridge. and after laughing in amazement for more than half an hour, we stuffed all that we could find (except for the stuff on our fridge) into an envelope, addressed the envelope to Kristian "Brian" Klaene, Brad "Brian" Jordan, and Neal "Brian" Fitch, then walked over to their house and surreptiously placed the package in their mailbox.
this was right in keeping with previous goings on at 923 journal avenue. brad would come downstairs, turn the TV to channel 57 (the barely scambled porn channel) and walk out of the room. once he signed neal up for a porno movie catalog. we got no end of enjoyment out of titles like "temple of poon." but this one took the cake. it was real-life porn. wow.
so shelly stayed on our fridge for a long, long time. she hid in the drawer under the microwave when parentals dropped by, and reemerged within moments of their departure. when we moved to cramer, she hid under a pile of stuff in the living room for several months, until we uncovered her by accident. she immediately found her way to the fridge again. and when we moved here, she took the place of honor --- until neal's ancient grandparents stopped by and they deposited shelly face down on my dresser. i thought i'd pass her on to you, because i knew you'd appreciate the humor of seeing this picture with absolutely no explanation.
and that, my friend, is the story of the softporn photograph from our refrigerator.
as for the breast exam door hanger... well, that was on the bathroom door for ages at the waller house. somehow wound up in my stuff, and again i though you might like it...
[neal just dropped his pick into his acoustic, and is shaking it to get the pick out... *snicker* i can see his shadow on the wall as he flails the thing in the air...]
Wed Aug 18 22:23:53 1999