The Damned Lies Project

Wherein I regale you with tales of metal shows past.

“I once knew a man named Ed… who used to dance with the dead.  DEAD.  SKIN.  MASK!”

I was seventeen years old and at a Slayer concert.  My first and only Slayer concert, to be exact.  I’ve always been a big fan of metal off and on, but there was a period during my teenage years where I had a love affair with the very heavy metal – death metal, black metal, and anything angry and moshable.  This led me to Slayer’s Rein in Blood album, and then to Seasons in the Abyss, which they were currently playing songs off of.

I’m not sure why the hospital made me reminisce about heavy metal.  Maybe because it was so unlike the deathly clinical silences, the serenely white walls, and the undanceable beat of the hospital machines.  Maybe the isolation made me angry.  Maybe I just wanted to hear some fucking metal. Read the rest of this entry »

Wherein the affairs of imaginary people are thoroughly discussed.

I used to tell people that I had four brothers, but they always pointed out to me that my parents only had four children.  Rather than chalk this up to simple mathematical miscalculation or the likelihood I didn’t know what I was talking about, I instead believed that I had a fourth brother, one that other people weren’t aware of or that they simply never talked about.

I began to imagine various facts about this fourth brother.  Read the rest of this entry »

Wherein the birthing process is described and old dogs are cranky.

After the accident, I lay in traction at the hospital.  A broken leg, a few broken ribs, and a concussion.  I was told I was lucky to be alive.  I felt lucky I didn’t wake up brain damaged and drooling – I’d find that worse than death.  The concussion made things interesting for a week, then I came to my senses.

Living in a full body cast isn’t much fun.  Between nurse visits and crappy TV, there wasn’t much to do.  I took this time to reflect on my life, or at least my life how I choose to remember it.

*  *  *

I was born on a Monday the color of wet newspaper.  Read the rest of this entry »

Wherein our not-so-humble narrator is introduced and things go poorly.

The date was going poorly.  She was telling me that she collects commemorative plates.  Like dinner plates, but decorative ones that you see on commercials.  I was sitting there thinking that either she is a pure old-fashioned Americana fan – the kind who has strawberry shortcake dolls and pewter unicorns all over the walls of their house, or that she was once a total stoner – unemployed and up at two in the morning, higher than a penthouse on Park Place, watching commercials for the Franklin Mint sandwiched that were between Jesus rock compilations and Girls Gone Wild.  I wasn’t sure which she was, and neither was appealing.  On the plus side, it was allowing me to focus on something other than her yammering.

Her name was Deborah, as in Deb-OR-ah, the OR heavily stressed, as in “coffee OR tea,” which was just as well, since she was a flight attendant.  Everyone knows the stereotype of flight attendants being “easy” because they are always staying in strange cities and get lonely.  When I first heard that about her, I was a little excited, but I began to wonder if other parts of the flight attendant lifestyle spills over to her regular life.  While we’re in bed, will she ask if I need another pillow or a blanket?  Does she have a button above her bed with a tiny picture of a flight attendant?  I’d press the button, it would light up, and then she would roll over, press the button to turn it off, and ask if I needed a beverage or anything.  “Uh, no,” I’d say, “I was actually wondering if you’d do that thing with your mouth again…”

Read the rest of this entry »