The Damned Lies Project

Wherein a strange man treats my wounds.

While I did not die out in the desert that night, I do not remember well the next few days.  I shifted in and out of consciousness.  I remember being dunked into icy cold water.  I remember my skin burning and something rubbed on my wounds.  I remember a sound like pots and pans being banged together, the tinkle of wind chimes, and the howl of the wind.

I remember a man sitting over me, singing something like a Native American song as the acrid scent of incense filled the room.  I remember the beat of drums and the somber sound of breath passing through a flute.  I remember snakes hissing and crawling up my legs.  I remember a pale, blonde woman looking down at me.  She reached to touch my face, and I remember the touch was so light that I didn’t even feel it.  I remember a laughing, howling man in a mask and a many colored jacket who held the world high up in one hand as he danced under a blanket of stars.

My first real memory was of waking up in bed.  I heard the sound of his mortar and pestle before I opened my eyes.  Read the rest of this entry »

Wherein we get back to the adventure and this goes on for a while.

Metaphorically, many have walked across a desert.  They talk of trudging through a wasteland, often before, after, or during a long dark night of the soul.  Along this journey, they question aspects of themselves.  Perhaps they find themselves broken.  Perhaps they are walking towards rebirth.  Other times, they are just letting go, leaving their internal possessions on the dry earth behind them as they move forward.

Very few people have actually walked across a desert.  It sucks.  Really, when you’re walking across it, the last thing you’re thinking about are your soul, the state of your life, or all the things you want to leave behind.  Well, possibly the state of your life, but in a very specific way.  As in, “What the fuck choices did I make that brought me here, walking across a fucking desert in the summer without water?”

I missed water most of all. Read the rest of this entry »

Wherein I admit a dark secret.

I have a problem.

It’s something that’s dogged me for a while,  a deep secret that I have wrestled with for many years.  I’ve tried to mitigate it, keeping friends and family from knowing the dark depths of my secret.  But I needed to indulge it.  I just had to.  And on this night I shared it with the world.  Or at least the other shoppers of Walgreens Store #1172.

It was one thirty in the morning.  I slid the basket across the counter.  The checkout girl glanced at the contents and then looked up at me.

“I think that I might have a candy problem,” I said sheepishly. Read the rest of this entry »

Wherein I question my senses.

I’ve been over this night countless times in my mind.  There’s so much I don’t understand, so much that seems to mutate in my memory the longer I think about it.  A shadow of darkness falls over the whole memory.  Ultimately I know I shouldn’t try to understand it, but recount it as best as I can remember.  Maybe you will understand better than me.

I stood in the middle of the hobo camp in what was their boxing ring.  Though I was surrounded by hundreds of homeless gentlemen, an eerie, oppressive silence had descended over the area.  I could hear the wind as it whipped over the top of the basin out onto the cracked desert.  All I could feel were my conflicted emotions swirling within me as I stood in front of my final opponent. Read the rest of this entry »

Wherein I fight a monster and meet the Emperor.

The next match isn’t even worth recounting.  He was dressed in a karate uniform that might have been red at one point but had faded to pink.  He had his long hair in a pony tail, and no beard, which was always surprising for a hobo.  But he was not a good fighter.  I’m not sure why anyone would put him in a fight except as joke.

That led me to my third fight.  This was the last match of the finals.  Whoever won this match would get to meet the Emperor and face the reigning “champeen”.  I was amped up and ready for this fight, but much of my excitement died just before the fight.  I turned around to Kirby and others in my corner and said, “What the hell is this?”

What awaited me was some sort of abomination.  Read the rest of this entry »

Wherein I reach the gathering, learn about the Emperor, and have my first tournament bout.

The gathering was held in an uninhabited part of West Texas.  As we rode in on the train, the summer heat was unbearable.  The boxcar door remained open, and I spent most of my time sitting on the edge so that the wind cooled me.  I felt like a happy dog with my face in the wind, but the truth was I wasn’t exactly happy.  Besides the heat making me miserable, I was nervous about the tournament.  They were only taking the top fighters, so it’d only be a max of four fights.  Even still, that’s more than I was used to in one night.

I watched the scenery go by for hours before Kirby tapped me in the shoulder.  The spot was coming up.  Since this gathering would be huge, we needed it away from any main cities.  No non-hobos could ever know about this gathering.  It would scare them.  So to get there, we were leaping off the train at a preappointed spot.  By this point, we were in the dryer West Texas where rock formations dotted the scorched earth.  The jumping point was when you saw the rock that looked like it was giving the middle finger.  When I heard it, I thought that would be hard to notice.  But when I saw it, I’m not sure how anyone could miss it.  West Texas was giving you a big old Fuck You as you rode the train by. Read the rest of this entry »

Wherein I rip off a montage and I earn an invitation.

What followed my indoctrination into bare knuckle hobo boxing was a series of fights as I went up the circuit ladder.  We rode the rails, and outside of each town, somewhere near the tracks there was a clearing where the hobos congregated at night.  While some came for company, many came just to see the fights.

I won fight after fight and travelled to so many out of the way nowheres that the whole experience is one long blur of trains, punches, and victories.  Imagine an Eighties montage of “You’re the Best” by Joe Esposito with me punching hobos and them crumpling to the floor.  The montage and music are very important to that image.  Otherwise, I look like a psychopath who likes beating up homeless people for fun.  That’s not true.

It was only a little fun. Read the rest of this entry »

Wherein I discover a hidden talent and acquire a new name.

“And now the challenger:  Tennessee Tex Tornado!”

You might be surprised to find out that I was that challenger.  No, I wasn’t from Tennessee, I wasn’t from Texas, and I’m not sure how someone could be from both.  Was I a tornado?  That was just flair.  But in boxing a flurry of punches is a very good thing.  Especially if it’s on the Hobo Boxing Circuit. Read the rest of this entry »

Wherein homicidal tendencies are tested and Anne Rice loses a sale

The day after graduation, I was due back at my part-time job.  I hadn’t left town yet.  This was our dry run.  My clone would work my job, while I would find something to occupy myself and stay out of sight of anyone who might realize I was in two places at once.  My clone didn’t understand why it was such a big deal, because he was me in every way.  He even said that he wanted me to go; he said that if he was stuck here working, he at least wanted to enjoy it without having to share.

I worked in a bookstore.  That could have been cooler if I didn’t happen to work in a bookstore in the mall.  Trade in the musty book smell and interesting finds for corporate masters, overdone lighting, and more James Patterson than you can shake a stick at.  Rather than having a good spread of titles, they focused more on having many copies of the “It” titles.  They’d rather keep shelves full of extra copies of NY Times bestsellers and Oprah’s book club novels that no one was buying than use that space for variety.

Of all the people I worked with, there were two that stuck out: Sebastian and Marina.  Read the rest of this entry »