SLAM!!
"there he goes."

Seven packed his shit into one little bag and split.

"ASSHOLES. you guys, we have all been frigging ASSHOLES here. disgusting! i'll see you -- whenever. i have things i need to DO."

we all sat there at the coffee table looking and feeling kind of stupid and discussing the small scene Seven had made that morning.
"He just woke up...on the side of the bed...that was wrong," says Basque, his face in his tea.

I had little to say.

"I wonder what he's doing?" Sho offered thoughtfully.

The television was off. there were a couple who had come to stay, a couple from New England who had shown up for art exhibits that were going on. They were sort of bland and peaceful.

------
PEOPLE WHO ARE RUNNING A GRAFTY B. S. RELATED CON GAME
NEVER LIKE HAVING TOO MANY INTELLIGENT CALM PEOPLE
WATCHING THEM
BECAUSE THEIR BULLSHIT GETS DETECTED.
-

Seven knelt in an alley and looked inside the shoulderbag.
i love these things, he thought.

It was an electric thing a ma bob.

It was one of those things that women carry to deter rape, it had a lot of current. It would sort of hit the nervous system and pretty much floor the person.

Seven muttered to himself.

"Sitting around talking. losers. i have to do something real."

he checked his personal effects and grinned.

"Cool."

For the first time in weeks, he was truly happy.

They are not committed to anarchy, he thought. they are still trying to pull the pennies offa proudhon's eyes. They just talk and talk, fucking...what is it with those guys.

i have had enough talk for a while and it's just starting to get warm again. I can sleep outside. Easy. perfect.

besides, philly's a hell of a town. i love it here. there are so many people. and i have gotten to know some of them...so well...

Seven found his stomping grounds with ease and a great deal of care. he had been sussing them for weeks, months. Bored, angry.

"Assholes." He saw the punks all sneering, dressed alike, in a clot in washington square park, sometimes, at rittenhouse square park othertimes, infrequently but sometimes on south street.

"doomed."

he didn't need a computer database to keep track of them all. he knew them well and he did not like them.

he was planning an excellent summer.

-------

meanwhile at the Philadelphia Youth Hostel, Kandarpa Subramaniyam was waking up slowly. Betty was asleep.

He looked at the clock. A quarter to two in the morning but he was awake. He'd slept well.

he gently so as not to wake her got out of the bed and slipped on his shoes-- in the outer area he heard arguing. The guys who run this place. sounds intense.

he looked out the window. gentlemen were sitting drinking beer out of bottles in plain paper bags. A typical late night.

maybe i can get some tea from those guys or something.

mimbling: 'i want some tea too kandy, can you get me some tea?'

"do you want any tea? i think you are having a dream."

"mm, yesh, thas right. having a dream."

he opened the door. it was the tone that got him. these are serious people really arguing. they are holding back and yet it's the vehemence.

the place was legend in the college grapevine as one of the coolest bed and breakfasts in the world. it was gutter funky but not uttely filthy if your standards were not utterly borugoios. it was a place to spend the night, meet people, have get togethers. the wep page advertised it and of course it ws not legal. somehow they had slipped through the cracks, gone uncensured by the local government.
and these were the guys who made it work. they ahd all introduced themselves to him. Sho was the first person he had met, sweaty and smiling, happy to see him. Bongo seemed to be c9onstantly drinking coffee and Seven was often lifting weights or just slacking in front of the television. he had met Basque bit not gotten to talk with them.

kandarpa was a whiz at remembering small details about people he had barely gotten to know. he liked people, he found something to like in everyone he met.

But this was a real fight. his parents had argued like this at times before the divorce...


"can't you see it?" bongo. loud. staring.

sho is staring right back at him. "saying the same thing over and over again is NOT a valid form of discourse!"

"look, you are both making too much noise." Basque stared into the hand held camera: apparently he was making a movie of their argument.

No way, Kandarpa figured, that they were acting. This was too much aof a real fight.

"look, Seven left because we only talk about doing things, and make movies and put out little leaflets occasionally. and also we are in the black here, have you noticed? he doesn't trust us anymore, he thinks we are becoming rich fatcats and emulating the state."

sho was vitriolic."That," he said slowly, measuring, holding himself in check," is ridiculous. we are all comitted to the same thing. how does us having enough money to pay our bills and buy beer make us like the wallstreet pigs and the idustrial military fascists, bongo? I see what he is saying but i think he is just being recalicitrant. he wants to hit and make it hurt...maybe he just doesn't have the patience to use the real methods."
"that's what you think. Seven's extremely patient." Basque, from beyond the microphone. "besides, weren't you anrgry with bongo? let's try to stay on topic."

"you're a lot of help."
"just burning up tape."

"but what he said is true. i told you what i was talking about, sho. over and over. and you simply say it is nothing. you tell me it makes no sense. you tell me it's null and void. i know i can't tell you what it is because you refuse to see it!"

"you're a pinhead."

"call me waht you like. i can't explain it to you because you have a huge blind spot!"

"a blidn spot. what you are saying is that there is something so glaringly obvious that no matter how you explain it to me i will reject it out of hand because it's not real."

"no...grrr...that's NOT what I said!!

"i said - gawd, man, you;re infuriating!"

"then I win."

DEMON LANDLORD OF SPRINGFIELD AVENUE

"why are trying to win or lose! see: this is your problem. i am explaining a point and YOU are trying to be some sort of samurai debater, where you are winning an argument. i am NOT arguing with you. a discussion is where wto people reson together until communbication is established and ideas are shared. you are trying to make me wrong and yourself right, and the fact of the matter is i have something to say that you refuse to see. you refuse to see it, i could draw a FUCKING picture and you would criticize the paper that i drew it on rather than see what i had drawn because you...have...a BLIND SPOT. it's between your EARS, mate."

Sho stood there and seemed to wver slightly. "Fine. then how about this. take me out in the back yard and shoot me."

"Your're doing it again! CHRIST this need of yours to prove yourself superior--" at this basque stood up and backed away from the table to get a biger shot, he decided that their voices might be overloading ths amll microphone on the camer and so he backed away, to get a shot taking in the entire breakfast area, bookshelves and murals, loft and the settee with the flower vases. he held the camer lasily, at waist height, staring down at the viewfinder. he turned to wink lazily at kandarpa. "Oh, hi. You know where the tea is, right?"

"Oh yeah, thanks. good morning."

"Ain't it, though."


-------

GREED IS A SNIVELING MONSTER THAT DOMINATES THE WEAK AND HELPLESS.
THERE IS NO VAMPIRE ANYMORE: GREED IS THE VAMPIRE. IT ENSLAVES AND CREATES LIARS,
TINY CURSED LIARS WHO REPEAT THE LIES OF THEIR FUCKED SLAVEMASTERS.


GREED IS LIKE THAT, IT'S A DISEASE.
THINGS THAT COULD HAVE BEEN
SUBLIME, LOVELY
BECOME
DISTORTED REFLECTIONS OF THE GREED THAT THEY ADMIRED
whether innocently,
foolishly
or both.


there is a God, they say, that protects fools and explorers.

For Greed, Alone,
I pray there is a Hell that can take it away from us all...

the other side of the affairs of bongo and sho, seven and basque etcase?
all the time Lord Anus von Sinnerstar was on the other side of the neighborhood
fanning the flames of self hatred and loathing, making a business out of the blood, shit and misery of others, and thanking Satan for all he gained via graft and deception.

Seven knew him and calmly planned his death.
Bongo knew him and gobbed in his eye. Lord Anus smiled.
Sho shunned him coldly. Basque found other things to talk about whenever he showed up.

None of us would have allowed him into the hostel and VERY IMPORTANT: seven kept his guns well hidden in floorboars all over the hostel. if Anus had managed to find his way in, seven was sure as shootin' that the slumlord would never find his way out. And there is the paradigm: on one side of the city there were the four of us providing a service to people from all over the east coast who wanted a cool place to crash and pay minimal or nothing -- the Philadephia Youth Hostel.

crosstown, Lord Anus was charging large sums for kids to get drunk and puke in alleys or wander blindly in the streets. he didn't CARE if they died in traffic or of hypothermia -- he just wanted money -- and to feel the craven adulation of those who his constant stream of GUILE worked its sick sorcery on.

Lord Anus was a sorceror, he proudly proclaimed himself in weird punk 'zines as an Atlantean Sorceror, him and his tiny "allies" Moustache Bug and Doctor Pressure.

Sho and Bongo sat reading the 'zine and discussed it. "An atlantean sorceror...ah, i bet old Anus was the one who said 'we gotta change our ways or the island is doomed.'"

"yeah, right, you're having a sarcasm, right there on the couch."
Sho nodded wisely and turned off another ZoneAlarm warning. Moustache Bug was full of jealousy of the underground success of the Hostel. Trying to Nark to the cops had only gotten HIM in trouble, a kind light shined on the semilegal activities taking place in the Powelton playhouse that they called the Philadelphia Youth Hostel...so the cops stopped by and smiled at Seven and Bongo, Sho and Basque, drank coffee and left and then hassled Moustache Bug for wasting their time.

In Powelton, the idealistic anarchists who had given up on a derivative and drab social scene.

farther southwest, Lord Anus, his wife and his brother, ruling the scene that the four had left behind, keeping people drunk and feasting on their misery, hopelessness and shame...

continued: seven sho basque bongo
i rumble when i talk or else i whisper. basically i blow of f a lot of shit because of what i believe. assholes and fakes don't interest me except as things to laugh at, things to make fun of. it is all a part of the cosmic anarchy.

people used to talk about poseurs. now they rule.

the good old days of punk anarrchy, of hardcore, are coming back though. the thing 5that makes the reveneg so sweet is i don't have to take any.

the fakes are washing out already and it is cool. they don't believe in anarchy: they are ALL POSE and CLOTHES but the real of anarchy, having fun, having free will, using that free will, having enoug brains to read or write a manifesto or do ANYTHING one's actual own self, real feminism, non propertarianism these don't interest the fakes, they just scream smash the state and stink HARD all summer long. they are punks but not in a good way . and they actually HATE real anarchists. because they hate everything.

did you ever smell something that was so damn stinky it made you laugh cause there was nothing else you could do and you couldn't get away from it?

sho kicks the door shut. 'bongo i HAVE to SLEEP.'

he works too hard.

i clutch my coffee and toddle down the hall to basque's room. the teevee is on underneath the door i can see the light and i hear they are talking spanish which means he and chick x are doing the deed. i won't be poking my head in. he is probably tapping it hard --

seven is in the kitchen area drinking coffee. 'what were you asking mihoshi?'

'i was askin the space detective if he had ever smelled something so profoundly bad that you had to laugh, so foul and lame that all you could do was wrinkleyour face and laugh?

'gods, what was it?' he is so relaxed for an anarchist punk.

'well, the first time it was elk shit. remember, i was in colorado--'
'oh, right you stepped in the elk shit and the people at the shelter almost lynched you cause yorushoes smelt worse tan people who hadn't bathed since--'
'since the leaves changed, right. but the OTHER time was a few years ogo when i was at an antiwar rally and the anarchosocialists were in front of me?' DAMN what a crucial fucking reek. that was the reek that was, seven, that was the reek that was.'

'damn!'

'crucial stench man i am tellin ya. and i ain't smellin ya right now and what when did you last shower?'

'yesterday.'

'whay can't i smell you funky kong?'

'good clean christian living, steady diet of women.'

'dig! well, anyway it wa rank. i was glad i had the ten foot pole they gave me. it had a flag on the end but i ripped it off and kept the pole to keep the stinky nerds that far away from me. it was ATROCIOUS.'

basque comes tiptoeing in from his bedroom in his shazam undies. 'hey, is this humor still considered clever? stink jokes are so 2001.'

seven smiles. 'you want some coffee?'

'i'll take tea i think. damn, dude, you need to scrub your armpits.'

seven looks slightly bothered. 'don't tell me i offend.'

'no, not you y wrascally wbbit, i mean bongo over hear. you smell like' he sniffs me 'trout, dead camels, old stale coffee that has turned into glue and a lot of other stuff. shouldn't you be lighting yourself on fire or something?'

i was suprised. 'i think i am getting anosmia.'

'go take a shower or something, man, the plants wil die. what's up seven?'

'not a lot basque. the water is hot anyway. good one.' they actually slap each other fives and onbce again whiet people shock the fuck out of me sometimes.

'yeah, well you faggots play pattycake all you want. i'm gonna go clean some cd's.'

'cds?' says basque.

'see deez nuts?' i cup them and give him the finger. then i go off to theshower. but he got me better.

trading zingers is part of the life of work here at the Phialdelphia Youth Hostile.

--------
'so seven, this chick is cheking me out at the rite aid?'
'yeah?' sven is groggoly interested. he is fighting sleep on purpose to have lucid dreams, later.'

'so i say to her, hi how are you and stuff, and we get to talking and then i say hey, babe, are those spacepants? cause your ass is out of this world.' basque drops the teabag into the cup.

'cheezy. did it work?'

'she's in my room! i fucked her stupid, she's out like a light. wanna see?'

'i think that's all right,' said seven lightly.

'oh. well whatever.'

'i didn't say i didn't want to see, i just said i think it's all right.'

cool! i gotta let this tea cool: i'll be right back.

basque tiptoed down the hall way while seven lightly sipped his coffee. then he looked up, he had been groggioly dozing with is eyes half open when basque returned with a videotape.

'and this girl is gonna stay here?'

'nothing but the best for our little team, dean clean,' said basque.

the video was another one opf basque simple gems, the girl comes in and smiles for the camera prettily.

they sit and do bong hits, fishbone is blaring loudly in the background. there's no audio.

after a few rounds of bong hits thegirl begins stripping for the camera.

'wow, what a cie chest.'

'i know, she's not got a lot but they are so nicely propprtioned. all women are beautiful. are they amore beautiful when they are stoned?'

'maybe it's just you.'

i came out of the bathroom in my towel. 'oh, finally, i can't smell ya coming. that is so reassuring. i really thought thjose carnivorous pits of yours were gonna eat april's cat.'