Since my first reading which began one late evening, then finished after another very early a.m. stint —I have had ...disturbing dreams. Perverted, unsavory, diminishing dreams. But, I take this better than a sign that I shouldn't read in the small hours, I was evidently effected by Geek City and its saga. So, I consider it a challenge to share this hardly known, easily over-looked writer and his stories. I want to get to the heart of his peculiar darkness, and entice you all to want to go to there too.
I left L.A.. I headed back up into the darkness.The rest stops were full of people with Downs' Syndrome. Whole families, mongoloid parents with many mongoloid children. …The transmission fell out of my Chrysler in Lerdo. I didn’t have any money so I sold the car for scrap. They paid me $40. The bus ticket for San Francisco was $38. …The bus driver got a lot of bad directions. I ended up in downtown Oakland after midnight with an old beat-up suitcase and a black plastic garbage bag full of dirty clothes. I started walking.
Downtown was well lit and empty of everything except ghosts. I walked down to Lake Merritt. The water was absolutely black and the ring of lights around the lake was beautiful. I didn't care that the lake was full of garbage and parts of dead bodies. The lights were on in Children's Fairyland. I put my bags down and looked at the water.
Be assured (or disappointed, whatevs), there is nothing particularly perverted about Geek City Apocalypso, although it is not a typical narrative. The passages feel journalistic, with the anti-hero Frank Grafitto reflecting on the events surrounding him. Voices shout from streets, yells emanate from cars. The reader is brought along for a Hollywood brunch, then dropped off in the Tenderloin. Feints and jabs of storyline come at you, then DING-DING! -everyone back to the corner to rinse, spit and vaseline the cuts. After a few rounds, you get your feet under you. Your eyes adjust to the dim, your ears to the din. You get a feel for the place Pachinko calls "Geek City."
While shit stank and vomit waterfalls are mentioned (each in their place) -there are many more salubrious moments (in praise of a fine local taco or well made gimlet). North Beach, all osso buco spilled wine steep foggy climbs and dank piss crevices, is lauded, reflecting the Beat Generation's own terroir. Pachinko's love of alliteration and onomatopoeia vein the comedic bedrock of GCA. Like SF's own "Zippy the Pinhead," as translated through a noirish-pulp novel, Frank Grafitto winds through the city pointing out the randomness of a fish-stick obsessed child, praising a delicious bowl of pho, registering the yakking off of bubble-headed business men -all and sundry with a giddy discovery of the non-sequitor of reality. His every toast is a random-phrase generator:
Well, here’s hoping the constipated guffle bird of fate doesn’t fly up your ass backwards,’ I toasted.
Cartoonist Bill Griffith himself described "Zippy's" origins this way: "I was asked to contribute ...to Real Pulp Comics #1... (My) only guideline was to say 'Maybe do some kind of love story, but with really weird people.'"(1) This is how I see Griffith's "Zippy" in lineage with Pachinko's character, interwoven back with Kerouac's "Sal Paradise" and all the rest. As if, "On the Road" becomes a shorter, no less spirited odyssey -with all the kicks and dilemmas playing out between stops on a Muni bus line, each new squat Frank struggles to find, and the next cocktail shared with a new flame. This is a weird love story. And in praising women -Pachinko doesn't soft-soap.
And she wanted to fuck other people, girls, and boys. She had read some book called ‘The Ethical Slut.’ She wanted to be an ‘ethical slut.’ When I was still in New Orleans she had called long distance in the middle of the night to tell me how some English chick she knew had picked her up at an Irish pub, taken her home, fucked her with a silver dildo, then eaten her cunt till she screamed and came all over the woman’s face and ‘Aren’t you proud of me?’ What could I say? I told her I was.
If Hubert Selby Jr. (another writer I feel is in Geek City's wheelhouse) described himself as a "scream looking for a mouth," Pachinko is a scream looking for a mouth to kiss; to actually hush the screams, to muffle the roar of rage and rebuke. To fall down to the soft grass of some median in embrace, to grope and clutch and feel, immune to gapes or jeers; to fuck the pain away (as Peaches herself would teach)...
We were in the vortex, electrified, in rhythm, irresistible, in fucking unison, the force field around us white hot with crackling lightning energy. We were about to explode, about to burn down the walls of the flesh prison, the flames were rising, the wooden bed frame was cracking… "Holy shit!" "‘Fuck it,’ she said, ‘If the bed breaks while you’re getting it on you must be doing something right."
Alas, Frank Graffito, your romantic liaisons are doomed. While Charles Bukowski famously wrote of his many MANY satisfied women (though he demurred that he was a 'late-bloomer') he also famously wrote about them callously, especially as his stand in, "Henry Chinaski." When he's tired of them, they are the bag of empty bottles to be curbed. Whether the cunt, whore, bitch, cunt-bitch (insert YOUR favorite here!); he was always happier alone. Pachinko's alter-ego however genuinely wants the love of a good woman. Unkind or any kind. An eye, a nose, a tongue for the ladies; whatever pound of flesh he can offer. He can't stop loving. He craves, even while they run-off with someone else, degrade his penis or go off their meds. He may hate them in that moment, positively rage against them through the night; come morning, wrapped in dirty sheets -he reflects. Picturing the time she got that new haircut. Remembering matchless, crooked teeth. Like a Buddhist, accepting change as it comes; like a homeless person too. It's about having nothing and always forgetting that you never did. A kind of Zen koan.
I see more people on the street that I love than I ever see on TV or in magazines. I see real. Stuck at a streetlight corner behind you. I'm already yours, don’t walk away so fast. I want to hear your voice, I want to hear you laugh, I want to touch your hair, I want to see you you in your underwear, smell your ears, I’m doomed. I’m not a frat boy with a suit and a cell phone, you will never look at me.
I intentionally draw the comparison in name-dropping Bukowski, and Pachinko would be the first to admit that "Henry Chinaski" and GCA's Frank have more than a little in common. Does all the body politic seem to visit the mailroom, or is it all our imagination? Is paranoia merely a disease of the mind or is your supervisor silently judging you? But, whereas Henry has no fucks to give about anything, Does Not Give Two Shits, Frank is vulnerable and twitchy. He refuses to succumb to brainwash, but he obsesses about it. He enthuses philosophically, verbally free associates, and goofs on the pursuit of popular culture. In his rhapsodies Frank of Geek City satirizes the excesses of consumerism, cronyism, fascism, professional clowns: the real life politics of "Apocalypso" -more timeless than a 2008 presidential election, less specific than Sept 10, 2001.
Sports were vicious. All that time spent competing. Wasn’t that all that humans did? Compete? Survive? Why not train the kids to be better at sex? No, you had to learn that on your own, in a void. Fed disinformation, outright lies, punished. It’s bad! It’s wrong! And few things were more fundamental. Nobody ever died wishing they had spent more time at the office. No, there were probably some twisted, pernicious dingbats out there who did. Don’t write them off. …Instead of sexualizing sports, why not sportsify sex? Blow job contests? Contests to see who could have the most orgasms? Who could please their partner best? …Why was it all a secret, shrouded in mystery? THOSE competitors would DESERVE their medals. No. Everything was stupid, forget it.
Pachinko's Frank is not immune to incoherent rage, though he staved it off for a while. An anti-hero tilting at windmills, the Quixotic spins eventually knock him senseless, leave him rope-a-dope. And after figuratively venting his spleen -he is left spectacularly literally damaged. It's an honest pay-off for the reader, with all the blood- letting and sputtering woe as is his due. To finish this essay off with a high-tone literary bit, I found a reference to Dostoevsky and his writings lasting effect on a reader. That it had "power" in its "intimacy with suffering and morality." Now, I don't mean to pit the great 20th century Russian writer against the unknown on the card, but -I'll say this- Pachinko is a contender. He's got a strong skull, fast feet, and he can play the piano. Besides, a lot of folks say Fyodor, well, he was excessive -the blogosphere of today might say TL:DR (too long; didn't read). But, in a fair fight, coming in at a trim 197 pages, "Geek City Apocalypso" throws down, swinging like the heavy-weight soul of wit, brief yes- but with no lack of punch.
—Sugarpuss O'SX, May 3, 2012
1) Dueben, Alex "Is Bill Griffith Having Fun Yet?", CBR, October 6, 2008
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