Originally published at joehumphrey.com. You can comment here or there.

I powered the Sookie Stackhouse books in a marathon couple of weeks after I finished watching the first season of True Blood. The books were pretty entertaining, and I enjoy the voice Charlaine Harris gives Sookie. Given that all of the books are narrated by Sookie, and entirely from Sookie’s perspective, it’s a damned good thing that Sookie has such a strong, charming and likable narrative voice. As the books got more and more involved with the various supernatural factions in Harris’ version of America, post-Vampire outing, the books did become a little convoluted and tedious. It got less and less believable that all of this crazy shit is going on, not only in the relatively small constrains of northern Louisiana, but that there are all of these different supernatural races living and operating secretly under our noses. Vampires were a stretch, but one I was willing to make. Werewolves and shape-shifters… sure, okay. Around about the fifth or six different supernatural being I started losing my ability to suspend disbelief. What becomes even harder to believe is that Sookie is able to endure all of the crazy shit she goes through over the course of roughly a year and a half. I won’t spoil anything for those who haven’t read the books, but it’s a fucking LOT of shit.

But those are the books. They’re fine for what they are, and I enjoyed them well enough. They aren’t exactly great books or anything, but they’re entertaining and I enjoy reading them. I mean, it’s not Kurt Vonnegut, but they’re a good read and better than a lot of crap I’ve come across.

What I want to talk about is the TV show. The TV show is really fucking good. Like, really, really great. Even more so this season than last season.

I’ve talked a bit about my love for True Blood here, but I don’t think I’ve really delved into what I love so much about it. I figure it’s about time I did that.

I watched the first season on DVD the weekend before it came out (Blockbuster has it’s benefits, however minor they are). I avoided it at first, not out of any real conscious boycott or distaste for anyone involved, but mostly just because I was afraid that the show would be too similar to my own vampire screenplay. So it was easier to just not find out than to actually face that possibility. Eventually curiosity won over and I grabbed the DVDs. Luckily, it’s nothing like my script really, and finding that out allowed me to sit back and just watch the show for what it was. After plowing through the first season over a weekend, I was eager for more. So, like I said, I started reading the books.

Having read the books between the first and second seasons gives me a kind of different perspective on the show that people who read the books before the show came out might have, or people who haven’t read the books at all. For one thing, I already had a preconceived notion of what the characters looked and sounded like going into the books. I pictured Anna Paquin as Sookie and Stephen Moyer as Bill in my head. So I never had to make the adjustment of trying to fit these actors into my established mental image of their characters. That made the transition into watching the story of the second book, covered in season 2, much easier.

The thing that’s really great about True Blood, having now read the books, is that the books are there. It’s all there. They didn’t drastically change the story as it’s already established. But because the books focus only on Sookie’s perception of the events unfolding, there’s a lot of room for the writers of the TV series to make up the rest of the story that’s going on outside of the main Sookie thread. So even though I know pretty much what’s going to happen in Sookie’s part of the story in season 2, I have no idea what’s going on with Lafayette, Tara, Jason, Sam and the rest of the cast. I get both the gratification of seeing the story that I already know unfold, as well as getting something fresh and new and exciting.

And they’ve done such an amazing job with those supporting characters. That’s what really makes the show stand above it’s peers. I can’t remember a TV show that featured such flawed and damaged characters, but still respected those characters so completely. There’s a fair amount of humor in the show, but you never get the feeling that we’re supposed to look down on any character or laugh at them. The things that are funny are things that are funny about life and people in general. There’s no real exclusively comic relief characters in the story. Even the funny characters have very real issues and drama in their lives, and that’s all respected and treated as heavily as the main characters.

 

For instance, my favorite character on the show is a guy named Terry Bellefleur. He was a character in the books, but like most of the supporting characters in the books, he’s there mainly as filler. He’s colorful filler, but he doesn’t really contribute a whole lot to the story. Terry is a war veteran (Vietnam in the books, Iraq in the show) who suffers from a particularly bad case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In the show, he’s twitchy and jumpy and always looks like he’s about to flip out at any moment. It’s a character that could be very easily (and fairly tastelessly) played for laughs, but they never go there. Yes, he can be a funny character, but you never get the sense that we’re laughing at him. It’s not even really something that’s been seriously addressed on the show, but it’s a very interesting and tragic element. Terry is one of the many deeply flawed characters on the show who just want to get through their day as peacefully as they can. He’s played brilliantly by an actor named Todd Lowe (who I only just found out tonight was the same actor who played Layne’s garage band boyfriend Zack on Gilmore Girls. WTF? How did I not notice that?) and he plays Terry completely straight. There’s never any feeling like he’s hamming it up or making fun of Terry’s eccentricities. But at the same time, it’s never so overly dramatic that it feels self indulgent. It’s all just very matter of fact. Here’s this character, and he has these problems and here’s how he works in the story. That’s it.

And that’s what I love about the acting on this show. All of the human characters, with all of their many deep flaws, are played very honestly. There’s no condescension to it. There’s never any character whose problems are bigger than any other character, and there’s never a feeling like any character is more or less significant than any other. Which is quite a change from the novels, where we focus only on whatever characters happen to be interacting with Sookie at any given moment.

A good example of how the actors on this show play their characters straight is Sookie’s bother Jason. Jason Stackhouse is a dopey, dimwitted, easily manipulated, but mostly well meaning jock who is also possibly a sex addict. Now, almost every TV show in existence has at least one dumb ass character. One character who is there to say funny, stupid things to get a laugh. Unfortunately, most actors (especially in long running TV shows) don’t want to be forever associated with their dopey characters. Most actors don’t want to be George Costanza or Woody from Cheers for their entire career, so they tend to play those characters in a winking-at-the-camera “I’m not really this dumb” kind of way. There’s usually at least one episode in any given series where a “dumb” character is able to redeem themselves and we realize that they’re not quite as dopey as we thought. The example I’m thinking of is the character of Hurley on (my personal favorite show) Lost. Hurley’s main purpose is dopey comic relief. While he’s not a stupid character really, he is a dopey one. But there seems to be at least a couple of episodes every season where Hurley says some really profound or intellectually interesting shit. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but it is what it is, and that’s fine. I don’t mind when characters (even dopey characters) have layers to them that are maybe smarter or more perceptive than their surface image.

But that’s not really the case with Jason. Playing Jason is Australian actor Ryan Kwanten (previously of Dead Silence and Flicka) and he plays Jason for exactly what Jason is. He plays Jason completely straight. Jason is a dumbass character, and Ryan plays him exactly as such. There’s no winking at the camera and no deeper, philosophical or intellectual layers to Jason. He’s just a dopey guy. Watching Ryan play him, it’s hard to imagine the actor as anything BUT this dimwitted character. I can’t even picture what he would sound like with an Australian accent. It’s really quite refreshing to watch his performance, because you never for a second get any indication that Jason is anything more than what we see on the screen. He has layers, but all of those layers are just as dimwitted as what we see on the surface. It’s neat watching Jason deal with situations that are far beyond his intellectual abilities, and seeing him deal with them AS a dumb character. His dimwittedness (as well as the previously mentioned sex addiction) often gets him in serious trouble, but he manages it as best as he can, with the limited tools he has.

In the show, the Jason character is quite a bit different than he is in the books. I personally prefer him on the show. In the books, he’s more of just a dumb redneck. He’s incredibly selfish and self centered, and often just downright mean. In the show there’s an element of sweet naivety to him that just isn’t there in the books. You get the feeling that the character on the show, ultimately, wants to do the right thing, even though he’s just not smart enough to figure out what the right thing is.

There are very few characters in the show who aren’t being manipulated and used in some way by another character. Unfortunately for Jason, he is, by far, the most manipulated and used, and with the heaviest consequences. It’s because of that completely honest portrayal of his stupid naivety that it’s believable that he gets himself in the situations he’s in. In any other show, you would expect the dumb character to figure out some way out of the bad situations they find themselves in. But Jason just isn’t capable of that.

Again, I find it refreshing.

The scene that really catapulted this show into the best of the best for me, was a scene between Terry and Lafayette, the black, gay, drug dealing cook, in this weeks episode. Now, Lafayette is a fan favorite, and with good reason. He’s played by Nelsan Ellis, and Nelsan is absolutely unbelievably awesome in the role. I can’t think of another gay character in a TV show that’s played with such respect, honesty and completely without any kind of judgment or agenda. Nelsan simply IS Lafayette on that show. And I defy you to find a more charming, charismatic actor working in TV today. He’s absolutely amazing.

Anyway, at this point in the show, Lafayette has endured a pretty damned traumatic event and has been suffering from a little PTSD himself. When Andy Bellefleur (Terry’s cousin and former detective) decides to question Lafayette about a recent murder, he gets a little carried away and triggers a bit of a panic attack in Lafayette. Terry walks in on this and chews out Andy and sends him on his way. Terry, recognizing the symptoms of PTSD, gets down on the floor with Lafayette (where he’s been cowering, terrified) and attempts to comfort him using a fairly traditional “happy place” kind of grounding technique. It’s an incredibly touching scene, beautifully written and acted. It’s also a surprisingly masculine scene, considering how tender it is, and considering that it’s a straight man comforting a gay man without any kind of awkwardness. Terry simply sees another brother suffering from the same thing he’s suffering from. It’s a beautiful scene and it was at that point that I decided that True Blood is one of the best shows on TV.

It forced me to go back and look at the first season, and think about it somewhat differently. While I’d enjoyed the show and the books up to that point, I never really took them particularly seriously. I recognized that it was a well written/directed/acted show, but I also saw it as a bit corny and over the top. But after this weeks episode, I’m seeing it in a new light. 

The main story of the first season was taken directly from the first Sookie Stackhouse book, Dead Until Dark. It centers around a serial killer in the small Louisiana town of Bon Temps. Since it’s a mystery story, and we don’t find out who the killer is until the end of the season, there are a lot of red herrings. They lead you to believe that Sookie’s brother Jason might be the killer, then they implicate Sookie’s boss and friend Sam Merlotte, and there’s a lot of “who done it?!” kind of back and forth. Because of that (and because I hadn’t read the books at that point) I had to reserve judgment about most of the main characters on the show, because they were showing everyone as fairly dark and potentially a murderer.

There was a scene in one of the earlier episodes where Sookie goes on a kind of date with Sam. Now, there’s a lot of mystery around Sam at this point anyway, because they hadn’t yet reveled a major secret about him. In the scene I’m thinking of, Sam and Sookie have an argument outside of a restaurant. Sam is jealous and upset because Sookie has been dating a vampire, Bill Compton, played by Stephen Moyer. Because Sam is clearly in love with Sookie, he uses Bill’s vampiric nature as an excuse to berate Sookie and avoid the more obvious issue, which is his jealousy. The thing that stood out to me was the fact that Sam, who is generally played as a somewhat simple and almost dopey good guy, becomes an almost violently imposing figure. Watching that scene the first time, it felt as though it was played simply as a means to imply that Sam may be the murderer. But watching it a second time, it made me realize that Sam does have a very dark, angry side to him that isn’t obvious at first glance. Watching other episodes from the first season, that thread of anger is there all through his character.

In the books, Sam is a fiercely loyal, always well intentioned friend to Sookie. He’s very much like a beloved pet dog (appropriately enough) and there isn’t really much of a dark side to him. But in the show they’ve added that kind of dangerous element to him. And it’s dangerous in a much more sinister way than if he were simply an asshole or just a guy with an anger problem. It’s because of that fierce loyalty and devotion that makes that angry streak really scary. In a way, it fits the pet dog analogy as well. He’s like a beloved dog that’s becoming aggressive. You love the dog, but more and more you’re starting to see the reality that this dog could fucking kill you if it decided to. And when that dog goes Cujo on you, it’s that much more disturbing because it’s your buddy that wants to eat you, not just some random dog.

It’s something that’s also inline with a theme in the books that I’m really hoping becomes a theme on the show.

In the books, Charlaine Harris writes Sookie like a battered spouse. Even though there’s no real direct abuse (there IS one scene with Bill in the third book that’s pretty fucking iffy though) in her relationships, Sookie is constantly having to justify the actions of her partners, whether it’s Bill or otherwise. She justifies to others and justifies to herself. Like I said, the relationships themselves aren’t necessarily abusive, but what comes along with them is. The complicated and dangerous world of vampires (and other creatures) puts Sookie in a constant state of almost getting killed. And she gets beat up… a LOT. It’s almost like abuse by proxy. While her partners aren’t abusive to her, she suffers abuse because of her relationship with them. She’s attacked by a creature in the woods and almost killed. At one point in the books she’s staked, another she’s raped, and at another she’s literally tortured for hours on end. Her relationships are almost like a relationship someone might have with a serious drug addict. While the addict might not be overtly abusive, it’s still a dangerous, unhealthy situation. Sookie even brings in the cliché excuses like “There’s bad stuff, but the good times are really good” and she often lets her desire for awesome vampire sex cloud her perception of the dangers around her relationships with vampires. More than a few times Sookie says something along the lines of “There would be a lot less pain in my life if Bill Compton had never walked into the bar that night”.

That’s what impressed me about the mean streak that runs through the Sam character in the show. That idea of abuse and abusive relationships is all through the books, and I was glad to see shades of it in Sam, and especially in that scene. Again, Sam isn’t directly abusive towards Sookie, but he’s threatening, and the potential appears to be there.

Rewatching some of the season one episodes, there was a lot of little things that reference things that are going to come out later. Alan Ball said on one of the DVD commentaries, that he plans to use each book as the main story for each season. So season one was book one, season two will be book two, and so on. He pointed out a little reference to something with Jason, foreshadowing something that won’t happen until probably season six or so, if they make it that far.

There was also something that happened in the first episode that I didn’t understand until I read the books. When Sookie finds the Rattrays draining Bill, and she attacks Mack Rattray with the chain, the chain flies through the air and wraps around Mack’s neck and tightens, seemingly of it’s own accord. Given that they go out of their way to establish the limit of Sookie’s extrasensory abilities, and that those abilities don’t include Carrie like telekinesis, that didn’t really make much sense. I didn’t put a lot thought into at the time (it WAS the first episode after all) but watching it again, I understand what’s happening, even though there’s absolutely no indication or explanation for it in the show so far. I know why it is, and clearly the producers and writers of the show know, but they don’t feel the need to explain it until Sookie figures it out for herself.

In another commentary, one of the writers or directors (I don’t remember who it was) said that there was another reference to the reason why the chain did what it did in another scene, but that they ultimately cut it out, because they didn’t want to throw too much at the audience at once. That’s probably a good idea, but it’s nice to see that they’re thinking that far ahead.

And I really dig that they’re so loyal to the books. Mostly because the format they’ve established will work really well with the stories in the next few books. They don’t need to change much, and if they can keep up with the new stories they’ve established with the secondary characters, we’ve got a whole lot of really good True Blood on the way.

I’ve talked a lot about the respectful, underplayed way the actors portray the human characters on the show. Almost the opposite is true of the vampire characters though, which is also interesting.

The vampires on True Blood are almost universally overly dramatic and at times intensely clichéd. I remember watching the first season, I almost turned it off and stopped watching the first time they went to Fangtasia, the vampire bar in Shreveport. It was such a worn and tired cliché and it put me off the first time I saw it. It was a vampire bar full of people in latex and long coats and striped stockings and electrical tape crosses covering their nipples. It honestly confused me at first, because the vampires I’d seen so far were interesting and fairly fresh, but then we had this bar full of the worst kind of obvious vampire schlock. I couldn’t understand how characters who were hundreds of years old would go to a bar and dress like 20 year old goth club kids.

The introduction of Eric Northman, the owner of the bar and Bill’s superior in the vampire hierarchy, was the most puzzling. Eric, who is supposed to be this imposing, serious character, is sprawled out on a chair placed on the center of a raised platform, like he’s on display. He’s wearing shiny black leather and his head is tilted down, his hair hanging in his face. It was almost like he was doing an impersonation of Brandon Lee in The Crow. Eric’s right hand man (woman) Pam is at the door, checking IDs, and she’s wearing a tight, black leather dress and blood red lipstick like some kind of wannabe Elvira.

I almost felt betrayed. Here I’d been enjoying this innovative and interesting show about vampires, and all of a sudden it got incredibly silly and offensively predictable. It took me a little while to get comfortable watching the show again after that scene. Luckily, what I came to realize as the show went on (and especially after reading the books) is that it’s all a put on. After the vampires “came out of the coffin” they started becoming what people expected them to be. Eric Northman is a business man. At first glance, it seems as though Fangtasia is a bar that caters to vampires, but it’s actually more like a vampire themed Hard Rock Cafe or Planet Hollywood. The bar isn’t for the vampires, but the humans. Tourists who want to go and look at vampires. So they put on this show of being exactly the cliché that people expect.

That’s a far more interesting and inventive approach than I gave them credit for. Later in the show (and all through the books) the Pam character dressed more like Martha Stewart or Donna Reed. She wears entirely non-vampire like, domestic housewife type clothes. And Eric dresses like your typical attractive thirty something guy.

That contrast between what people expect and what actually is is a major theme in the vampire characters, and one I enjoy very much.

Like the human characters (all of whom have some sort of dark secret) in the show, the vampire characters operate on at least two levels. They’ve got their public persona and the underlying truth. While humans (and people in general) have this dynamic as well, it’s much more of a conscious choice for the vampire characters. They carefully and deliberately craft their public persona, based mostly on what humans expect of them. It comes naturally to people to adjust their behavior and public persona to suit their environment, but these vampire characters aren’t human. They very deliberately and specifically create an image of themselves to present to the public and to their fellow vampires. Also, because of this political pecking order and internal legal system within the vampire community, they have to treat each other in a specific way, and adjust their behavior to fit who they’re talking to.

The vampires simply aren’t human, and for the most part, they aren’t good characters. Even the “good guys” like Bill aren’t really good guys. That fits in with that abuse theme I talked about earlier. Sookie turns a blind eye to what Bill really is. She desperately wants to impose this humanity on him that just isn’t there. Sure, there are human qualities to Bill, but when you get right down to it, he’s a fucking murderer. The episode this week very clearly showed that Bill is capable of completely despicable and evil acts.

I loved the flashback to Bill’s time with his maker (the vampire who turned him into a vampire) Lenora. In the flashback, we go back to some time presumably in the thirties, when Bill and Lenora convince a couple in an underground bar to come back to the their bedroom for some hot four way sex. They then viciously slaughter the couple, Lenora holding the man’s head forward, forcing him to watch as Bill tears open the woman’s throat. They then kill the man, climb onto the bed and start fucking, covered in blood, next to the poor girl who is bleeding out from the wound in her neck.

It was a horrifically violent, incredibly sexy scene, and I appreciated it for a few reasons. The first, obvious reason, was that it was just a badass, gory, awesome scene and a lot of fun. But on a deeper level, I felt like it added a much needed conformation of Bill’s nature. Up to this point, we’ve had plenty of indications of what Bill is capable of, but nothing really direct. Sure, he’s killed all kinds of people, but it was generally either in defense of Sookie, or because of some kind of skewed morally righteous reason (like when he killed Sookie’s child molesting Uncle Bartlett). This was the first time we’ve seen Bill do what we know vampires do. It was the conformation I needed (and never even really got from the books) that Bill actually is beyond human. While he does have a kind of tweaked moral center, it’s based mostly on his own needs and desires. He loves Sookie, so he feels a need to protect her and her honor, but beyond that, he’s pretty much a monster. In that way, Bill (and pretty much all of the vampires we’ve met) are almost like sociopaths. I say almost, because to say that they ARE sociopaths implies that they’re damaged or defective humans. But they aren’t humans. Not any more.

So even Bill, who is for all intents and purposes a “good” character, is putting on a show. It’s a show for the public and it’s a show for Sookie. He may genuinely care for her, and may even love her, but he’s still giving her the impression that he’s more human that he is. Granted, he tries to explain to Sookie, more than a couple of times, that he’s a vampire and doesn’t have the same kind of feelings and ethics as humans, but Sookie refuses to see that, and I think Bill is comfortable letting her ride that denial. That flashback goes a long way to show just how wrong Sookie is about Bill’s humanity, or lack there of.

Again we’ve got Sookie filling the role of the abused partner. She has this attitude that says “I can FIX him! I can make him human!” when she’s clearly deluded. She can’t fix Bill any more than she can tame a wild tiger. Bill is not human, and will never be human. He’s a ruthless killer, and even though he’s attempting to “mainstream” (the term for when a Vampire chooses to stop feeding on strangers and exclusively drinks synthetic blood or from a willing partner) he’s still the same monster he was before the vampires came out of the coffin.

It’s interesting to watch the performances of the actors playing vampires in the show. All of the vampires who are older (in vampire age) than a few decades act in this overly dramatic, exaggerated way. So when you see Eric (who is over a thousand years old) sitting in his chair in the middle of the bar, looking like some kind of goth king, it’s not because that’s the way he is, it’s just the part he’s playing. After a thousand years of existing outside of humanity, feeding on and murdering people, he no longer has any kind of humanity in him. He’s so far detached from humanity that he’s become bored. He doesn’t know what it is to interact with people on any kind of human level. Like the other vampires, he’s a kind of sociopath, seeing everyone else a prop to be used and discarded.

So while the human characters are flawed and harboring dark secrets, the vampire characters are beyond flawed. You can’t call their negative qualities flaws, because that’s just what they are. Just like you can’t really call a great white shark a flawed or damaged animal because of it’s cold, vicious nature. It just is what it is. It kills because that’s what it does. These vampires are no different. Guilt doesn’t even enter the equation.

It’s a stark contrast to the human characters, who all harbor some sort of guilt and moral turmoil, and it makes for a fascinating dynamic.

The only vampire characters who don’t have that quality to them are the new vampires. Specifically I’m thinking of Jessica and Eddie. Jessica is Bill’s protégé, a vampire he has created and must teach how to be a vampire. Eddie was an unfortunate vampire who was kidnapped by Jason and his crazy girlfriend Amy, played by the awesome Stephen Root (of Office Space/News Radio/King of the Hill fame). Both vampires are relatively new to being vampires, and both are basically human characters. Seeing as how Jessica has become a vampire over the course of the last few episodes, she’s still essentially human, and having to adjust to her new lifestyle. Eddie, on the other hand, was a character who became a vampire after the great unveiling (when vampires came out of the coffin) because he thought it might improve his sex life. It didn’t particularly work (as much as I love Stephen Root, he’s not the most attractive man in the world) and he’s nestled into a fairly comfortable life of watching TV and trading his vampire blood (which is sold as a powerful recreational drug) for sex with Lafayette. Eddie drinks Tru-Blood (the synthetic blood drink that made the great unveiling possible) and doesn’t hunt people like a normal vampire.

These two characters are interesting because they show that the inhumanity of being a vampire isn’t because of the actual physical transformation of becoming a vampire, but due to the lifestyle and extended lifespan. Eddie was just a lonely guy who happened to be a vampire. He had the issues that came along with vampirism, but he figured out a way to deal with them and live a life that’s relatively human. That’s what made his death all the more tragic. He wasn’t really a vampire. Yes, he had gone through the transformation, but he wasn’t a monster. He was just a guy who happened to be a vampire.

Poor Eddie. That poor, poor bastard.

Jessica, on the other hand, is interesting in that we get the opportunity to watch her become a vampire. She’s surprisingly eager to learn how to be a monster, but she still has enough humanity in her that we get to see the human response to the monstrous nature of being a vampire. I’m quite excited to see how they play that. At this point, Jessica is just a teenage girl who’s been thrust into the awkward and confusing life of a vampire.

One of the best aspects of the show is watching these vampires function in our world. These monsters live in our world and have to live their day to day (or night to night I suppose) lives in the constraints of the modern world we’ve built around them. It’s not quite like a “fish out of water” scenario, because they’ve watched us build up the world from the sidelines, and they’re aware of how it works, but at the same time, there’s a sense of detached weirdness to it.

For instance, there’s a scene where we find Bill in his living room, alone, playing golf on a Wii.

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It’s such a simple, and seemingly obvious thing, but it’s something I don’t know that I ever would have thought of. Of course Bill would play golf on the Wii. It’s not like he can play golf on Sunday afternoon like anyone else. He gets to simulate an activity that he literally can’t experience otherwise. It’s an incredibly sweet and sad scene, and it does a lot to embed these vampires as real fixtures in our world.

In another scene, Bill is at a shopping mall buying for clothes for Jessica. He’s in a store called Forever 21 and is approached by Eric. The scene itself isn’t particularly remarkable, but the context of it is fascinating.

We’ve got Bill, trying to interact with humans in an entirely human environment, and trying not to make a thing out of the fact that he’s a vampire. It doesn’t exactly work out that way. Then seeing Eric show up in a friggin track suit is even more goofy and strange. It’s a funny and entertaining thing to watch. These vampires can be as overly dramatic and intense as they want, but ultimately they still have to function in our world. Bill still has to buy clothes at the mall. He still has to ask Sookie to drop off his dry cleaning and find workers willing to help him remodel his house at night. And Eric still, apparently, has to highlight his hair, as evidenced in the friggin awesome scene at the end of the first episode this season.

In that scene, Lafayette is being held captive by an (up to that point) unidentified person, which was the source of the PTSD I talked about earlier. In the reveal of who is keeping him captive, Eric walks down the steps in his most intense, badass vampire entrance possible, and he’s wearing a smock and foils in his hair, clearly in the middle of getting his hair did.

He then proceeds to completely rip apart Lafayette’s fellow captive, who made the mistake of trying to attack Eric. Following the limb removing, bloody gore fest that was Eric’s attack, he kneels in front of the terrified and trembling Lafayette and asks him if there is blood in his hair. Lafayette, pissing himself scared, says that yeah, there’s a little bit. Eric sighs and says “Pam’s going to kill me”.

That’s another one of my favorite scenes. I love the contrast of these horrifically terrifying creatures having to participate in the mundane things we don’t really think about. It’s just a lot of fun.

And really, when you get down to it, the main draw of True Blood is that it IS a lot of fun. Sure, we can wax intellectual all day about the nature of the characters and various story telling techniques, but when at the end of the day, the main reason to watch the show is just for the sheer joy of it. For someone like me, who likes a healthy dose of sex and violence in their entertainment, True Blood is perfect.

And there is a LOT of sex and violence in this show. I mean, one of the first scenes in the first episode is of Jason going down on a fangbanger (a slang term in the show for a kind of vampire groupie) named Maudette. They then watch a homemade video of her being savagely fucked by a vampire while she hangs by her wrists from a hook in the ceiling.

 

That’s the beauty of pay cable TV. There are no ratings. There’s no fear of not being distributed in theaters. There’s no watchdog telling filmmakers what they can and can’t show. You can get away with pretty much anything on HBO and Showtime. It’s become a place where filmmakers can do projects that they otherwise couldn’t do in a theatrical release. Sure, Alan Ball could have taken the Sookie Stackhouse books to the movie theater, but it would have been a watered down version of what we get on HBO. In this format the writers and directors can not only show the kinds of things that don’t make it into an R rated movie, but they can take the time to tell the story without having to worry about keeping it under two hours. The only thing HBO requires is that it’s a sellable product. Clearly True Blood is doing just fine in that department, despite (or, perhaps, somewhat because of) it’s excessive amounts of sex and violence.

A lot of the sex and violence comes directly from the books. The books are incredibly violent and dark in parts, and it’s hard to go five or six pages without Sookie fucking someone. If Sookie isn’t have sex, she’s thinking about sex. It almost got to the point that I started getting sick of reading about Sookie having sex. And I loves me some sex. But after a while I was like “Really? Again? Seriously? Can we please just get to the story?” It takes a lot to get me to the point that I’m bored of reading about people fucking.

But it’s all there, and they’ve pulled no punches in bringing it to the screen. Sex and violence is a huge theme in the books, and it’s a huge theme in the show. And it works perfectly in that context. There is no more perfect a place for intense sex and violence than a vampire story.

And it’s not just regular sex and violence either. There’s a kind of sick, demented vibe to a lot of it. For instance, in a scene in this episode (this weeks episode was fucking amazing btw, which is why I keep referencing it) where Eric is feeding on a fangbanger in the lobby of the vampire centric hotel the characters are staying at in Dallas. The fangbanger is there essentially as a walking, talking wet bar. Her entire purpose at the hotel is to be a source of blood for resident vampires. It’s a symbiotic kind of relationship. The vampires get live blood and she gets to feed her own sexual fetish for vampires. In the scene, Eric is feeding off her, with an almost “can’t get it up” element to it. He eventually gives up and pushes her away because he can’t enjoy feeding off of her when she’s so willing. He asks her to pretend like she doesn’t want him to bite her. It becomes a kind of rape fantasy, and it’s the only way he can actually get what he needs out of feeding on her. It’s a very dark, demented scene. And again, kind of fucking hot.

The people making this show know what’s up. They know what turns the typical vampire fan on. Modern vampires, by nature, are a metaphor for sexuality. Even more so, they’re a metaphor for unbridled, angry, violent sexuality. That element of rape is something that is interwoven all through vampire literature and pop culture. It’s inseparable. That power play is what’s made vampires the sexiest of the pop culture monsters. The makers of True Blood clearly understand this, and have no problem blatantly exploiting it for everything it’s worth.

It helps tremendously that the people participating in the sex and violence are a damned fine looking cast. Ryan Kwanten, the guy who plays Jason, has a body like a fucking GI Joe doll. There’s rarely a scene with Jason where he’s wearing a shirt. Jason naked just seems to be an crucial part of the show.

Alexander Skarsgård, the six foot four Swede who plays Eric is not exactly an unattractive fellow. Sam Merlotte and Bill are both good looking guys (though I think Steven Moyer, the guy who plays Bill, looks a little too much like Paul Rudd for me to take completely seriously) and are frequently naked. Because the show is written and executive produced by Alan Ball, who is openly gay, and uses vampires as a metaphor for discrimination in general, but even more specifically homophobia, there is a lot of naked man butt on this show. Also, I think the abundance of male nudity is in large part because the vampire/romance genre traditionally has a mostly female audience. If anything, Twilight and Buffy have proven that.

But this is no Twilight. These vampires don’t sparkle. They will fuck you up, in every sense of the word.

Being that I’m a generally straight male, my real interest lies in the female characters on the show. There are some seriously sexy chicks on this show.

For starters, (btw, this is the point in the write up when Joe becomes an incredibly shallow horndog. If you don’t like it, you can ess my dee) there’s Jessica. The actress playing Jessica is fucking smoking hot. She’s 24 year old Deborah Ann Woll and she’s like…

Okay, you know how when you see a 76 Corvette Stingray, and you’re just like “Wow. That’s fucking hot.” But then you see a 2010 Corvette ZR1 (you know, the one with the glass panel in the hood) and you’re just like “Holy fucking shit…” and it takes your breath away?

Well, if Sissy Spacek was a 1976 Corvette Stingray, Jessica on True Blood is that ZR1. She’s like the new, slick, improved Sissy. She’s got the fiery red hair and the freckles and the big, bright blue, inquisitive doe eyes. And Jesus Christ… she’s just… hot. And she wears the pleated skirts and stockings and garters and all of that hot shit I love.

There was Amy, Jason’s V addicted (V being the slang term for Vampire Blood) psychotic short lived girlfriend, who was played by Lizzy Caplan (who I’ve only ever previously seen in Cloverfield) who is a kind of slightly prettier, and profoundly more naked version of Zooey Deschanel. While her character was despicable and evil, I thought the actress playing her was absolutely gorgeous. I was sad to see her go, even though her character clearly had it coming.

Even Pam, Eric’s second in command, while almost too imposing and intense to be called sexy, she clearly has a kind of MILFy vibe to her. In this case, MILF meaning Murderer I’d Like to Fuck. She’s almost too corny, but there’s something about her condescending, smirky, eyebrow raised attitude that’s incredibly hot as well. Her character in the book was quite attractive (as far as characters in books can be) and it translate well into the show. I’m excited to see when they do her flashback and show how she became a vampire. It should add a much needed element to her character that will make her that much hotter.

I fucking love Pam. I love her character and I love the way Kristin Bauer plays her.

The Crème de la crème though, for me, is Anna Camp as Sarah Newlin, the wife of the biggoted militant minister of the Fellowship of the Sun church.

It took me a little while to realize just how hot she is, mostly because it was a bit before I got into her storyline. For a long while, I felt like the story of Jason joining The Fellowship was incredibly tedious and boring. It wasn’t until I realized why they were going that direction with the story that I was able to relax and enjoy it.

I imagine that the job of adapting the books for the screen isn’t a particularly challenging one. The books very clearly, and plainly lay out Sookie’s storyline. That’s almost directly adapted for the show. The real meat of the writing process, I would think, is filling in all the spaces that don’t directly involve Sookie. In this case, they had to do something to show how the Fellowship of the Sun operates. In the books, The Fellowship of the Sun is this ominous, evil church hell bent on destroying vampires. But that’s pretty much all we get. The Sookie part of the story is there and her interactions with the Fellowship are purely from a protagonist point of view. Putting Jason inside the Fellowship gives us a much needed view of the internal workings of the church and it’s members.

In the book, Sarah Newlin is (like most of the supporting characters) kind of nothing. She’s just there. She does what she’s meant to do, but that doesn’t amount to much more than being another angry, militant Christian soldier. We know she hates vampires and that she’s willing to die for her cause.

Here, in the show, we’ve got an entirely different perspective of Sarah as a kind of emotionally isolated prop, meant to stay silent and be pretty. She’s a woman who married what she believed to be a righteous, well meaning reverend, and has been annexed into fairly meaningless role in their marriage. Her pride is wounded and while she’s clearly a vindictive, “bad” character, there is a small amount of sympathy for her there. That may not last, but it’s there. She is another in a long line people looking to manipulate and use Jason for their own devious means.

The actress who plays her, Anna Camp, I’ve never seen before. But Jesus Christ is she sexy. I didn’t see it at first, but once I was able to get past my annoyance at that storyline, it sank in. She has what is quite possibly the sexiest mouth I’ve ever seen. It’s not a pouty, puffy Angelina mouth, but something else entirely. In this weeks episode, Sookie says that she “looks just like vanilla pudding” and it’s absolutely true. She looks just like vanilla pudding.

The scene where she gives Jason the hand job in the bathtub was probably the sexiest scene I’ve ever seen on TV. There’s something about the curl of her lips, her perfect teeth, and her intense, knowing eyes that just drives me batshit crazy. And her tongue comes out a lot when she talks. Not in an obnoxious way, but in a subtly fucking amazing way. I’m going to go ahead and say this right here and now: If I ever get the opportunity to meet her there could be some serious issues with my fidelity. Sorry Sandra, but that’s just how it is.

There’s a scene earlier in this season where Jason is joining the Newlins for a BBQ and, unbeknownst to the reverend Steve, Sarah is suggestively licking a beer bottle. What we saw in the show was slightly exaggerated via Jason’s horny perspective, but it was still hot to watch. I would pay cash money for an entire DVD of just her fellating that bottle. It was amazing.

She’s like… Have you had it when you’re looking a baby. Like, a baby you’re close to, whether it’s your own baby or like, a baby brother or sister or nephew or something, and you’re looking at them, maybe watching them sleep, and then all of a sudden you get all choked up and overwhelmed and you feel kind of stupid because you don’t even know why you’re about to cry, but the baby is just so fucking beautiful and innocent and perfect that your heart can’t take it?

That’s how I feel when I see her on this show. It almost makes me weep because I want to bone her so bad. She’s TOO beautiful. TOO perfect. She’s like that little girl in the red jacket in Schindler’s List. Or like seeing a fucking unicorn or something. Something that beautiful shouldn’t exist in our world. I might have to find her and cut her head off and bury her in the desert.

I should probably wind this down, because I’ve been working on it for three or four days now and it’s already far longer than it should be. Also, I’m getting a little Stan about Anna Camp. I should probably go find me brain medications.

The show is not perfect. There are things that could be better. I love it to pieces, and I think it’s one of the best written/directed/acted shows on television right now, but there are a few things that could be improved.

The only gripe I can really think is worth mentioning is that I’m finding the Michelle Forbes/Maryanne storyline really fucking obnoxious. I just simply do not give a shit. I don’t care about any of it. That storyline in the book encompassed maybe ten pages, and honestly, even in the books it didn’t make much sense or really interest me at all. I understand that they need to give Tara (Sookie’s best friend) and Sam something to do back in Bon Temps while Sookie and Bill and Eric are in Dallas. But Jesus, just get it done with and let’s move on. It feels like they’ve been repeating the same couple of scenes over and over again for the duration of this season. There’s some kind of big, pagany orgy, Tara gets uncomfortable with it, and then eventually comes back to being okay with it. And then again. And then again. Now, at least, we’ve kind of started to do something slightly different since they’ve captured Sam. But I still don’t really care. There’s enough going on with Sookie and Bill and Eric and the Dallas vampires and Jessica that we don’t NEED this extra shit with Maryanne and Tara. I wish they’d just wrap it up and move on.

Anyway, that’s about all I’m going to say about True Blood for now.

PS: I couldn’t help but lose my mind a little bit when I saw my car in the parking lot at Merlotte’s Bar.

My rims are cooler though. God I miss that car.

OH. And just because I couldn’t find a proper place to stick this still, I’m just going to tag it on at the end because I like it. Nothing better than chicks covered in blood. I might have some kind of weird Carrie fetish, I don’t know.

Special thanks to phoenixothon @ capaholic for the eleventy bajillion caps I used here. My harddrive is now almost full with thousands of pictures capped from almost every episode. I just kept downloading those zip files, hunting for exactly the right pictures. It was very helpful.

I’ve already had to cut a few people from my friendslist. I understand the need to be the first in with the "too soon" jokes and shock tactics, proving to the world just how edgy you can be. I'm not playing that game. I ain't having it. Not in my fucking house.

You're certainly well within your rights to make jokes and try and impress people with how crass and heartless you think you are. Just don't expect me to hang around and listen to it.

So please, if you think this is funny, GTFO.

...
I think I need to stay off the internet today. I just don't have the energy for it.

Hi.

I appreciate you adding me to your friendslist, but I have to tell you... if I can't read your journal, I'm not going to add you back. I can't read Cyrillic. Sorry about that. It's nothing personal.

Thanks,
Joe

Just wanted to say that I'm doing a little bit of trimming on my friendslist. No offense. It's not personal.

Also, if anyone wants to take this as a free pass to cut me, no questions asked, go for it.

Originally published at joehumphrey.com. You can comment here or there.

So, I feel as though I need to further explore this bear issue. Not bears as in Bear Force 1 (that’s the good kind of bears)

but bears as in the blood thirsty killing machines.

LIKE ALL OF THESE MOTHERFUCKERS!!!

I went in Flickr and searched for “bear” to prove my point.

Like… look at this fucker… He wants to eat that kid so bad… BUT HE CAN’T BECAUSE HE’S IN BEAR JAIL WHERE HE BELONGS!

Look at this nasty motherfucker! Trying to trick us into thinking he’s people. YOU DON’T FOOL ME YOU SON OF A BITCH!

Bears are lazy motherfuckers too. Not only do they kill people and drink their souls, but they also lay around all day and don’t have fucking jobs. GET A JOB YOU FUCKING LAZY BEAR! I HATE YOU!

Like this fucking guy. BRUSH YOUR HAIR YOU FUCKING BUM BEAR!!! CHRIST! TAKE SOME PRIDE IN YOUR APPEARANCE.

It’s hard to take pride in your appearance when you’re constantly distracted by your undying lust for human flesh. But still. Brush that shit. Fucking bear.

This fish did not heed my warning AT ALL. And LOOK WHERE IT GOT HIM. Right into the jaws of death. So listen close people. DO NOT FUCK WITH BEARS. DO NOT APPROACH THEM. DO NOT TALK TO THEM. DO NOT FUCKING LOOK AT THEM. ONLY SHOOT THEM IN THE FACE. Or else next time it might not be that fish. It might be you. Or your children. Or your children’s children. Or your children’s children’s children!

THIS IS FUCKING WRONG. DO NOT TEACH YOUR CHILDREN THAT BEARS ARE FRIENDLY! This is like teaching your children that antifreeze is delicious or that it’s a good idea to get into vans with strangers with mustaches.

THIS PICTURE COMBINES ALL OF THE WORST THINGS IN THE WORLD. BEARS, EMO KIDS AND FURRIES! FUCK!

 

ARE YOU MOCKING ME MOTHERFUCKER?! YOU THINK THIS SHIT IS FUNNY! I WILL NOT REST UNTIL EVERY BEAR IS DEAD!!! FUCKING SHIT!!!!!!!!!!

  

I don’t know what the fuck this thing is supposed to be but the caption under the picture said it’s a panda, so FUCK YOU TOO PANDA. Even though you’re wicked cute.

NO!!! STOP IT!!!! NO MORE BEARS!!!!!!!!

This is how they’re taking over the world. Making more and more bears until we have a bearpocalypse!

OH SHIT HERE HE COMES!!! :O!!!!!!!!!!

This bear thinks he’s a submarine. AND HE IS!! A SUBMARINE OF DEATH!!!

HEY!
HEY! You think I don’t see you there, BEAR ?!?!?!?! YOU THINK YOU CAN  HIDE FROM ME!!? BEHIND ANOTHER BEAR NO LESS!!! FUCK YOU!

Fuck you too, Panda. You’re the worst of the bunch. You think you can fool me eating that bamboo like you’re so fucking innocent? NOT TODAY, BEAR! YOU AINT FOOLING ANYONE!! FUCK YOU!

 

I don’t trust these fuckers either.

Close your fucking legs, you slutty ass bear. Fuck you. This bear is a hoo-wa.

OH SHIT!! THIS BEAR SWIMS LIKE PEOPLE!!! HE’S LIKE THE MICHAEL PHELPS OF BEARS!!!!!!!!!!!!! FUCK!!!!!!!

BEARS CAN SHIFT THE FABRIC OF TIME AND SPACE!!! THERE IS NO END TO THEIR EVIL POWERS!!!!!!!!!!

That bear’s legs are long. AND HIS FUCKING HANDS ARE HUGE!!! I HATE THEM SO MUCH!!!

THIS BEAR CAN WALK ON WATER LIKE JESUS!!! BEARS ARE BLASPHEMOUS!!!

These bears are thirsty after a long day of eating babies. HUMAN BABIES. FIFTY HUMAN BABIES.

You’re not a bear. You’re okay.

 

Jesus fucking Christ! PUT YOUR DICK AWAY YOU FUCKING BEAR! What the fuck is wrong with you?! You disgusting fucking bear.

WHAT THE FUCK?!?! NO ONE WANTS TO SEE YOUR BALLS YOU FUCKING BEAR!!!

Bears have no decency. No respect. No dignity. They’re just fucking pure evil. They eat people. They are killing machines. And if you let them, they’ll show you their dirty bear balls. There is no end to the evil of bears.

What the fuck?

This picture is making me very uncomfortable. IS IT A MAN DISGUISED AS A BEAR OR A BEAR DISGUISED AS A MAN?! Either way, it better stay the fuck away from me or it’s gonna get fucking shot.

AHHH!!! I FUCKING TOLD YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GET THE FUCK OFF OF THAT BABY YOU FUCKING BEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :O!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SOMEONE HELP THAT BABY!!!

FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Currently Listening: Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska

Originally published at joehumphrey.com. You can comment here or there.

If you spent ten years of your life and a million dollars and built a time machine so that you could go back in time to 1979 and bone Debbie Harry when she was in her prime.

So you arrive in 1979 and go to New York and find Debbie. She’s performing with Blondie at a club in New York. Probably CBGBs or something. After the show you run up to her and say this:

You: OMG I just traveled from the future so I could come back in time to bone you.

Debbie Harry: Really?

You: Yes!

Debbie Harry: Awesome! Tell me what’s going to happen to me in the future?

You: Uh… well… um… you’re going to be in a fucked up movie called Videodrome with James Woods. You play a like… I think you’re a robot or something. I don’t remember. You put a cigarette out on your boob though. It was fucked up.

Debbie Harry: Who’s James Woods?

You: He’s an actor. IN THE FUTURE.

Debbie Harry: Ah. What else?

You: Um… like… you’re going to be in another movie called Tales From the Dark Side.

Debbie Harry: Yeah? Is it good?

You: I guess. Not really. It’s okay I guess.

Debbie Harry: Am I movie star in the future?

You: No, not really. That’s about it. Oh, and you’re going to play a lesbian in this movie called Spun.

Debbie Harry: Is that a good movie?

You: Nah, it’s pretty stupid actually. It’s got Mickey Rourke in it though. He’s pretty good sometimes.

Debbie Harry: Another actor?

You: Yeah.

Debbie Harry: What’s it about?

You: Meth addicts.

Debbie Harry: Oh. What about my music in the future?

You: I dunno…

Debbie Harry: You don’t know?

You: I think you put out a couple more albums with Blonde and then like… I dunno. Some kind of techno thing or something?

Debbie Harry: What’s techno?

You: It’s like disco but shittier.

Debbie Harry: Oh. So…

You: Yeah?

Debbie Harry: Did you bring back any like, winning lottery numbers or anything?

You: No… actually, I didn’t think about that. I just came back for you.

Debbie Harry: Ah. What about sporting events? Any major sporting events you can bet on and get rich?

You: Um… I dunno… not that I can think of. Sports isn’t really my thing…

Debbie Harry: Okay… well… why did you travel through time again?

You: For you.

Debbie Harry: What do you mean “for you”?

You: I mean, I built a time machine so I could come back in time meet you.

Debbie Harry: Oh. Why?

You: … so we can have sex…

Debbie Harry: Oh, right. You think so?

You: YES!

Debbie Harry: I dunno. I’m pretty busy… I actually have to get going, I’m scheduled to have an orgy with David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed…

You: Oh… after?

Debbie Harry: I don’t think so… I’m going to be pretty tired…

You: Ah. Well… okay I guess. See you around.

Debbie Harry: Probably not!

Then she would leave and you would be stuck in 1979 and everything would suck because you wouldn’t even have the internet or anything.

So we're being evicted. Just found out. I gotta find another place to live within the next month. That should be real fun considering that there's NO WHERE to fucking live in this stupid fucking town.

What happened is that our landlord didn't tell us that the suite we were living in is illegal, and apparently because it's detached from the house it's like, SUPER illegal and we've gotta get the fuck out.

I am so done with everything.

In an effort to combat my sour mood, I searched for "puppies" in Flickr.

Here are some of the puppies I found. I can shares them.

 

I thought this dog was really a good jumper, but then I realized that he's just laying on his back going like "RUB MAH BELLAH!" which is still pretty awesome. Probably more awesome than if he was jumping, because a dog that jumps like that aint no dog I wanna deal with.

This fucking dog is brilliant! He's not as good at Rubix cubes as me, but still, he's a fucking dog so I gotta give him an A for effort.

This dog thinks he's bad ass but he's just a little fucking dog.

Oh shit! This dog is fucking cute!

Dude, fuck you fucking poodles. Who do you think you are? Fucking stupid ass dogs.

This dog wants to fucking kill himself.

OH SHIT! This is my favorite one so far! This dog is a fucking clown! If I was a dog, I'd totally be this dog.

This dog is fucking wasted. He has a problem. IT'S THE MIDDLE OF THE MORNING FUCKING DOG! Fucking druck ass dog.

 

This dog gets laid HELLA. Even with that goofy collar.

HEY! GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE FUCKING PANDA!

FUCK!

Nah. Move along.

OMG! :(! This dog was born blind and is in a shelter and needs to be adopted. I would adopt the fuck out of that dog! http://www.barcshelter.org/ Someone in NY adopt that cute ass blind fucking dog!

THIS IS NOT MAKING ME HAPPY ANYMORE.

OMG HIGH FIVE DOWN LOW TOO SLOW!

Happy birthday Romeo, you dopey lookin' motherfucker!

That's a fucking wolf.

HEY NOT EVEN FUCK OFF!

GROSS!

I LOVE DOGS THAT SMILE!

This fucker loves America. And probably Jesus too.

FUCK! Puppy tongues are fucking cute!

TO MUCH FUCKING DOGS!

Don't even think about touching my cookie you fucking dick.

This fucker is so baked he's not even actually wearing a sweater, he's hallucinating that shit. That's why it looks like a fucking crocheted technicolor dream coat.

This fucker thinks he's Jaws and that's why he's awesome.

D:

WHOA! JUNGLE FEVER!

...

I'm bored of dogs. I'm going to search for...

"naked trampoline"

...

Internets, you have failed me for the last time!

This almost makes up for it though.

Originally published at JOE HUMPHREY DOT COM. You can comment here or there.

 

It would be to travel back in time to like, 1975 and bone Carly Simon. Except that 1975 James Taylor would probably stab my head off with a used syringe and then drink my soul. Cuz dat niggaz crazy, bra!

And I say 1975 because I’d want to bone her before she got all coked up and kind of nasty. By 1977, when this video was shot, she was already kind of starting to gross out.

 

It’s not that she’s even like, super hot. She kind of looks like Janice from Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.

 

But there’s certainly something super enticing about her.

She’s like the really cool chick that is friends with someone you work with and you only sort of know her but every time you ever see her you think "Man, she’s seems so interesting!" and you want to ask her out but you don’t know her well enough and she’s way out of your league anyway and dating some super cool (but a total asshole, in your opinion) dude that’s a million times cooler than you and you know if you asked her out she’d laugh, but not in a mean way, but in a kind of sweet "Oh, you’re so cute!" sort of way that’s both comforting and somewhat condescending.

So one day you muster up all of your courage and you cold call her up on the phone. You automatically go into great length explaining who you are, because you’re sure she doesn’t remember. Then you drop the bomb and ask her if she’d like to go get a coffee or go to a movie or something some time. You quickly start to back peddle when she sounds surprised and uncomfortable. You say "it’s okay, nevermind" a million times and she never really gets a chance to react, at least to you personally, and you leave it with something like "Okay, well, see you around anyway" or something equally stupid and awkward but you can’t even remember exactly what you said because you were so busy hating yourself for even trying. She says something like "Yeah, okay, see you around" which really feels like "Don’t ever fucking talk to me again you little creep" or, at least you take it that way a couple hours when you’re sitting in your room and replaying the scene over and over and cursing yourself for even bothering and trying to convince yourself that she’s such a fucking bitch, even though you know she’s not and that you really hate yourself because you know she’s out of your league and she knows it too.

So you make every time you ever see her again completely awkward and weird and give off these "I fucking hate you because you’re such a fucking uppity bitch and think you’re better than everyone else" vibes and she doesn’t understand why you’re so passively aggressively hostile and why you sit in the corner at the party and mope and make sure everyone knows how much you dislike her.

Then you spend your nights checking her Facebook to see if she’s dating anyone and to see how many super cool friends she has and how they all love her and think she’s so fucking great and what you don’t know is that that day, months ago now, that you asked her out, she was more just surprised because she didn’t think you were interested and she didn’t know what to say and she probably WOULD have gone out with you if she wasn’t already in a serious (but incredibly dysfunctional) relationship and was quite hurt and confused that you were suddenly so hostile and stand offish.

Then, a couple years later she’s single again and your friends have told you that you she actually quite liked you and wanted to go out with you, but you’ve gone and fucked everything up by being such an emotional basket case and all you can do is keep watching her facebook and realizing that she really IS just as as awesome as you initially thought she was, but that she’s also quite lonely because this happens to her a lot. People are intimidated by her because she’s so cool and pretty and upbeat and friendly and EVERYONE thinks she’s out of their league and she goes through friends like tic tacs.

She can’t help that she’s so likable and cool and so she ends up with abusive, unappreciative drug addicts and no one is willing to sit her down and tell her that she’s worth more than that and deserves someone who will love and appreciate her for just how awesome she is, and treat her like a real person and not some kind of novelty and someone who won’t resent how cool and talented she is. And you realize all of this after it’s too late to swoop in and save her from one of her many bad relationships because you had to go and do what you always do, which is assume that anyone who is nice to you must want something from you or must be placating you because no one could genuinely like you for who you are because you don’t like yourself for who you are, so how could anyone else?

So you spend the next fifteen years pining from afar until one day you bump into each other at some party or another and sit down in some quiet part of the house and have a long talk about what could have been and you laugh and have long, introspective pauses and have a genuinely nice time, though laced with a bit of pain and regret for what could have been.

By this point you’re married and have a couple of kids. She has been married a few times and has a couple kids of her own. You trade phone numbers, to stay in touch as "just friends" and you go home that night and sit on your bed next to your sleeping wife and wonder if you’d have had a happier life if you’d married Carly Simon instead and you decide that, really, you probably wouldn’t. She’s a great chick but now that you’re older and you’ve spent the last fifteen years getting over her and pretending that you don’t still miss what could have been, but you see now that both of you are carrying around way too much baggage and that any relationship you ever could have had would have been just as dysfunctional and bad and unsatisfying as any of her other failed relationships and that you really are happy with your wife and that you love her and she loves you and really, do you need more than that? So you sit there and decide that finally you can truly come to terms with that deep and painful crush and let it go.

That is, of course, until she calls your cell phone at midnight and asks if you can talk. You tell her to hold on and lie to your wife that it was a wrong number and you shuffle down stairs (for a glass of water, of course) and you call her back from the office phone and you talk for three hours, even though you have to work the next morning. You talk about deep and uncomfortable things but it feels wonderful. Wonderful and sad because over the course of those three hours you undo that amazing feeling of finally letting go and you fall in love with her all over again. You tell yourself that you were kidding yourself, and that you’re still just as infatuated with Carly Simon as you were the first time you met her.

You also feel incredibly guilty because you have no real justification for doing what you know you’re going to do, which is cheat on your wife, who’s been nothing but good to you, and put up with a lot of your emotional bullshit and subtle resentment of the fact that she’s not Carly Simon.

So you start searching over the last twelve years of your marriage to try and find reasons why you can justify cheating. You tell yourself that because she gave you shit for not taking out the garbage last week, that she’s a bossy bitch and you simply can’t breath in this relationship. You tell yourself that because your sex life has become pedestrian and boring, you deserve to have sex with someone amazing and wonderful and sexy like Carly Simon because Carly Simon would want to have sex with you FOR you and not out of some kind of sad obligation to your marriage, even though you’ve been doing exactly the same thing and that your sex life is boring and pedestrian because you’ve just gotten lazy about it.

So you sit there at three-thirty in the morning, knowing that you’re going to be completely fucked at work tomorrow but you don’t care because your heart is racing and you’re so fucking excited you can barely breath. So you put Anticipation on your ipod (of course your ipod is loaded with Carly Simon music) and you jerk off picturing that moment when, after so many years, you’re finally going to have her all to yourself. You jerk off with the Playing Possum album cover propped up in front of you. You masturbate and fantasize about what you can only pray might happen.

Even though you know, deep down, that nothing good can come of your plans. You know that there’s no real relationship there, and you know that you’re both married and that, in the end, neither of you can be truly happy. The impending affair can only end in heartache, but you’re not thinking about that. Or, at least, you’re desperately trying not to.

So you wake up the next morning after only two and a half hours of sleep and your wife asks what you were doing up all night and you tell her that you just couldn’t sleep so you watched TV downstairs all night and tried to sleep on the couch, and even though she’s not suspicious, you’re sure she knows your plan to cheat on her, and so you get hostile and defensive and start a big fight before you storm out the door, unshaved and wearing yesterday’s shirt, and drive to work, trying to forget your anger at your wife which is actually anger at yourself. You do this by putting Carly Simon on the CD player and checking your phone every thirty seconds to see if there are any text messages from Carly Simon. There aren’t and you make yourself feel better about it by telling yourself that she doesn’t have to get up in the morning and go to work so she’s probably just as tired as you are and still sleeping because she can.

Then you go through your work day, not really working but constantly checking your email and voice mail and text message inbox to see if she’s called you and you try so hard to tell yourself that last night wasn’t a fluke and that she isn’t getting cold feet or changing her mind, but that old voice in the back of your head starts working on you and telling you that she is blowing you off and that she was just lonely and using you as some kind of crutch to make herself feel better and that she doesn’t actually want to hook up with you and you fight it so hard but it’s just not working and you realize that you’re just as fragile and lonely and sad as you were fifteen years ago.

So when she finally does call you at two thirty, an hour before you leave work, you have to fight blowing up at her and accusing her of using you, because you know that you sabotage yourself. Add that to the guilt you already feel for even thinking about having an affair. But when she calls and tells you that she’s been thinking about your all day in that breathy voice of hers it all melts away because she’s giving you that one thing you so desperately need, which is that feeling that you are someone who can be attractive to someone YOU find attractive.

You talk for only a few minutes this time, but long enough to decide to go and get a drink after work. She agrees to meet you at a quiet little pub that’s all the way on the other side of town and not anywhere your wife might drive past and see you standing outside smoking and talking with Carly Simon. You call your wife on your cell phone and tell her that you’re meeting the guys after work to watch the ball game and that you probably won’t be home until after ten and not to wait up, and she seems indifferent and says "okay, sure" and you feel a little bit victorious and like you just might be able to pull this off.

So after three or four drinks you and Carly Simon are getting pretty friendly and talking about old times and laughing and every time she laughs your heart melts and all you can think about is tearing her clothes off and throwing her up on the table and fucking her right there in front of everyone and you get the feeling she’s feeling the same thing, because every time she laughs she looks up at you to see what your reaction is and you smile and she smiles and it’s not a friendly sort of "we’re friendly friends who are chilling as friends and having a nice time" sort of smile but a "I want him to rip my clothes off and fuck me right here on this table in front of everyone" kind of smile. You take it that way and you’re more than likely right.

So she goes up to the bar to order more drinks and you follow her up and turn her around and you kiss her full on the mouth and she tastes like vanilla ice cream, just like you always imagined. You keep your eyes open and watch her close her eyes like she’s been waiting years for it and your heart melts again because this is the one thing you’ve wanted more than anything for so many years and it’s really really happening and not only is it really really happening, but you actually feel like you’ve got some degree of control in the situation, which is something you never even dared to imagine before. You’re the fucking king. You feel like the world is in your hands. You’re super fucking cool. The girl you’ve wanted for years is butter in your hands and you’re going to take her to a hotel room and make love to her for an hour and you’re not going to feel even the tiniest ounce of guilt about it, because how can you feel guilty about finally getting something you’ve wanted so bad for so long? It just wouldn’t be right to taint this experience you’ve dreamed about with guilt? It wouldn’t be right so you don’t let it.

Shit, you’re even proud of yourself.

So you lean over like Mr. Cool Guy and you whisper in her ear that you’ve already booked a hotel room across the street and that you want to take her there. And she whispers "yes…right now…" and you feel her breath on your ear and your eyes flutter and you think you just might faint. So you walk across the street, somewhat drunk, and she takes your hand and everything in the world finally feels right.

You take her up to the room and you’re pulling each other’s clothes off before you can even shut the door. And you have amazing sex. The kind of sex you only ever dreamed of. You’re slamming each other against walls, knocking things off of the dresser, tearing down shower curtains and you feel like a fucking god.

When it’s all over you’re laying together in the bed, looking at each other and a million thoughts and questions are running through both of your minds. You don’t even talk because you know that if you start asking questions, it will get complicated and you don’t want it to be complicated. You want to stay in this room, in this moment, forever.

You’re laying there staring into those big, beautiful blue eyes, watching her watch you, and that’s when your cell phone rings and you look at the caller ID and you see that it’s your wife and you see the disappointment and regret flood into her face and suddenly it’s all slipping away. You let the phone go to voicemail and pray that it didn’t spoil the moment, but it did and you’re suddenly angry again. You’re angry at your wife for intruding on your moment. That moment you’ve dreamed about since you were in your early twenties and now it’s ruined. Can’t you just be happy for even a little while without her intruding and fucking it all up. You’re furious at her for intruding and being your wife and you hate her for being innocent and for the immense amount of pain and guilt this is going to cause her. You furious at her because suddenly you’re no longer Mr. Cool Guy. You’re Mr. Guilty Guy and what right does she have to make you feel like that? How DARE her?!

You stand up and go to the bathroom and wash your face and you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and you’re overwhelmed with such guilt and self loathing that you have to look away. So instead you look at Carly Simon in the mirror and you see that she’s pulling her skirt back on and buttoning up her blouse and you realize that it’s already over. That you’ll never have that moment back and you’re even angrier. You turn around, standing there naked and exposed and vulnerable, watching her putting her earrings back in and fixing her hair and you go to her and she turns and looks at you and smiles, but it’s a sad smile and she opens her arms and you go in for the kiss but she hugs you instead and you feel awkward and stupid again. She whispers "thank you" in your ear, but unlike the last time she whispered in your ear, this is sad and somehow pathetic and you pull back and look her in the face.

You want to go back in time and turn your cell phone off and pretend that you’re twenty again and that you still have your whole life ahead of you but the truth sinks in your stomach like ice, freezing your words. Then she does kiss you, gently but without passion and you realize that she doesn’t taste like vanilla ice cream at all, but like cigarettes and vodka.

You also realize that it really is over and that she’s going to leave you alone in this hotel room and that you’re going to have to go home and try and live with yourself. And that’s exactly what happens. She says that she’ll call you at work some time. She knows she has to call you at work because she can’t call the house and the reality of cheating hits you that much harder and suddenly you regret it all.

You sit on the end of the bed, naked and you cry. You cry because you know that you’ve really gone and fucked it all up, like you always do. She’s gone and that voice starts back up in your head again. It tells you that even though this is the first time you’ve ever done anything even as remotely bad as this, it’s more than likely just another in a series of affairs for her. That she’s used to it and that you have no fucking clue what to do next. You’re so conflicted and more than anything, you mourn the innocent and routine life you used to live with your wife and you know that it will never, ever be the same again. Even if she never finds out what you did, you will always know and will always feel guilty about it.

So you pick up your cell phone and listen to your voice mail, the masochist that you are. It’s your wife telling you that she’s going to bed and that she hopes you’re having a good time and that she loves you and that she kissed the kids goodnight for you. And there isn’t a hint of suspicion or vindictiveness in her voice and that hurts you even more because you know that from now on, her innocence will cut you like a knife. So you listen to the voice mail again and again and you cry.

Then you take a shower and try to wash every hint of Carly Simon off of your body and you become paranoid about your clothes, worried that they smell like her. You look at your watch and see that it’s only ten and decide to wait another couple of hours before coming home, because you want your wife to be good and asleep.

At just after twelve you walk through the door and hustle to the washing machine and throw your clothes in. Then you take your clothes out, thinking that it might be suspicious that you just threw them in there and then you put them back and take them out out again and then you decide to put them in the hamper, but you worry that if you put them in the hamper, your wife will smell them and figure out what you did so you hide them in the garage in the box of Christmas decorations, with the plan of taking them out and washing them the next time you have the house to yourself and then you tip toe upstairs, praying that no one wakes up.

You make it to your bedroom and climb into bed as quietly and unobtrusively as you can manage, but you still manage to wake your wife up. Sort of at least. She mumbles in her sleep. She asks how your night was and who won the game and your heart leaps into your throat because you really have no clue who won the game and you picture it all unraveling clearly in your head. You’ve got a fifty fifty chance of wrecking the whole thing ten minutes after getting home, because you know that she’ll find out who won the next day and you’ll be busted. So you think fast and tell her that you didn’t even see the end of the game and ended up playing pool with Roger instead of actually watching the game and as you’re saying it you feel just how phony and fake it feels coming out of your mouth and you realize that you’re rambling and then, thankfully, you also realize that she’s fallen back asleep again.

You lay there in the dark, light years away from sleep, and your wife rolls over and puts her arm across your chest and you feel like the biggest shit-head in the world. Eventually you do sleep and the next morning you hurry off to work without eating breakfast and keeping conversation to a minimum. It takes less than two hours before you start to melt down from the constant over analyzing of the previous night and you call Carly Simon and she picks up the phone and is somewhat distant. Friendly but distant. You make the biggest mistake of your life and you tell her that you love her and that you’re going to leave your wife for her, because when you’re in the safety of "not home" it’s really easy to forget the guilt and the self loathing.

There is a long and deadly pause before she finally says "I think I love you too" and your eyes start to sting with tears. Tears of joy and tears of sadness, because you know that you’ve got a really bad night ahead of you. You spend the rest of the day texting Carly Simon, over and over again, with really nothing at all to say. You just need to keep reassuring yourself that she really does love you and that it will all be worth it.

Then you go home and your wife is making dinner and you eat with her and the kids and you try your hardest not to look like you’ve got something to say, but it’s impossible, and as your wife is putting the kids to bed, she finally asks you what’s wrong and you say "we need to talk" and she looks confused and nervous and finishes putting the kids to bed. You wait down in the den, pacing and trying to figure out the best way to let her down easy and knowing that there simply isn’t any way this isn’t going to work out amicably. You try and convince yourself that you can just explain how unhappy you are with your life (IE, your life where you don’t get to have sex with Carly Simon) and that you have to run to your happiness and you daydream that she’ll just nod and agree that you have to be happy and that’s what most important and… and… and why the fuck can’t she just understand that? Why can’t it work out like that? You know it won’t, but part of you still hopes for it.

Then she comes down and she looks worried and she puts her hands on your shoulders and asks if everything’s okay and you say that it’s not and then you tell her that you had sex with Carly Simon last night and she steps back, her eyes wide and stunned, and says "What? Like, THE Carly Simon? The You’re So Vain chick?" and you say that yes, last night you went to a hotel and had sex with THE Carly Simon and that you want a divorce so that you can be with THE Carly Simon. It doesn’t take long for your hopes for an easy let down are dashed aside. In fact, it doesn’t take long before you wife is alternately sobbing and yelling at you, and telling you to "FINE! GO BE WITH YOUR WHORE, CARLY SIMON, IF THAT’S WHAT YOU WANT! BUT IF YOU THINK I’M GOING TO MAKE THIS EASY FOR YOU, YOU’VE GOT ANOTHER THING COMING!" and you tell her that we need to talk about the custody of the kids and she just cries and says "Oh fuck you! You’re the one breaking up the family!" and then you take that opportunity to storm out, angry at her and even angrier at yourself. You get in your car and peel out, not knowing where you’re going. But you DO know. Or, you think you do.

You call Carly Simon and get her voice mail. You leave her a long, rambling message about how much you love her and how you actually DID it and how you can finally be with her and how amazing it’s going to be and how happy you’re going to be and then you keep driving and you call her back every three minutes, getting voice mail every time. After twenty minutes she picks up the phone and you say "thank god, I was worried you were screening me out" and she laughs says that she’s at the bar with her friends and that you should come meet her and you cry and tell her that you love her and ask her if she’s checked her voice mail and she says that she hasn’t yet, but that she will now. You hang up and wait for her to call you back. It’s the longest ten minutes of your life.

Finally she does call you back. You’re almost at the bar and you pick up the phone and she’s crying. You think she’s crying because she’s happy and you start in again talking about how wonderful it’s going to be and she suddenly says "I can’t do this…" and you say "What?" and she says "I can’t do this… I can’t be a part of this" and you get really fucking scared and upset and you hang up the phone because you’ve just pulled into the parking lot of the bar and you storm in and look around for her but she’s not there.

You find a group of her friends and they’re whispering to each other and looking at you and you go over and ask where she is and they tell you that she left and you storm out of the bar again, only to find her in the parking lot, crying on her friend’s shoulder. You go over, nervous and scared, and you say "Carly Simon?" and she sniffs up her tears and she hugs you and you have no idea what it means and then she whispers in your ear for the last time "I’m so sorry…" and you pull away and try and look her in the face but she won’t look at you and you tilt her chin up so she has to look at you and you tell her that you left your wife… broke up your family… for her. How can she do this? And she says that she knows how it’s going to work out and that she never asked you to leave your wife and that it’s happening to fast and that you’re smothering her and frankly, you’re scaring her.

And you flip the fuck out and start screaming at her, calling her a fucking whore and how DARE she come in and ruin your life and that you wish she were fucking dead and she’s sobbing and her friend comes up and tries to get between you and her, because you’re getting physically threatening even though you don’t really mean to be, or maybe you do, and you push her friend aside, maybe a little harder than you meant, or maybe just as hard as you meant. Either way, she goes sprawling to the concrete and scrapes her leg and hits her head on the side of the car. Carly Simon screams and backs away and suddenly you realize that you’ve gone to far and you start apologizing, wishing to god you could just wake up from this horrible nightmare.

Carly Simon takes your hand and you yank it away. She keeps trying to tell you that she’s sorry and that she wishes she could take it all back and this only makes you angry again and you’re even angrier than you were before and she tries to hug you and you push her away and she cries even more and says "Fine! Fuck you too then!" and then you go so far over the line you may as well drown in the shit mess you’ve created for yourself because you just slapped her across the face.

This was bad for the obvious reason as well as the less obvious reason. The less obvious reason is that Marvin, the six foot four, three hundred pound black bouncer is walking towards you and he doesn’t look happy. You turn around just in time for him to grab you by the arm and twist it behind your back and slam you against the brick wall of the club, breaking your nose, dislocating your shoulder and cracking a tooth in half. Marvin yells at the back of your head that you went and slapped the wrong Carly Simon. You’re bloody and pressed up against the wall and you’re screaming. You’re screaming because you’re in pain. Physical pain, but even worse, you’re emotionally traumatized by the whole sequence of events. You’re just fucking done. Done.

Marvin lets go of you and you collapse in a pathetic, sobbing heap on the ground, waiting for the cops, who are already on the way. You lay on the ground, crying and everyone just stands there watching you fall apart. Watching your complete emotional and mental collapse. The cops come and haul you downtown, but by that point, you’re pretty much tuned out of the world. Nothing is real anymore. Your family is destroyed and you have nothing. You don’t have Carly Simon and you’ve completely devastated the one person who really did love you just for you and the kids… oh god, the kids…

Carly Simon decides not to press charges and your wife comes down to the station to pick you up. She drives you home and when you start trying to apologize for everything, she tells you to shut up. That she doesn’t want to hear your voice anymore, possibly ever again. She wants a divorce and it’s over.

Now, two years later you live in a six hundred square foot studio apartment. You see your kids on the first and third weekend of the month and you get them for two weeks during the summer. Things are still rough between you and your wife, but you think that there’s still a chance it might work out. Especially since it’s been eight months since you last called Carly Simon and she told you that if you don’t stop calling her, she’s going to get a restraining order. That was the final clue that she really isn’t interested anymore. It took a long time and a lot of really bad phone conversations and refusals to meet in person to get to that point.

You’ve tried to date a few times, but you’re just so godamned needy and pathetic that it never leads to a second date. Mostly you just want your wife back. You’re trying. You really really are.

One night you call her (your wife) at eleven. You’re drunk and you know it’s a bad idea, but you think you might have finally gotten to the point that she’ll at least talk about the possibility of trying to make it work out. You can tell in less that five minutes of conversation that it’s not going to end well. In fact, you can tell that it’s all not going to end well. That you fucked it up beyond repair. The last thing you wife says to you before hanging up the phone and hanging up the relationship that she really just doesn’t have time for it. You ask her "Time for what?" And she says that she doesn’t have time for the pain. She doesn’t have room for the pain in her life. She doesn’t need it. That’s when you know it is truly, honestly over.

You pour yourself another drink and spend another night contemplating the pistol in your closet. Perhaps tonight will be the night, perhaps not. Either way, you’re fairly convinced it will be one of these nights. Soon enough. You’ve just got to reconcile leaving your kids without a father, and that voice speaks up again and reminds you, oh so smugly, that they really barely have you now as it is. Just on the weekends. And those two weeks in the summer, which are awkward and feel forced anyway. They’ve got a new daddy anyway. Fucking Ron. Your wife’s new boyfriend who’s a fucking stand up guy and you hate him with every fibre of your being because he’s everything you’re not. He’s stable and kind and good with the kids and isn’t pining for Carly Simon and, more importantly, he’s fucking your wife. What you’re going to do starts to make more and more sense and you sit on the toilet lid, crying and drinking peppermint schnapps directly from the bottle and tasting the bitter tang of gun oil on the tip of your tongue.

You close your eyes and that song comes drifting up out of the dark in your mind. Anticipation. Anticipation is making me wait. Keeping me waiting. The song drowns out the sound of your sobs and sniffling. You think about how right the gun feels in your hand. And you’re thinking about how right tonight might be. You’re crying and repeating to yourself "These are the good old days. These are the good old days. These are the good old days. These are the good old days. These are the good old—-"

And then blackness.

—–the end.

That’s the kind of chick Carly Simon is. She’s cool like that.

It’s a shame she sounds like balls now. She has like, a Marianne Faithfull thing going on now, which isn’t a good thing.

 

 

I should say, for the record, that the story I just wrote is completely fiction. I’ve never had sex with Carly Simon, or cheated on my wife. It’s all guess work.

::edit::

I should also say that I know pretty much nothing about what Carly Simon is like personally. I don’t think I’ve even ever seen an interview with her, or if I haven, I don’t remember.

I should say AGAIN that, Sandra, seriously, I’ve never had an affair or slept with anyone else. For reals.

Originally published at JOE HUMPHREY DOT COM. You can comment here or there.

When I was a little kid my dad told me a story. This was when we still lived in England, so I couldn’t have been older than six. My dad told me a story while playing me a song called Careful With That Axe, Eugene from the Ummagumma album by Pink Floyd. This was back when people actually listened to albums btw.

I don’t know where the hell he came up with this story, but I remember it pretty well. Obviously, in retelling it, I added a lot of my own to it. It wasn’t a first person narrative when he told it, and I added the parts about where the voices came from. But most of it is pretty much the same as the story he told me. There was a guy and a girl and Eugene, a fat bearded man who lived in the mountains and drove a dirty brown jeep and killed people with an axe.

Anyway, here’s the story. I recommend listening to the song at some point as well. Not only because story is about the song, but because it’s a fucking crazy song and you should know it if you haven’t heard it before.

 

The Star is Screaming

Once a month Eugene’s dirty brown jeep makes the twenty mile trek down the mountain. It’s the only time anyone in town sees him as far as I know. Always the first Saturday of the month.

My uncle Dan told me once that Eugene was a war vet, though I couldn’t tell you of which war. Honesty, I’d be hard pressed to guess how old he is. Could be Vietnam. Could be Korea. Hell, it could be WWI, I don’t know. All I know is he been coming down the mountain in that same jeep for as long as I’ve been alive and he always looked the same. And he always had that same gnarly looking half blind mutt in the back of his jeep.

It’s hard to guess his age because his face is buried under his beard. A big, ugly bush of twisted gray hair. What little you can see is scarred and beat down lookin’.  And he stank like nobodies business.. You could always tell when Eugene had been to town because Dottie’s General Store stank like shit the rest of the day.

He comes down the mountain to sell his meat at Dottie’s. He always got venison and elk. Occasionally bear or moose. Always something big and dead. He sells his meat and he buys three or four cartons of Marlboros and a case of Wild Turkey. He gasses up his jeep and picks up his mail. Then he’s gone, back up the mountain. He doesn’t talk to nobody and nobody tries to talk to him. They know better. There aint no point. Eugene don’t even look at anyone, much less strike up a conversation.

The only reason I know his name is cause I talked to Darla at the post office. Eugene Stanford. She said that till bout twelve years ago, he’d get letters and magazines. Hunting magazines mostly. The letters was from someone in the city named Emily Stanford. Could be a daughter or a sister or even a wife. She didn’t know and I couldn’t even begin to speculate. But then, like I said, ‘bout twelve years ago the letters stopped and now all he gets is hunting magazine and stroke books. And video tapes. Darla didn’t know what kind of tapes, because they didn’t have no return address. Just plain brown paper. She could tell they were videos by shaking the package though.

I’ve only been up to his place once before, and that was by accident. I took my girl, Clarice, with me on a call up in the mountains bout four or five years ago. I used to drive a tow-truck and I got a call to come pick up a car that’d driven off the side of the road and got itself stuck hanging off the side of the mountain. We’d get prolly three or four of those calls a month at least. Almost never that far up though. It was an old Chevy Caprice. One of them 80s models like they used to use for cop cars. Some dumb broad had slid off the side of the road and gotten hung up on a tree. She’s lucky she didn’t fall the fuck down the cliff.

Usually I didn’t take Clarice, but I knew it was gonna be a hell of a long drive and I didn’t want to go alone.

We got a little lost. Well, I got a little lost. It aint that I don’t know my way around up there, it’s just that it’s easy to get turned around on the wrong road and not have enough room to get turned back the way you need to be facing.

The half ounce of grass we were burning up didn’t help none either, to tell you the truth.

It started getting dark and we still hadn’t found that car yet. Usually you can find em pretty quick. But this time we were havin’ trouble. I found a couple places where it looked like it might have gone off. Where a fence had been busted down or a set of tire tracks in the mud, but when I stopped to look, there wasn’t no car. Eventually we turned up into this long driveway, hopin’ to find someone with a phone so I could call back down the mountain and see if the person had left another message.

We cruised down this drive way that seemed to go on for half a fuckin’ mile. We finally get to the house. There’s an old as shit barn that’s hardly standing and this ramshackle little shotgun shack. The one of the first things we noticed were the cars. There must have been twenty cars parks up here. Most of em was rotted and rusted and dead. But there was some halfway decent lookin’ rides there too. I remember a perfect lookin’ yellow Mach 1 that looked like it’d had more than a few grand dropped into it. I couldn’t make sense of it. But even the nice ones looked like they hadn’t been driven in years. They weren’t even parked in any sort of order either. Just kinda left wherever they stopped.

Then I seen that beat up brown jeep. It’s parked up next to the house. Sure as shit it’s Eugene’s jeep. Clarice started getting’ all worked up and telling me to turn around. She knew as well as I did whose house this was. It wasn’t that she was afraid of Eugene. Nobody was really. It was just that it felt kind of wrong to be up here, seein’ more than Eugene ever meant to show anyone. I have to say I kind of felt the same way.

But I also needed a phone and this was the first place we seen in a half hour of drivin’ around in the friggin mountains.

I pulled around to the front of the house, next to Eugene’s jeep. The sun was goin’ down by this point and I was startin’ to get a little pissed at myself for gettin’ turned around as I had. I’d told the dumb broad that I’d be about an hour and a half. We were getting onto three hours by this point. But fuck her anyway. What the hell was she doin’ way the fuck up in the mountains to begin with?

So yeah, I parked next to Eugene’s truck and I got out. Clarice grabs my arm and does her best scared puppy face. She asks me, practically begs me, to just stay in the truck and drive back down the mountain. I tell her not to be stupid. There’s a lady waiting for us and if we don’t find her by night, she could freeze up here.

I pull away from Clarice and tell her to wait in the truck. It was already starting to get cold, so I grabbed my coat from the back and walked up to the door. Nobody answered when I knocked, so I called out, asking if anyone was home. Still no answer. I look back at the truck and I see Clarice, pleading with her eyes. It kind of pisses me off to tell you the truth. Sometimes she just doesn’t understand ‘bout responsibility.

Around back, I hear the sound of somethin’ chewin’. Then I see that fuckin’ ugly dog. It’s layin’ on the back porch, gnawin’ away on a big ass hunk of bone. Must’ve been from a bear or something. Big ass shoulder chunk or something. The dog stops chewin’ when it sees me. For a minute I thought it was gonna come after me, but it just sat there, lookin’ at me with them beady little half blind eyes.

That’s when I seen Eugene.

He’s standin ‘bout a hundred feet from the house, bare ass naked. He’s just standin there, his back to me. His big ass hairy back. Then I realize that he’s holdin’ an axe. He’s not only holdin’ an axe, but he’s apparently in the middle of choppin’ wood. Naked.

He brings the axe over his head and brings it down, splittin’ a log. His rolls jiggling with the swing. I can see that he’s bleedin’ from a few different places on his legs, presumably from hunks of splintered wood.

That’s when I turn to go back to the truck. The cars in the yard was weird. This was just fuckin’ trippy. I turn around, hopin’ he didn’t hear me. Fuck the lady in the Caprice. This shit isn’t worth it.

Then I hear him talking. At first I think he’s talking to me. I turn around and he’s still standing there, his back to me. Sets up another log and splits it. More wood splinters off and cuts his calf. Then I hear him talkin’ again. I don’t hear what he’s sayin’ but it sounds like he’s havin’ a conversation with nobody.

Clarice calls my name and I know she’s coming around the house. Fucking dumb bitch was supposed to stay in the truck. If only she’d stayed in the fucking truck like she was supposed to.

Eugene turns around and looks right at me. But it feels like he’s looking through me. Like I aint even there. All I can see is those eyes peeking out from behind the scraggly gray beard. And they’re looking right through me, burning dark with some kind of animalistic hatred. I see his lips moving. He’s still talking, muttering either to himself or whatever invisible person he was talkin’ to.

Then he’s comin’ at me, his massive stomach swinging with each step. I hear Clarice say ‘oh my god!’ and I hear Eugene muttering to himself. He’s sayin’ somethin like ‘beneath the lies, the star is screaming.’

But I hear somethin’ else too. I hear somethin’ right before he hits me with that fuckin’ axe and Clarice starts screamin’ her head off. I hear another voice. It’s like a voice in my head but I heard it with my ears too. A woman’s voice. Almost like I heard it from the trees and the air. The voice said “Careful with that axe, Eugene.”

And then he hit me. Right in the side of my chest. I almost couldn’t feel it. It felt like when you get socked in the stomach and all the air runs out of you and you can’t pull any back in, except without the pain of gettin’ punched. I tried to yell but all that would come out was a wheeze. I’m pretty sure he popped one of my lungs or something. And then Clarice started screaming.

And she’s screaming. And screaming.

I tried to get up but Eugene put his foot on my chest and pulled the axe out. Immediately I felt blood spewing up my throat and I still couldn’t breath. It started to pour out of my mouth and nose. I turned and watched as Eugene went after Clarice. It didn’t take much. She turned to run but he grabbed her by the hair and threw her to the ground. I knew it was done then. I blacked out as he put the axe into her head.

When I woke up things was different. Clarice was with me. Her face was a little messed up from the axe and I had a hard time talkin’ because of the wound in my chest. But we know our place now. It’s kind of funny, because before I came up here, I used to think that Eugene must be the loneliest guy in the world. Livin’ up in the mountains all by himself, never talkin’ to no one.

But now I know better. He’s got plenty of people to talk to. He’s got us and a bunch more too. We all keep him company up here in the mountains. Even that dumb broad with the Caprice is here. I didn’t even notice her car when I pulled the truck up. We still don’t know much about Eugene and we don’t care. All we know is what he’s done. Done to us and done to others before us. And we remind him. All night we remind him and eventually, hopefully, he’s gonna realize what’s waitin’ for him when he finally does what’s right. Until then, we scream and we whisper and we never let him forget.

When someone else finds their way up here we do our best warn them off, but they never hear us until it’s too late. They always end up here behind the light with us. Behind the light of the star, screaming at Eugene with us, reminding him of what he done.
Currently Listening: Pink Floyd - Careful With That Axe, Eugene