B A N G !
BY WILSON AMON

I remember him way back like when he first came to college and was growing out his hair a little but had it all in that in-between phase. Maybe by October hooked his bangs behind his ear. Oh God. Bangs. Yeah, I remember he had that Steve Miller’s “Greatest Hits” CD in that huge rack of CDs. He brought all his music he hadn’t listened to since he was thirteen. Should of sold it for the Pixies but how could he have known? I remember going to see the Blues Explosion with him and even then you could tell he was pissed he wasn’t that little prick on stage going “blues explosion” every thirty seconds to three-thousand cheers.

Man, why’d you have to mention that? Of all the bands we ever saw with him why’d you have to mention the Blues Explosion? I still can’t believe he actually did it.

What do you mean you can’t believe? He had it all set up. Like at first he was only into psychedelics then knew there’s no way a burnout’s going anywhere unless you gouge out your eyes, probably only if you gouge a model’s eyes or a Governor’s child’s eyes or some shit. Then on to music but got too frustrated playing his acoustic all the time by himself because he didn’t have an amp or a car to transport the amp he didn’t have or any like-minded musician friends to drive the amp he didn’t have to go play with the like-minded musician friends he didn’t have. So on to writing because he could sit by himself and not worry about the neighbors complaining that he’s shouting his songs too loud and he’s psyched he’s not just another guitarist in a town crammed with guitarists.

Wait. But at this time when he started writing instead of music instead of drugs you can’t say he knew what he’d do. That he had it all planned from the get-go. I don’t think anybody ever starts doing anything thinking they’ll do what he did. I mean that’s a weird road to start down. But I think you’re right that he was psyched about writing rather than trying to get shit-ass gigs or wasting every night recording over the demos he did the night before, every night, the same songs he played all the time.

Yo, I think he was just trying to get laid and realized that unless he had a car and a band because he had such high standards when it came to ladies probably because he thought of himself as someone you’d eventually read a front page obituary of—that, that, yeah man, the girls. Because he didn’t get any because he was too shy that’s what caused it. I hold the lack of female sexual aggression entirely at fault.

So what you’re saying is all that pent-up frustration needed a release and he doused it, lit it, and that shit released. But I think when you get to that late a stage you’ve got to consider all the influences he was under. I mean the only thing he’d ever do was quote that line from the original “Breathless.” He’d always ask people he’d meet what their greatest ambition was and then wait around till they asked him the same question and if they didn’t ask he’d say want to know mine: to become immortal then die. I mean that’s straight out of Goddard. That’s like all he’d ever say when people got to talking about the future.

Man, you’ve got it all mixed up. See: first it was drugs, then music, then before writing he thought, I mean, remember him saying all the time shit about how the only reason anyone created any sort of art or music was to reproduce yourself and art was shit, you had to actually reproduce, breed, knock boots, knock some lady up? Remember he left for about a month to go back home and breed or else throw himself into a gorge? Yeah, but he didn’t get anyone pregnant because in that transitional phase between music and trying to mate he’d been doing all those steroids and it gave him serious acne and shriveled up his prick to like half-the-size of a raisin. You ever see that shit—it was small. So he couldn’t breed because I don’t think he could get it up and even if he could it didn’t get all that up off of him, and in comparison I mean, he was getting pretty huge. Now imagine half a sliced-raisin member attached to the body he was getting. Man, proportionally, that’s clitoral.

So then you think the fact that all he wanted to do was mate but then he was too ‘roided-out and zit-faced combined with this fatal narcissistic shit, all that led him to finally do that? I can’t believe it. Yo, that’s because he was going for it all. And you can’t imagine even someone going for it halfway. He was going for the Canon. Oh God. The Cannon. He had all those stories stored away on his hardrive and didn’t even try to send one out because he thought they were like Year-2099 shit and probably he couldn’t face another rejection. I never read any of it but from what he told me all he did was write about commercialism and advertising and that’s why he spent all the money he made working shit jobs getting tattoos of corporate logos down at The Designer’s on Sixth until his whole body was covered with every logo he could think of, well, not just logos, but icons like on the computer and every sort of stop sign, caution when wet sign, you know all the traffic signs, just about everything, all the professional basketball, baseball, hockey, and football logos, everything out there he had carved right on his skin, and maybe he thought someone in tight white plastic would come and click on him, or like—presto!—one click on the Nike icon there on his tricep and he’d turn into Jordan. That’s just conjecture.

I just can’t believe he blew himself up.

I don’t know, man, he just eventually blew himself up. And it would have been cool to read what he wrote but the idiot blew himself up in the same room as the computer where he stored all his manuscripts and his whole room was charred and waterlogged from the firemen’s hoses.