Ian bursts out of the bathroom, his small frame wrapped with a towel, his face completely transformed. His hair is straight, more vividly black, and hung comfortablyhis blue eyes lit up like dayglo denim. He looks more like his normal energetic selfthough energetic wasn’t quite the word for it. Maybe atomic. The average person thought he was on speed if they didn’t know him better. And the strange thing was that most people universally agreed that Ian’s demeanor could permeate you like radiation. The moment he walks into a room, the party has arrived. Nick often referred to the effect as his “daily dose of Ian.” Searching the room through piles of clothes, Ian looks for something tolerably dirty (or tolerably clean, depending on how you look at). “I made about twenty sales last night,” he announces to Travis.

“Really?” Travis seems genuinely surprisedthe summer was always slow.

“Yep.” He speaks in his mile-a-minute style. “We had a bunch of people over here last night. I told a couple people that I could hook ’em up, and before I knew it I was talking to a whole crowd.”

“Word spreads.”

“Yep.”

“You didn’t tell ’em it was you, right?” Travis asks, a little wary.

“No! Of course not, dude. I’m in the know. I know a guy. That’s all, Vaquero.” Ian takes his clothes into the bathroom.

Read the whole story so far: Carousel Cowboy

Characters and Places: Athens, Ian Fleming, John Riffing, TKE House, Travis Fleeting

There is another stint of silence as Travis and John get out their cigarettes. They lay quietly on the couches and look about the room for sources of entertainment.

“Hello!” Travis calls across the room energetically, as though seeing John for the first time.

John looks on, perplexed.

“Hellooooooo!” Travis calls again.

“Hello,” John replies plainly, smiling a little.

“What do you think he would do if we just barged in there and started dancing around or something?” Travis proposes.

“I told you you were gay.”

“I’m not gay. I’m just bored.”

Read the whole story so far: Carousel Cowboy

Characters and Places: Athens, gay, Ian Fleming, John Riffing, TKE House, Travis Fleeting

Ian lived in a fraternity house on Milledge Avenue up the street from 3D. He was the expatriate of the foursome, a photographer among the natives. He had first met Travis when the two lived in the dorms together their freshman year. Nothing much had happened then in that first year, but in their sophomore year, the two figured out that they had a common thread: the criminal element. After a long discussion at a coffeehouse one night, they had decided that between the two of them, they could make fake drivers licenses for a decent profitTravis doubly so because he could increase the number of people at his shows. A friendship was born. There was more at stake, of course. It wasnt long before Travis as a musician came to know and appreciate the nuances of photography, and Ian came to know Traviss music. Even as artists of different mediums, they both “got it.”

Read the whole story so far: Carousel Cowboy

Characters and Places: Athens, Ian Fleming, John Riffing, TKE House, Travis Fleeting

3D is filled with a dirty light and John is sitting in a meditative pose, cross-legged in the middle of the living room when Travis stumbles in, wiping sleep from his eyes. It is three-thirty in the afternoon. “That’s a first,” Travis says, commenting cynically on the fact that John is awake before him.

John has his eyes closed. “I was contemplating my penis.”

Read the whole story so far: Carousel Cowboy

Characters and Places: John Riffing, Travis Fleeting

Everybody knows that John or George or Rick or Barry drinks. And everybody knows that Sheila or Susan or Jessica or Lisa is a slut. And no one’s saying nothing, you know. I mean, no one’s saying anything, but everyone knows that Rick or Carrie or Jack or Frank is a total asshole and talks too much. And everyone definitely knows that Bobby, Harry, Desmond, and Cynthia are total freaks, and really not worth talking to. It’s not that anyone’s saying anything, mind you. No one ever says anything; it’s just that everybody knows. And everyone hurts.

Read the whole story so far: Incunabula

Characters and Places: everybody, honesty

His sound comes at first to him like a cough in a quiet room, awkward but unwilling to be suppressed. At first he thinks about the song, he thinks about the notes, until they begin coming faster to him than he can perceive, until they cluster like insects that form strains and threads, but gather at the hilt of his consciousness, no longer willing to wait, they amass until there are so many of them and their reverberations and echoes, that the insect hoard turns into waves. They wash over him, here and there, revealed finite spots that he can recognize, but even these tiny moments of recognition, he backs away from. Like a sleeper counting backwards until he is counting no more, he is sliding out of his brain. He turns the function of his muscles over to his muscles and he, harmonic zen monk, steps back out of himself to get out of his own way. Where does he go, wandering his sonic soundscape where visions, mostly loose and washed out, come to him?

Read the whole story so far: Carousel Cowboy, The Gutar Solos

Characters and Places: Athens, Guitar Solo, Travis Fleeting

As they approach the apartment, they both observe Nick’s tired demeanor.

“Hey,” Travis says simply, coming to stand in front of him.

John walks past the two to go inside.

“Gi’me a cigarette,” Nick demands.

Looking at Nick seriously, Travis just says, “Do you know what we went through to get these? There were cops, natives… the bridge was out… oh my God! I’m not even going to get into what happened with the flux capcitor time shifts!” Travis shakes his head in disbelief.

“Shut up,” Nick replies as Travis gets out two cigarettes, handing one to his friend. Sitting down on the stoop, Travis lights his own and regards Nick for a moment who is still and staring at some nothing. Travis leans over takes the smoke out of Nick’s hand, puts it in Nick’s mouth, lights it, and watches as Nick passively smokes, without moving. “I really gotta’ quit doin’ this,” Nick says, the cigarette hanging pathetically, sticking to his bottom lip.

Read the whole story so far: Carousel Cowboy

Characters and Places: Athens, John Riffing, Nick Vaughn, Travis Fleeting

They drive on listening to “Wish You Were Here,” eventually turning on to Lexington, taking them back toward the city from out of the farms and pastures. Both were trying to think of something interesting to talk about, but it was June, and there really was nothing to talk about in the slow hot pace of summer. They had their music, but you couldn’t do that all day or talk about it all day, regardless of your level of dedication. You had to have nap time—that period of creative rest in which cigarettes are smoked, talk is had, and the back of your mind wanders in search of overlooked anemic melodies and ditties that may someday grow up into songs. John and Travis, Nick and Ian (all of them the Fat Kid) were either battling the muses or having nap time. At least when school was in session, there were all manner of stupid, trivial political and historical things to talk and complain and bitch about. But then, when school was out, life became remarkably simpler, though perhaps less conversationally inspiring.

“What have you got scheduled for tomorrow?” John asks.

Travis thinks about it. “Let’s see… I’ll need to lie in bed for about an hour and cry because I’ll have woke up again. That’ll be at about one-thirty in the afternoon right now the way things are going—I’m behind schedule on all the putzing I was supposed to do yesterday. And then, after breakfast, I need to stare at a wall until the sun goes down maybe.”

Read the whole story so far: Carousel Cowboy

Characters and Places: Athens, John Riffing, The Fat Kid, Travis Fleeting

John starts looking around the dash, and then gropes under the driver’s seat, searching for his tape player. The dash stereo is broken with a bad habit of eating tapes, but John has a tape player adapter for his portable CD player (which is also broken) plugged in to a walkman. They call it his ghetto stereo. He finds the walkman, hits play, and Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” washes like liquid valium through the car’s speakers. The music calms the beast of John’s driving, and the car hums with floating motion; the road grows a little longer.

David Gilmour asks, “So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell, blue skies from pain?”

“It’s not that bad, is it?” Travis says as he hopes it’s not.

But concentrating on the road, John’s light demeanor grows a tad heavier, with minor chords. He is key changing. He thinks about the difference between blue skies and pain in the dark of the morning. “It’s Rache,” he says, his teeth chopping her name off short.

“You’re not gonna’ break up or anything?”

John shrugs and keeps his eyes on the road, Rachel could be either a green field or a cold steel rail. She could be a smile or a veil and he couldn’t tell.

Read the whole story so far: Carousel Cowboy

Characters and Places: Athens, John Riffing, Travis Fleeting

If you’ve ever sat in a Thunderbird, you know what it is to sit in a vehicle that swallows you whole. There is an infinite distance between the beginning and the end of the road; a sense that you are not meant to arrive, just go. Driving it isn’t just fun, it’s a matter of confrontation with the road, a challenge to the asphalt with the wheels so widely spread. Go where you please, because God will protect you—he drives a thunderbird, too. And only he, that master of the elements and the universe, creates chariots of such sport. There can be little doubt that the GM plans for the car came from a burning bush high on a mountaintop. Like the first sip of a cool, amber beer on a Friday night, Travis always sinks into the passenger seat of the Thunderchicken, settling into foam stained with the smell of ash, knowing that this ride will not be like the last. John’s car was no nine-to-five car—no machine for commutes. There was never really anywhere to go, anyway—the ride was home. Darkness in the huge window to the right of Travis reveals in his mind a distant panorama of fields where animals run free, somewhere beneath pinpoints of early morning June stars. “Bring your dreams,” the Thunderchicken requests as the engine purs to life, “I will carry you along, on my sturdy shock absorbers, and twin cams, smoothly over waves of discontent.” Drive her like she deserved to be driven and she would protect you.

Read the whole story so far: Carousel Cowboy

Characters and Places: Athens, John Riffing, Thunderchicken, Travis Fleeting