Page 182 of Nearly Roadkill
Cheers,
D.I. Drew
ZINE EXCERPT
PISSED OFF, NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE
… a strong suspicion and even distrust has replaced the growing hope that Registration would bring more options, not less. But anyone who has had obnoxious ads hurled at their screen names can tell you it’s annoyingto fend off campaigns for hair replacement implants when you’re trying to find a law library, or worse, when you’re taking the occasional cyberstroll as a different persona, even as a different gender. The joy of the Net is its freedom.
Update: NPR
Radio On-Scene Report, KRUW Wichita
There’s a different feel to this crowd. I’ve never seen such diverse groups of people here in Sedgwick Park. In one corner, people are using sign language, in another, young people with pierced noses, purple hair, and big combat boots are talking animatedly. Every age is represented, and every color of the human rainbow; it’s phenomenal. Like a demonstration, but with no agenda, no speeches, and no discernible cause. Just… joy.
Rap Shoopman, NPR Youth Reporter
Shoopman: Amid all the people celebrating what looks like the actual shutdown of the Internet, there is a very serious raid going down. Feds and local cops are stationed wherever a false Scratch and Winc sighting led them. A car traced to Scratch is currently parked outside a Travelodge. Police have been preparing for action in this area, having focused on Times Square and Madison Square Garden, while other SWAT teams were camped out at City University and SUNY. This is Rap Shoopman, reporting for NPR.
SCRATCH JOURNAL ENTRY
Winc and I went for a drive, just aimlessly cruising around. But then we saw a group of people shouting that suddenly all nodes were down! No idea why! The strike worked! We looked at each other, and then I pulled over. I ran into a coffee shop, and when I came out I saw Winc looking at me through the car window like ze’d always ridden in there with me. Like some movie. The sun was still in its early morning place, making everything feel new. Winc was smiling at me, the light right behind hir hair. I jumped in the car and handed hir coffee, and we were off, for who knows where, but we were going.
We got a few blocks and all that relief and tension flooded through me, and it went to my crotch. All of a sudden I had to get my hands on hir, my Winc. I looked over at hir all shy but later ze said it was more like sly. There was this cheap hotel right in front of us, so I screeched into the parking lot.
We were in the room and I was swimming in desire, totally aware that ze was real, not online—big as life, hir body warm and real and right up close. With even the slightest touch, it was like electricity zapping me. Ze said it was the same for hir, like we needed to take an hour for every inch of skin, but we had no time and the electricity was fierce. I was swooning, actually swooning, a word I’d never understood until that moment, but I couldn’t breathe and I was dizzy and all I could do—all I wanted to do—was hang on. I knew, right then, that despite all my great philosophizing, it was hir gyrl stuff that turned me on right then, hir breasts and hir smell and hir hair and hir eyes looking at me so womanly and open and ready for me. Ze was female. I wanted hir.
I’m not even sure I got all our clothes off, but it was a fast, furious, glorious fuck—I felt I could eat hir bones with my teeth and smash our skin together so it would never come apart. We tore up that room, with the radio blaring about the strike, about “Scratch and Winc” who sounded like the totally made-up cardboard heroes they were. We fucked when the stupid commercials came on, and then we took a shower and practically broke the door fucking in there.
I splattered: Even though I had to conquer the hell out of hir and tell hir all those dirty things in my head and vulgarize hir and bring out hir want and need and crave, at some point we became this one passionate body that didn’t have a name or a sex or a place that was anchored down anywhere; we were us, juice and blood and kisses.
Until we heard on the radio about the police swarming, at which point… well, we got the hell out of there.
END SCRATCH JOURNAL ENTRY
PERSONAL LOG, JABBATHEHUT
To:All who care to listen
From:Jabbathehut
Subj:My signoff statement (I refuse to call it an anthem)
It is not in my nature to be public in any manner, nor to join the activities of others, as organized efforts are at best mediocre and lack creativity. However, I have been unwittingly infected by the desperate idealism of those I have come to regard as friends.
It’s been a good 12 years since I retired to my lair, driven here by forces of evil in part, but mostly of cruelty and chance. Such is the nature of God, a malevolent fellow who appears to suffer the same boredom many of us do in these uncertain times. I doubt I shall surface again, at least in this guise, as my conduits have become far too known to far too many. So, a farewell attempt at self-revelation.
Many years ago, I loved fiercely. She was intelligent and beautiful, and blessed with a ferocious determination I had not seen before nor since.
And then, she was gunned down, for no other reason than we lived in the United States and she was caught in a random crossfire. As one is. Here at least.
At her side was her best friend, who was also shot, succumbing to her injuries later. That equally random fact saved my life. Because my beloved’s partner in death had left behind a young son and a husband. Quite simply, they needed me.
“John,” the little one’s father, is a sensitive sort; it was all I could do to keep him feeding the dogs and shaving himself each morning. You might say that little “Toby” saved us both, with his wondering eyes and quick heart. He asked us innumerable questions, gave endless and irritating hugs, and possessed aninsatiable curiosity that perhaps appealed to this battered ego of mine. Once I was assured that his father was skating on all wheels, I retired to this peaceful room with my fish and electronic spiderwebs.
We’ve kept in touch, and it does not surprise me that Toobe—as he has come to call himself—should be a part of a movement so large, successful, and chaotic.
And later, at my side, was of all things a Witch, a Pagan, and like myself, a lifelong citizen of the fabled Isle of Lesbos. Over the next four years or so, we built empires, she and I… our collaborative artistry has awakened again!
