Monday, August 29, 2005

"TATTOOED LOOPHOLES" is a fast fiction based on this beautifully bizarre image by Matt Furie.mattfurie1_small Not since those really disturbing paintings by
Miguel Calderon which appeared in The Royal Tenenbaums have images given such a one-two punch.

Unlike most people in Vancouver, I don't do drugs and so I need imagery such as this to take me to those altered states which dump you out in the middle of nowhere in a gorilla suit plastered in lipstick stains.

On behalf of the world, thank-you Matt Furie, for kicking the shit out of us through the medium of art.



TATTOOED LOOPHOLES


John Stimmer's rather large tattoo of a sasquatch in running shoes with an owl on its hairy outstretched arm caused a lot of commotion whenever he took his shirt off. He was shy but gladly "told the tale" of how and why and where and when he got his tattoo. He lurched through the facts illustrated with jerky flourishes from his bony arms and people were too mesmerized by the tattoo to notice that there was no real tale being told.

They were too busy gawking at the sasquatch which has a third eye of enlightment burning bright on its forhead.

Staring directly at them.

One evening John took a somewhat treacherous short cut through a back alley to get to his bus stop. His fear of showing up late for a date with his girlfriend overruled common sense and the shadowy figure in the back alley wasn't as frightening as his girlfriend with a mask of a scowl over her face. So he told himself.

"Hey man you got some change there ?" The man stepped into the middle of the narrow alley.

"Nope, sorry," John said. (And being from Canada he said sorry in day more than you will say in a lifetime.)

"Okay well then gimme anything else that you got," he said, pulling a dirty needle out from his frayed pocket.

"I don't have anything," John stammered.

"Gimme everything. Take off your pants !!"

John fumbled with his button and fly which suddenly took on a new level of difficulty. (For our purposes let's say eight or nine zipper teeth out of ten). "No don't take off your pants just gimme your wallet. And take off your shirt."

And after his shirt was off the junkie's clenched fist went limp. And the needle fell onto the dilapidated bricks of the back alley and he high-tailed it into the darkness with a special fear in his drug soaked mind.

Whenever John Stimmer talked about his near mugging experience, he simply listed a series of facts. The extact time followed by the location followed by why he was late followed by statistics about junkies followed by a "tattoo" followed by a narrow escape.

People were too bored by what was coming out of his mouth to dare ask about his tattoo and risk eliciting further figures and facts.

The tattoo stayed in storage under his shirt and the red glare of the sasquatch's eye of enlightenment slowly burned into dullness.

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