Green Disease

Your two-for-the-price-of-one week continues with an excerpt from a work-in-progress called Green Disease. The author, Sam Famolaro, is a musician and writer, currently studying history at Hunter College. He has a very fun "stream of consciousness" blog where he promotes his writings and current music project, The Informers. Go check it out at www.jwilkesblog.blogspot.com.

The excerpt you are about to read is written in the voice of one of five characters who tell the story of their crumbling hometown and their attempts to find an escape. Also, Sam assures me that the lowercase letters and questionable punctuation is on purpose. So even though it kills me not to correct it, I hope you all enjoy his story!

Green Disease

By Sam Famolaro

benjamin rooney: 

it's snowing really hard outside, but i just can't sit in my room anymore. It's 9:30 at night and I'm starting to go stir crazy from looking at the walls. every wall in my room, including the ceiling, is the same color. a thick, bloody red. not fresh blood though, more of like an "old blood that's been drying on your knuckles for the last three days" kinda red. i didn't paint them that color, that's what they were when i moved in. it makes me a little bit suspicious of the people who lived here before me. regardless, it's giving me a headache.

i can't take it anymore so i get up and grab my coat. i shove my iPod into my pocket and lace the ear buds through my shirt and around the back of my neck so that it doesn't look like I'm wearing them. i pirated the entire Bad Religion discography last night, even though i only like about fifteen songs total. i just felt stupid downloading it all and not keeping it, so i stayed up until 5:30 in the morning categorizing it and adding different artwork for all the albums. I'm gonna have to listen to it at least for a few weeks so that i can justify downloading it. I lock the door as i head out, check for my wallet and my phone. I make it about three-quarters of the way to my car before realizing i left that pack of Camels i stole from my dad on the kitchen table. i go back inside, kick off my Nikes and put my Chucks back on. i know it's a bad decision, but they look better with my outfit, and currently fashion is outweighing function for me. i grab my cigarettes off the table and leave again.

i've already lit it up by the time i get to my car and throw my computer bag in the backseat. I've gone through four separate automobiles in the seven or so years that i've been a licensed driver. not my fault. not all my fault at least. currently, i'm driving a 91' Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera which a select group of my friends have come to refer to as "the De Niro." No joke, it's retro as fuck. serious bench seats in this mother fucker. despite the fact that it makes me feel like i'm in my grandpa's car whenever i drive it, it serves every need that i have. the stereo sounds decent. it gets me to work, plus it's so old that unlike new cars, it's still made out of all-steel and metal parts. the downside is that it's balls-out cold inside of it, even with the heat cranked up. the upside is that it's really heavy, so it doesn't get stuck in the snow very much. when you live upstate New York, it's vital to know your cars capabilities in the snow, because you're gonna get a lot of it and our world doesn't stop for snow. maybe down in the city, or farther down the coast they do, but upstate, it's just a way of life.

i start my car, then get back out to brush the snow off. it really is starting to come down now. when you see snow all the time you begin to only think about how much you can't stand it, but tonight i think it's going to be a nice backdrop. i throw out my cigarette in the snow bank and get back into the car. i plug my iPod in and put on Armed Forces. I light up another cigarette as i pull out of the driveway.

i get to Andrews' and, low and behold, he never rolled up the blunt or even broke up the weed like he said he was going to. typical actually, Andrew is mind-blowingly unreliable when it comes to shit like that. honestly though, i'm not surprised and since his parents are out of town, it really doesn't make all that much of a difference.  we sit on the sofa in his living room and Andrew turns on Sportscenter. it's the end of fuckin' winter and football is long since finished its season, yet somehow, all they can come up with to talk about is how keen they think the Pittsburgh Steelers are. Andrew flips around the stations as i break up the weed on the table. most of the time, when you're breaking up nuggets, you can tell instantly if you have quality or trash and this is quite obviously trash. it's dry and it smells like piss. my buddy Brownie used to sell me amazing stuff every single day, but ever since he packed up and moved to Tennessee (what a black drug-dealing hipster is gonna do in Tennessee, i'll never know) i can't seem to find a regular connect for decent chronic.

"hey Andrew, where did you get this shit?"

Andrew puts on MSNBC. I got it from Uncle Jack's house, Why?"

i should have known. Uncle Jack has been slinging garbage weed for almost fifteen years now. old fuck never even leaves his house. kids just roll up all day and visit. Jack has built himself quite the cottage industry actually. You can get weed, phillies, wraps, and even single cigarettes for below market value. it's like a one-stop shop for deviance. i smell my fingers. they smell like pesticide; a telltale sign that this is from the Uncle Jack's. it also means i can look forward to a shitty high and a bad headache, in no particular order.

rolling a blunt is like an alternate universe art form to people like us. i don't mean that in an obtuse sense, we don't do any of that dumb "let's make a giant blunt outta three phillies" kinda shit. i guess it's more like an arts and crafts project. you take your time, making sure that it's not too tight, but not loose enough that you start sucking weed into the back of your throat. Andrew stares at the TV.

"I'm not trying to sit outside and smoke," i tell him. "let's take a high ride"

Andrew looks at me and his face puckers up. "I don't wanna drive, it's awful out"

I stare at him disapprovingly. sometimes i feel like Andrew would be perfectly content to sit home on the couch forever and that's a bold statement from someone who spends as much time on the couch as i do.

"Come on dude, it's freezing and snowing. At least in the car we can turn the heat on."

"We can turn the space heater on in the garage," Andrew replied.

"That space heater is a piece of shit; we'll end up burning the garage down."

"i don't wanna drive" Andrew replied with a greater sense of finality. "I hate driving in the snow. If you wanna drive i'll go with you, but there is no way that i'm going to drive anywhere"

"That's fine" i reply. I'm secretly excited that he said that because i just finally downloaded the remastered version of Brighten the Corners with all the extra tracks and i was begging for an excuse to listen to it all day. i always like to be the one driving on a high ride so i can control what we listen to.

I feel like sometimes my entire life is affected by what songs show up on my iPod playlist; a slave to compressed media files. Sometimes it makes me feel like I’m not in control of my life, like I’m living my life in the confines of some imaginary pseudo-hipster/indie kid image I’ve knowingly cultivated for myself. I am constantly waiting for some kind of judgment to be passed by people who I’ve never met, as if the only thing other people on the street or in their cars care about is to find out “what Ben Rooney is listening to today."

I pick up the finished blunt and hold it between my thumb and forefinger. I run the flame from my lighter up and down the length until all the saliva dries off and then I sit back and wait for The Rachel Maddow Show to go to a commercial break so I can attempt to convince Andrew to get off the couch. from the way he’s sitting now, with one sock on and his legs over the back of the sofa, the prospects are grim.