Dandy Darkly

Wicked Little Town (part four)

Peer into the astral plane, and still today you'll see two teetering infernos of spinning fire. The columns stretch from the blistered pavement up to the mocking cosmos. Shrieking harpies with bat wings and barbed whips ride the updrafts of scorching air, seeking helpless souls to pluck from the chaos and drop to the ground below. From beneath the fallen beams crawl demons the color of carnage, and a gentle, southwestern breeze supports a rotten-candy cloud of ash, burning jet fuel, and soot covered, contorted faces lost in the dark and gasping for air.

No trip to New York is complete without an obligatory visit. There's the construction pit, offerings of flowers and cards. Annual ceremonies remembering those we lost. Elaborate murals illustrating what's to be. Though it never shall be. The site is cursed. We all know it, but can't accept it.

Look into the past and remember that day. The bravest among us, fire fighters, police, ordinary men and women who dropped everything to help the injured or the fleeing. The wall of dust held razor sharp teeth and goring horns. They found monsters in the narrow canyons of Wall Street. That morning the Veil between worlds fell with the towers. Cowering behind that car. Clutching his briefcase. Everything covered in ash. Alarms and police sirens and explosions, but all he heard was the breathing. And the growling.

Reading a comic book under the covers. Mom and dad are arguing again, but just keep reading. The flashlight's translucent glow pours through the thin paper page and casts a prismatic spray of distorted images on to the insides of the blanket. The safe blanket. Rotate the flashlight, the image shifts. The monsters and heroes melt together beneath the blanket. Count backwards and study the image. 3. Mom screams. 2. Dad screams. 1. Pull back the blanket. There's a monster in the room. Scream.

"FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! DIE MOTHER FUCKER!" - "The fucking thing had two legs and four fucking arms and a fucking spikes here and and and a fucking mouth of giant fucking teeth!" - "fuck where did it fucking come from man!?!?!!?" - "FUCK ANOTHER ONE! THERE!" - "Keep smashing it with rock! SMASH IT'S FUCKING FACE IN!!!" - "FUCK WHAT IS GOING ON?!" - IT'S THE END OF THE FUCKING WORLD!!!!"

The matron has arrived, and she has the artifact. The older witches are exhausted. Many of the younger are dead or flying wounded out of the blast zone. The matron steps quickly, her focus absolute. Demons three times her size roar and sprint in her direction. They leap and instantly vaporize into sand. Her thin lips move silently. She manipulates something small swiftly and delicately within her withered, ancient hands. The women rise as she glides past. They follow in her wake. They know her sacrifice is imminent. Their most loved; their eldest. The Green Witches' tears hit the charred cement near where the drops of the matron's blood has fallen. She who was here when Manhattan was born. The matron bids them stop. There's so much more they must accomplish this dreadful day. She opens her tiny palm. To her hand she's painstakingly sewn a wooden button. The witches turn and flee from their loving mother, sister and friend. 

The conspiracy theorists say it's a government cover up for a secret radiation or nuclear testing facility beneath the World Trade Center Site. Think about it, the infected mutants in the Chelsea biohazard zone got loose and somehow busted a reactor core or something. Whatever. If you study the tapes you'll clearly see a green explosion happen at the base of the second tower a full hour and twenty minutes after the collapse. Pause it. Right there. See it? What is that green light? 

It's a sunny morning in the month of September before the September we know was. A gentle breeze blows to the southwest. Three regal women stand on the banks of a wild, untamed island. The natives claim the forests are cursed and want no ownership of it, but are willing to sell it in exchange for a few mystical trinkets. The witches confer and return with a handful of thirteen buttons. Supposedly these buttons have the power to close any door, seal any break and mend any tear. The natives refuse the thirteenth, as their shaman is highly suspicious of the number, and instead accept twelve of the magical fasteners as payment for the blighted land they call Manhattan. The matron puts the lucky thirteenth button in her pocket for safe keeping, and begins helping the sisters of the Green Witch Coven unload their tiny boat.

Wicked Little Town (part three)

From Wiccapedia:

The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Green Witch Village neighborhood of New York City. They are frequently cited as the first instance in American history when people in the mutant community fought back against a government-sponsored system that persecuted genetic minorities, and they have become the defining event that marked the start of the mutant civil right's movement the United States and around the world.

When the spinning beer bottle of Miss Calamari Antoinette (a tentacled, drag queen) made solid contact with the head of Vinny Laurenzo (a mustached, beat cop) could anyone have predicted what the next 30 years had in store for mutants?

After Stonewall, mutant activists rallied by Civil Right's leader Harvey Milk made bold strides in gaining acceptance from a middle America who, by instinct, had learned to fear anyone different than themselves. Hollywood also took charge in changing popular perceptions. From Wart and Burnie on Sesame Street to a fish faced Carol Brady, folks couldn't get enough of mutants. Bird beaked models graced the catwalks of Paris, and revelers glued fake fingers to their hands to trick the doormen at Studio 54. In 1979 there was even rumor of a Federal Constitutional amendment granting citizenship status to any Americans born of dissimilar Darwinian descent. Then, in 1981, the BURP plague appeared in primarily mutant neighborhoods, like the Castro in San Francisco and New York's Green Witch Village. 

Everything went to shit from there.

The Blatta Upper Respiratory Parasite, aka the BURP, prematurely labeled MRRI (Mutant Related Respiratory Illness) and jokingly called "the Coughroach" is best known as the Bug. It's a bug. To be precise a mutated species of cockroach that infests the patient's chest cavity. Feels like asthma at first, but if ignored turns into coughing blood and roaches peeking out from one's nose. Eventually they eat through the lungs. It's a slow and wheezy death. Then a thousand flying maggots burst through the skin, and a pandemic is born. 

At first, America was fairly nonchalant to the potential health risk. The infestation was contained to mutant ghettos. But in 1983, teenager Bryan White lost consciousness in a public pool and received mouth-to-mouth resuscitation from a mutant who was BURP positive. Bryan's subsequent infected status became a rallying point for the Clean-Gene movement and the forced relocation of ALL mutants -- regardless of BURP status. Infected humans, including Bryan White, were also quarantined. Entire neighborhoods were simply walled up and left to their own management. Monthly deliveries of food, supplies and medicine have continued for the past twenty years, and to date no government official has confirmed hearing any communication from the ostracized mutants.

Urban legends do persist of bug covered mad men banging on subway car windows, but there's far spookier things in underground New York than a few short of breath mutants.

Pat yourself on the back, America. The relocation seems to have stopped the Bug. With that notion public perception has slowly began to shift. Fifteen years ago, a baby born with a pig's snout would have been shipped off to the nearest bio-hazard zone. But today's mutant kids are welcomed, for the most part, at some public schools. There was even a mutant winner of American Idol. Viewers had their suspicions confirmed when the rocker parted his gelled hair and winked at the paparazzi with a guy-lined, third eye. And as part of his Promise to America, President Barney Frank has vowed to open the mutant slums by 2012. 

It's hard to be skeptical of anything in this world, but just dropping in for a friendly hello after two decades of incarceration is something I'll believe when I see it. If the mutants come out wanting revenge (I would), can we handle two wars in this city?

Next, I'll conclude my profile of nightmare Manhattan with a focus on the wyld womyn of the Green Witch coven. And 9/11: When the veil between worlds ripped apart, and New Yorkers came together to push the infernal hordes back to their pits of Hell. And we're still fighting...

Wicked Little Town (part one)

On a clear evening, from the rooftop observatory of the Empire Tower for Astrological Sciences, one is afforded an unobstructed, three hundred and sixty degree view of my new home, the lovely necropolis called Manhattan. 

Down Fifth Avenue, past the Flat Iron Building, the crowded shops of SoHo and the ornate golden rooftops and winding alleyways of Little Beijing Market, you can see the razor sharp spires of the Bergen Bridge. Their elegance sits in stark contrast to the dull, squat masonry of the massive toll bridge, Goblin's Crossing. 

Both bridges deposit the traveler in the state of New Norway, the eleventh state of our great nation which geographically encompasses the entirety of Long Island. One of the oldest settlements on North America, New Norway was discovered circa 1100 AD when the viking explorer Thorkell Leifson (son of famed adventurer Leif Ericson) made contact with America's indigenous people there. The civilized Norsemen admired the Lenape tribe's deep sense of honor and rich pantheon of powerful deities. They were equally impressed by the natives' giving nature and capacity for deadly retribution if threatened. The two groups were fast allies long before the Spanish sorcerer Giovanni da Verrazzano's ships sailed past the Narrows in 1524. And almost a century later, when Henry Hudson's expedition glided up the river that would later bear his name, the two races were indistinguishable as one.

Much of New Norway's capital city, Bergen, is visible tonight. The towering totem poles, carved with likenesses of Odin and Freya, are as impressive as their unique homes and buildings, ecological and architectural masterworks cradled within the limbs of hulking, living trees. And sure, occasionally a sacrificial scream or two echoes across the Hudson, way more during their hedonistic full moon rituals. But for the most part, the tribes of New Norway are good people and amicable neighbors. 

(If only the same could be said for our Eastern state, the toxic swamp people of New Jersey. Seriously.)

Back in Manhattan, further north from Little Beijing Market, the colorful murals featuring laughing, round faced children riding whiskered dragons abruptly disappear. In their place are filthy, graffiti covered brick walls with broken windows. Buzzing neon signs point out tattoo parlors and absinthe lounges. In the East Village, pierced young people grind away a life of self-destructive bliss. And the old ones, the ones who somehow managed to survive it all, they roam the shadows, hungry for any scrap narcotic The Void tosses their way.

Midtown... bleh. Busy little gnomes busy making piles and piles of cash. Next!

Moving around the observatory walk... gross. There's a winged rat sitting perched facing the Upper East Side. No, it's not a pigeon. In my Manhattan the rats actually have wings -- black raven's wings to be exact. They're gross. Shoo, rat.

A perpetual fog hangs over the Upper East Side. New York's most influential, original families still own sprawling residences among the grim granite buildings and stuffy English pubs here. It's in this dreary neighborhood that you'll find the Mayor's mansion. Mayor Gloomberg, laughably running yet again for re-election, holds the post in perpetuity. And, yes. He's a ghost. A very, very old ghost to be certain.

I sincerely hope you, delicate reader, don't find these dreadful admissions to be too shocking. Tis simply the world I've come to inhabit. I consider it my honor and duty to share it's secrets with you. Moving on --

New York's enormous, fifth avenue museums form the backbone of the fence separating Central Park East from the rest of the city. The spiked barricade runs the entire perimeter of the 800 acre park. Most New Yorkers think the barbed wire and razor sharp spikes are in place to limit the access of the gardens and lawns to those who reside in Manhattan's wealthier neighborhoods. In honesty, it was erected to keep Central Park's myriad nasties from interrupting the rich folk's genteel croquet matches and well earned steak dinners. But occasionally something truly twisted does get loose. 

And it runs its ten legged, twelve eyed self straight to Harlem!

Wouldn't you know the black folk just happen to got stuck with the side of the fence that no one can seem to keep repaired? And that's precisely why Councilwoman LaShawndra LeFay went into politics. Fed up with how the city was dumping all their shit on her Harlem, she's now become one of the most influential politicians in the entire state.

There's also a persistent rumor that Ms. LeFay is the infamous Voodoo Queen of Harlem with hexes on Manhattan's most powerful movers and shakers and a horde of blood thirsty zombies at her disposal. But you can't believe every rumor you read on Page Six. Can you?

OK. That's enough for now. I'm not convinced your suspicious natures can accept the fantastical things you've read on this interdimensional diary of darkness.

In the cards for tomorrow:

The bohemian west side of our horrific hamlet: Are the jovial families of the posh Upper West Side any happier than the smiling troubadours gracing the prosceniums of Manhattan's famed Broadway? Not really. Both groups are paid to look happy.

And once again Times Square is a cesspool of low morals and filthy pleasures!

T’Ain’t No Valley Low Enough

Snow on the first day of spring? The forces of darkness are afoot.

Those Black Party boys better double-stuff some seriously high pig bottoms this weekend, because I expect glistening rosebuds (of the floral kind) by Sunday, not the destroyed catcher’s mitt kind that will be on display following the annual leather-sex-party- celebration of spring’s glorious return.

Seriously.

I’ve never been to the Black Party myself. (But I do certainly have an opinion of it!) However my occult studies in London did take me to a sacred valley in Ireland where I witnessed the conjuration of satyrs and an embodiment of Ostara, a fertility goddess – the Celtic incarnation of Persephone, herself. Let me tell you bitches something, it was breezier than a Summer’s Eve commercial!

So there I was, a guest as a favor of a friend of a friend. Honestly, those lesbian priestesses did NOT want me there. Said I had too much “taint” on my soul – they didn’t like my reply that I’ve "barely had enough t’ain’t anywhere on me!" That didn’t win any smiles from the high Gaelic priestess who relegated me to a far away patch of grass and said if I interrupt the proceedings I’d be kicked out of the stone circle. So me, my t'aint' and my tainted soul sat there and watched (yes, very impressed) as these womyn of the wyld worked their charms, and brought spring back to the Emerald Isle.

They sang a chorus of songs. As each song progressed their singing was accompanied by the sound of flutes. And one by one an orchestra of small, hairy, hoofed and horned men gently pranced from the tall grasses. They walked first as though curious, but then quickly joined in the revelry. They spun and danced. Their wooden flutes trilled delightfully.

I’m not sure if it was the witches’ spells, the presence of the mythological creatures or the hallucinogenic seeds I was fed before the ritual, but something seized me. I suddenly found myself clasping hands with the womyn and skipping-to-my-loo among the circle of stones. The High Priestess smiled and allowed my entrance freely. My taint had dissolved!

And then the whitest, purest light flooded the ritual space. And the High Priestess suddenly appeared taller, even more regal. Her ears tapered into fine points and her blond hair cascaded down her narrow body and seemed to weave itself into the vibrant green grass. Her features were sharp and delicate, like a fairy queen of Celtic mythology. All around us flowers of every shape and hue grew and unfolded. Yet, something darker was happening in my periphery, was it the sacrifice of a pig? A frantic,  high pitched squeal became mixed within the chorus of singing voices. The satyrs wove the flowers their beards, and we laughed and sang. Everyone laughed. I laughed! I actually laughed!!!

And then I passed the fuck out. I ALWAYS pass out!

When I awoke, I was back where I’d been sitting. The witches were cleaning up from a picnic feast. The High Priestess came and sat with me. We discussed what I’d seen, the satyrs, her embodiment of Ostara. It was all very surreal, but very serene, very peaceful…

Perhaps I’ve been too judgmental of the Black Party. In many ways my transcendent experience matches the jubilant reports I’ve heard from my friends; horny, furry men with “flutes” in their mouths; women taller than life, glammed out of proportion beyond everyone else; a pig’s frantic squeals; music and decorations, men passing out.

I now regret deriding the annual party earlier in this discussion. In fact such a catharsis, Black Party or woodland valley witchy Celtic Goddess summoning, would likely leave anyone super-jazzed for springtime, regardless of wobbliness hobbling home or unexpected snow on the streets. I respect you, satyrs. I’m simply not ready to relinquish my t’ain’t to the beat of the Black Party.

Yet…