e.s.g. - dirty hustle -- songs making me cry at exactly 5:00 am, staying up until i can't get a mcdonald's breakfast before bed, slouched out in dirty 2xl hanes, jeans unbuttoned. turned up all the way on tinny headphones until the higher, trebly parts distort like club soundsystem, bringing out screaming harmonies at the tips and static on the hard syllables. listening and playing some make yourself cry game from when i was a kid. eyes sucking in all that laptop light in dark room. remembering spending dusk with spacey morphine addicts-- which still make me think of some first world war, trenches of france, returning home to fox hunting and big antique glass syringes, some shit like that, but is actually about some skinny brown girl showing me bloodclot darkred craters up and down both her arms: "do you know what that's from?"
"shit, abscesses?"
"no, those are burns."
"fuck!"
"that's why i want to quit. i think it makes my body look ugly. i'm going to start methadone on wednesday. i'm starting at thirty."-- giving me a rundown on everyone in the city's coke ("no, they're bunk! you know how it goes ten twenty thirty... on the rig... well, they're... the top is BUNK... all of that... you're going to... squeeze it out of that one and into another rig..."). impressing her by giving her a ten to buy a pepsi and some licorice on the way there, letting her lace her fingers into mine and lean on my shoulder, hoping she'll give me a heads-up if i'm getting setup to get robbed, shaking a bit off for her to test, i guess, it's all bought and paid for. fuck but i can't even picture her face, just those fucking arms, and shivering visceral twistedupface feeling that gives you. shit fucking bothered me in a way almost nothing can. i've watched girls shooting up coke i bought them, in shitty dope houses with their dad asleep in another room, somewhere, squashing tiny black spiders crossing my forearms. no problem. i worked in a beef plant, surreal assembly line death shit that you are guaranteed to nightmare about for the rest of your life, stood at my station cut around the neck of the cow hanging off a conveyor hook above you, let the head man grab it under the jaw, take your knife and seperate the esophagus from the windpipe, take your rubber band gun, get the tip over the esophagus and drive it up into the cavity, click the trigger to release the elastic and it keeps the guts from sliding down and out, all in a rain of stillbodytemperature blood. that shit was different, though.
all over sweet creamy 2% chocolate milk rich... perfect... hopeful, nasal on the hook... hopeful up and down surface shivering replacing marrowdeep revulsion thoughts...
the whole world is a hustle, home of the brave and free
with penitentiary workers, modern day slavery
what kinda choices they gave me
play ball or stay in school
convicted felons can't get jobs
who in the hell made them rules?
what about basketball bobby, won't make it to the pros
he averaged 24 but his SATs were low
imagine hearin the gun blow, seeing blood all over the bed
see, al had AIDS so he shot hisself in the head
know sometimes we get scared
lookin ahead past the trouble
the world a hustle lord help us through the struggle
BETTER WIPE YA TEARS AWAY BETTER PUT YA FEAR ASIDE
PUT ONE HAND UP IN THE SKY AND LET ME KNOW IF YA DOWN TO RIDE
THIS ONE FOR THOSE DIED AND DIDN'T SURVIVE THROUGH THE STRUGGLE
DON'T MATTER YOUR DAMN COLOR THE WHOLE WORLD'S A DIRTY HUSTLE