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Steven Clark / The Ass Haulers

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Steven Clark’s ongoing Extended Project of prose, photography, music, spoken word, filmmaking, and various other erratic erratum.

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Undertow 3:39

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Yesteryear 1:29

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Las Tierra Negras (Juan Bond 077) 4:00

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Writer's Block 8:00

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Cocaine 2:39

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The Extraction of Cheekbones 3:41

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Maddness By The Pound 2:34

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Juda's Lung 1:03:59

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Charlie Sheen, Corey Feldman, and the Weatherman

by Steven Clark

As I crossed the baking-hot parking lot towards the grocery store that awkward thing happened when you are suddenly in lockstep with a stranger, she was a weathered granny type lugging one of those large purses that looked like it was a quilt in another life and now was pregnant with crumpled coupons and cheap hand lotion. I could tell by her knurled hands and leathery smoker’s face that she had spent too many lean years in a poorly ventilated fluorescent lit factory and sunshine to her was as rare as luck or a kind word. As we walked elbow to elbow in the blinding sun I turned and looked her square in the eye with the seriousness of a judge handing down a death sentence.

“You know if they see us walking in together like this people are going to talk.”
“Do I know you?!”, she barked back slightly shaken by another human voice.
“Probably not.”
“What’s your name? We’ve met!”, she asked electric with intrigue.
“You’re thinking of Charlie Sheen” I said.
“NO! I know who he is. I’ve seen you before!”
“Just imagine him when he was twisted on drugs, the tiger blood phase.”
“No. What’s your name?”, she asked now caught in my sticky web.
“Steven Clark. But you’re thinking of Corey Feldman.”
Her face grew flush, “Oh God no, NOT HIM! He's handsome! I seen him on the morning TV with them half-naked angel girls and he was dancing like the Jackson!”
“Someone once bought me breakfast at the Kentucky Derby because they thought I was Corey.” I replied.
“Honey we have met before!”
“Maybe. I use to do the weather on WAVE 3 about ten years ago. Did you visit my booth at the state fair?”
“Oh my! Really?! No, I don’t think so!”

As we entered the store I offered her a cart.

“Take the small one, if you take the big one you’ll just fill it up with nonsense. I’m only here for an onion and some beer but I’m still using a cart. Had a horse kick me clean in the spine, lots of nerve damage.”
“Oh No! Bless you! Thank you, nice to meet you!”, her head bobbled in feigned pity as she took the small cart.

“Nice to meet you too, have a golden day, fight the power.” I said.

As I walked away towards the wet waxy jungle that is the produce section she shouted from the long line at the pharmacy, “Your weather was always the best!”

Ashtray Ohio by Steven Clark

The rickety smoke machine belched another billowy vanilla scented cloud as the mirrorball lit the room like a newly discovered constellation.

“Don’t be fuckin’ creepy man!” she yelled over the throbbing music while hanging upside down on the pole like a thin pale vampire bat,

“I love Jesus and I’m a good girl.”

Sliding down in a twirl and then a spread-leg splat on the scuffed glossy black catwalk directly in front of me she made knife-like eye contact that cut clean through to the back of my skull, a low stakes game of chicken that I instantly lost. She knew that deep inside I was eating her game like a starving campground raccoon, I was the proverbial dog chasing the car and if I caught it I wouldn’t know what to do next, just run off yelping with a tucked tail. I was punching above my weight and we both knew it, she was an out of reach runaway blood thrill rollercoaster that only goes down. In defeat I tossed over the palm-sweat-soaked folding money as tribute to the glitter-skinned queen and quickly looked away as she tucked it under her garter, it was hard-earned but still only money, I’ll get paid again next Friday. Just another Christmas Eve.

Reincarnation of a Bluesman by Steven Clark

All grown up now, an adult with no future and no past, no training to speak of. As a child my goal was uncomplicated, focused, I wanted to be a weathered leathery old bluesman, traveling the delta alone on foot, playing every 1920s backwoods juke-joint with saw dust on the floor and homegrown hooch on request, fifteen cents a bottle. Sit at the rough-hewn wooden bar, pull the cork out of the pint bottle with my teeth and drink, play when I’m drunk enough, leave when I’m ready. The nomadic troubadour without a map, just a National Steel tucked in his gunnysack, and itchy souls on his feet.

My teacher asked me what I wanted to do for summer vacation, I told her I wanted to hop a Greyhound to the crossroads and sell my soul to Ol’Scratch for blues power. Her face looked like a puzzle with some of the pieces gone, but if that disturbed her, what if she knew about the secret booty tucked into the bottom of my book satchel, what if she knew that I was packing a straight razor like I had heard all of the real bluesmen did. See I would as often as possible, sneak my dad’s straight razor from the medicine cabinet and carry it to school stashed neatly in the bottom of my Superman book satchel, lunch-bag, school paste, milk-money, straight razor, just the bare essentials. When I had that thing with me, I felt as though I had secret super powers just like the man of steel, hell I was the man of steel, cold steel. Just as soon as one of those pink-cheeked little crackers called me a no good colored, or a guit-fiddle pickin’ coon, I’d reach into my satchel and pull out my blade and lay’em open deep and wide. I’d stand over the little punk and in a gloat I’d laughingly say, “Well look at that, we are all pink on the inside, ain’t we!” Pretty lofty goals for an eight-year old white boy with a red plastic guitar.

My grandmother used to watch me and a cute blue-eyed blonde neighbor-girl after school while our parents were still at work. Granny had a tall rice bed about two and a half feet off of the ground, back then it seemed as high as a treehouse. I would sit underneath the giant bed with my back against the wall (I learned that early on too, keep your back agin’ the wall) and the neighbor-girl would lay across my lap on her belly with her pants down around her knees, and as we hid beneath the bed intersecting at the crotch forming this preadolescent “x”, I would softly caress her pouty little eight-year-old ass. She wanted the lioness’s share of the Popsicles that granny kept in the freezer for after school, and I wanted to see what a real moneymaker looked like in the flesh, I thought the arrangement worked out just fine, she got double her ration of popsicles a day, and I got weird fiery butterflies in my stomach that I was yet to understand. She was a Popsicle whore, and I was her John. One-day granny came in to make the bed and busted me in the act with my sweaty little palms pressed purposefully against neighbor-girl’s pillowy pink trunk. When my parents got home from work that afternoon they decided, upon hearing the horrifying news that their only begotten son was a demented sex fiend, that they would take away as punishment for my lechery, my prized little red guitar. My heart pumped hard and fast, full of rage and panicked terror, this was my first run-in with the man over a young piece of ass, and only the beginning of a long and torrid history with loose women. Inside my head I said, “Fuck’em, I’ll blow the harp like Sonny Boy.” Now harmonica is a beautiful instrument, and I love few things more than to hear one played properly, but that was the longest two weeks of my life, and the only two weeks since that I’ve spent without a guitar handy, exceptin’ a couple of Superbowls back when I lost to Big Dougy, and the time I had to pawn it to get my car out of the city impound. When I got that little red guitar back that Thursday afternoon it felt better than cold cotton sheets on a hot August night.

Now I’ve never been big into the good book, but I sure loved going to vacation bible school each Sunday, mostly because I got to wear my fancy blue three piece suit, and partly because neighbor-girl was there, and her sweet little onion was beginning to ripen, talk about bringing tears to your eyes, hot damn, she could. My mom never did understand why in the middle of record summer heat an eight-year-old boy would want to dress up in his full-on Sunday go-to-meetin’ clothes. When all of the other kids wore shorts and tank tops, I was decked out to the hilt, I’d clip my tie on in the morning, wink at myself in the mirror, and think, “Shit-fire ol’man, you sure do cut a fetchin’shape!” The suit came from a Sears catalog, but to me something from somewhere else, anywhere else, was exotic, Illinois may as well have been Italy in my eight-year-old mind. It was 100% Grade “A” polyester, but with it on I felt like it was made of armor, and I was a slicked-out high-toned successful scholar of the open road. Sundays also meant fried chicken and lots of family coming over. I would sit in the corner of the kitchen with my greasy chicken leg and my tall attitude, watching and listening to my extended family mauliin’ the spirituals as grease dripped from my elbows. Silently I’d ponder why none of them could clap or tap feet on time, why were they always on the up count. All children are born with rhythm, even white babies, that’s a natural known fact, I had rhythm in spades and they were quietly trying to breed it out of me with these weekly anti-groove gatherings. Most Sundays I would eat alone on the front porch swing, trying not to hear the rhythm-less unmelodic quasi-musical racket resonating from inside the house. I would just swing and eat, daydream about my old friends from the road, my days as a field hand, the razor in my boot, and defiantly count to four over and over.