frowns need friends too, it’s true.
Sep 02
Literature, Review, promotion, writing sam pink 63 Comments
sam pink has a manner of courting obscenities, portraying human transgression as consolation. this appeals to me, i had to get a copy. sam pink is nice and sent me one. i finished Frowns need Friends Too and didn’t know where to start. i tried to put my finger on the sense of deja vu i took from his detached style: like irregular thought, irregular thought, irregular thought, bombshell and/or sinker! amusing/awkward title, irregular thought, irregular thought, bombshell and/or sinker! awkw..you get it. i mean, you’ve read sam pink around, right? his patterns are present and sometimes broken but the general output is ‘things you think but do not say and things you’ve not allowed yourself to think because you never had the words to correctly come off abhorrently wrong in the appropriate manner.’
after a couple weeks (yeah i’ve been putting this off) the deja vu feel clicked. i hadn’t read sam pink’s style elsewhere so much before per say as i had actually known sam pink’s writing, personified. back in high school, around ‘95, we had named him sloth. sloth was obsessed with gg allin, murder junkies, all things porn, which sounds normal for a young outcast coming into adulthood (pun intended). sloth’s prized possessions were three black and white printouts (1) a girl fucking a horse (or vice-versa, how is that properly stated?) (2) a girl fucking (again, ?) a coke can (3) a ‘normal’ deep throat closeup. sloth kept those three papers folded lovingly in his back pocket for an entire summer. he would enthusiastically shove them in anyone’s face who happened to approach our derelict crew. of course, this was before the entire world had access to the intranets and such porn was passé by kindergarden.
sloth had an extreme slouch, moved super slow and twisted his unkempt hair constantly with steady twists and pulls until patches of bald appeared all over his head and his parents decided he needed professional help. the day sloth announced he was officially schizophrenic we were all walking to steal beer from the anheuser-busch factory just past the main thruway of town. sloth was his normal quiet self, walking with our pack, occasionally laughing his signature crazy cackle laugh – sometimes at something someone said, sometimes at nothing any of us could actually hear. we passed the autoparts store (on the main thruway, constant steady traffic) which had a picnic table for employee breaks and sloth said ‘so guess what? i’m fucking schizophrenic and my entire life is going to be shit!” he jumped atop the empty picnic table, pulled down his pants and began to give all passersby a masturbatory show.
we all laughed at first then fear of impending cop doom set in and we coaxed him down and ran for the shelter of the train tracks. unfazed or maybe he had already forgot his public wanking, he stopped on the tracks to have a smoke. most of the guys, tired of his antics, kept going onward toward the beer factory. a couple of us stopped to have a smoke with sloth, weary to leave him behind alone. he began to chain weeds together into a crown of sorts while absently talking about his little sister and how he would watch cartoons with her and wonder what her tiny face would look like if he cut off her oxygen. we were used to sloth saying horrible things and figured it purely for attention. now we wondered if he had always been serious, letting us in on darker things we had yet to accept as real. at the same time we felt like we knew him well, some in our group had known him since preschool. he was a good/fun guy but at the same time we couldn’t ignore the explicit raw insanity coming out of his mouth.
reading sam pink is much like hanging out with sloth. his words are uncomfortable, a little horrific but at the same time familiar – somehow chummy so you’re never quite sure if you should be only a little embarrassed or totally appalled at yourself by enjoying them. in all things i say fuck it, don’t over think such matters. go buy frowns need friends too and/or check out sam pink september 11th at dit fest. get in touch with your obscenities, take them for a stroll to the beer factory, steal a case off an unlocked van, take a seat on the train tracks and drink till you forget how normally rotten we all are.
(one of my personal favorites below for your eyeball pleasure)
neanderthal clitoris
The worst position to be in is to have someone care about you more than you care about yourself.
The worst position to be in is to be that person.
The worst position is to be a person.
Everyone needs to hate someone else.
Being that someone is as good a goal as any.
You are my favorite failure and I am too destroyed to get off the couch, I guess I will sleep on the couch without brushing my teeth.
Everyone needs to hate being a sleepy-failure with a goal but I want to be buried in a coffin, holding another human that died on the same day as me, both of us wearing crowns made out of construction paper with plastic jewels glued onto them.
Ouch, this is hurting me.
I made the sign of the cross and vomited on my feet.
Ouch.
The worst position is the one you began with, and then continued to make worse.
