Stalking Lamartine
By Rick Berlin

On the corner of Lamartine + Paul Gore is a paint peeled 3-story clapboard duplex. You open a metal gate onto a slippery brick walk, bang your knee on a chair w/ a knife-split seat. You're 5 beers to the wind. Smiling into the yard you think: Bukowski'd feel at home here - discarded bikes, a plastic car charred by a cherry bomb, a garish yellow frame couch w/ partial cushions + two generic white plastic outdoor chairs too wet to sit down on. A Vespa (parts missing) hides under a hedge. A carton of Bud soggy from rain sags near the back door, remembering last night. A chair on a fire escape outside a 2nd story window waits for a midnight smoke. A plastic toy chime piano sleeps on the front porch railing. You plunk one finger onto a colored note. Boink.

After the Midway closes, or the Behan or the Gate the house lights blaze, shadows move behind pulled shades. Something's happening. A pre-wedding party for a former roommate. Lamartine regulars fill the house. A cyclist/photographer w/ a Polaroid takes extended exposures of the willing. A flashlight, a candle, a prism to make the result murky, haunting, honest. Each candidate holds still. The results litter the table. You want to steal your favorite. You do. Nobody seems to mind.

Once, in a downpour, everybody stayed outside, destroyed on beer + wine + grass, faces shiny from the rain. On July 4th they fired bottle rockets horizontally down Paul Gore. The girls beat the boys. Cars dodged streaking lights. Hispanic kids from next door snuck out in their pajamas to watch. You remember you buzzed once at 3 AM. No answer even though a light was on upstairs. You pissed under a tree thinking someone's fucking their brains out. In the basement a rehearsal PA, drums, amps, guitars is booked 7 nights a week. Tape decks record conversation + first time hi-hats for 2nd time drummers. In the living room a see-thru chlorine blue kick drum + floor tom stack in a corner unused. You switch on an electric organ (like the drive-by in Punch Drunk Love). When you try to remember your new song you're too high to play it. From his 3rd story window a singer irons out an unfinished tune. On the porch a girl murmurs a transient music journal. Her eyes are closed. Bread (the LP) revolves at 33. The soundtrack of 70's horror flick blinks out from a TV/video unit older than your parents.

The 'den' (they wouldn't call it that) shows off a found object stereo w/ swing-out speakers + a stack of vinyl. A plastic peacock w/ a rhinestone tiara stares at you from the trailer park paneled wall. The velveteen portrait of an African American naval officer firing a brass cannon makes no sense. Who painted this? Why? You sink down on the big L couch one leg slung over the neighboring arm of a chrome-n-black 60's office chair. Your beer hangs from unfeeling fingertips. The coffee table centers a pumpkin wearing Jackie O sunglasses. The ashtray overflows with stubble. Gum stuck photos of roommates past + present circle a doorframe.

In the kitchen a black + white photo of a JT Leroy boy/girl eyes you weirdly from wherever you stand. Who abused this kid? Is he somebody's West Virginia stepbrother? A mousetrap w/ a peanut butter decoy waits on a pantry shelf. 2 refrigerators chill beer. A blood red staircase carpet slinks up to rooms you rarely visit unless you live here. Rumor has a dorm fridge on the 3rd floor to hide stash from late night piranhas. Not to worry, there's plenty to go around - beer, Jack, vodka, a finger-smudged green gallon of Gallo.

You feel safe. Short term or long. Drunk stoned or sober. Never sure who's visiting or crashing or paying rent, who's who or what's what or for how long, but it doesn't matter. It's their place but it's yours too. Sort of. Unwritten laws keep assholes to a minimum. You hope you're not on any shit list, especially when you tear off another drunken rant. People seem to pay attention when you talk, like jazz cats who listen to play. Gay, straight, young, old, talented, untalented, employed or jobless ‚ it's cool at Lamartine. No agenda, no scores kept.

The unanswered question: Who's hooking up w/ whom? If there's a sexual subtext you can't suss it out. Rarely does it seem like a score is on the books when the night is in full swing. Or if it is, the moves are covert.

What they do find is connection. Eye to heart to brain to ear. Like a party w/out the verb. You half hope you can go back months later after leaving town + it'll still be there - the friends, the music, the booze, the vibe. But you know it won't last.The 'Family' will break up or shift into an untenable gear. Like a good idea gone bad unintentionally. For now it's cool. New romance gets a jump-start. Same-sex friends get tight w/out a homo scare. Music gets sparked. Bands collect dissolve re-form. Art fungus grows rampant. You're as sure of this house, these people, as you are of anything + you know if you tried to nail it, to make something of it, it'd slip through your fingers. You feel sad. You want to hang onto it like your best year in high school. You can't. It won't let you.