Tag: drugs

Tarquinius W. Peterson’s Fantastical Guide to: Nighthawks by Edward Hopper

April 10, 2018 / M E Lucas / 0 Comments

Welcome to Tarquinius W. Peterson’s Fantastical Guide to the World of Art.

This week we are uncovering …

Nighthawks by Edward Hopper 1942

An Edward Hopper, not Dennis Hopper as mentioned last week (he was six-years-old when Edward painted Nighthawks), I don’t know who mentioned Dennis, he’s an actor for crying out …

So, Edward, and the Nighthawks.

To get us started, we asked two questions last week:

Who are these people?
Why is there no door?

It’s a known fact that the portrayed café customers and staff are unemployed actors, all are merrily going about their business (ah, I see where a possible Dennis Hopper connection comes in), but how did everyone else get in? It’s not obvious, particularly with no entrance door from the street. A question on the cracked lips of many aged art critics.

To answer this, I’m drawn to a dream once had sitting in the Nighthawks café speaking to Josephine Nivison, Edward Hopper’s wife. She told me:

‘Eddie painted a door on the left of the painting, beautiful glass and curved like the other corner window, but in a fit of rage I took a saw to it and hacked it off.’

Dumbfounded I sat in silence and we finished our mint-chocolate malt shakes. Then she piped up again:

‘I sawed the door off because an advertising deal fell through. Phillies Cigars agreed a $50 dollar deal to have their billboard over the café, which was brilliant. National Biscuit Company [Nabisco] however, reneged on a deal after Eddie had painted their Ritz Crackers logos everywhere on the entrance door and the “Open and Closed” sign. It would have taken him ages to repaint, so I thought sod it and cut it off. Cheesy fries, Tarquin?’

The dream became messy following my answer.

In 1942 the world fought its second war. The Americans were enjoying life after the thirties depression and didn’t want to sail off to fight the Nazis. Why sail away when they could monetize on advertising in the new reinvigorated laissez-faire society.

Josephine and Eddie failed in their attempts to ‘sell’ more ad space on Nighthawks. Borden’s household glue: Elmer’s Glue-All, was to appear on a shop over the street, Edward sketched several giant “Elmer the Bull” images as window decorations, but a conversation with his stalwart vegetarian friend John Harvey Kellogg [of cornflakes fame] convinced him otherwise.

Despite setbacks, the painting directed itself on a path to success. Phillies delighted in the outcome, their product placement exists to today and they didn’t have to renew any contract, thousands of visitors to the Art Institute of Chicago, where the painting now hangs, see their cigars every year.

The mass of advertising proposals on the café, and shops opposite, were in motion. Josephine had paperwork drawn up with several advertisers, but the Institute made the Hopper’s an offer they couldn’t refuse: $3,000. Minus taxes and costs that came to $1,971, still a nice payload in the 1940s. The deals for the other ads fell through and the shops remained like brand new premises awaiting sale, fortunately without agents’s details in the window.

With Phillies cigars gaining prominence with their ROI, others jumped on the coffee shop trolley. A great deal of artists and authors were and are still touched by Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. The despairing mood of the painting has attracted interest within creative departments of the music, theatre, TV, and the film industries.

Famous film director Ridley Scott first encountered Edward Hopper when he found a collection of the artist’s initial sketches for ‘Night Hawks’, hidden in a box of old issues of Der Spiegel at his local carboot sale in Middlesborough. These sketches included countless advertising mockups for billboard’s and variations on window ads. They, and Hopper’s mood, later influenced the flickering neon advertising backdrops of future Los Angeles street scenes in the film Blade Runner.

Undeterred by media interest, a successful conclusion never arrived to explain absence of an entrance doorway. Several critics suggested the doorway was best placed in the corner, but Hopper struggled to “do 3D curves” and omitted it. Many think the door was removed because it obscured the central customer’s face; although, the removal resulted in an unfeasibly large sheet of glass.

Either way, the great T.W. Peterson, although disregarding the mullion of the curved window not lining through with the stall-riser panel, and the high square footage of glazing, attempted to prove existence of a removed segment of the painting.

With permission of the Art Institute of Chicago, I examined Edward Hopper’s original masterpiece in great depth. Measurements are around three by five foot, a fair sized canvas, which needed two people to handle.

Calling on Vinny, the Institute’s security officer, for added muscle, corners of the cheap pine frame were grabbed and the canvas turned. It showed plenty of tape and staples, but of more importance the frame’s centre rail wasn’t centred. Josephine’s truth revealed itself in a side-length of fashioned timber nailed between top and bottom rails; the original side rail she once hacked-off. The frayed canvas edge showed signs of rough cutting and there, beneath rusty staples, part-image of a timber door frame with the unmistakable colours and pattern of Nabisco crackers.

Proof that the original canvas had been longer and that a separate entrance door existed!

Thanks to one of the world’s leading biscuit brands, one of America’s most iconic paintings had been truncated by sixteen and two third percent due to a failed advertising deal.

The consequences on the painting, apart from the reduction in revenue and ‘real life’ colours to the other shopfront elevations, is the covering up of the policeman. You may ask …

‘What policeman?’

and

‘What relevance does he have to do with art critique?’

Edward T.J. Hopper (later adopted by James T. Kirk as T.J. Hooker) wanted to be a policeman as a young boy, but later changed his mind after partaking in too many drunken and drug-crazed art college parties. It is no surprise then that in the second window from the left, above the shopfronts, is the ghost of a painted out uniformed cop on stakeout duty. Shown along with the cop’s paper bag with coffee and sandwich takeout [note: the removed diner logo].

Back to my dream with chips and cheese and Edward Hopper’s wife. Ms Nivison alluded, while squishing handfuls of molten yellow goo, that another character approached the ‘later to be axed’ coffee shop doorway.

Which brings us back to the title ‘Nighthawks’. It is well accepted the terminology relates to the so-called late night coffee drinkers inhabiting the diner, further investigation of these actors-cum-artists models-cum-drug dealers unveiled more:

The guy with his back turned is a stooge in the scene, happy with his glass of milk, handgun concealed within his jacket pocket, ready for action should the need arise.

The guy with the cigarette is the hawker, the dealer, he doesn’t smoke, he can’t even hold a cigarette to save his life. Also, his nose is not like a hawk’s beak.

Critic Jean-Luc Cliffman once claimed the hawker was a wealthy owner of a falconry in the Catskills and over the years resembled his birds of prey; similar to a dog owner’s semblance. I don’t believe this was the case, certainly the owner of a big hooter, but a hawk, that’s too far off the birdseed.

The red-head broad is fiddling with a packet of grass, curious of its recreational effects. Many believe it to be a sandwich, few say that’s nonsensical because it’s a green coloured cellophane wrapped package and she doesn’t have a plate or serviette to hand.

The café supervisor is pretending to wash-up a glass in the under-counter sink, while keeping his eye on the (now blended-away) undercover police officer in the first floor window.

These characters assume their roles, but do not gel together as they once did earlier in the paintings history.

The last ‘nighthawk’ is the lost character. The mysterious person no longer in the scenario who got the chop when Josephine took a saw to hack of the failed Ritz Cracker door ads.

Commercialism aside, the missing feather of this artistic puzzle is not a nighthawk at all, he’s an everyday punter. Yes, they are night hawks, if the perspective taken illustrates simple lives of individuals in an all-night diner café.

Tarquinius W. Peterson goes deeper and further with the fantastical guide. Astonishingly, I can tell you our since eradicated feathered trilby wearer, who almost entered the joint that night, was a regular Johnny out to score a ganja fix.

Craving for marijuana in 1942, driven by success in the stock exchange, pushed the recreational sector into overkill, ahead of La Guardia Committee Report on New York’s marijuana problem released two years later. Sharp-suited regular Johnny needed his high and planned to buy from our fedora’d gentleman with the large nasal appendage; the late night drugs hawker, the Night Hawker.

The Crystal Method

November 21, 2017 / M E Lucas / 0 Comments

A Short Story – 1710 Words.

The Crystal Method

It’s raining; it always rains on pickup day. Especially on this estate, and especially onto these blocks of flats. No wonder they are all coloured grey, any colour has long washed away. It’s as if God himself is pissing through the clouds onto this scum, this rundown neighbourhood of degenerates. The rain is falling so hard, my windscreen wipers are doing their best, but I can hardly see a damn thing. If Mikey steps off the pavement, the first I’ll know is when his face bounces off the streaky glass in front of me.

Heavy rain is perfect for my day: the noise; the overcast light; the fact most people stay indoors, out of it (in both senses of the meaning). The only downside is they can see me coming, the lone cob-head out for his fix. Of course, I’m never the only purchaser climbing these towers to nirvana, I just hope the rest stay in bed this morning.

In my regular college gear: stylish trainers, striped trackies, zipped up waterproof sports hoodie and well-stocked backpack, I feel out of place in this ghetto. There are no on-the-beat constables it’s a strict no-go area, any skirmishes dealt with armed riot police.

I pull into a parking space, and out of horizontal sheets of water steps Mikey. By the time he gets to the car he’s soaked. Grabbing my backpack and pulling over my hood, I step out and greet him.

‘Hiya, Mikey. What’s with the shit weather?’

‘Fuck knows, man, but I still gotta check you boys in da pissin’ rain. I could get pneumonia, or somethin’, and no one give a shit.’

‘Great seeing you, Mikey, even in this shower.’

Two years I’ve known Mikey ever since picking up my first fix of Cobalt; how naïve I was back then. We embrace for a second as old friends. A Costa Rican illegal, short but stocky, with a big smile and matching muscles, he’s one of Faquesta’s chaperones.

‘I’m told you gonna see the big man,’ Mikey says and pats me down. ‘You gotta present or somethin’ in that bag?’

‘Nope, just college stuff and my lunch,’ I say, knowing he’ll check it anyway.

He does.

‘A can of coke? That stuff’ll rot your teeth, man.’

‘Yeah, and the Cobalt’ll do the rest.’

We laugh and he finishes searching and frisking.

‘Come on, let’s get out of this shit,’ he says, and jogs off the only way a body builder can, with the look he’s shat his pants.

‘Man these places stink,’ Mikey says entering the grey concrete underpass. He’s right, puke, piss, shit, and something burnt, but least it’s dry. We leave a trail of raindrop splashes, as the weather drips from us, and head for the lift core. Ubiquitous neon lights flash at different rates along our route. A shriek echoes in the distance, it doesn’t faze Mikey, and just makes me glad that after today I won’t need to come back to this anti-social cesspit.

My unintentional dawdle means by the time I get to the lift door Mikey holds it open.

‘Hurry up,’ he says, in a muffle of jacket, held over is mouth and nose. The reek stabs at me as I enter the lift, and I raise a damp sleeve to my nose to filter the worst of it.

Not a millimetre of the metal lift car lining is spared from spray-paint and graffiti, floor buttons likewise, however, Mikey finds one for the top floor. We say nothing as we rise. The paint covering the light dulls the lumpy and sticky contents of the floor. A camera hanging from the ceiling is the only item not defaced; Faquesta knows we’re on our way.

Out of the lift, up a flight of dark stairs to an access door, where we find another associate there to frisk me a second time. When I finish my explanation about the college books and my lunch, Mikey looks into an eyeball recognition camera and the door opens. We’re all out on to the roof, back into the rain and taking deep breaths of fresh air.

Ahead is the curved-roofed glass structure I’ve heard so much about. The Crystal penthouse suite with unobstructed views over the city, inaccessible, and built without planning council approval, but who’d object to Faquesta. We all trot across the roof to sliding doors, more recognition and we’re inside a dry draft lobby–cameras are evident as are faces behind glass walls.

‘This way gentlemen,’ a cute long-blonde-haired girl instructs us. We follow. A semi-automatic hangs from her shoulder; the autocratic state of Faquesta.

We’re ushered into Faquesta’s inner domain and there with the backdrop of the city skyline he sits, puffing on a large Havana and gloating in his ill gotten wealth; the raw face of abuse and gangland scarring. This old-school man had not got to where he was without a number of scraps.

‘So, my friend, you want to work for me,’ the man says, straight to business, ‘is that right?’

Faquesta, sitting; body guards standing either side, poised with fingers on triggers of similar semis to the girl; me, between Mikey and another henchman, standing three in a row.

‘Actually, my offer is for you to work for me,’ I say, cutting him dead.

There is a pause until Faquesta laughs out loud in a cloud of cigar smoke, revealing his nerves.

‘Look around you, my friend. You are in my Crystal, surrounded by my men. I am Faquesta, I’m the law and I work for no one, but myself.’

‘That’s a shame,’ I say, and reach into my bag.

‘Stop!’ One henchman shouts and raises his gun.

‘Relax,’ I continue, hand raised slowly dipping into my open bag ‘it’s just a can of coke. Your hospitality is lacking, Faquesta, I had to bring my own drink.’

‘You’re not impressing me, my friend. If you have nothing else to add, my men will help you off the premises; and it’s a long way down.’

I move behind Mikey as I talk. ‘There’s no need for that, my friend.’

Obscured from view, my hand reaches into Mikey’s jacket pocket and retrieves the handgun I placed there during our embrace in the pouring rain. Before anyone realises my pick-pocketing skills, I’ve raised the gun and shot one of the gunman in the chest. As he goes down and everyone kicks into action, the second bodyguard befalls the same chest shot; armour plated shells make a real mess. The henchman raises his firearm as I grab Mikey and place the barrel of my gun against his temple.

‘Drop it, or Mikey dies,’ I say, pulling Mikey to the glazed roof and city backdrop.

‘What the fuck, man!’ Mikey says.

‘You’ve just made a massive mistake, my friend,’ Faquesta stands, his cigar smokes, as if he pulled the trigger.

The girl bursts into the room with her weapon poised to shoot. My back is to the window and Mikey acts as my shield to the others.

I whisper, ‘Get ready to run, Mikey.’ Then out loud I say, ‘No mistake, Faquesta.’

‘So, why not shoot me?’ Faquesta says.

‘Because I’ve done my homework, my friend. My intell informs me you’ve full body armour underneath that designer suit, besides, this coke …’ I begin to shake the can in front of Mikey my arm across his chest. ‘… this is for you, mind the fizz when you open it.’

All eyes on the can of drink as it spins across the room.

My gun flicks back.

The can lands under Faquesta’s desk.

I shoot the glass behind me.

In expectation, he jumps away from his desk.

The plated shells do the damage on the reinforced glass, it shatters and a sudden cold and moisture laden draft washes in.

Nothing happens to the decoy can as it rolls to a stop.

Cubes of glass scatter on the flat roof and over the edge of the building’s parapet wall.

I let go of Mikey.

A little confused with recent events he hesitates, but I don’t. I’m through the opening, running fast into lashing rain, along the edge of the roof towards the fire escape staircase, trying not to slip. Mikey turns, still between me and the girl’s gun, and draws his revolver.

‘After him!’ Faquesta shouts, Mikey follows at last, the whipping rain hinders any chance of a shot.

Timing is perfect. As one of Faquesta’s men opens the door, my speed carries me through. A kick to the door smashes the guy in the face and topples him over the stair balustrade. I jump through the door and it slams on the rebound behind me. A dead weight thumps down the stairs below. I turn and take a peek through a gap in the door. Mikey is waddling towards me, soaked and pissed-off. Faquesta is frantic, shouting at the girl behind the missing piece of his cracked Crystal.

Mikey enters the staircase fist first with his gun held tight and dripping water. A quick grab and I’ve pulled him in with arm twisted behind his back.

‘You took your time, Mikey,’ I say.

‘He’s gonna kill you, man.’

‘I doubt that,’ I say and let him go. ‘Let’s take a peek shall we.’

As I push the door ajar again, the drizzling rain continues as does Faquesta’s ranting. The girl and another one of his henchman climb through the window frame on to the roof and into the downpour.

‘That can of coke!’ I say.

‘It wasn’t coke was it?’

‘Nope.’

Chemicals are my thing, and I don’t mean just cooking up crystal meth. Several rocks of calcium carbide, drop of water and a good shake. Faquesta’s cigar will do the rest.

As the two run towards us we hear a muffled pop and watch the ensuing fireball explosion. Faquesta and his Crystal penthouse are blow to pieces, spraying glass and contents high into the air, out over the estate, along with the henchman. The girl clings to a parapet and claws ruffled and bloodied back on to the roof before collapsing.

With my main competitor spread all over this shitty estate, I turn to my old pal.

‘Looks like you’re out of a job, Mikey. How’d you like to come and work for me?’

Words: 1,710.

Wings

November 25, 2015 / M E Lucas / 1 Comment

A flash fiction writing post composed for December, from the prompt “Jump”. Spoiler: Contains profanity! Just so you know.

Wings

School. Teaching, it’s just not for me. Uniforms and rules: no room to manoeuvre, no creativity, no individualism. No understanding. No understanding of complex minds reaching out for help and the result: warnings, detention, exclusions, then; expel the little shit before he kills us all with his deviant attitude of defiance.

Expel the little shit. The boy has little respect for authority, has no respect for authority.

They want me to fall on line, well I can’t. How can I? How can I follow the nerds. There’s no room in the line; no desire to be in the line. The line doesn’t need me either, no desire at the line of desks to share knowledge with an expressive individual. Does not compute with the scholars of dullness, the blinkered academic parent pleasers.

‘What do you mean you got expelled?’ My parents views of a their failing offspring. ‘You prick, you’re a useless little prick.’ Really? That’s really what you think. ‘What will the neighbours say? Father Joseph? My boss, oh no, he can’t find out, I’ll never be able to show my face.’

What?

Fuck the neighbours, fuck the church, fuck your oily grumpy shit of a boss, and fuck you, Mum. Fuck you. I’m leaving.

An’ I did. I left.

I got a job.

I didn’t get a job.

I couldn’t get a job.

There are no fucking jobs. There are no fucking jobs for school dropouts, school throwouts. No jobs for homeless creatives. No jobs and no money. And no one. There’s no one to help and there’s… no one.

A broken window, on a broken street. It’s a glorious gateway to a new home, for now. The dust and dirt, the shards of glass, the pigeon shit. The pigeon shit, my god, everywhere, pigeon shit. Nothing worse, except the needles.

Except the needles weren’t the worst to start with.

I got a girlfriend.

I did, I gotta girlfriend.

She had needles, she had drugs, she had crazy eyes that watered with ecstasy. And fear. Shelley had crazy blue eyes. I never saw her normal eyes, just the crazy ones. I had crazy eyes too, probably. Heroin: analgesic heaven. Euphoric narcotic. Narco euphoria. To heaven and hell and heaven on an endless circling trip.

The first time was the weirdest. The last time was the weirdest too.

The last time.

Shelley flew. Shelley flew away, on the fix of fixes. She dissolved into the numbness, the swirling, beautiful numbness. She dissolved. I know because I dissolved next to her. On the pigeon shit carpet. She escaped to the bright lights, the cloud of peace, the cloud of forgetfulness. Escaped from the shit.

When I returned, she stayed. I returned to find her cold. Cold and bubbled with vomit. Cold. The stink of puke. The pigeons pecking at the regurgitated cubes of food. She didn’t return.

‘Get away from her you fuckers,’ I shouted. ‘Get the fuck away from her.’

And they did.

And so did I.

I left her.

I had to, I couldn’t…

I just couldn’t.

They’d blame me, throw the book at me, throw a punch or two for good measure. They’d lock me up. Prison. Prison nutters, they’d knife me for killing Shelley. I didn’t kill her, she fell, from the clouds of heaven. She lost her grip on the clouds and slipped to hell, with the pigeons. She slipped with the pigeons. They won’t believe me.

I had to leave her, I just had to.

I couldn’t…

And then I’m here. High above the ball-freezing water running fast below me. Deep, darkest brown and quick. And ball-bloody-freezing. Hands cold on the frost covered cast iron, gripping hard out of necessity. The loud rattling thunder of early morning trains shakes me, I grip tighter.

The rusting rivets of metal beneath my feet twist my ankles, I shuffle on the edge. Perched on the centre span of the railway bridge, with the pigeons. I’m a pigeon. A bloody pigeon. If I’m perching like a pigeon, can I fly like a pigeon? Fly like a fucking puke-pecking pigeon. Fly like Shelley.

‘Take me away, Shelley,’ I shout, competing with the rumbling rolling stock. ‘Take me away from the fucking pigeon shit!’

And then she’s here, Angel Shelley, flying towards me with wings of white. Silky white feathers, strong wings keeping her effortlessly afloat. Strong white silky wings, not shitty, dirty pigeon grey wings. Not like my wings – dusty, grubby, broken wings holding me down, keeping me on this ledge of guano. Not like hers. Not like the glistening angelic form in front of me.

Surely, on a flight from heaven; she made it to fucking heaven. Those crazy blues made it to heaven and now they beckon me, those crazy, crazy beautiful eyes; a spell they cast. The fuzzy feeling in my back, the shredding of grey, the bloom of white. She’s conjured me wings. Wings to match hers. Pure, magnificent, strong.

I jump.

Words: 827.

Image: Unknown.

Edited from an Original Post on:

Scribblers Forum Thread – Flash Fiction 314 – Jump