WAY TO THE FAIR
Short Story by SA Martinez

Josie up high, all smiles and weightless above me, is on her way down, now that she's had her fill of the air, her time in the sky. Me, I'm just back for the company, for the Fourth of July, for anything really. But already I can see the fireworks coming before they hit the sky.

Anna stands behind the screen door, yelling at me to be careful with Josie. "Not too high!" she yells. I'm pitching Josie in the air. Trying to imagine what it's like. What she feels.

"Look at me!" Josie screams rising up there, her hair held back in a bun. For the life of me I can't even remember how old she is. Sun in my eyes, I pitch her up to where she holds blind the glare. Up to where I can guage her descent. Reach to where the catch will be.

"Yeah," I say, "Look at you." Anna looks sleepy, running her fingers through her hair, standing behind the screen door, still. She folds her arms across her chest and leans against the frame. She's looking far away, as if I were leaving instead of coming back. I can't tell if she's shaking her head because my return has changed the picture once again, or because she's just shaking off some strange thought. Some thought of some once wonderful friend. In any case, it goes without saying, she is waiting for my "hello" - for my smile to lift.


I try to recall the first time Anna and I made it. We were high, I remember, and we laughed. I remember it being outside, me lifting and Anna straddling her legs tight around my waist. All the while me still standing, holding on. It was August and there were a few good hours left in the sun. I remember spinning around, stumbling over feet and falling backwards. Then the pain that came out of the helplessness, and the sudden earth and somehow her knees. Anna laughing her carefree laugh and saying, "You alright, honey, you alright?" My insides hurting like hell. Anna over me peering down from the sky all blue and open above. "I love you," she said, "I love you perfect."


Now this is us.

She steps away from the door to where I can barely see her. "Josie," she yells, "come on in now."

I swing Josie around and I'm about to set her down; and while there's still some sun, turn back for good - when I realize Anna's back at the door. I give up trying to make out her ways and set Josie down. There's goes the little one fluttering to the top of the stairs and turning, "See?" Josie says pointing to the ketchup on her shirt, "we had hot dogs."

Anna comes out of the doorway and into the half-light. She has a drink in her hand and it's now that I can tell that she's had more than a few. "Can you move your legs?" she asks, sexy-drunk, walking barefoot toward the porch rail, slow and loose, in cut-offs and an old tank top. Her hair down and her hips like sculpture. I can hear Billie Holiday's voice coming from inside the house. The song is "Sleepy Time Down South." My favorite. I'm as speechless as I am helpless. Like that time in August. "Don't answer right now," she says, raising her drink to her lips.


She's all easy speech and gaze. She cocks her head to one side and leans slightly over the rail. Her eyes are far-off and sunward. She sings along with Billie now, softly, almost in murmur, swaying small - and she looks as if she wants to cry but has forgotten how. "How does one toast the past?" she asks, looking beyond me, "do you know?"

I want something to say. Maybe a story to tell. But I don't know the words or what it takes to say them. "I don't know," I say. "I've no idea."

"Like this," she says, emptying the glass on the ground, looking at me as if I should know. "It's so simple."

Behind me, nothing but the sun and the breeze on my back. Her eyes, close now, finger to her lips. She looks like an angel hushing the world to silence. An angel in sunset bloom.

"Come up here," she says, eyes still closed. "Dance with me." I move toward her through the uncut grass. Take the steps one by one. Move behind her. Her head comes back. Her neck. We're facing the low sun, my arms around her waist, and for a moment it looks as if the sun is rising and we are on the other side of things. And it's as if I'm dreaming all this, my body drifting again. And if I close my eyes for a minute, I will be lost.


I am 51 now - I left Chatsworth Street when my body was keen and my hair black. Now I'm back for good, and after years stumbling for balance in the sway of alcohol, my liver, it turns out, has decided to plot against me.

I think back to the night I left. Drunk as usual. Night Train in my hand. Josie kneeling down in the center of the room crayoning flowers, while Anna and I argued. Josie mumbling loud enough for us to hear. That day I'd got a job guiding a horse at the county fair. That day I was trying to get Josie all worked up and anxious about coming with me. "Make ya famous Josie," I said. "How about that?" But she knew better, even then. She knew how the alcohol made me speak of things . And there she was - standing by me. Me pressing her tear streaked face into my greasy jeans. "You wanna come with Daddy, don't ya? Sure you do."

Anna was crying in the kitchen when I left. I was leaving her. And she knew it. And Josie was looking out the window at me staggering in the street, waving in the lamplight - "Come on now, if you're coming girl. Aint' got all night for this shit."


Now they are coloring the sky somewhere far off. Oranges and reds burst and balloon up above Chatsworth Street, up over the Woodmen Tower, fading toward the Missouri. And Anna, of all women, is settled, sunk in the sea. Where the sounds of the coherent cease. Where light cannot reach. Chatsworth woman.

I get up and walk toward the phonograph. Anna's father was a jazz fiend and he left her with the best; Monk, Peterson, Powell, Evans... I pick up Bill Evans' "Conversations with Myself" and put it on.


I go over to the screen door. Outside it's dark and clouds are moving in. The air smells of rain. I look out onto Chatsworth Street. The nervous side of town.

Rain on Chatsworth Street while I waltz with myself and drink from the bottle. Evans' "Blue in Green" on the phonograph. Outside a whino mines aluminum. He crushes cans and loves the sound of money beneath his feet. Up the street, my old people, their whiskey voices singing, make their way inside the Chatsworth bars.

I'm coughing and slipping backwards to where years ago me and cousin Sal stood trapped under the slant of Chatsworth neon. Fatherless boys with bandanas wrapped around our heads, alienated and needing the company of others. Wondering why our mothers took us from Pine Ridge to Chatsworth. Wondering why the pamphlets left at our door told us to be clean and to praise God. Needing to talk to other people, wanting to touch a girl because of the horny ways in our blood. Sal and I, needing guidance and not finding any, fled toward the warmth of the firewater world.


Early morning, almost dawn. Outside a half-rain falls and I watch Anna. She stirs. Her gaze is my way but it is not of this world. It is in the heavens, her gaze, and she looks like an angel again. An angel too far gone to see what she has chosen.


"She doesn't get much light," a voice says, hushed and vaguely familiar. And it's a while before I realize this voice is Josie's and a second more before I laugh, thinking it funny how oddly grown up she sounds.

"Well," I say, "What do we do?"

"There's always the fair," she says. Again I'm laughing and now Anna's laughing too as if she just remembered how. As if things were looking up for a change. Josie by my side. Her look for real. "Come on," she says, "I'll show you."


Light rain falling - shining on the grass in the half-light. I follow Josie, first with my eyes, then with the rest of me stretching long strides on my way to the fair. And after a while I see a sign that's supposed to read "Chatsworth Playground" - but where the word "Play" should be, the word "Fair" in white paint appears instead. I imagine my little Josie playing Tom Sawyer.

This all has got me thinking back. But the rain is good and the grass we walk on is green, and I know it sounds corny but it's a shade I haven't seen in years. Full and swelling like it is, even in this bad light.

"See," Josie says spinning around, palms up, "it's not over yet."

Sky clearing, clouds spreading thin in this not-so-alive-sun. I run to her and lift her like the bag of bones she is and pitch her into the air once again. Thinking, how, with luck, I could toss her out of here, to somewhere different.

"Not so high!" she screams, then cries with delight knowing that she can do nothing but enjoy her flight. I throw her higher and higher still. In the air, her hair loosens from its weak knot and falls, teasing the blue sky that expands above us. The wide blue sky, the sun has reached...finally. Rejoicing.

SA Martinez .......Talkin about ART

I love the visual. Who doesn't? The color. The movement. The mood. And when things are captured and frozen in time they become the most powerful images. And we try to describe how the visual makes us feel but generally we are at a loss for words & what it takes to say them. And for me that's what does it - when I'm like "Damn...that's fuckin.....the shit."

On the road I try to make it out to local galleries. One of the benefits of touring - to actually venture away from the venue and feel like you are really on tour of the country. And I have to say that there are dope spots everywhere. Aside from the obvious places: New York, LA...I'd have to say Portland was the most memorable. Some very nice artists up there.

This past year I had the good fortune to start collecting art. I realize that my idols (Pollack, Picasso, etc..) will never hold up my walls but that's OK. I know from searchin that master works from lesser knowns are hanging everywhere.

I grew up a good part of my youth in the Catholic Church - Our Lady of Guadalupe. The very heart & soul of South Omaha. The church was constructed around the turn of the century & had some huge mosaic frescoes. Church Art. Jesus, Joseph, The Virgin Mary...the whole nine. I also had to be an altar boy. It pretty much sucked. Kneelin most the fuckin time in that funky vestment - listening to what the gospel had to say according to such & such (Paul, the Corinthians and you can bet there was a John in there too). Communion had me holding the plate out for all those pasty morning tongues. But what sucked hardest was that I had to carry the cross in the procession. I had to hoist this huge ass crucifix attached to this big ass pole with my tiny little arms & anchor the female end of it onto this gold plated penis lookin thing. And this was one of those realistic lookin Jesus dudes - splayed out on the cross, spikes through the wrists, dried blood where the holes were, his gaze heavenward with this look-how-much-fuckin-pain-I'm-in expression. And during special services like Ash Wednesday the parishoners would line up & kiss his feet. Let's stop here. This is where shit just gets too carried away. I mean I'm not gonna kiss that shit. I'm nine years old. I'm scared. I don't need that drama.

Now in that scene, the church scene, you see a lot of suffering depicted (the stations of the cross, etc..). I can appreciate it too. In a lot of ways that's like the Old School. The church way back in the day commissioned artists to depict bible scenes and these artists honed their craft to a science creating very realistic images passed down depicted again & again with very few changes. Church art is arguably the most recognizable.

Alright....let's fast forward to how I began collecting art. During the making of the Down video - we were shooting in a warehouse right next to this place called Artcore Gallery. During a break in the filming I made my way over to the spot. What first struck me were these beautiful figures, these carved colored figures - then I realized they were the dreaded christ figure. "Holy Shit! Jesus is that really you? You don't look so bad. You look kind of fly." And he did. He was done up in all these cool colors: cactus greens, sky blues, pinks, mettallic grays, etc.. On some he was stuck all over with rose thorns, another had these colored baubles glued all over him, and another had all these cactus spines sticking out of him. I could go on. There were over 20 Jesus figures and they were all so unigue. The artist is named Michelle Conor. She was raised in Japan, lived for a time in LA & now resides in Mexico. I thought she was really cool & I really enjoyed looking at her work. She transformed this tired looking Jesus figure & gave him new life. Bravo.

This other artist I began collecting is Juan Perdiquero. He has this technique which I can't even begin to explain. He takes photographic paper & coats it with this thick ass ink and....fuck it. I'm not even gonna try because I know he has labored hard coming up with this style and me deconstructing it is just gonna fuck it up all to hell. So fuck it. I will say his work does have a strong Spanish Baroque flavor though. I saw his work while in New York at this spot called the Alternative Museum. Michelle mentioned that she had work on display there so naturally I wanted to check it out. When I saw the exhibhit the one piece that stood out most was this piece called Aparicion III by Juan Perdiquero. Now that piece is hanging in my living room. It is a spooky eerie portrait of this androgynous looking humanoid. I also thought it looked like an end of the century Mona Lisa or even possibly something much more ancient. Otherworldly. The gaze....Damn, everytime I look at this image the gaze is just penetrating. Its cold & strange & seductive all at the same time. Tres cool.

Another artist that I've been collecting is a dude by the name of Randy Galaska. I've been fortunate in that I've met both Michele & Juan (even got to check out Juan's studio in Brooklyn) - but Randy I know on a deeper level. He's my homey. I first saw his work back in 1990 when a mutual friend took me to his show. I was like, "Damn. He's bad." I can't really remember one specific piece - there were so many that it was overwhelming. And they were dope. My friend Jeff was like "Yep, that's Randy. He can produce." I was like, " Fuck yeah he can." I was amazed. Not at their existence (although I have yet to see anything like them) but rather at the fact that he wasn't much older than I was and he had done all these cool assemblage tribal like shapes and I was just trying to use the word "homing" in a rhyme. However, it wasn't till a couple of years ago that I actually hung with Randy. I was swingin through Omaha visiting my friend Tony at his skate shop when he goes, "Yeah I just gave a bunch of broken decks to Randy to use." When I go, "Galuska? What's he doin?" "Just makin fat art," Tony says. Naturally I wanted to check him out so we cruised over. When we got to his pad I immediately noticed that his style had really evolved. He had come into his own & had markedly developed his vision. His colors were much more vibrant, his lines were cleaner and tighter. His shit was boomin. "Yo Randy, how much you want for these?" I saw him as a renegade hip-hop producer. Instead of piecing together his art with James Brown or Roy Ayers samples, he was using the deconstructed skateboard decks of Kareem Cambell, Mark Gonzalez, Steve Bara & Tony Hawk. There is so much street vibe in his art. Very young. Very dope.

Well enough about art. Simply put - I love it. It's just like the world. Just as magical and I can't get enough.