Organ City

IN ORGAN CITY, THE TRIP NEVER ENDS. People pump through the streets and alleys with robotic lockstep.

Everywhere I go, I think about Organ City. Rain falls on my face, cold and brutal. Buildings seem to be, at the same time, the color of a glowing syrup of bright red vomit and a sort of dripping shit-brown.

I think about this as I lay on the floor in my room, looking at the ceiling, trying to fall asleep. I close my eyes and try to dream.

I open my eyes. I can’t open my eyes. I try, but I can only get them halfway open. Does this mean that I’m only half blind? Through the slits in my eyes, the world looks orange. I stand up. My back hurts. I’ve been sleeping on the floor for the past few months and I’m really feeling it now. My throat hurts too. I don’t want to swallow but it happens. It feels like I’m swallowing a rock.

I lay a hand on the wall, to steady myself.

I still can’t get my eyes more than halfway open. The white wall looks orange. My hand on the wall looks orange. I need to open my eyes. I struggle. No luck. I try to force them open with my fingers. Nothing doing.

I call for Frank.

“Come downstairs,” he says.

I somehow make my way out of the bedroom and I go downstairs.

There is a pig in the kitchen. The pig has a chef’s hat on. He smiles at me.

“You’re not Frank,” I say.

“True,” the pig says.

There’s a metal pot boiling on the stove. It smells like noodles. I love spaghetti. I’d be interested to see how a four-legged animal cooks the stuff. I do notice a chair near the stove.

“Give me a lift?” the pig asks. I bend down and pick him up. He wiggles like a baby. I set him on the chair.

“Whoa,” he says.��“A little too much touch there, sailor.”

I don’t know what he’s talking about. I simply put both of my hands underneath his belly and lifted.

Welcome to Organ City.

I named him Wiggles. We found a spot in the woods near a lake. I sat on some rocks and put a fishing pole in the water. Wiggles sat on his belly and stared at the water.

“Ah, but what price sanity?” Wiggles asked.

“This, apparently,” I said. Then, “You know, being a pig, it would be a great satire if we ran you as a presidential candidate.”

“Stupid,” Wiggles said, “it’s been done. Chicago ’68. Pigasus. Remember?”

“I wasn’t born then.”

“History, my friend, history.”

Wiggles, you asshole. You could’ve played along. Why make me feel stupid?

I stood up and picked up a heavy rock. It took two hands to lift. I held the rock over Wiggles’ head, grunting underneath the weight.

Wiggles sighed. “You don’t have the guts.”

I let go of the rock. It fell on Wiggles’ head. It was flattened and blood was coming out from all sides of the rock. Some of the blood ran through the dirt and rocks and into the lake. Water near the shore had turned pink.

The blood mixing the water. For a second, just the briefest second, my dreams and the real world become one experience.

Organ City is as real as Philadelphia. As real as Birmingham.

I walk around Philadelphia and suddenly a tank rolls by and I’m in Organ City.

For example: I’m in Philly, walking to Clark Park to meet a girl. I’m in a neighborhood close to the Hydrogen Jukebox house. A lot of artists share houses in this neighborhood, but, like most of West Philadelphia, there’s a lot of poverty. I walk by a rundown brick apartment building and there’s a black guy sitting on the steps. As I walk past him, he says, “You got a cigarette?”

I happen to be smoking one, but I’ve only got a couple left for the rest of the night. So I tell him I ain’t got one as I walk past him.

“Yeah sure,” he says. “Not for no nigger you don’t.”

I start to laugh. Softly, underneath my breath at first, then hysterically.

As I walk, the world around me becomes Organ City. I’m carrying the Mouse Queen on my back. Her arms are around my neck. Her face is next to mine, cheek to cheek. Her whiskers and the hair on her arms tickle. The Mouse Queen starts to laugh with me. “If he only knew,” she said, “that you barely have subway fare.”

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