Eating Bacon With the Cocaine Cowboys of Manchvegas

Sometimes I think of Kags

I’ve been meaning to write to you— I’ve been sitting on this story and scheming how to tell you it— my life has become the poem and the poem has become my life and I have given it all to the muse you know? To tell the truth in the way I can, to write to you lovely folks and paint you the picture of this life that I’m living I have to change the names and mix some things up to make the narrative sing and to protect the innocent and the criminally connected. I have never had an interest in a literal timeline of the moments with exact details and things because those are the deets that live in my journals and notes apps and maybe long after I die y’all can get the straight facts, but for now I write to you and tell you these stories because I’m out here and living it. Even right now as I write this, I am in a camper with someone I didn’t know a week ago parked in Kansas staying up through the night and to tell you about my last week in Manchester. Times are strange. This is the third part to the Manchester Trilogy part one How I Lost My Front Tooth In Manchester, New Hampshire and part two Woe to the Vanquished

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The boys had left me up in Manchester, New Hampshire as the final show of the New England Renaissance was going down the following Wednesday and Milo threw me on the bill to add some draw and push to the event. Since I’ve passed on the Renaissance to the new lieutenants holding the front line back in New Jersey, I’ve taken an ambassador role and pop into scenes and do a show or help in different ways I can and so I stayed behind in this sleepy New England. It was the next night when Milo had a date over from Instagram. Social evolution is crazy. The priests were getting all the ladies but left behind a horde of bastard kids whose mother’s wanted pieces of the church to take care of them so that came to an end and then the rock stars and musicians came in but they got carried away being so inundated with whatever they wanted that they started chasing literal fucking kids so what was left? There was nowhere on anyone’s bingo cards that making memes could get you laid but here we were— the meme admins will inherit the Earth.

So I hit up Kags: the coke man of Manchester, the pit bull of Manchganistan, and one of the sweetest souls I had ever come across. We both were rough around the edges, brash and prone to bouts of debauchery but we had some deep masculine connection; some animal ancestral song that we both knew the words too but now only hummed it to pass the time, as if we both had haunted the same theaters of anguish and pain. We were the pall bearers, we were the granite stoned obelisks of families and relationships and friends but around each other when no one was looking we could show the cracks in our foundations and tell the war stories of when we almost came crashing down— spreading the legend of the men in our lives who suffered in silence and admiring how they said so little as they walked through fire. We hoped we could walk through flames as tranquil and unwavering too.

Before I even had his car door closed he tossed me a gram of some of that white lightning and we were off to howl at the moon and follow the sinister calls of our own animal natures. What normies fail to understand is that the poet is outside of the bounds of typical expectations— that the normal behaviors that would be aborrant to polite society are all open possibilities to get you closer to truth or vision or maybe just maybe placing you at the crossroads to catch the afterglow of some ethereal American sonnet echoing somewhere between the dive bars and the trap houses just waiting to be channeled even if just for a moment.

We hit Elm Street like a scud missile bouncing up and down its bars and alleyways aiming for nirvana but finding the bathroom stalls instead. When I first wrote of Kags, I was worried how he would react to the story— I changed his name and gave him as much anonymity as I could but he loved it. The way Kags walked down Elm Street, you would swear he was some form of royalty— everyone came to greet him: the business owners, the patrons, the homeless dudes in the alleyway. In between each handshakes were transactions or he would just buy drinks or hand money to those who needed it. No one had elected him there was no ceremony or coronation, Kags, the guardian angel of the damned, the patron of the entire service industry found the crown in the gutter by the convenience store and placed it atop his own head.

“buy something for your mother, tell her I send my love”

or “get whatever you need”

Everywhere we went I was introduced as the writer. Kags had shown all of his people the story and now I was smashing drinks with all these adoring faces who wanted to know everything about the guy who turned their buddy into some literary mythical character. Our group grew and we were sniffling and pounding beers and shots of Jameson holding court with aspiring real estate moguls, bartenders, construction workers and some wild werewolf of a man snapping his jaws with conspiracy theories of reptilians and lost cosmonauts a howling mad prophet who may or may not live on the streets but his theory on music was profound. I have a rule I stick to that I always talk to the homeless and street preachers. In Europe there’s the myth of the poor wandering wise man but American has no such tales of penniless glory. Not yet anyway. I’m still looking for heroes and I’m not a betting man but I would wager if America had any heroes left they would be hiding on the streets of sleepy working poor towns like Manchester instead of the penthouses of Manhattan or Los Angelas.

“Hey toothless” Came a voice and it was Lana, one of Milo’s friends from work and for a split second I became insecure of the tooth that had been knocked off but the cocaine quickly dissolved that.

“How’s this sweetheart!” Came the coked up street prophet pulling his entire top plate of teeth out and making her bolt up the road.

“We don’t make fun of teeth here man”

The night was like a wormhole pulling us up until we had been to every bar and every bag was moved and every beer was drunk and then we met up with his girlfriend Lana and her friend. They both were nurses who had just come back from some big rodeo. A rodeo. A fucking rodeo. In Manchester, New Hampshire. I thought we won that war. Anyway, Lana was down as fuck— a polymath and fantastic artist, a gentle soul from a tiny town on the border of Vermont and the way she looked at Kags said everything that needed to be said. It was love and adoration. The girls suggested we go to a strip club and soon we found ourselves barreling down the highway at warp-speed our mouths moving as fast as the tires pushing us into the murky waters of a New England twilight.

We walked into the club and Kags handed me a stack of cash, “welcome to Manchester, have some fun” and I stumbled in my mind all garbled and snowed out as the music vibrated my sternum and when I saw the dancers under the flashing lights from above my heart almost exploded like a bottle of Faygo. One day I was writing poems and now I’m in the company of some criminal icon wilding out. And who said poetry doesn’t pay?

Lana’s friend and I sat in front of one of the girls and she came over to us and plopped down on the stage with a piece of bacon in her hand boringly licking it.

“I’m so bloated I totally don’t even want to be here right now” She pouted rolling onto her back in front of us. “Like really”

“Ah I’m sorry, you okay?” I said.

“There’s a free bacon buffet tonight. Did you get some? I love bacon so much. I ate too much and now I feel like I’m dying, I’m dying, how could I shake my bacon bits when I feel like this? I’m laughing but it fucking sucks” She was sprawled out across the bar the purple spotlight painting violet constellations across her sleeve tattoos.

She was right and I handed her a stack of cash. In a world where you make money by concealing your true feelings and desires to meet the needs of others and I’m not even just talking about dancing it could be serving pancakes at Ihop— the service industry is a whole head game and honesty is a fleeting siren’s song and damn did she deliver some honesty.

They got me a dance and the woman took my hand leading me to the VIP section and she was gorgeous and the hallway felt like it went on forever, the lights flickering in slow motion with the reflecting strobe lights. She pushed me to the seat and jumped right into it and grabbed my dick “welcome to Manchester”

but alas the booger sugar had been a double edged sword and all I was left with was a dead soldier. Such is the fall of man. What did they say about Icarus?

“I’m skeed, I appreciate the gesture but not even a shock paddle is going to get the trooper up. We can Holden Caulfield this shit I don’t care, I’m just chilling, I’m just happy to be here”

I have no idea if she knew what I meant but she sat on my lap and grinned on me and we talked about the story, the story about Kags and being a touring poet and then she got up and I left cursing my foul luck and submitting to my fate by blasting through the rest of it in the bathroom. Back at the table, the strippers who weren’t dancing were all at our table flirting with Lana and when I sat they all turned their attention to me asking about the story. The night carried back to his apartment on the other side of town where other folks gathered and we railed lines and read poems and talked about the culture that is spreading around the country. See the meme is that people will be doing coke and taking about all these crazy business ideas but I’m a poet so I just talk about lame shit like the zeitgeist or

“Dude, we’re bringing you to Lana’s parents tomorrow on the border of Vermont. Her family owns like the whole damn town. Bringing you to a Yankee Swap”

“A Yankee what?”

What sort of strange people exist up in this quarter of these United States with their new fangled holidays but they told me it was like some gift swapping game where everyone brings bags of gag gifts and draw numbers randomly and you can steal gifts— it’s Hallmark as fuck. Back home in Jersey, they call them White Elephant parties but I was too poor to ever be invited to any of that bourgeois shit so I was in the deep end of the swimming pool. Spun like a cyclone at six in the morning on their couch obligated to meet family.

Before I knew it, the sun rose and the day bore on and the party continued until we were out the door and barreling North the trees growing thicker and more threatening with their posture— a palisade of nature’s last grasp on the coast. I stared out the window and every mall, shopping center and strip mall were mobbed with people.

“What’s up with that?” I murmured.

“It’s Christmas week dude”

And it was. When you live the bohemian life like this sometimes things get away from you. Last night we were heathens, all Motley Crue and doggish but today we were distinguished thirty somethings walking up to the massive home that was already packed with aunts and uncles and cousins and grand parents and uncles in silly suits and inside jokes and belly laughs and home cooked food and sound of children’s feet running back and forth across the linoleum. This massive house surrounded by farm land had all the making of that true Americana. That family culture, the innocence and security that a stable life provides. It was magnificent to observe it as I swayed with Kags in the corner as we pounded their beer in the effort to not look completely blasted on marching powder.

Lana showed me her and her mother’s matching coat hanger tattoos on their wrists and then grandma pulled up her sleeve to show me hers and then it bloomed and every aunt and cousin showed theirs like the Death Eater’s showing the Dark Mark and it was turtles turtles all the way down man and I couldn’t’t believe what I was seeing and maybe I was hallucinating the whole thing. My eyes were darting around the room like a fly at a shit buffet — there was so much to take in but I didn’t know where to start. When they brought out the hedgehogs and that’s when I lost it and then I blinked and I was outside smoking a cigarette staring off into the thick wood that lingered in the dark behind the wrap around porch like some ancient poltergeist calling me in. I needed some sleep.

Then we traded gifts and they stole and exchanged and laughed and for a moment I wasn’t the traveling poet, I was a part of this moment laughing and being all American. There was a moment when we snuck off outside to smoke some pot and decompress from the Juliard-esque production that was us pretending we were sober in front of this really sweet family that I thought about how easy it would be for me to return to cutting meat. And work my ass off and get a spot and step back from the poetry game going full civilian with a couch and a flat screen too. Is this even what I really wanted to do?

But back in Manchester, Kags turned to me and said “want something for your article?” Then I became his apprentice and this wasn’t called spiraling this was artistic investigation— I was a journalist diving into the annals of the underworld. This was for the story. I learned the breakdown: what goes into cutting the product just right, the way to bag it, to tie it with one hand swinging it around your ring finger and tugging it through. Then how to clear and load a glock, the differences in ammunition. I was learning so much. I was a Vice reporter getting hands on in the field.

America sure is a melting pot and the rich float to the top but I’ve always been more into the solids, the real meat of the American dream floating around the bottom. Down there is where all the usual suspects cross paths; the criminals, the users, the abusers, the holy men, the broken souls, the artists, the haunted, the desperate, the dreamers, the poets and the searching. And if there are heroes yet to be born into this national myth than I’m sure we will find them there at the intersection of the damned.

Kags this one’s for you dog.