Rollins - The Portable Henry Rollins

I started writing on the road when I was in a band called Black Flag. I was young and the road held much to open the eye. So many things were happening day-to-day, I thought it would be a good idea to start writing about it. The more I wrote, the more I liked writing. After a while, it occurred to me to make a book. I saved money that I was supposed to use to eat with.

After several months I had enough to make a fold-and-staple photocopied chapbook. I sold five hundred of them and used the money to make another run. I made a paperback later that year. A friend told me that I had to have a name for my company. Company? I was just making some books at a cheap printer in downtown LA and selling them out of my backpack. I took his advice and came up with 2.13.61 Publications. Those numbers stand for my birthday. I figured I will be the only one on the label, so why not?

Time went on and more paperbacks came out. I got an office and some staff to deal with the mail order and store accounts. We started putting other peoples work out. More time passed and we kept moving the company to larger places and needed bigger storage space for all the titles.

As it is now, we are a small book company that puts out everything from photo books to short-story and poetry books. We do okay.

I was at Villard one day in 1996 for a meeting with Craig Nelson. He asked me if I would consider doing an anthology of my work. I thought that was an interesting idea. The excerpts from my books included in this volume were chosen in hopes of presenting a fully rounded view of what I do writing-wise, and I hope you enjoy it or something.

H ENRY R OLLINS

N umbers are perfect, infallible and everlasting. You arent. Numbers are always right in the end. You may see an incorrect figure, but thats not the fault of the number, the fault lies in the person doing the calculating. How many times will your heart beat during your lifetime? Of course you dont know! But theres a number that will provide you with this small bit of information. Numbers are dependable! The sun may explode, you may lose your job, you may never be able to get it up again, but at the end of the day five is five. Get it? Good! Numbers do not cut in line at lunchtime. Numbers do not write bad checks. Numbers sound cool, like when a fucking pig gets a call on his pig radio to go answer a 2-11. You can go to buy coffee at 7-Eleven. Numbers make good names. Like at a party or soire. I always wear a sticker that has a martini glass and the words HI MY NAME IS : printed on it; underneath the printing I write in 2-13-61. So I can say, Hi, my name is 2-13-61, whats yours? Then you can say to girls or guys, Hey youre really the bees knees! Whats your number?

I see walking bombs on the street
Hearts not beating, but ticking
I am talking about detonation!
Youre in McDonalds
And some guys head explodes
Brains everywhere
I think theres some faulty circuitry here
You see some guy in a business suit
Walking home from work
Look at him closely
Hes slumped over
Theres smoke coming out of one ear
Theres a buzzing, crackling sound coming from his head
Blown fuses
Poor machine!
But its ok
The parts are interchangeable
Well install a new one

In a state of delirium I dreamt that I came upon a female cockroach the size of a girl. She smiled at me and told me to come closer. She kissed me. The feeling of her belly scales against my flesh made me convulse and sweat. We made love. She wrapped her six legs around my back and pulled me close. Her antennas lashed my back. No girl ever made me feel like that before, ever. By morning I was covered with sweat, blood, and a noisome yellow-green mucus. She had my children (twenty of them). They were semihuman in form, could reproduce in weeks not years, and could lift up to six times their own weight. We are breeding. In the alleys in the sewers in the back rooms and brothels. Not a day goes by where my children dont grow in size and strength. We are everywhere. You try to kill us with motels and poison. This is snack food for us. You will never rid the world of us. We will rid the world of you.

I woke up this morning in the truck. I like sleeping in the truck. Its quiet and dark. Rain was falling on the roof. Sounded nice. Outside I heard tires screeching followed by a loud crash. I looked out the window. Head-on collision. The song Dead Joe by the Birthday Party immediately came to mind. There was a child lying sprawled on the sidewalk in the rain. The mother was in hysterics. The child kept screaming, Mommy! Mommy! I tried to imagine what the mother saw when she looked down at her child. Was the childs head bashed in? Were any bones exposed? Was the childs blood mixing with the falling rain and making rivulets of bloody water into the grass? Did their eyes meet? When the child would scream, the mother would jerk as if hit by lightning. Do the jerk mom, cmon mom, do it in the rain. Cmon ma, jerk it. Use your hips mom. Jerk it.

She lit my soul and inhaled deeply
Flicking my ashes occasionally
Finally, she ground me out
After a time, she reached for another
Cracked
Crumbling
Ruptured soul
Shattered
I wrote out a road map to get back home
I threw it away
Here I am
In uncertain time
And a shaky place
And this is all right
Not somehow
But all right
This isnt the way it is
Its the way it is around these parts

I was in a mens room at one of those big gas-rest-food stops. At the urinal I saw six men pull down their zippers and pull out their cocks almost simultaneously. It was fantastic, like a firing squad, or like some kind of secret Masonic pud-grab ritual. Men act differently in the mens room. They dont talk much, and if they do, its real loud as if to say, Hey, Im not afraid to talk in the mens room! They act very manly in the mens room lest someone think they are gay. There are no weaklings in the mens room! We are in the mens room. We have our cocks in our hands. We are urinating our way. Right. A man who is henpecked and owned by his wife or girlfriend transforms into a virtual bedrock of masculinity upon entering the mens room. Its a temporary club, where men, united by a need to urinate, are men.