Red Velvet Sunrise

By Kurtis L Darby

After a night of partying with his contemporaries, art student Maxxi learns his friend, up and coming graffiti artist Jamesy Hale is missing. With the mysterious guerilla artist Gash descending on mid-nighties New York City, things bend quickly toward the chaotic. Will Maxxi find Jamesy before the city crashes down around him?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kurtis L Darby
• Release date: Jan 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215390252

Book preview

copyrightⒸ 2018

1.  Slowan

Jamesy Hale and I met on the scene as he was destroying a condo on East twelfth, months later, he was asking me to make love to his wife so I could be eternal. Somewhere in the middle we became friends. In roughly twenty-four hours, one of us will be dead.

An incessant banging I think is in my head, makes me open my eyes. It’s not  my head. It’s the door. I never really expected to wake up at all. Thanatos and Hypnos, the gods of death and sleep pulled a Parent Trap style trick on me.

Powdered Drizanidrol encapsulated in a hard shell of hydroxypropyl and methylcellulose and starch will dissolve in the stomach in twenty to thirty minutes after swallowing. Digested it is absorbed into the bloodstream where it can go to work depressing the central nervous system and boosting the effects of gamma-aminobutyric acid.

You do just enough and all the anxiety you feel will calm like a frozen lake. You do too much and you might forget to breathe and meet Thanatos and his inverted torch.

Still not over with.  What is the day, month, year, I try to remember. I get flashes of the ball dropping months, ago, Rockin New Years Nineteen-ninety...

The unabating banging. I don't know why anyone won't answer, then I realize I'm in my place, presumably alone.  

Crawling myself vertical, up the cool wall, I walk along with my shoulder pressed against it like the floor may fall from under me.  Feels like I'm walking in something with the texture of cotton candy but with a density that makes my legs feel ragged. The door seems a lifetime away and a cold river of sweat that formed down my back at some point in the night runs down to the band of my Calvins. I look around for Xandi because I'm sure she was here last night. I remember our skin glued together on the couch. She had a flesh-colored G-string and a flowered blouse while we were going lesser ape to my new Blur CD. But when she left and why I can't remember. I do remember the clear feeling of imprisonment and figuring a couple of more capsules of Driz might help me feel free, numb, numb, number (I  want to be the numbest), I took them.

Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end? 

In the bathroom, I find the bottle of Driz and think just one more might do the trick and I lift it up to my mouth then the asshole kicks the door and I drop the Driz capsule and it does one of those fucking impossible against the sink bounces, and hits the rim of the toilet once before bouncing into the blue water and now I'm so fucking angry at the idiot who thinks they can kick in a metal fucking door I rush to it without thinking, wanting to get rid of this fucker so I can be left alone. I sling open the door and It's Slowan and I curse under my breath because I wasn't expecting it would be him of all people and he bounds in like fucking Tigger with his bullshit grin.

What took you so long, Abercrombie?  He asks, like pounding on the door incessantly is a normal thing to do.

He goes right to the CDs and starts flipping through them and throws in some BTE.

What the fuck do you want, man?  I ask and he seems like he’s offended but it’s hard to tell with him.

I was thinking Hale was here.

Hale?

Yes.

Hale's missing. Have you seen him? 

As I look down to my bare knuckles I see a small cut on my hand. If I focus I can see Hale, his face bloody. Did I hit Hale? Did I bloody his face? We were at a party at Calorifere. I can place Slowan there too, the red walls behind his head, his stupid fucking gelled hair and Mediterranean perfect tan. I know he and Hale were both there last night. 

"Dude, I can barely remember where I was last night,"  I try to brush Slowan off.

You were in Calorifere, he tells me with a confused look from beneath his thick eyebrows. 

Like I didn't know that. Can't remember much else, I say, fishing through the ashtray and finding a  metallic lipstick-kissed cigarette, no doubt half-smoked by Xandi. I feel pretty awake but after a couple of puffs, my legs feel like they want personal autonomy. 

Yeah? Slowan says coming toward me. You left with Xandi.

He walks toward me and for some reason, I think he's going to hurt me  I swing my arm to block him and hit him in the nose. In answer, Slo punches me in the gut and it makes me feel immediately nauseous but somehow my stomach holds. I know he had a crush on Xandi but as these things go, so what, I’m thinking as I push off the wall.

Get over it, I tell him and he goes on about how much he digs her but I know Slowan digs whatever he digs for a short time.

As I look at my hand which is now openly bleeding, I wonder when did I start this trend of fighting? Back into the bathroom I go and pour the peroxide over the sink and I see the Driz I dropped earlier is still a capsule but it is a bloated cartoonish capsule now and I flush it.  Trying to make a plan of what to do next is really difficult on this many chemicals, but clarity pierces my confusion then and I know all I really have to do is get rid of Slowan's ass. 

Listen. Slo buddy, I begin coming out of the bathroom but he's looking at me funny. He asks what it was I said. Again, I begin and again he asks what I said then, there is a strange color to his face and, I start to feel a down coming, a real fucking down.

Down, down, down. There was nothing else to do, so Alice soon began talking again.

I have a dream of someone, maybe Xandi, maybe Lexi, but I know we are screwing in the dream, the slope of her nape, the swell of her breasts, charcoal dust on my fingers, the denim burn of friction on pants not fully pulled down.

Boom.  Well, not boom. Whatever noise light makes sounds in my head and I open my eyes and see Slowan. He reels his hand back and slaps me again and my head bangs against the tile and I go back to sleep. The next thing I see is him over me, black greasy gelled hair shaved at the sides, smooth almost infantile face with the lack of hair. My nostrils burn with a familiar sting. With a little straw in his mouth, Slowan is smiling like a schizo. I breathe in and my heart seems to be stuck to my chest then it thunders and I sit up with a gasp of breath. 

He's back with us, Slowan sings like an announcer at a sporting event, then goes to the mirror above the sink and primps his gelled hair. Slowan is nuts. I mean it. The craziest guy I've ever known. He's a film student. He gets wet off ideas about guerilla filmmaking, guerilla war, guerilla art. You're likely to see him walking around with his 8mm camcorder talking to himself, filming women walking on the street who are about as freaked out as you can get, because Slowan is handsome and buffed, but his eyes don't blink enough. He's really fucking intense. Lucidity evades him at times. He can go on these great diatribes about Cuban rebels that would be halfway interesting if you gave a fuck or he can be vacant Ecs'd out of his skull going on partying pilgrimages that could make candy kids seem like pussy runaways. 

He's strong, too. He lifts me up around my torso and I know he didn't want to fight earlier or he could've taken me down then. What I get out of our friendship I’m not sure of but, Slowan is friends with me because things are better in my world: better school with an actual campus, better girls like Xandi, and better drugs. 

He slings me into a chair and hands me a cup of liquid that is thick and dark like Indian ink. I take a sip—coffee, and I feel... not normal but like soon I’ll feel the damage of the previous night and it's going to hurt like hell.

Then I remember Slowan's camera and I think it might have some footage of what we did last night. 

Slo. Did you film any of last night?

"Hell-to-the-jeah." 

Where's your camera?

Back at my place.

Can We go get it? 

Yeah. Sure. MMM. He looks at me with a dumb gesture on his face.  There's just one little problem.

What, Slo?

You slept with Xandi, he fires like he was just waiting to throw that in my face.

What's this about Hale? I ignore the Xandi shit. I mean, we all just hang out. If he wants to hang out with Xandi after this that’s between them. While Slowan goes on talking I turn off BTE and turn on the radio. Something operatic is playing, when I turn the dial. It sounds like it could be from that new indie film version of Rigoletto with all those annoying Hollywood assholes and Hale's bitch sister. I switch it back to CD Mode and put my Blur CD back in and press play but it's not Blur, it's PsychoCandy. Xandi's been trying to get me into this noisy shit for a long time and I'm too angry now because that means my blur CD is in her Psychocandy jewel Case

His wife can't find him, slow is still going on. His voice is sincere, with more care than I can muster after a night of partying.

No one can ever find Hale. That's his whole thing.

Yes but she's been all over the city going crazy. Checked all the usual places.  He's dematerialized.

I look down at my knuckles.

Slo. I think maybe something happened between me and Hale yesterday.

Something like what? He's standing there looking at me, not blinking.

I don't know. My hand's all banged up. I remember him being banged up too. I think maybe it happened last night. Can we go take a look at your Camera? I say not able to shake this sense of dread I have when I think about Hale.

Slowan and I have been friends for a couple of years. A student with financial woes can make a quick buck posing for a life study workshop. If Slowan’s junk ever went missing, I’m sure I could draw it for the police. He is an aspiring filmmaker who idealizes Kassovitz and Richard Kern. Once in a while, he gets me to feature in his films. Like Sophomore year, he gets me and Stucky, and Matt nice and skeeved up on some pills and gives us ski masks. He takes us to a drag burlesque and we order a couple of drinks while the drags go on with their show. When the bouncer is distracted, he leads us to the back of the house and hands us pantyhose, and says: panty raider. 

We fall right in with him pulling the pantyhose over our faces, running into the dressing room and at first, the drags get all upset and yelling because they think they are about to be victims of a hate crime. Slo eases them saying Ladies you’re perfectly safe. We are only panty-raiders.  And then, the ladies are actually amused by us rifling through their drawers looking for their large panties. They join in mugging for the camera and slapping us on the back while we do our hasty search. The whole thing is fun until the bouncer comes in and slams Stucky against a wall. I run through the audience clasping the panties, pantyhose on my face. The whole thing is an interesting watch but of course, when he takes it to his City film class they tear the damned thing apart likening it to a popular prank show, saying it lacks depth which in all honesty it does. Slowan doesn’t lack depth. He’s actually one of my most intelligent friends. He just has it in his head like all art students that he’s going to push his genre to some new avant-garde outer limits. His mission: nonlinear film-making that features tableaus of moments put together for the wicked juxtaposition. 

We manage to get me dressed and leaning heavily to the side we make it to Slowan's dungeon of a place. I mean it's fucking grody.  His bed is just a mattress on the floor; there's the obligatory shelf with cinder blocks on the floor and a copy of Finnegan's wake that's in every middle-class college kid's apartment. He shares it with a drum-and-bass DJ who's named after one of the minor Mario Bros characters, like Toadstool, or Princess Toadstool, or maybe not princess but something like that. He has a bunch of cassettes of things he's filmed. I don't know exactly what he's filming all of this stuff for. On the wall is a photo collage, kind of, of the scene. I am in a few of the pictures, but not as many as Hale is.

Hale has that star persona. 

Hale will be God. 

We all know it.

There’s a poster on the wall, I think I’ve seen it before. It’s not the typical college dude porn you see on walls. This is more artistic like a boudoir type of pin-up of a goth girl with dark hair and rotund breasts sitting on the hood of some classic car her left eye winking at me, her pale skin tattooed but you can’t see what the tatts are because the poster isn’t quite big enough. They are out of focus. One on her right quad is slightly obscured because a strap has fallen down and obscured it. 

She’s the type of woman I wouldn’t even bother painting or drawing and I’d need a condom of some unfound Sci-fi movie mineral to protect me before I bedded some ghastly skag like that. 

You good, Maxx?

Peachers, Slo. Just admiring your taste in muses.

I could be so lucky.

I sit at his small desk while he begins running wires to his laptop. It groans like a nearly done brewing coffee maker and the screen lights up.

---

BendART.Com

Who is Gash? We rank the six most plausible theories.

Who is Gash?  His identity has been the source of much debate ever since the can-wielding rebel first began stenciling So/Cal real estate. In the years since he’s made mortar in other cities and towns across the world his canvas and many around the world have followed him with the fervor of Phans or Deadheads but with the added air of  mystery surrounding this secretive artist, it’s not just fans on his tail. There’s a host of journalists who would love nothing more than to paint a face on the ubiquitous street artist. While there are constant sightings, a few theories have made the rounds and are likely the most plausible.

1)   The Grey Hulk:  This one is a favorite of mine.  It paints Gash as a middle-aged Scandinavian artist who lost his marbles Gogh-style and has since been a Phantom of the Art-world posting up his work from the shadows.

While I like this one no one ever seems to have any information on who this man may be. All we have is images like the one below of a gray-haired well-groomed man outside of a Hamburg art space.

2)   DJ Bonhomme:  It is no secret that Gash has some sort of relationship with power music duo The Blitz Free, the experimental Trip-hop Duo.  He graced their Into the Deep album cover with an original image. A seemingly mainstream act of corporate art he has not since repeated for anyone else. Half of the power duo DJ Bonhomme has said that he and Gash are friends but he has not offered much more about the details of that friendship. Rolling Stones journalist, Gerald Wheeler thinks that’s for a reason, claiming Bonhomme is Clark Kent and Gash his alter ego. He drops his turntables and beat machines for a spray can. This isn’t just conjecture though. Wheeler backs this up with a detailed account of how often a Gash piece is erected in a city where Blitz Free has just played. 

3)  Cherchez-la-femme:  A theory that has absolutely no supporting evidence is that Gash is not a single artist, but a collective of artists that is run by a woman who is, for all intents and purposes, Gash. This theory is fairly new and there aren’t many guesses about who that woman is but she obviously would need to be an art-world insider with loads of connections. There isn’t much of a description of her except she is told to be a leggy brunette with ravenlike tresses.

4)  Victor Mallon: This one will get you an earful from most who follow art. Many remember how Mallon, an art world outsider, social-climbed to the top with not only no art education but also no known artistic talent. He was a self-proclaimed documentarian who somehow became friends with street artist Guerra, and later one of Gash’s closest friends. His visibility at Gash’s events has led many to believe he is in fact Gash, but if that’s so how do you account for the lack of talent? Well just like his own art, he schemes, he plans, then he has post-grads execute it for him. Accepting  Mallon as Gash would mean admitting that the genius that is Gash is not so genius. Just a bunch of college grads under the rule of a wannabe artist. 

5)  Drexler:  No artist paints a picture to hang in his own home. For all of Gash’s anti-establishment ways, his art is still bought and sold in more traditional settings like auction houses. To that end, he has employed Drexler. Once a corporate lawyer he now makes his money as a liaison between Gash and rich people's wallets. But he has remained very tight-lipped about his client leading some to believe he is the very person he pretends to protect.

6)  The Unknown Archer:  Many who claim to have seen Gash tell a similar tale of a guy in his early twenties with Rem McCormack good looks and the fashion sense of an alt-rocker. The blondish chiseled-jawed man most claim to be Gash has been seen as far as Australia. With the odds being strong that an artist so busy has been arrested at least once, it would seem obvious that he’d be jailed at least long enough to reveal who he is. Gash must have lots of friends, in various places of power.

---

The screen goes black for a second then there we are all at Calorifere. I'm not in a lot of shots at first. But there are quite a lot of Xandi and even more of Hale. Then there's me leaving with Xandi and the film stops. 

Asshole, Slowan says.

Look. Sorry alright. Won't happen again.

I realize something.

He wasn't bloody.

What?

Hale. He wasn't bloody in what you shot.

Why would he be? Hey, what do you think happened between you guys last night?

I don't know. I look on the wall and there's a picture of me and Hale chumming it up at a Blitz Free Concert. Looking at our faces I can tell we are really wrecked. Just off behind me there is a blond kid who could be my evil twin. He’s not with us, I mean, I don’t recall him being in our group at all, but there is something familiar about him. Maybe it’s just because he looks like me.

I remember something else from Last night. I didn't go straight home with Xandi.  We went to a hotel. Which one was it, The Macdougal? No, the Macdougal has a strict no-nonsense policy even for trustee babies like Hale. Maybe it was The Ve in midtown, but no I don't think we got that far up. I think now it was the Court Street Squire hotel.  They banned Hale and all of his Tagonaut crew but that was over six months ago. I close my eyes and try to look behind the bloody-faced Hale in my mind and see if there is that chintzy pink polka dot wallpaper behind him and I find that my memories are too fuzzed.  I can see Hale in front of that square wallpaper, can even put him in front of the clover walls of the Macdougal, the Flat toned walls of the Ve. Shit on a biscuit, I can put him on the top of the Rock wearing a superman suit overlooking the city with his bloodied face. 

Where'd you go last night? I ask Slowan.

I took Paige and those girls to a set my roommate was spinning at The Greenlight.

Can I borrow this? I say slipping my fingers beneath the corner of the snapshot of Hale and me.

What are you going to do with that? I work it off the wall, trailing around it until the putty bond breaks. 

I think I know where I saw Hale last.

No one cares where you saw him...  He pauses then and blinks a few times in succession like his mind just reminded his body that it needed to blink occasionally and he has to catch up. 

Wait a minute. You're starting to freak me out. I mean. You are talking about blood and then you are referring to the last place you saw him. Jolie's hysterics this morning. Finding you half-dead in your place. I feel like something sinister is at foot.

I look at him and feel very much like he deserves an explanation but I really can't explain.

"At foot?" I ask.

"Wait, is it afoot?"

Either way, that’s no way to talk unless you’re a seventeenth-century constable.  Look, if I had an explanation for you then I would give it. But as it stands I don't know what happened to Hale. After a moment. If anything did happen. For all we know he's crawling back to Jolie at this very moment.

Maybe I should call her. Slowan looks at his flip and opens it. I plop down on the bed knowing I may not get back up if I do as I feel like death warmed over. I grab a pair of cheap shades he has on top of the Mac by his bed. He dials while I listen to the beeping. He dials some more. I hear him put the flip back in his pocket. 

Lots of messages, Maxxi. She still hasn't found him.

Take a ride with me downtown, I say. I can see in his posture that he is still worried.

Listen, I do think he's fine, Slo. Honestly. If the party got as out of control as I think it did, the fine staff probably sent Hale's ass to cool off in the drunk tank overnight.  Certainly wouldn't be his first time now would it?

No. Certainly not.

Come, I say sitting up. But I can see he is still toggling some emotions.

Hey. I try sitting up.  After the slack stomach muscles fail, I jump into the second attempt and sit upright with a jolt that frightens the fairly unfrightenable Slowan.  What is all this footage for?

I don't know, he says feebly at first.

"No. I don't buy that, Slo. You walk around filming your friends all the time for no reason?