Space Songs: Fear and Trembling in Bethesda/Ocean City

By Dylan Lawn and Dylan Thomas Lawn

Drugs! Phones! Danger! Dr. Thompson! Youth! Beauty! Anger! Money! Amerika! Trump! Excitement! Drama! Action! Violence! Fresh fruit! Thrills! Spills! Romance! Adventure! All the things you can read about, in a book.

The breathtaking new vision of GENERATION Z… a promising debut YA novel from an author carrying the same creative Welsh/Irish blood as the Great Dylan Thomas himself, Space Songs: Fear and Trembling in Bethesda / Ocean City takes adult and teenage readers through the modern generational struggles and pitfalls, of being raised, and coming of age, in the 2010's-2020's Amerikan culture. An absolute must-read for Anybody who holds the writing of People like Dr. Thompson, J.D. Salinger, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Sylvia Plath, Bret Easton Ellis, Ayn Rand, Homer, Nietzsche, Seneca, and So Many others, in High Regard.

***TRIGGER WARNING*** self harm, suicide, mental illness, addiction, abortion, blood, terrorism, drug abuse, prostitution, generally upsetting content. Reader discretion advised.

Enjoy the book!

-Dylan Thomas Lawn

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dylan Lawn
• Release date: Aug 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9798218225421

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Dedicated to Everybody who Turns On, Tunes In, and Drops Out...

...Come join the party!

© Copyright 2023, Published by Dylan Lawn & Draft2Digital.

All rights reserved. This book, or any portion thereof, may not be used or reproduced in any form without explicit written consent from the publisher, with the exception of quotations used for review purposes.

Cover photograph by Dylan Lawn

Cover design by Dylan Lawn, created with Canva

Digital ISBN: 979-8-218-22542-1

"The beginning of the new century will also be marked in history as the quasi-official birth of what will come to be known as Generation Z. . . . Never mind the gibberish of Mystics & Astrologers; this is the Generation that was born into the Richest Economy in the history of the world. They were born rich & powerful, the certified Aristocrats of a new & Amazing century. The American nation is more Dominant now than primitive American leaders like Harry Truman & Richard Nixon ever dreamed of. We are Number One. Nobody argues. We have dollars, we have bombs, & we have the Will to use them. Let’s get back to Generation Z & its Lush & Extravagant birthright in this year of our lord 2000. . . . It may be a mixed blessing to be hatched at the top of the Heap. Indeed. The Stock Market might crash, crazed Muslim terrorists might put Nerve Gas or Anthrax in your drinking water, Your daughter might get Rabies or turn into a famous Porno slut with two Junkie boyfriends who will Hack into your secret Computer Code & loot your Bank Accounts. . . . But these are Uptown Problems, for sure, compared to being born in a Great Depression or forced to join a Hitler Youth Brigade at the end of WW2. Nobody is ever going to feel sorry for the gilded little sots of Generation Z."

-Dr. Thompson, December 4, 2000

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The poor bastards of what will forever be known as Generation Z are doomed to be the first generation of Americans who will grow up with a lower standard of living than their parents enjoyed. That is extremely heavy news and it will take a while for it to sink in. The 22 babies born in New York City while the World Trade Center burned will never know what they missed. The last half of the 20th Century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what’s coming now. The party’s over, folks.

-Dr. Thompson, September 17, 2001

Part One

Bethesda Bonfire + Drive to O.C.

The wood was fizzling and snapping as the fire flowed through it. My shins were warm, but a steady draft chilled the back of my neck, and made the trees sway in dry sound against the ever-declining gradient of the sunset. A thick layer of foam kept the coldness of the beer off my hand, compressing and wrinkling under my fingers. And, eminently oozing out from a bluetooth speaker on the ground by the cooler, over the din of conversation, the fire noises, the nighttime noises, was a space song; one with a slow, shuffling beat and reverb drenched guitars, echoing, distant vocals, some of the bass getting absorbed into the dirt in the grass it was resting on, shaking and distorting.

Hours, dragging all through the afternoon and evening into the April night, private school kids and trust fund kids and millionaire’s kids coming and going and laying around Tyler’s house, in the kitchen and living room and basement, his bedroom and the screened in porch, sprawling out onto the deck and the backyard. Myself included, of course, I’d been there since noon, nothing better to do on a lazy warm Bethesda Saturday... One of those rare instances, where nobody planned any real action, because we all assumed somebody else would, so the whole weekend would look like this for almost everyone. Around six-thirty or seven, it started getting dark and cool, so everybody grabbed lawn chairs and folding chairs, pool chairs from some of the neighbors, even the desk la-z-boy from the home office, to sit around the fire pit. To his credit, Tyler at least knew what he was doing, tinder underneath, pyramid structure, draw the flame upwards, the steady, eternal craft. Nick circled endlessly, barefoot in the sharp grass, with a white plastic bottle of lighter fluid, shooting quick fast streams over people’s shoulders and past their heads onto the logs, forcing big pillars and arms to burst and leap out from the body.

Nah, I haven’t been on the server that much, past couple of days.

"Oh my god, dude, this shit... they were building this big fuckin’ mob grinder, right there, and it was just, this big, ugly cobblestone and dirt, piece of, just total shit, tower. They were gonna make this whole compound, with all these farms and shit, like, right outside of spawn. So then Brandon was like..."

I took a long swig, leaned back and closed my eyes.

"‘What the fuck, you built this right in the fucking spawn’, and really, I mean, like, what were they thinking. They had all these fuckin’ mountains, right off to the side where those jungles are, they could have put it in the mountain, that’d be perfect."

Yeah, they could have made a little tunnel going into it, they could’ve put everything in there, all the mines and storage and animals and shit... yeah, they could make one of those little pressure plate doors, at the front.

Nah, they wanted all the animals and the horses, all of that stuff over by the farms. They were gonna build stables and big, big uh, fences, for all ‘em.

True.

Yeah.

Big fences? I didn’t know they had those.

"Big fences, like, big fences around them, I mean. Fuck you, you know what I meant."

If you get that fuckin’ beacon, dude, you can mine so fast, you literally take out, like, two thousand blocks every minute. You can get a whole chest of good shit, in like, ten minutes of beacon mining.

That makes the game too easy, though, that’s too unbalanced.

"You kidding me, come on man. The beacon is not easy to get, you need a shit ton of iron or gold to make it, it’s like, thirty five blocks of it or some shit. And you need that beacon headpiece, the fuckin, wither star thing, and you need all those goddamn wither skeleton skulls for it, and that, that’s fucking, hours, of grinding those goddamn, asshole skeletons down in the nether."

Yeah, true, you’ve got a point.

"Plus, that’s the whole fucking point, is that you want to get all this cool armor and weapons, so you can show off to your friends that you got the good stuff, so that makes you keep playing the game."

Yeah, yeah.

I’m not playing until they add that new update, with all those new biomes and the other shit. That old server’s not gonna have any of that, because they already went everywhere.

Whatever, dude, there’s always gonna be updates to that game, they’re gonna be updating that game when we’re sitting around in a fuckin’ nursin’ home.

Yeah, man, definitely.

There was only a thin ridge of blue left spanning across the western sky, a few stars already out. The only noise came from the fire and the music, too early in the year for the crickets and the summer sounds.

I lit a cigarette.

Oh man, big Mr. Lung Cancer over here, puffin’ away-

"Fuck off dude, always giving me shit."

There was a pause, a few chuckles around the circle.

"You’re always on that juul, and that’s just some, some mystery fuckin’ Chinese goop. At least, this is just a plant. I know what it is.

Yeah, it’s a plant, and a thousand other chemicals and rat poison mixed in.

That’s true, though. I would switch to the umm... american spirits, but the marb reds are just... too classic, y’know. Marlboro is to cigs what coke is to soda.

Yeah, yeah.

Are you planning on just, letting all the smoke waft down here, and go right into my fuckin’ face?

Of course.

Ridiculous, dude, fuck that, I’m gone.

He started dragging his chair across the yard to the opposite side.

You’re literally sitting next to a bonfire, with a giant plume of smoke-

Yeah, but it doesn't smell like death, and it’s not blowing into my eyes!

Tyler stood up, staggered a little, and walked to the house to take a piss.

Fire’s goin’ out, put some more wood on.

Nick got halfway to the woodpile before exclaiming, Oh, shit, he’s still got his christmas tree here! He really tried playing it off, oh so naturally, as if we didn’t all see him eyeing the tree up the whole time.

I was watching the fire, letting my vision soften and blur, so I only heard the rustling of the tree being dragged across the yard.

Yeah, this is gonna burn real nice.

He positioned the tree in the pit so that it was sticking almost straight up. The bottom started burning, the fire was getting hotter. Little red rivers shot up through the branches, and in ten seconds, the entire tree was engulfed in rippling orange waves, an eleven foot tall spire, screaming upwards, greater than god.

Oh, shit!

Jesus!

All of us scrambled out of our chairs and retreated, and once we’d formed a new, wider circle, the danger vanished and everyone was cheering and laughing and marveling. Some held up their phones to take pictures and snapchats.

For a few moments, nobody talked. Then, from the house, Oh, what the fuck!

It’s your christmas tree, Nick did it.

"Fuckin’ little snitch, we-

Why the fuck would you put the whole thing on at once, did you not think that would happen?

I don’t know, man, nobody told me not to.

Fuck’s wrong with you? What, are you stupid or something?

Fuck you.

I heard the quick eruption of violent noise- fists hitting flesh, little gasps and grunts, sneakers scuffling on dirt, the hey hey hey come ons of others coming in to break it up. I heard all of this, but I didn’t bother looking. My eyes were fixed on the spire. I had already seen my share of alcohol-fueled brawls, there was no spectacle left in it for me- but I had never laid eyes on a great pillar of flame like this before...

A blizzard of embers was being carried off into the breeze, glowing against the long deep shadows thrown outward. But after only a few minutes, the crackling went from erratic to constant to subdued, and the blizzard became a shower, then a drizzle. As the branches blackened, the fire fell and sank back into the pit, leaving just the razed corpse still standing. Someone took a log from the woodpile and bashed the remains, and the tree cracked and broke and collapsed.

I was the first one awake the morning after. On the basement couch, the whole room a gray mirage, lying still, listening for any other sign of life in the house, gazing out the sliding glass door across the backyard, running my finger over the hole in my shirt an ember had burned open.

These terrible images and hollers, I can’t say any of it was new, but this was the memory floating in my mind as I was making the drive. Taking long, slow sips of beer to keep me loose and steady... yeah, this seems reckless to the average straight-arrowed thinker. But anyways, after however many weeks of stiff whiskey, that beer may as well have been tonic water, and I can pass whatever breathalyzer they give me. I’ve devised a method involving a big gulp of popper fumes through the mouth, forcing the air down and swallowing my own breath... but what do they say about good magicians not giving away tricks?

Didn’t take much time to pack a bag and the car, either. Shirts and shoes and socks, shorts and boxers and bathing suits, shaving kit, book to read, journal to write in,