Rosenbush Cafe

Todd Rundgren tells us in “Heavy Metal Kids”

I was a sweet young kid once
Now I’m a full grown crank
And when I die I’ll probably come back as a Sherman Tank.
I know that I could make this world so peaceful and calm
If I could only get my hands on a hydrogen bomb

Todd, 1974

eXisTenTiaLNihLisT (WARNING: Adult themes. The SG site contains nudity and plenty of imagery and writing that is not intended for children or adults who are upset by the subject matter discussed below. This post was started earlier in May, several weeks before my near-fatal automobile accident on Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at approximately 2:45 p.m. EST. As often with eXisTenTiaLniHLisT I am writing as a Dadaist in a consciousness stream, albeit, with my off-beat humor sense thereof, and so I have looked at what I wrote and am confident that I can leave it alone realizing that when it was started life was no longer or shorter until Tuesday. I’m happy being a man, but the prospect of coming back as an empowered woman would by OK, provided the world is a better place. My last several days, however, has taught me another valuable life lesson: be strong and happy with your lot for tomorrow may never arrive! The crash left me unable to finish a myriad of updates that will come later in June, especially after some extremely important issues that have less to do with the Cafe than everything else important in my life. — May 30, 2009)

I’d rather come back as one of the Suicide Girls
Celebrating the alternative beauty of pierced and tattooed bodies augmenting the goth culture and punk rock with unashamed and unafraid of displaying nudity. I first heard of the SGs a few years back and like anyone with curiosity was interested in learning more:

Were they girls that wanted to die? No, no, no.
Were they girls who wanted to live? Yes, yes, yes.
They were girls who showed a variance on the beauty is only skin deep or in the eye of the beholder motifs.

A small group of them were on display in the episode of CSI: NY, Oedipus Hex where at the fadeout Suicide Nixon invites series regular Danny Messer (Carmine Giovinazzo) out to see where the night would take them, but naturally he doesn’t take the opportunity; “Being with a Suicide Girl, you don’t know what you’re missing!”

Like any good fantasy, after the fadeout, I envisioned Danny enjoying the wildest ride of his life as he indulges in public sex, ending up arrested by fellow CSI Stella Bonosera (Melina Kanakaredes), who cuffs the poor bastard to a lamp post, invites all the co-workers to paint his body like a black light poster and leave him stranded in Central Park, but only long enough for his boss, Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) to ride by with his gf in a horse-drawn carriage. “I’d ask for your gun and badge but looks like you left them with your pants,” he says. Suddenly, Danny awakens, aroused, but only to find himself at home in bed alone! He is late to work and when he arrives no one is in the building and then he awakes again, still aroused, this time with Suicide Nixon locking his handcuffed wrists, over his head, to the bedpost. The rest is left to your imagination.

The episode was more serious than my rave: a fresh-faced midwestern teenager, who wanted to be an SG gets murdered instead by a jealous guy, while real SGs are on-stage involved in a blood drenching scene a la Carrie. It was a good, if not great episode, because the death reminds us of the fragility of life and how easily is can be taken - even in fiction.

A few weeks later, probably due to their, pardon the pun, exposure, I was flipping teevee channels one evening, at the far end of the progamming dial, I stopped to view a naked girl being photographed in a bathtub. There were more tattoos on her body than water and studs piercing eyebrows, nose, tongue, navel and, yes, below the water line. I had stumbled - out of my chair -into the final half hour of a documentary on Suicide Girls.

I’m a very ordinary male without tatts, piercing or a goth wardrobe and aside from having a beard since the seventies I’m not much of a risk-taker. There are plenty of scars from cat scratching and the number of times I’ve struck my head on anything that could leave a mark means aside from some baldness I fear that with my head shaved it would resemble the surface of the moon.

I will never be mistaken for the racy blond but this is fantasy after all!

For shame, since an eXisTenTiaLniHLisT should open the portals to everything and nothingness physically as well as mentally. If I can scheme to get a fictional television character into trouble I might as well conjure a bit for myself. If possible, I’ll come back playing a keytar in an girl band like Von Iva.